Name: How to Get More Plans with Challenger Selling
Uploaded: 2026-01-28T20:00:26.809Z
Duration: 15 min
Description: How to Get More Plans with Challenger Selling

Transcript for "How to Get More Plans with Challenger Selling": Good afternoon, everyone. We'll give it a minute or two for Mercy people to join. Welcome to our presentation of Get New Plans Through Objection to Handling. My name is Mark Van Riper. I'm the Director of Customer Growth here at RPAG. You know, today is not about a new selling technique. As a salesperson, you may follow an outlined sales approach such as spin selling, snap selling, challenger sale, Sandler sales method, consultative or solution selling, or Dale Carnegie. Or maybe you've developed your own or blended several together to come up with the works for you. But I am confident each of you face objections from prospects no matter what technique you utilize today. So let's talk about what plan sponsors need. So if you look at the survey, I'm gonna share some data points with you. Did you know that 50% of plan sponsors said the pace of change for investment products is speeding up? 23% of plan sponsors report adding income focused funds to their investment lineup. Over 90% of your prospects already work with a retirement adviser or consultant. Doesn't mean that they're good. Doesn't mean they're not good. It just mean doesn't mean you can't replace them. Just the fact that most plan sponsors have other responsibilities outside their company and rely heavy on you as the adviser for the support. Are you prepared to have the tools to pry away a client from another adviser? The importance of having tools like RPAG give you that competitive advantage. Our PAL feeds can save up to two weeks of manual entry. For reports, you create cons consistent turnkey solutions, produce your education, ready at your fingertips, and, of course, our exclusive CITs. So let's talk about when you were talking with prospects, the introduction of objection handling. This is so important. You know, you you've you've won deals. You've been on calls. You've sent and received emails, etcetera, and I'm highly confident that you faced objections at every stage of that game. Next slide. So let's talk about the types of object objections that are there. You know, objections create barriers for you to get new plans. Some are real. Some are imagined. Is there a perception of a mismatch between you and your prospect's perceived needs? Does the prospect have a legitimate concern about you, your products, or some other issues? You know, today, a plan sponsor can run a check utilizing broker check, look at Google reviews, or maybe get look at Glassdoor to gain a bit of insight. Is the objection homegrown or transplanted? Like, all like, the question there, I get this statement. It says, like, all advisers are the same. It's just how much do you charge? Is the objection expressed or silent? You know, I'm highlighting this one because you typically deal with a plan sponsor or buying committee, and it's the silent ones that are harder to address. But there's another group in this process. They don't get a chance to vote to switch to use a new adviser. They're the plan participants. Plan participants can easily fall into the silent objection category, and it's important that you uncover the possibility and possible silent objections from the participants through talking and communicating and emailing and stuff with plan sponsors or buying committees. So common reactions to objections that we get. You know, it's common for us to react or have reactions. And when we read objections, we hear objections, we see objections, maybe it's on somebody's face. You know, one of those could be maybe in denial. That won't be a problem. You're overthinking it or condescension. If you knew how this actually worked, you're missing the biggest picture a bigger picture. Confrontation. Our customer data proves otherwise. That's not accurate. Or empathy and reframing. That's a fair point. Let's look at another way. Many of our clients thought y but discovered x and were better met than here's why, or I understand why that you would think that are a concern to you. It could be one of these or all of these, but trust me, I've been there myself. So what is the right approach? Let's take a deep dive on this and think about it. And and it it comes back to it's handling the with empathy. It is the feel, it is the felt, and it is the found. You make thing them feel by using empathy to remove tension of the objection. What they felt, how you can share relatable story like I dealt with this on a previous client. We've collaborated together to develop a better outcome and found a business benefit invitation to connect. This is where you put yourself in the day of the life of the plan sponsor, a member of a buying committee, or a participant getting ready for their first time contributing to company four zero one k plan. It is mapping a buyer's journey of an ideal client persona with custom strategies, fund investments, buying criteria that helps you with your next prospect see the value. So what's the end game? Let's talk about that. Turning objections into actions. Think about this. Who are the stakeholders? Are they even in a room during the first call? Probably not. But you need to research by knowing the answer to objections. What do we need to know to further qualify deal a d qualify deal validity or understand maybe the decision criteria to switch plans switch provider, excuse me. Capture the feel attitudes. What emotional response do you expect from the audience when you're handling these objections? And then what actions or actions do you want your audience to take? You know, the objections in group settings, we're all in sales on this call. You know? And sometimes it gets tough when you get into a group setting of you know, maybe it's a buying committee or a couple of people in the first call, and they start, you know, offering up objections to what you've shared, what you suggest, what they see. And this is when you start really reading the room. You know, if it's by committee, you look at the different seats in that in that committee, and you can look at the on the slide here, we've got different you know, we call it classify these as possible seats. And, you know, you look at it and say, is there a special interest group that we're working with here? You know, are are they gonna solve all of our problems? These are some of the concerns of the people in the room. And besides their concerns or objections, you know, are they sitting in the cheap seats? So they look at this and they say, hey. Is someone mirroring another person in this room that may indicate that the original person is the decision maker? That gives you an idea who that might be. And then how do you set the mood, the, you know, the tone of that first meeting in in in an environment like this? You identify maybe who the influencer is as a decision maker. Is it the plan sponsor of the retirement plan? Who might be detractor to switching? Good person. You wanna focus on how do I handle their objections? You know, who's sitting in those cheap seats? They're only there because they have nothing else to do, but they don't have any input, but they have to be there. Better yet, who might be your internal champion? How can I leverage that? How do I what are their possible objections because they're important to me? Who has the strongest vote? There are the demographics of a plan. You're not just not dealing with just CFOs and plan sponsors. Ideally, we take a step beyond those people who are the participants in this plan and drive different outcomes. So you've got blue collar versus white collar, you know, population. You got larger, older population looking at how much to gain to have protection from income base. This is where RPAG misfit risk bubble chart can help. What is the new misfit risk bubble? The new upper optional module enables you to import level participant data such as date of birth, account balance, contribution rate, and salary, and generate a visual overlay comparing each participant's optimal portfolio to multiple target date fund, glidepath This module can help you illustrate how much each series fits for actual participants in your plan versus having to derive fit from comparisons to generic benchmarks and averages. The outcome. You know, when you handle objections intelligently and professionally, that's when you start to build trust, gain partnerships, and you're on your way to long term relationships. Along the way, you'll have transparent pricing. You'll set realistic time frames, offer unique features that build reliance, understand if there's a budget or funding limitations. But always be aware, competition's lurking out there and wanna take that plan. But after you get through the objection portion, you can understand your product fit, the solution performance, develop internal consensus, and remove any solution misalignment. So building your objection handling muscle. You know, you wanna prepare for this type of meeting. You train every day. You know, the most successful athletes, the performers, the actors, the doctors, the lawyers, retirement advisers, whatever you have, they train continuously over and over again. They hone their craft. This reminds me of the story of the show when Charles Barkley went to Hank Haney on the TV episode of the Hank Haney project where Charles was struggling with this, terrible golf swing that I'm almost pretty sure we've seen on either on the show itself or on multiple videos. So one day, he proceeds to walk out, and he sees a 100 golf balls on a 100 tees. And he looks over, and Charles says, what are we doing here? And he says, what's this for? And Hank says, you're gonna hit all of them, and they're gonna hit all of them again and again and again. So Charles is standing there and says, this is crazy. Hank says, your good friend Tiger does this about 10 times over a day. That's what it takes to be the best at something. This is how you get that muscle memory. You're committed consistently and diligently working through objections you have, the same type of muscle memory. Next times are not necessary objections, but they could be in time. As such as the new funds, investment options are rolled out all the time. You've gotta stay in front of those. Did you know right now in the workforce, we have five or six different generations that we contend with? You know, that means objections come in all shapes or sizes as well as responses. I have found it to be beneficial to build out objection database, you know, whether it's on a written form, whether it's on a computer, whatever you may do. And then as you go through and you're doing presentations, you're soliciting to get new new clients, you wanna build that out, and then you can keep building it to do more going forward. This way, you're always looking to hone your craft. I can't stress enough about a role playing and particularly objections and handling. You know, many people think, oh, role playing is not that important. You know, I don't know about all the portions of role playing, but I can tell you for myself. Objection handling role playing makes it so much easier because when I go to step in that room and the injection comes up, I can think back. I've heard this question before. I've heard this objection before. How do I prepare to answer it? And I'm also being empathetic. I'm not showing surprise. I'm not showing anger, whatever else in that case. You know, you can role play or work with, you know, a coworker. It could be a team in your office, whoever. But if you get that chance for someone who just isn't as versed in our space and you sit down and go through it, you can have a great outcome. I'm gonna share two examples of where this has come out to play in my life that I can relay back for you. You know, I really enjoy playing pool. And when you play somebody who isn't as skilled as you are in in billiards or pool with its eight ball, nine ball, whatever the case may be, you start to see that they don't play the way that you play. So they're kind of handling you're handing you objections without you knowing. And before you know it, you might have lost that person. But your skill set says that shouldn't have happened. So you've kind of played their game, and you've fallen into that. Did I handle those objections? And I didn't do that because I didn't follow my muscle memory. Right? Well, it's another one that really comes to mind, and then it's probably front center for all of us because it recently just happened, was the most recent college football championship. IU, in many people's minds, were not supposed to win the national championship. Heck, they weren't even supposed to be there. Right? They didn't have five star players. Coach was a Nick Saban as their coach, and they didn't even have, like, massive NIL funding. Right? And so the teams that were playing them, you know, became very frustrating and discouraged because they didn't play the way that they expected them to play. They didn't have the talent, the levels to necessarily compete and and prepare for those games. They played their game. They really worked it out, and and they said if we hone our craft, we commit to what we're gonna do, we can win these games. And as you guys can tell, they certainly they when they did that, they won the natty. I mean, this is an amazing amazing story with, you know, older players, younger players, whatever else, but that's what they They hone their craft to get to where they're at. You know, we do this type of muscle memory here quite a bit to develop this. Know, mastering objections that we talked about today, we've gone through a lot of things here, and and it's just it's just one portion to sale. I know all of us are great salespeople. You guys have great success in growing the number of plans in your book of business, but we have to be more adaptable today. We've gotta be more nimble and sharper than ever before. You know, clients and plus prospects, plan sponsors, buying committees, participants, they've got options. There's quicker access to information. The loyalty can certainly be challenged. You had it today. You may not have it tomorrow. And people are impatient because we live in the Amazon buying mode. We want it all right now. So you have to be adaptable when you're ready to handle all these objections, and that comes through the stuff we discussed here today as you go out and you prospect and you try to find clients. You're in a great position to to win as an RPAG member. And I'll leave you this if you look at the quote, and it says that, you know, you are selling your services every day. The best salespeople do not close deals. They open doors to deeper connections and lasting partnerships. And I and I hope that you guys can take away from the portion of this today that was so important to they had a practicing and handling objections. It's not a sales pitch to you by any means, Jordan. You know, that you need to buy a new sales process, but it's the one thing that that I take away. I I have certainly I'm passionate about this, and I hope you guys can hear it in my voice. You know, practicing that part of it. You know, you get down. It's so easy to say, I understand what funds we're offering. I know what the fees are. I know who we're gonna how we're gonna position this, what the lineup should be, and, you know, that kind of stuff. But it's like, you know, really practicing and coming up with objections you come up with your own are just the ones you've heard over the years to add to the database. You walk in and you got that confidence, you can, you know, really neutralize some of those situations, and that comes from muscle memory. So if we've got questions, you guys can submit those right now. Glad to go through those possibly with you. If anybody has any of those, share any ideas. And then, if you have ideas too for future webinar sessions like they have us, we'd like to submit those as well. But there's and then we're a survey about this as well. that kind of brings us to the conclusion. I certainly appreciate everyone's time. I hope you got a lot out of this. Like I said, I'm very passionate about it. I thank you for your time and consideration, and have yourself a wonderful day. We look forward to the next webinar.