Do you want the red or blue pill?

April 15, 2025

Red pill or blue pill? Objection handling?

Objection handling can never become a conflict. Going for the ‘no’ or hard close as some salespeople advocate is always a disaster.  Viewing the objection as some kind of gladiatorial combat where you must emerge victorious with the enemy ( your prospect) defeated, the objection overcome and the argument won is also a far too frequent sales error. Very occasionally, aggressive and hard closing works and you can effectively force someone into buying something that they’re not sure about or don’t really want but there are two huge downsides to this; you will never have a relationship with them and they will never come back for more. Both of these outcomes are the kiss of death for any bootstrapper.

You need the prospect to finish the interaction with you in a positive mindset where, even if they haven’t bought from you this time, they are now much more comfortable with you and will hopefully buy from you in the future. So how do you overcome objections without generating conflict? There are two key techniques on top of the five essential steps I explained in my last blog ( insert link); third party story and red towel vs blue towel ( also now as red pill or blue pill).

The third party story is one of my favourites and uses basic psychology. Most people rarely like to be outliers. No-one wants to be the only person buying something that no one else has bought however good they might think the product is. You can use this fear or outlier reluctance to help you. When the prospect, Client A, raises an objection you should move through the objection handling steps 1 and 2 of agreeing and empathising. For step 3, overturning the objection, do not start to explain to client A why their objection is due to a misunderstanding or failure to understand a key point, but instead you can  simply refer to a  previous conversation you had with another prospect, client B. However carefully you try and explain to client A why they have misunderstood, you are effectively disagreeing with them and so are in a state of conflict. Everything you say to them is part of dialogue between the two of you, so they can object, interrupt, disagree and even argue if they want to. What they cannot do is interrupt a reported conversation you had with Client B as this is not a dialogue between you and client A but simply a reported story that you are relating to client A of your previous dialogue with client B.

Into this story, that you are now relaying to client A, you can put in client B’s mouth all the exact same objections that client A has and you can then report on how you explained them to client B. You can relate the entire dialogue of back and forth between you and client B, explaining how you overcame all clients B’s objections until they were satisfied and bought the product. For example, “ It’s really interesting you say that Penny because another customer Bob had the same thoughts earlier and when I explained to Bob…..’ You get the idea.

By reporting on the objection and how it was overturned with a third party you depower client A from being able to disagree with you, as they are just listening to a conversation you had with client B that they were not a part of. This allows you to do two things. Firstly, you can explain and overturn the objection without creating disagreement and hence conflict with client A. Secondly, you can also make them feel psychologically safer and remove their outlier fear as another customer had the exact same thoughts that they did initially and then went on to buy the product. They therefore no longer feel like an outlier and now they will feel comfortable buying from you either at this moment or later.

Avoiding a hard no is essential for avoiding conflict and another good technique for doing this is red towel vs blue towel, or as I like to call it the red pill vs the blue pill from The Matrix movie. Any parent knows that if you ask a small child in a bath before bedtime if they are ready to get out of the bath then the child will respond no. The child knows that as soon as they get out of the bath, they are on the non-stop one way travelator to pyjamas, story and bed that all small children want to avoid. They will simply reply no and go back to splashing or playing with their bath toys. However,  if you ask them if they want a red towel or blue towel, they will choose one and without realising it they have now agreed to get out of the bath and they have effectively been closed. The same is true with Morpheus and Neo in the Matrix movie- he doesn’t ask Neo if he believes him but he simply assumes he believes him and gives him a choice of a red or blue pill. Neo is never asked if he believes him or not but by choosing a pill he is inadvertently acknowledging that he does. This is assumptive closing. It creates a positive dialogue with the prospect as opposed to a conflict or disagreement. It also opens the door for follow on conversations about the product which as a bootstrapper you want to have as this direct feedback allows you to improve the product quickly.

Both of these techniques fulfil the same goal of avoiding disagreement or conflict with the prospect, moving them along the sales process so that they are closer to buying and crucially building a relationship with them and increasing their level of comfort with you and in buying from you. This is key when you are in the early stages and still building the first scale product and looking to identify product market fit. It is also very important for ensuring that you are building relationships with your first customers so that they can become product testers and evaluators for you, as well as ultimately targets for cross sell and product expansion. But before we get into that let’s see what happens when you’re thrown a curve ball with an objection that you haven’t had before and use the politicians answer, next week’s blog topic.