The Best Ways to Address Objections from Decisionmakers to Turn a No into a Yes - Episode 34

You're listening to the nonprofit. Power podcast. In today's episode, We share the best ways to address objections from decision makers to turn a no into a yes. So stay tuned If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place. I'm Cath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive non profit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter. It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner, and to have them Bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the nonprofit power podcast. Hey everybody. Calf Patrick here. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of the nonprofit power podcast. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode. Whenever you're engaging a decision maker to get them to agree to do something, usually something around money or policy you're likely to encounter some resistance or objections along the way. You can't make this not happen. But you can plan your messaging to anticipate objections and address them quickly. Sometimes even before they've been spoken. So that you reduce any potential friction on your pathway to getting that decision-maker to yes. Mhm. Hey there folks. Welcome to the nonprofit power podcast. I'm your host, cath, Patrick. we've all experienced this, whether we're talking to a policymaker, a potential contracting partner, a government agency person, whoever we're dealing with. We're trying to get them to agree to something, right. That's why we're engaging them. We want to work on something together. We want to solve a problem. We want their help in solving a problem, or we want them to pay us to solve a problem. Or some combination of the above. A lot of the time there are things that cause them to hesitate. There's some resistance to saying yes to the thing that you're proposing. I generically characterize these as objections. but it can be expressed as resistance, reluctance, an outright spoken objection, whatever it is. But I'm going to call them all objections because fundamentally that's what they are. It's something that's making them say. I don't know. I don't know if I want to do that. That doesn't sound like something that's going to be good for me. That's what's going on in their head. It's rare that there's not at least one objection. Now it might be relatively minor. It might be a concern, a question. But it's in the way. It's creating friction. It's in the way of them getting to yes. So fundamentally your job is to clear out everything that's in the way of yes. That's what we're doing here. And we want to do it as efficiently as possible so that we're not wasting our time, we're not wasting the decision-makers time, and we're not allowing opportunities for other new reservations to come creeping in that they hadn't thought of before. You want to move them smartly along on the path to yes. And do everything you can to help make that a nice, easy, smooth ride for them. So it's helpful to talk about where objections tend to come from. And broadly speaking, there's kind of a handful of things that cover most of the territory. And at the root of all of them is a fear that there's going to be either a risk, and or some pain for them somewhere in this arrangement. And that risk or pain can come in the form of them thinking I'm going to have to do some work that I don't want to do. Or I'm going to have to spend money that I don't want to spend. Or I'm going to spend the money or do the work, but I'm not going to get the result that was promised. And then I'll really be out of luck. pretty much most of the time objections fall in one or more of those kinds of categories. they're all rooted in a fear on the part of the decision maker that something ungood is going to happen for them as a result of this. And, that can be an elaborately constructed scenario and story in their head, or it can just be a vague feeling of discomfort and unease. Of I'm not sure that's a good idea. I'm sitting here right now, doing what I'm doing and I'm not experiencing any extra pain or risk. But as soon as I engage with this organization that's coming here and asking me to do a thing, then I might be taking more risks. I might be up for more pain. I don't know. I don't like that. So at its root that's where a lot of it is. Now the most notable exception to that is if you're engaging a decision-maker who is fundamentally philosophically opposed to the thing you're proposing. So it's not I don't know if that's going to be good for me. It's I don't agree with that. I think that's wrong. I'll never do that because I believe it's wrong. If that's what you're dealing with, then the objection is not one that you can necessarily effectively counter with messaging with that decision maker. Very likely in that scenario, and we've talked about this in some other episodes and will again. In that kind of a scenario very often where you're going to need to go is some sort of a pressure approach. And there is definitely messaging to go with pressure. But we're going to set that aside for purposes of today's conversation. And we'll deal with the whole pressure scenario separately and give it more in-depth treatment at another point. So let's operate from the assumption that you're dealing with a decision-maker who is at least neutral on the philosophical aspect of this engagement. again, typically it's usually around money or policy. So whatever it is that you want them to do with you or for you, that they don't have a deep seated, philosophical opposition to it. They may be neutral or they may be aligned to some degree with what you're trying to do, the problem you're trying to solve, and the solution that you offer. And they might have different levels of alignment with each of those pieces. But at the minimum, we're assuming neutrality. So. Objections can get expressed, as you know and have experienced I'm sure, in either explicit terms or implicit terms. explicit expression of objections are things like they say to your face, it costs too much. Or, I'm worried that it's going to cost too much, or that sounds expensive, or any number of versions of expressions of alarm and concern around the cost. Or it's too much work. And similarly that can come in a variety of packages, but fundamentally that's the message. Another one is, I don't think that will work. Sounds cool, but I don't think it'll work. those are all direct expressions. say in one way or another what their primary objection is, or maybe they've got several. Implicit expression of objections is when they're hedging and hemming and hawing, and being kinda mealy mouthed. And their mouths are moving, but they're not saying anything of great substance. And they're not engaging with the actual set of substantive questions in front of them. Which are, do we want to solve this problem? Do we want to solve it the way you're proposing to solve it? Do we want to spend the money or engage with the work to get it done? And if they're not engaging with any of those questions in any meaningful way, it could mean a couple of things. It may be that they're at an early stage of just trying to understand how the thing would work. Which they do have to go through, They have to get it first. Right. Very few people say yes to something they don't understand. So obviously that's an early part of your work. But if they're like just being really squishy. And not moving in any direction, either closer to yes or further away. Just kind of Dancing around the topic at hand. It could be an indication that they don't have the authority to say yes or no, and they don't want to admit that. Or they kind of have the authority, but they're afraid that if they say anything definitive, they might get in trouble from one of their higher ups. Could be they really do want to say no, but something about saying no is causing a problem for them. A lot of times it'll be that they don't want to say no to your face. Many people are actually quite conflict averse. And it's uncomfortable for them to just say no. But they don't I plan to say yes. So they're just going to keep talking and hope that eventually you'll go away. If you engage them multiple times and nothing ever seems to move forward, there could be other things that are wrong. There may be problems with your messaging. So we're going to get into that. But it also could be that they just really are trying very hard not to say yes, but they're deeply uncomfortable with saying no outright. when that happens, It can be quite useful to push them to articulate what it is that's causing them to have reservations. you can say things like, I sense that you have some reservations or concerns about this. Can you share with me what those are, and perhaps we can talk them through. And if they then don't say anything substantive, then that's a pretty good clue that they're just trying to figure out how to get rid of you without actually having to say no to your face. But you may have to ask it a couple of different ways. Because the other thing that happens. And, you know, we think of decision makers a lot of time, particularly the higher powered ones, we tend to think of them as large and in charge. And like, they always know their own mind and they always know exactly what they want. And a lot of times they don't actually. Especially if you're bringing them something they haven't really thought about a lot or haven't thought through in the way that you're asking them to think about it. sometimes they just need time for the gears to turn and that can take a while. So you don't want to leap to conclusions. if they're not engaging in moving the conversation forward in some way, it could be that they're just not getting it. And you can probe for that. You can probe for understanding you can probe for what questions do you have for me at this point? Is there anything about what I've laid out so far that seems unclear or just feels like it's missing something for you. Tell me where you're at with this. And give them a chance. And it's a good idea to do that on a regular basis anyway. Especially if you're laying out something that's fairly complicated. Is to check for understanding on a regular basis because you don't want to lose them early on and then have to go back and pull them back through. It's much better to check for understanding on a regular basis. And just say how we doing here. Are you following? And the other thing is that a lot of times people are distracted and only listening with half an ear. And so you may lose them because of that. Because they're busy worrying about the 529 other things they've got on their plate. we all know how easy it is for our mind to wander, even when we're trying to pay attention. It just happens. And I swear, post COVID, it's just worse for everybody. Attention spans are not great. And so understand that this goes back to all the things we talk about with messaging all the time. That you don't want to be running a monologue. You want to be having a conversation. So you don't talk extendedly for more than, you know, two or three minutes, maybe before you pause and ask a question, check for understanding. Even if it's a tiny little thing, something to give them a chance to say some version of yeah I'm with you here. Or I'm not with you. and if they're honest, they might say something like, oh gosh, I'm sorry. I spaced out for a minute. Uh, can you say that again? But if you check for that every few minutes, Instead of talking for 10 minutes straight, and then find out at the end of those 10 minutes they weren't listening to hardly anything you said, and none of it registered. Because their attention was elsewhere. You don't want to do that to yourself or to them. Especially because you might only have a limited time to engage with them. Be aware that they might not fully be able to articulate their concern. But if they are engaged and you say some version of, do you have any questions or concerns based on what I've laid out so far? And you can check that multiple times. Especially like I say, if what you're laying out is fairly complicated, you'll want to do that. And they may say something like. I'm kind of struggling to get my head around a piece of this. Okay. Well, which piece? let me help. or they might say, It sounds good, but something about it just doesn't feel right or doesn't feel like it makes sense or whatever they have to say. you can tell in the way they talk about it that they're struggling to put the pieces together. As opposed to saying well, that's all very interesting and I'm so glad you've shared all this information. I'll definitely take that under advisement. Bla, bla bla, You know what mealy mouth sounds like. Right. I'm sure you've encountered it in many, many times. generally speaking, your mealy mouth detector will be pretty accurate. So when that's happening, there are some things you can do to focus them. asking them to articulate what it is that is causing them to have reservations or concerns. And start there. Say, I'd like to understand where you're at with this. I sense that you have some concerns, possibly some reservations. Can you share what those are or perhaps can you just share, like what seems to be the biggest sticking point for you at the moment? And if they can't name anything, that's kind of a clue. I'm not saying give up on that person. But that is an indicator that you may want to find another decision maker in that realm who you can work with who can Engage with you more productively. but let's deal with the folks who actually know what their objections are, or can begin to articulate a category. And one really important caveat with all of this which should be obvious by now, is that you want to give yourself plenty of runway to have multiple conversations to get the decision maker to yes. because you're going to need a certain amount of know, like, and trust built with them before they're going to be comfortable doing a deal with you, partnering with you, working with you to either solve a problem or to engage you to solve the problem. you have to have done that work to get them to a place of knowing you, liking you, trusting you enough that they're in a place where doing business with your organization or you personally doesn't feel like the source of the risk The source of the risk is these other things. What if it doesn't work? What if we sink a lot of money into it, we don't see a result. Those kinds of risks. but if the objection is, I don't know if I can trust you or your organization to deliver on what you say. Yikes. That's not good. So ideally, you have built that before you are proposing that they engage with you in a partnership of some kind. If they're still trying to decide if they trust you, it's tough to counter any of the other objections. you make sure that that's out of the way before anything else. this is yet another reason why it's good to have a longer runway. Now, if it's a relationship that's already been established and you partner with them on things on a regular basis, or you've worked with them in some way. They know you, they like you, they trust you. And you've done that work. Then when you come to them with a proposal, they're focused on the proposal. They're focused on the substance of it. They're not busy wondering if this is going to be okay to work with you. So that's an important caveat. That at some point, you must do that work and you must do it with every single decision maker that you engage. It is unreasonable to ask them to say yes to something if they don't trust you. I mean, that's only reasonable, right? That's a human thing. So you have to do that work to build that know, like, and trust. Now, I'm pretty sure it's the case that you probably know what typical objections look like for different categories of the work that you do. Whatever services you provide, whatever problems you solve, whatever your particular approach to the solution is for those problems. you have engaged with enough decision makers that you have noticed some patterns, right? And that objections tend to encompass certain subject areas or topics. there's almost always some sort of money-related objection. There's almost always some sort of, will it work objection. or more sophisticated version of that is will it work for me? I see that it worked for those other people will it work for me? you have enough of these conversations, you begin to notice patterns about where the objections tend to lie. And you very likely developed some messaging around that to help people get past that. So you want to take all of that knowledge and create a plan for addressing those categories of objections. Before you ever go into a conversation. And a next level version of that strategy is that you're planning out your entire runway. You're planning out how you're unfolding your messaging over a period of encounters with the decision maker. Based on where you already are in your relationship with them. What you anticipate some of their general categorical type of objections might be. What other pressures they may have on them that might also be contributing to their objections or concerns. you've assembled all that information and you have a messaging plan that is designed to get them to yes. That is designed simultaneously to dismantle those objections as you go along in unfolding your messaging plan with them. Now, of course you'll adapt that plan on the fly as you get information back from them. That's always the rule with messaging, that you have to use the information you're getting back to make your messaging better. But ideally, you're planning out your whole runway of messaging, from start to yes. However long or short you expect that runway to be. And again, if you have a longstanding relationship, Prior experiences of working together. They like you a lot. They trust you a lot. They're inclined to want to say yes to things you bring to them. Then that's a shorter runway, obviously, than if it's somebody that you're going to be partnering with or working with for the first time. But either way you have some sense from prior encounters with people like them. What some of the objections are likely to be. So you're building your messaging to counter those objections from the very beginning. You're not waiting to find out if there's going to be an objection. Of course, there are going to be objections. And some objections will be a surprise and you'll have to adapt to that in the moment. But we're going to talk about some ways to do that that will give you kind of a baseline toolbox. Even if you don't know exactly what's coming your way. So you want to make sure you have a plan for every single encounter. And a messaging plan for every single encounter along that runway. And you'll probably deploy incremental strategies along the way. Throughout the runway from the time you first begin to discuss the thing, whatever it is, and the time you're really focused on making the sale so to speak. So let's talk about some of the common categories of objection and some strategies you can use to counter those objections. And that I can share with you without knowing the specifics of what you're asking for, or what niche you're in, what area you work in. These are categorical kinds of things. The objections tend to come in a handful of categories, and then get more complex from there. the most common one are cost-related objections. So you want a strategy for dealing with the cost associated objections that you tend to get around your stuff. it may very well be the case that, for example, if you do contracting partnerships, That there are cost-related objections that come up around those. And if you're doing a policy ask where perhaps you want new funding, like city council or county board or state legislation, where you want to get a new program or a new category of funding created to I provide a service. Either a new service or an existing service, but to bolster it in some way, whatever your strategy is. If it's around money, then that's kind of straight forward. of course cost is going to come up. But it can also come up if you're looking for a policy to change the rules around something. Almost every policy change somewhere down the line has a fiscal impact somewhere. On somebody. So it's good for you to understand what that is before you go in. cause it's real easy and you know, we've all done this, right? We've all been guilty of getting so excited about the policy change that we have figured out is going to solve this huge problem. We're so excited about it. We can't wait to start talking about who are we going to get involved? How are we going to engage. Gonna get these decision makers on board and we're going to get it done. It's going to be awesome. And we sometimes skip over the part about somewhere down the line, even if it isn't a spending ask, that there will probably be cost implications, fiscal implications for some individual or an administrative body or a state treasury or whatever. Somewhere there's going to be a fiscal impact, probably. So just assume that probably anything you're looking to do. Somewhere either clearly and obviously, or maybe less obviously, is going to have a cost implication to it. A very common version is, That's going to cost too much. And the thought process that you're going to want to take them through is, compared to what? Compared to solving the problem with a half measure that doesn't really solve it? That just kind of kicks the can down the road and then winds up costing more in the long run. Compared to not solving the problem at all? It's very easy for all humans, and decision-makers in particular, I think. To believe that the status quo isn't costing anything. It's the status quo. It's how things are. But you come along and you want to change that. You want to make it better in some way. And it's normal for the decision maker to look at that and go, but that's going to cost money. Like, well, yeah, of course. Duh. I mean, part of it is yeah. Um, of course it's going to cost money. So what? Obviously you're not going to say that. But what you want to do is help them understand that doing nothing, leaving things as they are, carries a cost. And it's a big one. They just aren't thinking about it because it's already baked in. It's the new stuff that gets our attention. Like, oh God, more money. That's new money. yeah, but wait a second. the situation we have now is costing this much. If we solve it for real with this solution, it'll cost x dollars. But the end result will be a net cost reduction of Y dollars. And if you have specifics on that great. But if you don't, you can simply explain how that works. And use ballpark or percentages. But people who are stuck in the But it's gonna cost money or too much money or whatever, are ignoring the reality that the current status quo already costs money. And that has to be brought front and center for them. They must understand the cost of the current way of being. So another big one is the set of objections that are around it's too much work. And with this it's important to know some things. To ask some questions. Because you don't totally know which part of the too much work they're worried about. some things you're going to want to get at are number one. Is their impression of the work required on their end, is it accurate? Or did they just make something up in their head about, oh God, that's going to be a lot of work for us over here. And they might be wrong. They might be imagining something that isn't accurate. So you want to check for that. You also want to know, is it about the decision-maker perceiving that they personally are going to have to do more work? Or that their staff or their agency or their organization, their company, whoever you're engaging with. Is going to have to do more work. Which if you're talking about the latter, of the larger problem of more work for the staff, more work for the team more work for the organization, the company. That is in part a cost objection. So understand that. That underpinning some of that is wait a minute. If I've got to put more people on this or pull people off of something else to work on this, at some point we're maxing out, I'm going to have to hire people. And that's going to cost money. So be aware that there can be a cost objection, hiding in a too much work objection. But it's a very different set of issues if it's the decision maker themselves. Thinking to themselves, oh, crud. That's going to be a lot of work for me. Then it's not so much a dollar cost issue. It's a time and energy cost. With either of those, there's two questions for you to have considered ahead of time. Which are, to what extent can you reduce the work burden on the decision-maker and or their organization? Are there things that you can build into your offer that will make it be less work for them? And if it's a policy ask, a lot of the kinds of things that you can offer to do are to organize support for it, to do the legwork, to go around and meet with other people, to ask them to tell you who you should be talking to. And then you get out there and you do it, and you organize other supporters and you build momentum. You create the groundswell of support that then gives them the cover to say yes to you. So that's one way you can lessen their work Cause if you're asking a policy maker to make a policy change. And the expectation is that they're going to go then do all the work to engage their colleagues and get them to come along for the ride. That is a huge ask of their time and energy. Now they're going to have to do some of that, but you can go a long way toward reducing their work burden by offering to do tons of that work on your side. And you absolutely should be doing that if you're asking a policymaker for help on a policy change. But even if it's like a contracting partner, And they're worried about it being a lot of work for their team. to what extent can you take on some of that work. Properly compensated, of course. Not suggesting that you take on extra work for no additional compensation. Don't do that. But if they're more worried about Extra work than they are about a higher price tag, then fine. you can work with that. but you have to understand what their concern is. you want to be prepared for both versions of it because they have different solutions. and those different solutions involve different messaging on your part. To help them see, oh, okay. Actually not a big problem. Not a risk. Not a pain point. They've already thought of it. They have an answer. Great. Now a trickier objection is the worry that the thing you're proposing won't work. Or specifically that it won't work for them. Now the won't work for them thing tends to come up more with, contracting partners. where you're telling them, we did such and so arrangement with xYZ agency or company. We were able to deliver these incredible results. Their costs went down. They had incredible net savings The people that we served got massively better outcomes. Et cetera, et cetera. And they might be thinking well, yeah, but you know, we're a different entity. What if it doesn't work for us? If we say yes to this contract, and then we don't get those same kind of results. There can be the generic fear, if you're proposing something that is brand new, to say, what if it doesn't work at all? what if this is wrong? What if your idea is bad? And it doesn't actually result in the outcomes that you're saying it will. If it's something that has been done successfully elsewhere, you can point to that. And use any available data or stories from that to support your case and address the objection. But sometimes. sometimes. it may be true. That If you're proposing something brand new. then they're kind of right. That this is a risk. So then your messaging becomes around how can I mitigate the risk for both of us? And it's important to help them understand that if it's something brand new, that you're taking a risk too. part of the messaging there is around how you're shouldering at least half the risk, particularly in contracting situations, but policy situations too. And to be able to say, Yeah. You know, we're going to have skin in the game too. we are taking a risk. We are investing xYZ resources in this. We are investing this much staff time, this much research, this much everything else. We've done all this work to lay the groundwork at a substantial cost to our organization, because we believe so strongly that this is going to have incredible returns. We've made this investment already. We are prepared to continue to invest. And then you can characterize what that looks like. And then say, here's what we believe the outcomes will be. Here's what we believe the ROI will look like. and then see whether that's moving them. Your goal always is to reduce their perceived risk as much as you can, without compromising your own organizational wellbeing. You don't want to, for example, take on a hundred percent of the risk in a contracting situation. That's a bad idea. Part of the reason it's a bad idea is that it could go really badly sideways and cost you a lot. But more likely, because I'm assuming you're not proposing to do a contract that you have no faith that it will work. if you've done the work internally to assess that something will work, and you know you can make it happen, then you're going in feeling like your risk is relatively low. So I'm not so much worried about that. The real risk in proposing an arrangement where your organization is taking on, say 70 80, 90% of the financial risk or whatever other perceived risks there are. That the investment is too low on the part of the partner. If they're only putting a little bit in, they have no investment in the thing succeeding. So part of what you've got to do is get them to come in pretty close to halfway. You want close to 50% of the risk to be on their shoulders. Now to get a brand new partner engaged, you might have to go 60% of the risk on you and 40% on them. But if you go much more out of balance than that, the biggest danger is that they will not feel invested and then they won't do the work to help make it succeed. And then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Then they get to say, see, I told you it wouldn't work. Told you that was a bad idea. We had reservations. See, look, it didn't work. Well the reason it didn't work is they didn't do their part. And I have seen this happen far too many times. Where an organization was working so hard to get a contract that they were willing to make a lopsided deal to get their foot in the door. And then the contracting partner didn't do their part because they weren't invested enough. And it's hard to build back from that. It's hard to then create a future contract or a future scenario in which they do invest, because they've now sort of proven their own point. So you have to be careful about that. with all of these objection categories, cost-related objections too much. Work-related objections. And objections related to what if it doesn't work or work for me? With all of these, your blueprint is the same. First you take what you know about the decision-maker you're dealing with or about the type of decision-maker you're dealing with. And what, you know, from experience are the types of objections you tend to get around your stuff. You take all of that and you map out the objections you think are likely to occur. And you characterize those in as much detail as you can. What about the cost? What about the amount of work? What about the, what might be the risk of it not working? And then you craft messaging that is specifically designed to counter those objections. And to challenge any incorrect underlying assumptions. And show that in fact, the perceived risk is either not real. Or that if it is real, you have a plan for mitigating that risk. You build your messaging to dismantle the objection. And as much as possible, you want to dismantle it at its root. So, as I said, with cost objections, you're attacking the unspoken underlying assumption that the status quo isn't costing anything, but you know, that it is. To the extent that you can quantify that existing cost, the cost of doing business as usual versus the initial outlay cost of your solution to the problem. And then the longterm cost savings of actually solving the problem. And you get as specific with that as you can. But even if you don't have precise numbers, it's still very important to call out the faulty underlying assumption. That there is no cost associated with the status quo. With too much work objections, your messaging will be correcting any misperceptions about how much work it actually is for the decision-maker or their team. You're also prepared with an offer that has you doing a chunk of the work that they're worried they'll have to do. And you're framing that in terms of how it benefits them, obviously. And with what if it won't work? You're crafting messaging that is around proof that it does work. Proof of how it's worked with other partners of yours. If you don't have that information, how it's worked in other places, and if you don't have any of that, Then it's your best supporting information and analysis about why you believe it will work. And why the risks that you've anticipated, they may be concerned about. How those can be mitigated to minimize risk going in. And then you're also including in your messaging, the risk that you're shouldering so that you can demonstrate that it is a shared risk. All of this is messaging that you have thought out ahead of time and prepared. And ideally you have a plan for your messaging runway. Where you're taking the decision maker through a series of conversations. and you're building in pieces of that objection, countering messaging at every stage of the process. obviously you'll address things that come up at whatever point. But you have a plan. You have a plan for how you want to take the decision maker on a journey of understanding how incredibly impactful and beneficial the thing that you're proposing will be for all concerned, including for the decision-maker. Throughout this journey, you're anticipating the objections. And ideally addressing them before they even have a chance to come up. But at a minimum, you're prepared to address them immediately when they are raised by the decision maker. This does two things. One, it positions you as someone who has their act very much together. And it demonstrates that you have thought this through deeply, and are likely to be a good partner on this. And two, it very importantly, dismantles those objections before they have a chance to take root and grow. Because any objection that's left on answered will only grow in the decision maker's mind. And you want to nip those little objection shoots when they're still very young before they have a chance to grow into great giant Oak trees that are much more difficult to root out. The other essential caveat in all of this that I hope you've gotten from this episode is to understand that there will always be objections. That in itself is not a problem. It's normal. And your job is to know that. And get busy, anticipating the objections that are likely to be attached to whatever the thing is that you're proposing to engage the decision maker about. And to prepare your messaging, to counter those objections. And challenge the faulty underlying assumptions. When you do that. You clear away the objections And massively increased the prospects of getting to yes. With your decision makers. Thanks for listening. And I'll see you in the next episode.