Cover of Way of the Wolf: Become a Master Closer with Straight Line Selling

Way of the Wolf: Become a Master Closer with Straight Line Selling

by Jordan Belfort

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Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from Way of the Wolf: Become a Master Closer with Straight Line Selling:

Act as if you’re a wealthy man, rich already, and you will become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence, and people will have confidence in you. Act as if you have all the answers, and the answers will come to you.
the logical mind serves as a human bullshit detector.
You do not want to try to resolve their pain at this point. In fact, if anything, you want to amplify that pain.
95 percent of the time, the common objections are merely ploys on the part of the prospect, who would rather bow out of the sale gracefully than have to look the salesperson in the eye and confront them about their lack of certainty concerning the Three Tens.
In terms of the split between logic and emotion, you’re always going to build airtight logical cases first and airtight emotional cases second. Why? Quite simply, by making the airtight logical case first, you satisfy your prospect’s bullshit detector, which then frees them up to be moved emotionally.
amplify that pain by asking the following questions: “How long has this been going on?” “Do you see this getting better or worse?” “How do you see yourself in two years?” “How has it affected your health or your family?” In essence, you want to make sure that you make your prospect talk about their pain. These types of questions will have a powerful impact on opening the prospect’s mind to receiving information, which they will now measure against their pain.
In other words, when you reach the end of the Forrest Gump pattern, rather than asking your prospect a question (like you’ve done with your previous patterns), you’re going to move straight into your new pattern for reselling the company—using the following seven words as your transition: “And as far as my company goes …” For example, let’s say that the last point you were trying to get across to Bill with your Forrest Gump pattern was that not only are you going to tell him when to buy but you’re also going to tell him when to sell.
communications to your “almost” new client come from a position of strength—meaning that, as far as you’re concerned, the deal is already closed and the communication you’re sending is from the perspective of building a long-term relationship and doing more business in the future. Otherwise, you’ll come off as being desperate, and it will end up having the reverse effect.
Use power words, like “dramatically,” “explosive,” “fastest growing,” “most well respected.” Power words go a very long way to capturing someone’s attention and establishing yourself as an expert.
One of the key reasons why you want to always use a script for prospecting is that each industry has its own unique set of questions that need to be asked in a certain order. If you try to wing it—as opposed to having all your questions mapped out in advance, in precisely the right order—then the chances of you remembering all the questions, or asking them all in the right order, is slim to none, and each mistake you make will have a negative impact on your ability to gather intelligence. Another major benefit of using a prospecting script is that since you already know what words you’re going to say, your conscious mind is freed up to focus on applying the right tonality to your words, as well as on what your prospect is communicating back to you.
In addition, I want you to notice how I use the word “so” in the second half of each of the three examples. In this context, we refer to the word “so” as a justifier, because it justifies your need to ask the prospect questions, as opposed to doing it out of curiosity or nosiness. In essence, in order to do your job correctly, there are certain things that you need to know in your capacity as an expert. By using a justifier, you can get that point across to your prospect loud and clear, and it paves the way for an even more productive intelligence-gathering session.
THE FIVE CORE ELEMENTS OF THE STRAIGHT LINE SYSTEM 1 The prospect must love your product. 2 The prospect must trust and connect with you. 3 The prospect must trust and connect with your company. 4 Lower the action threshold. 5 Raise the pain threshold.
A 9, on the other hand, is almost always doable. In fact, with only a few exceptions, you can always get a prospect to a 9 on the certainty scale, which is more than sufficient to close 99 percent of the prospects you’ll speak to. And as far as the remaining 1 percent go, you can actually close those prospects too, although I’ll circle back to them in a few minutes when we
Well, quite simply, while a basic yes is enough to move forward during the front half of the sale, you need an enthusiastic yes to move forward during the back half of the sale. The reason for this is that the level of enthusiasm of your prospect’s yes is going to serve as your primary means for measuring his level of certainty for each of the Three Tens.
To that, you’ll answer with the standard Straight Line response to an initial objection, which is: “I hear what you’re saying, Bill, but let me ask you a question: Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?” Similarly, if Bill had said, “I need to speak to my accountant,” then you would’ve said, “I hear what you’re saying, Bill, but let me ask you a question: Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?” And, once again, if he had said, “It’s a bad time of year,” then you would’ve said, “I hear what you’re saying, Bill, but let me just ask you a question: Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?” In other words, no matter which of the twelve to fourteen common objections your prospect initially hits you with, you are always going to answer in exactly the same way. You’re going to say: “I hear what you’re saying, Bill, but let me ask you a question: Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?
case, when you ask him for the order for the second time, you would step him down from ten thousand shares to five thousand shares, which reduces the energy-in aspect of the closing equation by 50 percent, after you just increased the benefits-out side of the equation during your follow-up presentation. This creates an extremely powerful one-two punch that will significantly increase your closing rate. And, of course, on your third closing attempt, you would step down to a thousand shares … and then down to five hundred shares on your fourth attempt, going all the way down to whatever the firm’s minimum is for opening up a new account.
information or had a chance to review it, as there’s an excellent possibility that he’ll say “no” to at least one of those questions, which gives him an easy exit ramp out of the encounter. The way to avoid this is to simply ask him if the conversation “rings a bell,” to which he will almost always reply with a yes.
The last part of your open is always a transition. “Based on everything you said to me, this is a perfect fit for you.” This should be an anchor for you; you should know it by heart.
Of all the factors that we have just spoken about, what is the most important to you? You definitely want to find out your prospect’s highest need, as this is the one that you’ll typically have to fill to push the prospect over the top. Have I asked about everything that’s important to you? Your customer will think more of you, not less of you, if you ask this, so long as you have done a professional job up to that point. You could also say, “Is there anything that I have missed? Is there any way that I can tailor this solution for you?
people don’t buy on logic; they buy on emotion, and then justify their decision with logic.
You must take immediate of control the sale. 2 You must engage in massive intelligence gathering, while you simultaneously build massive rapport with your prospect. 3 You must smoothly transition into a Straight Line presentation, so you can begin the process of building absolute certainty for each of the Three Tens.
I was able to persuade each new Strattonite to leave the insults of the past behind and check their emotional baggage at the door;
but you still need to state them every time you bring up the expenditure of energy.
In addition, these little stopping-off points serve as periodic rapport checks. For example, if you say to your prospect “Make sense so far?” and they reply “Yes,” then you’re in rapport; however, if they reply, “No,” then you’re out of rapport, and you can’t move forward in the script until you’ve gotten to the bottom of things. If you do, then your prospect will be thinking: “This guy couldn’t care less about what I’m saying; he’s just looking to make a commission.” So, instead of moving forward, you’re going to loop back and give your prospect a little more information that relates to that topic, and then ask them again if things make sense so far. Once they say yes—which they almost always will in this case—you can then safely move forward.
So, all Bill has to do now is lay out a closing scenario, explaining the various steps that Mr. Smith needs to take to get the ball rolling, and then ask him for the order.
return. In essence, you want to crystallize the fact that once they say yes they’re going to receive a massive number of valuable benefits, and the amount of energy they’ll have to expend will be considerably lower. By the way, one company that does this just about as well as a company can possibly do it is Amazon.
Now, before we move on, let’s quickly go through the process of how to handle buy signals when they arise in the back half of the sale. In other words, as your prospect starts to become more and more certain about the Three Tens, they will start sending you signals that they are interested in buying, in the form of leading questions about the closing process. For example, the prospect might say, “How much did you say it would run me?” or “How long will it take until I receive the product?” or “How long until I start to see results?” Those are just a few examples of the more common buy signals.
again?” To which you reply, “Oh, it’s only three thousand dollars,” and you say no more. Alas, you just committed sales hara-kiri. Why? Simply put, you’ve just created a scenario where there’s $3,000 worth of energy going in and zero benefits coming out, not because those benefits don’t exist—in point of fact, they do—but because you simply forgot to remind the prospect of them at the same time you asked them to tap into their energy reserves. In other words, the fact that you laid out the benefits three or four minutes ago when you asked for the order for the first time has no bearing on the energy in, benefits out equation a few minutes later, when your prospect gave you a buy signal.
For example, you’ll have a script that starts with those all-important first four seconds, and then includes your qualifying questions and your transition. Second, you’ll have a script that starts with the main body of your presentation and ends with you asking for the order for the first time. Third, you’ll have a series of rebuttal scripts that include the well-thought-out answers you’ve prepared to the various common objections you’re going to hear. And fourth, you’ll have a series of looping scripts that will include the various language patterns that will allow you to loop back into the sale, in order to move your prospect to higher and higher levels of certainty.
In the first Straight Line syntax, and in each syntax that followed, taking immediate control of the sale was the very first step in the system, and it always will be. Just how you go about doing that turned out to be elegantly simple, albeit with one complication: You have only four seconds to do it. Otherwise, you’re toast.

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