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.