Bad Agency Experiences: How to Turn Sales Objection Into Opportunity Part 3 [+Video]

Do you want to win more new agency business?

Of course you do, but it can be hard when your prospects have already had a negative experience with the competition.

In this article and video, I'll teach you how to turn their negative experiences with other agencies into a win for you and yours.

First impressions can be everlasting -- good or bad --and, unfortunately, sometimes we can be held accountable for a negative impression left by an awful experience with another agency.

These experiences  can be a common objection as prospects don’t fully understand what you do, how you do it differently, or what separates your agency apart from others.

To them you’re all the same, so, naturally, after a bad experience, many may have trouble not forming some sort of negativity toward our industry as a whole, but this an be overcome!

Think of it this way: if you’ve ever had a bad experience at a restaurant, you wouldn’t stop dining at all restaurants. You just wouldn’t return to that particular restaurant. The same should be true for your marketing agency prospects.

Note: This is the third installment in my series on Agency Sales Objection Handling.

Did you miss something?

Part 1 of the series was how to handle a prospect who says “send me more information.”.

Part 2 of the series covered the illusive “let me think about it” response.

3 Things You Can Do to Turnaround a Bad Agency Experience

Whether it’s poor communication in terms of expectations and deliverables, poor strategy, or just a clash in personalities -- bad experiences happen and the best thing you can do is to educate your prospects that that isn’t the norm.

1. Educate them on your plan.

Walk your prospects through the plan you have for them. Explain exactly how you’re going to help achieve their goals or ease their pain points.

Talk to them about what success looks like after working with you

There’s inherent uneasiness when people don’t know what to expect, but when there’s a clear plan in place, your prospect can feel more confident and rest assured.

2. Inform them about your systems and processes.

Clearly communicate what you do and how you do it in terms and phrases your prospects can understand. Make sure they fully understand your systems and processes for completing work.

As marketers, we can get excited about our ideas and work, but we can overwhelm prospects by using too much industry jargon.

Keep it simple, but do explain how you’re different and even call out how “other guys do it” and what makes your agency different.

3. Know and understand their 3 I’s: Issue, Importance and Impact.

• What issue are they having?
• What is the impact this issue is having on their business?
• What is the level of importance, or what is the consequence if they don’t address the issue?

Once you know these, you can better understand where they are coming from to not only deliver better results but improve communication.

Build Trust

The bottomline is prospects have issues in their organizations that they come to agencies to solve. They are putting their trust in your hands and if other agencies have betrayed that trust in the past, it is understandable that they may be a bit reluctant.

However, the next time a potential new client tries to blow you off based on judgments from a bad experience with another agency, you know what to say.

Ask them: “Have you ever had a bad experience at a restaurant?” After they answer, ask: “do you still dine out at other restaurants?” You know what to do from there…. :)

Be sure you check out next month’s edition to this series. And, if you have a sales objection you’d like me to cover send it to me at https://jasonswenk.com/AskSwenk/