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Paul Borgese - Fear Selling
Paul Borgese - Fear Selling
Paul Borgese
FEAR SELLING: How To Sell More And Sell Faster By Tapping Into
Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated Emotional Needs
Copyright © 2005
By Paul Borgese
paul@FEARMarketing.com
www.FEARMarketing.com
To license and/or private label this material for use at your company,
please call 201.533.9282 or email
the author at paul@FEARMarketing.com.
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Who Needs This Book
“We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack. This
tendency is the greatest tragedy on earth. It has probably caused more
misery than all the wars and diseases in history.”
-Dale Carnegie
The FEAR Selling System has been designed to help anyone who is trying
to persuade someone else – anybody else - to their way of thinking.
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Why Everyone Needs To Learn How
to Sell
Leadership, management and sales all use the same set of people skills.
Some might say that a boss has more control over her employees than a
salesperson has over his prospects, but only the illusion of control
separates the two situations.
If you don’t perform, or if your boss doesn’t like you, you could be let go.
Similarly, if you as an employee find a better job tomorrow, you can quit
and move on.
Competition is fierce. If you are looking for another job, remember, there
are dozens of other candidates with similar backgrounds to yours. The
question is: how can you position yourself so that you stand out from the
crowd?
Marketing and sales skills– and the core skills of writing and speaking
which underlie the marketing/sales processes - are crucial in today’s service
economy.
This is why the Scholastic Aptitude Test (S.A.T.) is being modified to test
writing and other language knowledge such as grammar. The S.A.T. is being
changed in order to meet the needs of a changing world.
Why is that?
Well, for one, it is easier to test technical skills like how to value a
company by using the mathematics of discounted cash flows than it is to
test political skills like making a sales presentation that will close the sale.
Valuing a company by means of a certain mathematical technique has only
one right answer. But judging whether or not a sales presentation was
effective is very subjective.
Similarly, it is relatively easy to teach technical skills such as the steps you
should take to launch a new product or do an initial public offering. But
political persuasion skills are far more elusive. How do you teach someone
to conjure the magic ingredients of charisma, rapport and credibility?
This is where the FEAR Selling System comes in. This System is designed
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to fill this all-too-common gap in our formal education.
First off, let me say that we don’t presume to have all the right answers.
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Anyone that tells you that their system works for every type of product or
service, in any economic environment and with every type of buyer (and
many desperate sales consultants will tell you that their system will) – is
selling you a dream.
As we will see, the famous Greek philosopher, Socrates, knew how to get
to the truth – and it’s not by having the right answers but rather by asking
the right questions.
And what we can guarantee you is that by the end of FEAR Selling, you
will know most – if not all – of the right questions to ask, and perhaps
more importantly, how to ask them.
FEAR Selling is a flexible framework that you can adapt to your product
or service, depending upon the specific economic conditions, competitive
situations, and buyer objections that you face in your day-to-day life as a
salesperson.
So early on, I began to study the sales process from several angles.
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I quickly learned that sales is all about psychology and communication
skills, so I concurrently enrolled in the liberal arts program at the
University of Pennsylvania to develop my persuasion skills as a writer and
speaker.
All told, up until my last day of graduation, I had spent nearly 14 years of
my life and had obtained more than $250,000 worth of education – but all
that education didn’t seem to do me much good in the real world.
It was depressing when I finally realized that even after all that time and
money spent, I had not even scratched the surface of all there was to know
about the selling process. It was only later when I gathered the experts
necessary to piece together the entire FEAR Selling System did I
appreciate how important this formal foundational education was.
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Sales Training, Sales Training
Everywhere
I next began to read all the books, newsletters and self-study programs that
I could get my hands on. I listened to all the popular and most of the lesser-
known sales tape series in my car, on the train, anytime I had a free
moment.
I spent tens of thousands of dollars attending courses, not only on sales but
on psychology, marketing, philosophy, leadership and business strategy. As
you will see, this multidisciplinary approach to sales is what makes FEAR
Selling more powerful in influencing buyer behavior than the majority of
other systems that you may have already encountered.
I felt like those blind men, fumbling around in the dark. I knew bits of the
sales puzzle, but I also knew that the big picture was eluding me. And
because I didn’t have the proper perspective, I was blind to the real power
of having an effective sales process. I knew tactics but didn’t know how to
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piece them together into an effective overall strategy. But I at least knew
that I didn’t know. And I knew that I needed a system.
3) Too often we are dealing with prospects that don’t have decision-
making power.
4) Our prospects use our quotes to get better prices from our
competition.
7) The prospects we do get into the pipeline never seem to develop into
actual sales.
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These are all very common problems that salespeople encounter, and we
will address each of these issues and many more as we delve into the FEAR
Selling System. But we can only begin to understand how to solve these
problems by studying buyer attitudes and behavior.
Following is a summary of the five most prevalent reasons for not buying as
reported by prospective buyers:
1) I get worried when salespeople don’t take the time to get to know my
specific problem.
3) I’m afraid that they won’t be able to deliver what they say they can
deliver.
As you can see, the majority of the answers to this survey revolve around
fear and mistrust.
The decision to buy or not to buy is more subjective than you might think.
We have found that despite bidding processes and return-on-investment
analyses that your prospects might demand, they typically buy based on
emotions.
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The Promise of the FEAR Selling
System
As we explore in the FEAR Selling System, one of the top reasons that
salespeople fail is that they don’t have a system.
Even though we suggest that you use the FEAR Selling System because of
its multi-disciplinary approach to influencing human behavior and its
extensive field-tested, results-oriented tactics, our greatest piece of advice is
to use a system – even if it’s one that you’ve developed on your own.
As difficult as it sounds, you must test and track your results to avoid
wasting time with strategies and tactics that just don’t work.
Now, with help from the professional affiliates of the Sales Career Training
Institute, we are able to offer this comprehensive course at a fraction of the
cost of attending an SCTI-sponsored event.
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THE 7 DEADLY SINS
OF
SELLING
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Why We Focus First On What NOT
To Do
From our review of the major sales training systems currently available, we
have found that they simply tell you what to do in general terms - but not
exactly how to do it - and then let you loose on the world.
The research conducted by the Sales Career Training Institute indicates that
the majority of sales professionals have built up unproductive habits over
the years that they are unaware of. Many of these habits have their
foundation in flawed advice provided to them by sales training that was not
properly field-tested.
Salespeople who are taught effective technique from the beginning of their
careers are at a significant advantage. Others must be deprogrammed from
their bad habits and then reprogrammed correctly.
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Whether we would like to admit it or not, all of us have been guilty of
losing sales because of something that we do or don’t do during the sales
process. We’d like to believe that we lost the sale due to circumstances
outside of our control, but this attitude of avoiding personal responsibility
will only lead to underperformance in the long run.
Our first objective, therefore, is to break down your bad sales habits and
build you back up again using habits that lead to success, which are built
on a firm foundational understanding of human motivation.
This strategy may work when we are young and surrounded by potential
dangers such as kidnappers, pedophiles and rapists. But when you are
grown-up and you choose sales as a profession, your livelihood often
depends upon how comfortable you are with picking up the phone and
calling total strangers.
We will deal with this fear of rejection and call reluctance later in the
FEAR Selling System, but we refer to it here only to give you a simple
example of the many psychological roadblocks and unproductive behaviors
that you must overcome in order to succeed in sales. You will become
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aware of your own limiting beliefs and unproductive behaviors as you are
exposed to the proven techniques of the FEAR Selling System.
For those of you who would just like to learn what to do without thinking
that you have to waste time on finding out what doesn’t work, please bear
with us. We guarantee that this time will be well spent.
Our research has shown that most sales are lost, not because salespeople
fail to do the right things but more often because they do the wrong things
at various points in the sales process. We refer to these “wrong things” as
The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling.
It is not by chance that the 7 Deadly Sins that were so influential in early
Christian teachings also are at the root of failed sales strategies today.
The original Deadly Sins refer to flaws in human behavior and attitudes
that cause all of us to:
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Building On The Wisdom Of The
Ages: Technical Versus Political Skills
Like the original Deadly Sins, the Sins of Selling are, for the most part,
failings in “political” rather than “technical” skills. To succeed in sales, you
do not have to focus so much on skills that are technical in nature, like the
mathematics you need to be an engineer or the grammar you need to
understand in order to be a good writer.
Our goal with the FEAR Selling System is to help you become what has
been termed an “action-intellectual” – that is, someone who has the ability
to reflect upon the subtleties of intrapersonal (that is, self) knowledge and
interpersonal (that is, interacting with others) power dynamics and then
execute based on that strategic thinking.
Leadership is about power - the ability to get people to do what you want
them to do. Sales – and indeed, business as a whole, is, at the end of the
day, an exercise in power, influence and persuasion. So in this sense, as we
are teaching you sales strategies, we are, at the same time, teaching you to
be leaders. And leadership skills are some of the most essential skills
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necessary for survival in these times of mass economic upheaval and rapid
technological change.
Our business schools may have a corner on the market for technical skills
such as accounting and operations, but when it comes to the political and
emotional realms of sales, leadership and management, the Ancients have
much to teach us.
Although our technologies have advanced, the human psyche has not
evolved beyond the fight-or-flight mentality of our earliest ancestors, who
huddled in ignorance, fearing the mysteries of the darkness, fire and the
other unknowns of nature that ruled them through intimidation just beyond
the safety of their caves.
Keep this in mind, the next time you are sitting across the table from a
prospect. Also keep in mind that the great thinkers of the past from
Aristotle to St. Augustine to Shakespeare to Freud can help us avoid many
of our daily intrapersonal and interpersonal problems. Unfortunately,
because of our rush toward short-term solutions, we fail to reflect upon
their often-simple concepts that could pull us out of the quagmires of our
muddled thinking and catapult us toward success.
Ignorant to the wisdom of the ages, we have all but forgotten the great
lessons of the past. The FEAR Selling System is designed to correct this
imbalance by focusing on the political aspects of sales and leadership. It is
our intention to take you out of your daily habitual thinking so that you
may become more self-aware and thus more effective as you strive toward
success.
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A Brief Word On Power and Ethics
“You can have everything in life if you will just help others get what they
want.”
- Zig Ziglar
Also, you must think of yourself as building a reputation that will spread
by word-of-mouth and be more effective than even the flashiest, most-
expensive advertising campaign.
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The 7 Deadly Sins Revealed
One could argue that the religions that have succeeded in dominating the
world have done so because they have foundations in core truths about
human nature. Christianity, Judaism and Islam all share common core
beliefs regarding sins or vices.
Although Nietszhe declared that God was dead, and Marx argued that
religion is the drug of the masses, the very fact that a framework of human
frailties such as the 7 Deadly Sins survived the many philosophical
upheavals of the last few centuries is a testament to the truths that such
thinking holds.
These same sins have been handed down to us not only through Sunday
school teachings but also through the writings of humanists of the
Renaissance such as Shakespeare and Machiavelli and of the
Enlightenment such as Voltaire and Ben Franklin. As you may know,
Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac is filled with simple sayings that warn
against the excesses of the various vices and praise the counterbalancing
effects of the human virtues.
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Throughout the FEAR Selling System, we will explain exactly how to use
the strategies and tactics that make up what we term The Success Habits,
which should replace the 7 Deadly Sins of Selling.
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Learning From Your Sins
The 7 Deadly Sins have a long history as central subjects in art, literature,
theology and philosophy. Although many believe that they come from the
teachings of the early Christian Church, as with many other ecclesiastical
doctrines, we can find their roots much deeper in history – and indeed in
other religions.
As one example, we can look to the Bhagavad-Gita, which is the main holy
text of India’s majority religion, Hinduism. In its Sanskrit verses, we find
that “Hell has three doors: lust, rage and greed.”
However, despite the rich and varied discussion of sin in almost every one
of the world’s cultures and religions, for our purposes, we will find it most
useful to limit our exploration to the writings of the great Western
philosophers and theologians. Since our world-view has evolved mainly
from Greek and Roman thought, we find that their philosophies are most
relevant when it comes to translating ancient wisdom into action in today’s
business world.
The killer selects victims who have committed or exemplify the sins of
Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony and Lust. Similarly, our intent
in this section - and throughout the whole FEAR Selling System - is to
wake up sales managers and salespeople so that they look at themselves
and their organizations in a more rational, objective light.
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Of course, in the movie, the killer’s sin is one of Pride in that he believes
that it is his place to play judge, jury and executioner. But as it says in the
Bible passage, Romans 12:19, “Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place
unto wrath: for it is written, vengeance is mine.” In other words, it is not
our place to blame or judge others.
In the same fashion, we suggest that you use the FEAR Selling System to
condemn your own sins – or those of your salesforce - while forgiving the
sinner(s) – which by the way, is a good management technique for
maintaining the respect of those whom you must oversee.
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PRIDE: Assuming Your Way Out Of
The Sale
PRIDE Defined – the excessive belief in one’s own abilities, which
interferes with one’s recognition of reality
“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know
nothing.”
- Socrates
It is pride – our egos – our need to prove to our prospects that we are smart
and worthy of their respect – that often leads us to losing the sale.
We talk too much and listen too little. We blurt out features and benefits
without first finding out if that information is relevant to our prospects.
Or even worse, we neglect to find out if revealing such information will
actually lessen our chances of winning the sale. The rule of thumb here is:
Never talk your way out of a sale.
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Questioning Is The Key
Pride typically gets in the way of successful sales due to assumptions that
we make that are often simply wrong.
We assume to know things that we have no idea about. That is why asking
questions is such an important aspect of the FEAR Selling System.
Assumptions, Assumptions
Everywhere
As the old saying goes: when you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of U
and ME.
Then, with blinders on, we typically fail to differentiate our products and
services from our competition.
Instead of being confident about our product, we often come off as too
cocky and thus turn off the prospects by flexing our muscles too much.
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We make assumptions about our prospects. Sometimes, we assume that
a given prospect is not worth our time, and so we may not even call upon
them or qualify them properly.
Our research has shown that many of us fall into the rut of doing the same
thing over and over, thinking that it is the best strategy to use without
testing our assumptions.
There is always a better way – even if you can only improve slightly upon
your current strategies – one small improvement can make a drastic
difference in results.
So you must test, test, and test some more. Test your assumptions
constantly by trying and tracking the results of different sales letters,
different scripts, different questions.
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It’s Not Enough Just To Ask The
Right Questions
As trite as this might sound, our research has found that listening skills are
one of a handful of key skills that determine success in one’s sales career.
Everyone says that they listen well, but you must really take a look at your
overall sales strategy from start to finish and determine if you are truly
listening to your prospects enough - and at the right times.
Most sales strategies focus too much time on the presentation – the telling
part of the sales process – and not enough on asking the right questions at
the right times in order to qualify your prospects properly and then lead
them to the sale.
By relying more on telling the prospect about your product or service, you
are making assumptions about prospects’ needs and wants. Such
assumptions are usually at the root of all lost sales. We categorize such
mistakes under Pride, since this sin blinds salespeople into thinking that
they know what their prospects want and need without even asking them.
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As our research bears out, the pushier you are as a salesperson, the more
defensive a prospect gets – and the more objections you have to deal with.
Most salespeople believe that it’s their job to convince the prospect of the
value of their product, service – or as some might say - their solution.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
You’re assuming that you know what your prospect’s problems are and can
solve them without their input. It’s as if you are making a diagnosis without
even examining the patient.
You must:
1) help them to realize the seriousness of their problem – if one exists, and;
2) show how you can solve that problem for them with your product or
service.
As you will see in FEAR Selling, these two objectives are really different
sides of the same coin. One side deals with your prospect’s fears, while the
other deals with their hopes.
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As in any sales and marketing endeavor, it is your job to differentiate
yourself from your competition – your fellow salespeople.
Well, first of all, don’t sound like the rest of the salesperson herd.
Since most salespeople are ready to launch into their spiel at the drop of a
dime, you must have a different strategy if you are to expect to differentiate
yourself. FEAR Selling will give you the strategies you need to set yourself
apart from your competitors.
If anything, such a pat, prideful, almost cocky response will destroy your
credibility, which, through our research we have found is essential for
building the long-term relationship necessary to close not only the first sale
but to keep your customers happy enough to keep paying you, and maybe
even purchasing something else from you in the future.
So again, the question is: How do you differentiate yourself from the
competition?
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It all comes back to not making assumptions about them. And how do you
do that?
According to Carnegie, you must have a genuine interest in people. For our
purposes, this means that you must ask more questions, listen more and
empathize more with the specific situation of your prospect if you want to
gain your prospect’s trust and respect.
Our wives or husbands are too stressed out to listen to us. Our bosses have
their own problems and don’t want to hear about ours or anyone else’s.
And our coworkers are all out for themselves. Even our kids are
preoccupied with their own lives and don’t appreciate all the sacrifices
we’ve made as parents.
Imagine the power you could have in building a relationship with someone
if you would just listen a bit more than you speak. Also, the only way you
are going to learn how your prospects think – and thus, how they buy - is
by listening more.
As an old Native American saying goes: you don’t really know a man until
you have walked a mile in his moccasins.
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This is your challenge. You must see the world from your prospect’s
perspective, walk around in their moccassins, feel their fears, and dream
their hopes.
We will take you through a powerful bonding process in FEAR Selling, but
for now, be aware that you must constantly be building credibility and trust
in order to win your prospects’ business.
Typically, the first couple of weeks at a new sales job, you learn product
features and benefits. You are like a tape recorder, trying to memorize all of
the good stuff that you can spew out when in front of a potential client.
Too many salespeople believe they know what their prospects want. And
too often they think that what their prospects want is exactly what they
have to sell. So they end up talking and talking until their prospects’ eyes
glaze over.
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Research conducted jointly with the Sales Career Training Institute
indicates that most prospects absorb only about 17% of what they are told.
If you couple this with the likelihood that they don’t believe most of what
they are being told by a salesperson, then most of your babbling is
worthless anyway.
It turns out that this philosophy is a core tenant of the successful sales
strategies that we have tested over the past six years, which we reveal in
detail in later chapters of FEAR Selling.
According to our research, however, the key to success lies not only in
asking more questions, but also in asking the right kinds of questions at the
right time and to the right people.
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We will address such questioning strategies throughout FEAR Selling;
however, keep in mind from this moment forward that to be successful in
sales – you must ask and listen much more than you must talk.
So next time you are confronted with the opportunity to throw out product
features and benefits, see yourself as if you are vomiting all over the
prospect.
Hopefully, this nasty association will enable you to slow down and ask
more questions, rather than just tell your prospect what they probably
don’t want to hear, aren’t listening to, and probably aren’t believing, even
if they are listening.
So to avoid the Sin of Pride - the sin that we have found to be the deadliest
of the 7 Deadly Sins of Selling, assume less, ask more questions and listen
more.
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SLOTH: Stumbling Due To
Systemless Selling
SLOTH Defined– the avoidance of physical or mental work
Traditional Sales Strategy: Rely solely upon and blindly follow the
“sales strategy” provided by your company - or just “winging it”
Reputation Is Everything
As many know, salespeople have one of the worst reputations among the
general public. Surveys show that the words most associated with
salespeople are: “snakeoil,” “liar,” “shyster”, as well as many other
unsavory terms that paint the picture that all salespeople want to do is take
your money and get out of town before you figure out that you’ve been
taken.
It’s bad enough that salespeople have this reputation among the general
buying community but an even more disconcerting finding in our research
was the bad reputations that salespeople have in the eyes of their very own
sales managers.
Typically, managers whom we’ve surveyed blame the poor attitudes and
work ethics of their salespeople for their companies’ poor sales results.
In surveying sales managers from Fortune 500 companies across the United
States and Canada, we found that many managers describe their
salespeople with words such as “lazy”, “disorganized” and “undisciplined.”
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Of course, it is the responsibility of sales managers to set goals and help in
strategy and tactic formation for their sales forces, and FEAR Selling helps
you put in place a flexible framework that has proven to lead you to
success.
As the old saying goes, “When you point one finger at somebody, there are
even more fingers pointing back at you.”
As a salesperson, you must take control of the situation. Playing the blame
game will not get you more sales.
And so the only way to achieve personal success is to set up your own
system, test it and then refine the system based on the results of the test.
If you are a sales manager, this feedback-loop concept is one of the keys to
getting the most out of your salesforce. If you are a salesperson, it can help
you determine what works best for you so that you can save time and
energy on future sales calls.
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Pick A System, Any System
One major finding of our research is that systems work when it comes to
maximizing sales. As we’ll say throughout FEAR Selling, sales is all about
testing different strategies, honing them and being flexible in using what
works in any given situation.
But that aside, we still say that any system - no matter what system you use
- is better than no system at all.
Once you find what works, stick with it. Of course, as we keep saying, test
other strategies, but the main goal is to find what works as fast as possible
and then keep repeating it time after time to reach extraordinary sales goals.
One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is that they do not set up
repeatable strategies that work. Those salespeople who do set up systems
have a competitive advantage. They free up their minds so that they can
truly listen to their prospects. They know what their next steps are so they
don’t have to think too much about their process and so can focus more
attention on their prospects’ specific needs.
Of course, the FEAR Selling System is designed exactly for this reason. It
helps salespeople who are starting from scratch and need a blueprint to
refer to throughout the entire sales process.
However, we have even tested this System with veteran salespeople, who
have invariably found some useful aspect of it that they can work into
whatever system that they’ve been using for years to create even greater
success.
So again, whatever you do, early on in your new job or in your career in
sales, work with a system that you can test and modify.
Based on our research, we can guarantee that this one strategy of using a
system will make a huge difference in your sales performance throughout
your career.
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GLUTTONY: Gorging Your Way To
A Loss of Credibility
Gluttony Defined - the desire to consume more than that which one
requires
However, your prospects are expecting you to be aggressive and so they are
ready to defend against you. They will lie to you, they will refuse to return
your calls, they will suck information out of you and then use it to
negotiate better deals with your competitors.
While everyone else out there is being aggressive and wanting to win all of
a prospect’s business in one bite, our research shows that you should try a
different strategy.
Remember, you can’t push your way to success in sales. You must set up
the dynamic of your relationship with your prospects so that they pull you
into doing business with them. We will explore this fundamental difference
in strategies in the early stages of the FEAR Selling System.
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For now, know that building trust and lowering your prospect’s resistance
to change are your biggest challenges. For any number of reasons which we
will explore later, your prospects fear doing business with you – or any
other salesperson. Therefore, what you need to do is slowly build trust and
rapport with your prospects.
Avoid Gluttony. Don’t go in trying to win the big deal without first building
credibility.
Our research over a six-year period shows that those salespeople who try to
win small pieces of business and then build incrementally end up with a
much greater portion of their customers’ share of wallet.
Even more striking is that those who use this strategy manage to break into
many more accounts than those who simply try to go out and bite off more
than their prospect’s will allow them to chew.
So what tactics should you use to win trust and eat the elephant one bite at
a time?
If they have to sign up for a year of your service without the ability to back
out of doing business with you, you probably won’t get as many people
nibbling on your offer.
So lower their risk by allowing them to get out of the relationship if it goes
south. If your product or service is as good as you say it is, they’ll stick
with you through the trial and maybe for many more years to come.
Our research shows that the word “guarantee” definitely breaks down
resistance. Of course, you must go through all the steps that we outline in
FEAR Selling in order to build up enough credibility with a prospect so
that they believe in your guarantee.
But after you follow that process, winning a new prospect should be
relatively easy if you provide them with a money-back guarantee.
You may already be aware that numerous marketing studies have shown
that few people will actually ask you for their money back – even those
who are unhappy with your product or service.
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They are either too embarrassed to do so, too lazy or too time-constrained.
Of course, we are not advocating that you sell crappy product, because
such a strategy will invariably push many more customers to take the extra
time and energy to get their money back from you - or simply not renew
their order with you.
But again, remember, like the trial offer, the guarantee enables your
prospect to taste without having to swallow your offer whole.
In order to beat out your competition, you might try to offer a part of your
service at a loss.
Think about it. Would you rather have some business at a little bit of a loss,
with a chance of staying in the game or would you rather walk away from a
potential client because they won’t submit to your terms.
Remember, it’s all about breaking down the natural resistance that most
everyone has to salespeople. As many of the top performing salespeople
that we interviewed kept saying: People hate to be sold to, but love to buy.
You must win the goodwill of your prospects if you want them to stick
around.
Also remember though, that you have to make money eventually so don’t
sacrifice your margins too much in the long run.
It’s true that many buyers today say that they buy on price alone, but at the
end of the day, any buyer with experience knows that they get what they
pay for.
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So you might want to budge on price to get in the door, but make sure that
this is a short-term strategy or else you’ll end up with lots of low-paying
customers who expect you to never raise your prices – and you will never
make a profit.
Don’t be like many of the salespeople that we have worked with over the
past six years. Don’t try to win all of a customer’s business in one fell
swoop. It probably won’t happen, and you’ll lose credibility in the process
thus ruining your chances of winning business from them at any point in
the future.
Be somewhat humble. Say things like: “We don’t want all of your business
– we just want to prove to you with a trial. Once we prove ourselves to
you, we’re confident you’ll want to do more business with us.”
So to avoid the Deadly Sin of Gluttony, remember to eat the elephant piece
by tiny piece.
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LUST: Sexy But Substanceless
Marketing
LUST Defined – an excessive desire to gratify the senses
Traditional Selling Strategy: Sell the sexy sizzle, not the steak
Internal Strife
Over the past six years, we uncovered many interesting – and unexpected
problems – that today’s salespeople are facing in the hyper-competitive
marketplace.
Typically, the issues that were most on the minds of the salespeople whom
we interviewed - or accompanied on sales calls - concerned the conflict
between themselves and the buyers.
These disgruntled salespeople complained that their advice was not taken
as seriously as it should be by their marketing colleagues. They believed
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that they should have significant input into the marketing messages used to
advertise and inform their prospects.
The salespeople surveyed felt that their opinions should be taken seriously
since they were “in the trenches” talking to prospects and customers face-
to-face, day-in and day-out. However, they felt that their marketing
colleagues spent too much time and money – and paid too much attention
to market research and their own concept of the needs of prospects.
So while many marketing and advertising executives are seeking the instant
gratification of highly creative, flashy campaigns, salespeople are looking
for substantive strategies that sell.
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The Sexy Versus The Solid
There is an old saying that goes: sell the sizzle, not the steak. Based on our
research regarding what makes people buy, we must disagree with this
saying – or at least clarify the definitions of “sizzle” and “steak”.
For our purposes here, think of the “sizzle” as the sexy features of your
product/service and the “steak” as the solid benefits.
Some products are all about “sizzle” – for example, luxury products like
jewelry, high-end cars and designer clothes. Sometimes, the instant
gratification of how something looks is enough to make the sale.
But most other products need substance – they need “steak” to sell to
today’s wary buyer. People want to know the benefits of the product or
service.
As any good salesperson knows, all the prospect cares about is WIIFM –
What’s In It For Me.
But, most advertising and marketing dollars are spent selling the sizzle.
The peak of such marketing came in the Internet boom years when small
dot-com companies spent fortunes for 30-second spots during the Super
Bowl just to catch the consumers’ attention with cutesy dog-puppets or
hamsters being fired out of cannons. Such ads were all about sizzle and
very lean on steak.
Now there is a definite need to break through the clutter and get people’s
attention, and we will address this need at the beginning of the FEAR
Selling System when we discuss Finding and Focusing On Your
Prospect’s Fears.
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However, after getting attention, you must focus on the solid benefits of the
product - the WIIFM. And this is where many marketing departments and
advertising agencies fall flat on their faces.
For now, it is enough that you are aware of this issue. It’s okay if sales
collaterals, messages, or tradeshow booths are flashy and attention-
grabbing. Just make sure that there is good-tasting cake under the frosting.
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ANGER: Losing Sales Because of the
Blame Game
ANGER Defined – the blinding passion by which one lashes out to blame
another often due to one’s own frustrations - also known as wrath
But this is only one manifestation of the Deadly Sin of Anger that we have
studied during several of our sales effectiveness research projects.
Although there are many factors that a salesperson cannot control, one
very powerful factor that they have total control over is their attitude.
• technique – effective sales strategies and tactics that anyone can learn
• attitude – how you think and react to what happens to you. The Deadly
Sin of Anger falls under this final category – it is a failure in attitude.
2) complaining about the poor treatment that they must endure at the
hands of their prospects and customers; and/or
We will explain this in more depth in FEAR Selling as it impacts not only
the effectiveness of salespeople that must work in teams, but it also does
damage to the trust that must be built between salespeople and their
prospects/customers.
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Effective Techniques + Effective
Behaviors = Positive Attitudes =
Long-Term Success In Sales
So although the Deadly Sin of Anger revolves around attitude, salespeople
– and their managers – must learn how to control this sin by focusing on
effective behaviors.
Our research bears out that proper techniques used in conjunction with
effective behaviors will create positive impacts on attitudes - which will
then lead to effectiveness in sales.
These positive attitudes will reinforce the use of the techniques and
behaviors necessary to sustain long-term success in sales.
So to fight the Deadly Sin of Anger, you must change your attitude. You
must take responsibility for your own success.
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GREED: Putting Your Own Needs
Before Those Of Your Prospect
GREED Defined– the desire for material wealth or gain often at the
expense of others
Traditional Selling Strategy: Try to sell your prospect on what you have
to offer regardless of whether or not it solves his problem
Just as Anger is rooted in a person’s poor attitude, so does the Deadly Sin
of Greed spring from a counter-productive attitude.
In order to do this, you must first overcome the many fears they have:
• and many more fears which we will learn to overcome throughout FEAR
Selling.
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Stop Thinking of Yourself As A
Salesperson – You Are A Trusted
Advisor
In order to overcome your prospect’s fears, you must build credibility so
that they trust you. You must place their interests in front of your own.
Buyers all too often report to us that salespeople have their own selfish
interests in mind rather than trying to work with them as a trusted advisor.
In other words, these buyers felt that most salespeople did not want to
create win-win situations, but rather wanted to make the transaction as
quickly as possible regardless of the buyers’ needs or the needs of the
companies that these buyers’ represented.
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When we surveyed salespeople in a wide range of industries, an incredible
94% of respondents described themselves as “relationship builders” rather
than “transactional salespeople.”
• rush the prospect to buy instead of taking the time to build rapport and
create trust first;
• at best, make one sale but lose potential future sales by ruining their
reputation with the customer.
In the movie, Kris Kringle gets a job working as the Santa Claus for the
Macy’s Department Store. His main job is to greet young children and ask
them what they want for Christmas.
Everything works out well until the Macy’s management finds out that Kris
is telling parents to go to Macy’s biggest competitor, Gimble’s, if they can
get a better deal over there.
At first the management is upset, but when sales at Macy’s skyrocket due to
the goodwill created by this “trusted-advisor” mentality, Kris Kringle
becomes a hero to the department store – and the management quickly
makes it store policy for all of its employees to make recommendations that
keep their customers’ best interest in mind.
The car salesman that told us this story has made an effort to build his
reputation in his community as a trusted advisor. Consequently, many
people in the market for a car in his area visit him first. And though he
sometimes points prospects to competitors, he outsells all of his fellow
salespeople.
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ENVY: Blindly Following The
Masses Instead of Leading Through
Differentiation
Envy Defined - the desire for others’ traits, status, abilities or situation
The reason for this failure is that most of these sales training aids fall
into the category of tactical tools rather than strategic frameworks.
Tactics are essential; however, typically, where these courses, books and
tapes fall short is in tying their tactics together into an overall flexible
strategy.
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But reading your prospect is not so easy. The prospects you encounter
and situations you find yourself in will vary depending on millions of
variables. Therefore, it is impossible for any book or teacher to tell you
exactly how you should approach or respond to a particular buyer or
situation in the future.
We cannot tell you exactly what notes to play, but we can give you the
sheet music that you can interpret and play based on what sounds right
for you given your style and what sounds right for your buyer, given any
situation that confronts you.
So don’t just blindly follow sales advice from books, tapes, your
colleagues or any sales trainers or consultants.
Again, what works for others might not work for you.
The most you can hope for is guidance, and this is what we will provide
to you throughout FEAR Selling.
The FEAR Selling System is the best guidance that we have collected
from a six-year research study distilled from hundreds of books, articles
and audio sales training courses and more than 14,000 sales calls
observed by our team of sales effectiveness researchers.
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FEAR Selling: Your Way To Success
FEAR Selling is a collection of tools – a flexible strategy that will
catapult your sales career to success – but only if you pick up the tools
and start experimenting with them.
FEAR Selling – and the other books in The Business of FEAR Series -
are our attempt to shake up and wake up current and future leaders,
managers and salespeople, and not merely to make you aware of the
great thinking of the past or obscure psychological research for academic
purposes.
Our aim is to provide you with actionable knowledge you can take into
the field that actually gives you the ability to sell more and sell faster.
We will attempt to organize the thinking of the ancient and recent past
for you in such a way that gives you a framework for effective thought
and action in a sales environment.
But we can’t do all the work for you. You will have to work too by
thinking through the relevance of this framework given your character,
management style and the variety of situations that confront you every
day.
You must take from our advice what you are comfortable with, make it
your own, and test it constantly to see if it works for you.
In the end, it is our hope that you will be able to apply these field-
tested, proven lessons to your daily lives, not only to help your
companies grow but also to help you succeed personally.
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FEAR Selling: How To Sell More
And Sell Faster By Tapping Into
Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated
Emotional Needs
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Introduction to FEAR Selling
Over the last several million years, a small, fragile monkey-like primate has
been slowly evolving into the dominant creature on the planet earth. We
have been molded into what we are today by reacting to the nature around
us and the nurturing of our families and societies.
Like other animals, our main motivational drive is to survive. This deep
desire for self-preservation extends beyond ourselves to our families, to our
countries and to humanity as a whole in that we know that we are reliant
upon others to survive. We know that others can do us harm, and so we
must either destroy those enemies or compromise with them so that we may
live together peacefully.
Most animal species are similar in this respect. They band together for
protection and fight off predators. However, one major characteristic makes
us different from the rest of the animals that we share this world with.
As far as we know, we are the only animals who are conscious enough
about our existence to be called self-aware. We are the only animals that
can grasp a sense of time. We do not live in an eternal “now” like the rest
of the animals that can only react to current stimuli.
We can consciously remember the past, apply lessons we learned back then
to our present, and then prepare for the future. And, as you will see, this is
one of the key foundational concepts in the FEAR Selling System.
The drive for self-preservation is at the core of practically all other drives.
All of our behaviors in one way or another try to move us away from the
fear of death toward the hope of life. Even suicide is a tactic that some
succumb to in order to avoid present pain in the hope of a more peaceful
future.
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But What About Sex?
As we will see a bit later, many psychologists believe that there are
multiple drivers of human behavior. One of these is sex. Obviously, many
advertisers use sex appeal to sell their products.
But it is our contention – and the belief of many others in the psychology
field - that all other drivers of human behavior lead back to one
overarching motivation – the drive for self-preservation.
We learn from our parents and our societies how best to adapt to our
changing world in order to survive. We learn by imitating others and by
constantly looking for new ways to better our situations. And we pass on
this knowledge to our offspring in the hopes that they will live better lives
than we have.
Greed Is Good
Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie, Wall Street, was right from a
self-preservation perspective. He said, “Greed is good.”
We all must have food and shelter to survive – and so we all strive to
acquire property – money – so that we can buy food to avoid starvation
and buy a house or rent an apartment, to protect ourselves from the harsh
elements around us.
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Such security distances us from death. The more we have, the better we can
fight our battle of self-preservation.
At the extreme, we could all be living on the streets, begging for food and
perhaps starving or freezing to death. So we go about acquiring property to
avoid discomfort, and ultimately, death, for as long as possible.
Now, of course, you might see the connection between the main driver of
self-preservation and what we call sub-drivers like sex and greed. We are
biologically wired to want to stay alive as long as possible. We strive to
reproduce and to acquire property, but what about all of the other
behaviors that don’t seem to be linked in any way to self-preservation.
Biological necessity is not the only thing that influences our behavior. Man
is one of the most social creatures on earth. How we react to situations
comes from millions of years of living together in groups that helped us
continue to live, reproduce and gather resources more effectively.
As we will see, the survival instinct is not only biological but psychological
as well. We are not only trying to avoid the physical death of our bodies
but also the psychological death of what Freud would call our egos – our
sense of self.
For our purposes, we will refer to this as the drive to maintain self-esteem.
Many sales experts talk about selling to people’s pains. Indeed, the
concepts of pleasure and pain are at the center of many motivational
theories, such as those of Sigmund Freud. Typically, we are motivated to
move toward pleasure and away from pain.
And it is true that people in pain are your easiest prospects to sell. They are
already out of their Comfort Zones and won’t need much help from you to
get them to buy your product or service if they believe it will relieve them
of their current pain.
There are some people who are in pain right now and will pay big money
to get out of that pain. Think about it. If you or a loved one gets seriously
injured in a car accident, you’ll probably rush to the emergency room of a
hospital and pay whatever it takes to solve that pain – whether or not you
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have health insurance – especially if it is a life-or-death situation. Doctors
are in the ultimate pain business. People usually only visit them when they
are in pain and want relief from that pain right now.
To make our point, let’s assume that you are an aspirin salesperson, and
that aspirin is not available in stores or online or through mail-order. For
the purposes of this example, people can only buy aspirin directly from
door-to-door salespeople like you.
Unfortunately, the majority of prospects that you encounter will not have a
headache right now. In fact, there is a greater possibility that they’ll have a
headache at some point in the future rather than now.
Do you want to waste your time knocking on people’s doors only to sell to
people who have headaches now – only to people who have pain now?
Of course not. If you do stumble into someone in pain, that’s great. You’ll
probably have an easy sale. But there are a greater number of prospects – a
bigger market – for people who may experience the pain of a headache in
the future.
It’s your job to get those prospects to realize that they can avoid that future
pain of a headache by buying your product now and being prepared for it
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when the inevitable headache comes in the future. So you are better off
selling to their fear of future pain than just focusing on their current pains.
First, let’s look at the people who focus mainly on the Unknown Future.
Actually, very few of us consciously live in the Now on a consistent basis.
Instead, in our minds, we are constantly thinking about the future. As
Eckhart Tolle explains in his book, The Power of Now and Dale Carnegie
describes in How To Stop Worrying And Start Living, humans by their very
nature worry about an unknown future. As both of these authors believe,
much of the world’s psychological suffering could be solved if we could all
just focus more on and live in the current moment without worrying too
much about a future that might never come to pass.
Mark Twain captured this human tendency to worry needlessly about the
future when he said, “I’ve seen many troubles in my time, only half of
which ever came true.”
Next, let’s look at the people who live in the Now. Just as some people
worry too much and are constantly dwelling on the Unknown Future, some
people focus too much on the Now.
Remember the fable of the ant and the grasshopper? In the summertime, the
grasshopper played around and lived for the moment, while the ant
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prepared for the future. When winter came, the grasshopper suffered for
not thinking ahead while the ant lived comfortably. The grasshopper was
living in the Now, while the ant was preparing for the Known Future. Like
other animals, the ant knew instinctively to prepare for the inevitable
coming of winter and so he prepared for it.
As we all know, many people in the United States are drowning in credit
card debt. They are not saving enough for their futures. They live one
paycheck away from bankruptcy. Every day they make a choice between
spending for pleasure now or saving to avoid pain in the future, and they
mostly choose to spend frivolously now, and let tomorrow take care of
itself. They act like the grasshopper in the fable, practically unaware that
they are not saving enough to retire comfortably – that is, if they’ll be able
to retire at all.
Depending on the type of product you sell, you want your prospect to
focus more either on the Now or on the Unknown Future.
But for those of you who sell most other products or services, your job is a
bit more challenging. Your job is to get the prospect to think into the future
about all the negative consequences that will occur if they don’t buy your
product or service now.
Some examples:
· if they don’t buy your resume-writing service now, they might not
find a job for a long time and may have to live uncomfortably because
they don’t have sufficient money;
· if they don’t buy your marketing services, they might not sell as much
of their product as they need to sell in order to stay in business;
· if they decide to buy a less expensive car than the luxury car you are
trying to sell them now, their friends and colleagues might not have as
much respect for them;
· if they don’t buy the life insurance that you suggest they buy now,
their family may suffer if they die or are disabled;
In FEAR Selling, we will explain step-by-step exactly how you make your
prospects realize their potentially painful future now. When we say
“realize”, we mean that you have to take them through a process – a
process that leads them to an awareness of their needs. As we will discuss
later, you can’t really convince anyone of buying anything. You can only
help make them aware that they need what you are selling.
Through the process laid out in the FEAR Selling System, you will attempt
to make that potentially painful future real for them now. You want them to
experience that painful future – to see it, feel it, live it now – enough so
that you get them out of their Comfort Zones and buy your product or
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service in order to avoid that possible painful future.
By now, you should understand what you have to do. Your goal is to focus
your prospects on their potential future pains – their fears.
We Think Therefore We Do
Unlike other animals, man can think about the consequences of his actions
and consciously decide whether or not to do something based on whether
or not the consequences will be beneficial to him.
Animals merely act on instinct. They only live in the Now. Of course, they
too instinctively “plan” for the future by, for example, storing acorns to eat
in the winter.
Man thinks and can choose what he does. Of course, like all other animals,
we also have unconscious, instinctive reactions to things like loud noises,
which make us freeze, run, attack, scream or whatever our instincts tell our
bodies is the most appropriate response at the time.
But for the most part, we have the time to think before we act.
What we must understand as salespeople is that the mind does not only
react to what is “out in the world.” It also reacts to its own activity – its
own musings.
The mind cannot clearly distinguish between stimuli that are real and those
that are imagined. In other words, things don’t have to be real to trigger a
reaction.
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Think, for example, about the last time you went to a horror movie. Of
course, you weren’t in any real danger, but at points, your heart probably
raced a little faster than normal – or you may have jumped in reaction to a
sudden scary movement on the screen.
As they say, perception is reality. And our minds sometimes find it very
difficult to distinguish between a simulated reality, like a movie, and our
own true reality.
Salespeople and marketers take advantage of this fact that stimuli don’t
have to be real to cause mental reactions and resulting behaviors. Through
words and imagery, marketers can trigger reactions in much the same way
that reality does.
2) The selling organization claims that they have the solution to that
problem in the form of their product/service.
Positioning is what FEAR Selling is all about. We will teach you how to
exploit this aspect of the human mind to better your chances to sell more
and to sell faster.
What you must remember as a salesperson is that you cannot force anyone
to do anything. Research bears out that children and teens are much easier
to influence than adults. But assuming that you are selling to adults, it is
best if you start with the assumption that you cannot convince them of
buying your product.
You can only help show your prospects that it is in their best interest to
buy your product. You can’t get behind them and push them toward
buying. They will resist.
You must rather coax them toward buying your product. And as we will
see, successful salespeople pull prospects toward buying by selling
emotionally rather than intellectually.
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Understanding What Makes People
Tick
The more you think about sales, marketing and advertising, the more you
will come to realize that it is all about motivating people. So in order to
become the most effective salesperson or marketer that you can be, you
must understand the basics of human behavior and motivation.
So by taking the time to understand the reasons why FEAR Selling works,
it will be easier for you to remember the System and apply it to the various
situations you encounter.
You might have to modify your use of this information given the nature of
your product, your own personality, the personality of your prospects or
the state of your industry or the economy at any given time. But knowing
what makes people tick generally will help you adapt more readily to any
given situation. And knowing the process of how to discover what makes a
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particular person tick will help you sell more and sell faster.
As you will see, it will be much more interesting – and much more useful –
to explore human motivation from this perspective.
If you remember your elementary physics, you will recall two general laws:
At this point, you might be asking, what does physics have to do with
selling?
The first law is very clear. If a person doesn’t have an immediate problem
or have a great enough sense that they might have a problem in the future
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(that is, if there is no fear), then they will not take any action. They are in
their Comfort Zone.
The second law is not so clear cut. A person who is uncomfortable with
their current state might take action or they might not take action. This
person is not in his Comfort Zone, but they might not be far enough outside
of their Comfort Zone – they might not be uncomfortable enough – to take
action.
Human beings are creatures of habit. Similar to other animals, we fall into
routines and typically resist any changes from those routines.
But when you first meet them, they probably don’t own your product or
use your service – and might not even be aware of it. They are, in some
ways, comfortable enough without it.
· not know that they have the problem that your product/service solves;
· know that they have the problem, but it is not a great enough problem
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for them to take action to resolve their problem;
· know that they have the problem, and it is important enough for them
– or, we might say, painful enough for them - to want to take action,
but they don’t think they have the resources (the money) to solve
their problem;
· know that they have the problem, and it is painful enough for them to
want to take action, but they don’t know that any solutions for their
problem exist; and/or
· know that they have the problem, and it is painful enough for them to
want to take action, but they don’t think that your product or service
is the solution to their problem.
1) You must make your prospect aware that they have a significant
problem currently – or that there is a high probability they will have a
significant problem in the near future; and that
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What Keeps People In Their Comfort
Zones - And Not Buying From You
You must show your prospect that the sum total of their fears that motivate
them to take action is greater than the sum total of the fears they have that
paralyze them into doing nothing, maintaining the status quo and staying in
their Comfort Zones.
Only by realizing this will your prospect take action and buy your product
to alleviate their pain and allay their fears.
In order for them to buy from you, you must show them that:
The negative consequences of not buying are GREATER THAN the costs
of buying.
You might have to take a moment to re-read that and really absorb it. It
may be confusing because you are not used to thinking of it that way.
Typically, you might think of the buying process the other way around.
You might think that in order to get someone to buy from you, you must
show your prospect that:
The benefits of buying are greater than the cost of buying. Of course, this is
an equally valid way of looking at the sales process.
But, as you will see, fear is typically a more powerful motivator than gain
(benefits). This is why FEAR Selling is more powerful than even the most
advanced benefit-focused selling strategies.
Let’s explore the concept of the Comfort Zone a bit more in order to better
understand the obstacles that you have to overcome as a salesperson.
Many of us would like to lose weight, but we keep eating the same
unhealthy foods and refuse to exercise. We enjoy eating those foods
because it brings us immediate pleasure, and we resist exercising because it
takes too much energy, which our minds interpret as pain.
Many of us would like to make more money, but we stay in the same job
and would rather complain about our situation than take action to better
our financial situation. It’s easier that way.
Why?
Well, it’s not easy to change. There are many pressures keeping us in place,
right where we are in our Comfort Zones.
1) minimize the fears that a person has about the consequences of taking
action – that is, about buying your product; and
2) maximize the fears that a person has about the consequences of not
taking action – that is, about doing nothing and refusing to buy your
product.
Think about why a prospect might not want to buy your product or service.
1) Your prospect might be afraid that you are lying to them - that your
product won’t work – that it won’t solve their problem - and that
they will have wasted time, money and/or energy by dealing with you.
They might not trust you.
For example, think about a get-rich-quick scheme that you might have
been thinking about buying. It might have sounded too good to be
true. You might have bought a similarly hyped product in the past,
and it didn’t work for you then. So you are wary about getting
cheated out of your money again.
Note that this is where the power of brands come in. Well-known
brands are all about trust. If you buy a brand product, and it doesn’t
work, you can always simply say: “They have the best brand name
out there. There was no better choice.” And you can shift the blame
away from yourself to the brand. Brands work because of the positive
reputations they’ve built in the minds of their customers.
4) Your prospect might even be afraid that your product will work, but
that it will change things, and people will not like them because of
their success.
As odd as it may sound, what holds back a lot of people is such fear
of success. Many people believe that if they get out of their Comfort
Zone and succeed once then people will expect them to succeed all
the time. This fear sometimes paralyzes people so that they don’t try
to succeed at all.
You can boil all of a buyer’s fears down to two distinct types:
In FEAR Selling, we will teach you selling techniques that will help
you to minimize both of these types of fears.
Now think about why you haven’t done that thing that you should
have done.
Let me ask you this: what is it that makes you finally do it?
Most likely, you end up doing it because the pain of not doing it has
hit a point where it is worse than the pain of doing it. And that pain
forces you to take action. You take action in order to avoid the
consequences of not taking action.
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To illustrate this simple yet key point, let’s explore each of the above
examples in turn:
· You may have gotten so fat that you don’t fit into your clothes,
and you have to go and spend money to buy new clothes. Or,
perhaps your spouse, or friends or co-workers start making fun
of you. You may be so embarrassed that you force yourself to
diet and exercise.
· Your house might get so dirty that you have to pay a lot of
money to have an exterminator come in to get rid of the mice
and bugs. Or, your in-laws come over, and it’s embarrassing
because they don’t want to step foot in your house. So you
quickly clean up.
· Your lawn might get so high that when you finally do get
someone to come and mow the lawn, they charge you a lot of
money. Or, your neighbors might start complaining about it and
embarrass you into getting the lawn mower out.
· You might get to the point where you cannot pay your bills with
your current paycheck, and so you simply are forced to go and
look for another job or else go live on the street. Or, you might
be embarrassed that you can’t go out to eat with your friends as
often because you don’t make as much money as they do. So
you get your resume together and start sending it out.
In all of these cases, you change – you decide to take action – because you
believe that the consequences of not taking action are worse than the effort
of taking action.
The key word here is “believe.” It’s all about your personal standards.
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· they are fat
But there is always a Breaking Point, which forces them to take action –
whether it is an actual loss or a loss in self-esteem.
· many other issues that we will explore when we present the Values
Elicitation Process.
It’s your job to help them discover their Breaking Point. And we’ll show
you how to help them reach their own personal Breaking Point.
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FEAR Selling will show you how to pull people out of their Comfort
Zones far enough to get them to want to buy your product or service –
because buying your product will help relieve their current pain or alleviate
their fears of future pain.
CHANGE CHANGE
COMFORT ZONE
NO TIME (The Status Quo) NO MONEY
LAZINESS LIMITED
KNOWLEDGE
CHANGE CHANGE
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Motivational Drives
As we mentioned briefly above, many studies have been conducted in an
attempt to isolate and label all of the human motivational drives. Following
are some of the drives that have been identified:
· Self-preservation
· Sex
· Greed
· Enjoyment
· Self-esteem
· Curiosity
· Imitation
· Altruism
We agree that all of these are motivators of human behavior, but in order to
simplify yet at the same time create a more powerful understanding of
human behavior, we will label most of them as sub-motivators.
Enjoyment, like greed, is our attempt to seek pleasure and flee from pain.
We need to relax, to give ourselves a break from the stresses of work, and
so the more property we can obtain – the richer we are – and the more
enjoyment we can experience.
Curiosity may have killed the proverbial cat, but it has been very helpful
in keeping the human race alive and evolving. Through exploration, we
have found new lands full of resources that we can exploit. Through space
exploration, we have developed many products that can be used in
everyday life here on earth.
Our early ancestors explored with their hands. They banged rocks together
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to make primitive tools that could help them in their struggle for survival.
Their curiosity kept them exploring for better, more efficient ways to
survive – to make better tools, to discover agriculture, which would enable
them to settle down in a particular area and not have to wander constantly
to find food.
Even today, we are all in search of a better, easier way to make money.
Everyone at one time or another has been curious about a get-rich-quick
scheme. We wonder: “If it worked for others, can it work for me?” You as a
salesperson probably sought out this book in the hopes that its strategies
and tactics will bring you more wealth and overcome the daily struggles of
selling. It is such hope that keeps us constantly looking to improve,
constantly seeking the better mousetrap. Again, curiosity is linked to self-
preservation.
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What may seem baffling is altruism when it is directed toward total
strangers. Why do we give to charity? Much of the motivation can be
attributed to many of our religious beliefs that we should help our fellow
humans who are less fortunate than ourselves. But even so, most of our
religions have an afterlife where the good will be rewarded and the evil will
be punished. Selfishness is definitely classified as an evil trait, and so we
feel guilt when a beggar approaches us, and so we might give him the
change in our pocket.
We can find many cases of wealthy individuals, who, toward the end of
their lives, give away enormous sums of money. Some have reported that it
is their way of “giving back,” perhaps since they feel that they have “taken
away” from their fellow man during their lifetime of accumulating wealth.
In a way, such rich people might be succumbing to the fears that haunt
Ebenizer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Only guilt and
his fear of death as embodied in the three visiting ghosts force him to
change from a greedy old wretch to a kind, giving human being. In the end,
fear motivates him to do good.
Others have admitted that they are in some way seeking immortality by
giving away their wealth in exchange for a chance to keep the memory of
their existence alive. For example, many donations are rewarded with the
naming of some building in the donor’s honor. And so, if a hospital wing or
a building on a school campus is named after the person, the donor may
believe that they, in some way, will live on beyond their physical death.
They will live on in the memory of those who will see their names on the
sign of the hospital or the college dorm.
5) Self-actualization: the desire to become more and more what one is,
to become everything that one is capable of becoming. People who
have met all of the lower needs can then focus on self-actualization.
They are free to pursue the more pleasurable things in life whatever
that means to them. They are not burdened by looking for food and
shelter, they feel secure with their economic and social situation, and
are comfortable with who they are.
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The Pyramid of Needs
SELF-
ACTUALIZATION
NEEDS
ESTEEM
NEEDS
SAFETY/SECURITY NEEDS
PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS
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Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is an alternative to the more pessimistic
theories of human nature, which depict man as naturally violent, lazy and
stupid. Other theories of human motivation such as those of Freud and
Skinner paint a much more negative picture of man by treating him as any
other animal which follows natural instincts.
It is not our role here to argue whether man’s nature is basically good or
evil. Our sole concern is to understand what motivates human behavior, so
that you will have an advantage in persuading your prospects to consider
buying your product/service or otherwise winning them to your way of
thinking.
Study after study proves that the average person is more motivated by the
fear of losing what he has than by the hope of gaining something better.
This is where FEAR Selling departs from the currently accepted strategy of
focusing mainly on product benefits.
Again, fear and hope are the main drivers of human behavior. And as we
will see, successful salespeople use these two motivators together to drive
people to buy their products.
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Hope Selling: The Basics of Selling
Benefits
Of course, it is better to focus on selling benefits than on selling features.
Too many salespeople that we have worked with focus on the features of
their products and services rather than translating them into benefits. Many
of them think that they are focusing on benefits, but they are really just
focusing on product features. Don’t fall into this basic trap.
So, the first step in positioning your product so that it is more attractive to
your buyer is to transform features into benefits. This will force you to be
client-centered.
The simple trick in transforming features into benefits is to use the phrase
“so that…” People aren’t interested in the features themselves but rather
the benefits that those features will give them.
· Side airbags
· Four-wheel drive
· Gets good gas mileage
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These are simply features. Don’t assume that your prospect can translate
these features into benefits by themselves.
We’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here because one of the keys to
FEAR Selling is asking questions to find out what is important to a
prospect before presenting to them. But let’s assume that we know from
initial conversations with the prospect that safety for their teenagers is
important.
Instead of just saying: “This new model has side airbags,” you want to say
something like “This model has side airbags so that if your son or daughter
gets into an accident, they’ll have a higher chance of walking away from
the accident unharmed.” As you can see, you have now painted a picture of
the benefit (safety) of one of the car’s features (air bags).
Instead of just saying: “This model has four-wheel drive,” you can say,
“This model has four-wheel drive so that the next time it snows you’ll be
able to get around much more safely.”
Again, as we will see later in FEAR Selling, you want these stories to relate
to a given prospect’s particular hopes or fears. For example, you may make
the above statement to a prospect who indicated their need for safety
during the winter.
Stop just rattling off the features of your product as if they mean something.
They are meaningless unless you translate them into benefits that matters to
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your prospect. We will explore how to find out which benefits are most
important to a particular prospect when we lay out the Values Elicitation
Process, but for now, it is important that you understand that you must
focus on benefits.
Fears are the flip side of the benefits. Now many marketers will argue that
using fear to motivate will turn people off – and they are right if you don’t
know how to use your prospects’ fears to your advantage. Often fear can
paralyze people and stop them from making any decision at all.
But think about any political campaign. Savvy politicians – who are really
selling nothing more than ideas – often rely mainly on scare tactics to win
office. They try to paint a negative picture for voters of life under their
opponent – while at the same time, they portray themselves as the
candidate who will lead their people to a hopeful future.
Like any politician, you must learn to use fear and hope appropriately, and
you will learn how to do this as we move through the FEAR Selling
System.
For now, you should understand that you must apply the dual pressures of
benefits – or, hopes, as we will call them from now on - and fears.
You must position your product/service so that it gives them the hope of
personal reward. And you must imply that the lack of your product will
probably lead your prospect to a painful future.
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As we interviewed successful salespeople, our researchers watched their
strategies and tactics – we watched for what was going on beneath the
surface of their interactions with their prospective buyers. From these
observations, we found that using the carrot (benefits) and the stick (fears)
is much more powerful than just using the carrot of benefits.
For example, there is a technique in NLP called The Fast Phobia Cure,
which has been proven to cure phobias (fears) in a matter of minutes. There
are processes that can now cure phobias of water, heights, public speaking,
flying and many other fears.
You can use such techniques to help you overcome any internal resistance
you have that may be hindering your sales. You may be hesitant to pick up
the phone and make cold calls. You may be uncomfortable giving
presentations. You may prefer sending materials to a prospect and hope
they respond rather than actually engaging them in a conversation. These
are all in some sense “fears” that we must overcome if we are to be effective
in sales.
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Not only can you use NLP techniques to improve your own effectiveness,
but you also can use them to help influence the behavior of your
prospective customers.
NLP Defined
NLP was developed from several different intellectual disciplines and
organized by its co-founders – Richard Bandler and John Grinder.
“Neuro” refers to our nervous system and mind. It is concerned with how
we process information by experiencing the world through our five senses
and then recording the memory of those experiences in our bodies.
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“Linguistic” refers to how we think about, label and order our external
world in our minds. We use language to do this. Language is what enables
us not only to communicate and share abstract thoughts with others, but it
is used to build our memories. Our minds process raw information that
comes to us in the forms of pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells and
turns them into words.
In the world of the computer, when someone presses the key for the letter
O, the computer responds by creating the image of a circle on the screen.
The computer has been programmed to respond in certain ways to the
pressing of each of its buttons. Similarly, human beings are programmed by
their environment (families, society, etc.) to react in certain ways when they
experience certain stimuli – when certain emotional buttons are pushed.
FEAR Selling helps you find your prospects’ buttons and push them to
your – and hopefully, your prospects’ - advantage.
For example, we are “taught” that fire can be dangerous to us, and so if
someone yells, “Fire!” we will react in a certain way. We may become more
alert, start watching for what others around us are doing and then follow
them as they run away from the area of danger.
If you think about it, a simple four-letter word triggers a massive amount of
reaction in our bodies. The adrenaline in our bodies begins to flow, we
focus our attention more intently on our surroundings, and we probably
expend significant amounts of energy to run away. All because of a simple
four-letter word that we have been conditioned to respond to.
Pacing refers to the ability to gain and maintain rapport with another
person by understanding how they perceive the world and then showing
them that you understand their world. We will explore how to draw out or
elicit how people think. We also will describe tactics that you can use to
make others feel more comfortable with you. Basically, think of pacing as
bonding with your prospect and building a level of trust so that you can
then take them to the next step – leading.
Leading follows pacing. After you have reached a level of bonding and
trust with your prospect, you can then use that level of rapport as a
foundation to build upon. Once you have obtained their trust, you can then
lead them – and they will follow your lead. You will use your own
behavior to guide your prospect toward what you want them to do – that is,
move them closer to the sale.
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The FEAR Acronym
The FEAR Selling System is based on this basic concept of pacing and
leading. First you must get your prospect’s attention and build trust, and
then you can lead your prospect to the sale. The F and the E in the FEAR
acronym are all about pacing; with the A, you will be pacing and then
leading; and the R is about leading.
Ask The Right Questions At The Right Times In The Right Way: How
To Find Out Your Prospect’s Specific Hopes And Fears That You Can
Then Use To Sell To Them
As you will see, the first three steps in the System focus more on listening
while it is only at the end of the process that you launch into your
presentation.
Typically, salespeople use the complete opposite strategy. They talk at their
prospect from the beginning without gathering the crucial information that
can close the sale at the end. They immediately plunge into presenting first
– providing their prospects with information without gathering the key
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information about their prospects’ hopes and fears that they should be
inputting into their presentation.
If you follow the FEAR Selling System, you will avoid this all-too-
common mistake since the System forces you to ask questions and listen
upfront as much as possible.
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Find and Focus On Your Prospect’s
Hopes And Fears: How To Uncover
Your Prospect’s Emotional Hot
Buttons And Use Them To Grab
Their Attention
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Before we dive into the first step of the FEAR Selling System, we want to
note that many sales training organizations teach you that the first step in
the sales process is to bond with your prospect. Typical sales training
systems start with the second step in the FEAR Selling System, which is
the Empathy Step.
Our research shows, however, that one of the most difficult aspects of
selling involves prospecting through cold calling and networking. So the
FEAR Selling System starts with how to approach a prospect in order to
get them to sit down with you, listen to your pitch, give you the
opportunity to bond and qualify them as a potential prospect.
FEAR Selling doesn’t jump the gun by assuming that your foot is already
in the door. So, let’s first talk about strategies that you should use to get the
attention of your target prospects and get that first meeting.
1) finding the right people to talk to who are most likely to buy your
product/service – this is the Targeting aspect of strategy.
They don’t tell you too much in the commercial, but rather just enough to
get you interested to stay up and tune in at 11 o’clock that night. They
might tease you with the latest terrorist threat. And so, you might be
anxiously awaiting that nightly newscast so as to ease your fears about the
situation. Maybe you’ll find out something from the news that will help
you avoid injury or even death. That’s how the news networks keep you
glued to your TV set. It’s all about fear.
For a more in-depth look at how the media uses fear to get your attention,
you might want to refer to the book, The Culture of Fear, by Barry
Glassner, Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California.
Glassner has written for many magazines and newspapers, including The
New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune.
Through his studies and broad experience with the media, he gives a
detailed inside look at how the media sells itself by using fear.
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Now that you are aware of this technique, look out for it being used by
your local TV news stations. Understanding how to use fear in order to
grab attention will undoubtedly help you sell more and sell faster.
Getting people to raise their hands and ask you to pitch them on your
product or service is getting more and more difficult. Generating leads for
salespeople to call on typically falls into the realm of marketing. (For more
on how to get people to call you, check out the book, FEAR Marketing.)
If you are lucky enough to have a great marketing department that funnels
you leads – or if you know how to take advantage of Internet-enabled lead-
generation strategies like pay-per-click advertising or affiliate marketing,
then you are in good shape, but nowadays, we find that salespeople are
doing more and more of their own prospecting. You typically must take the
first step and call on your prospects. (But for more on how to use the
Internet to generate leads, check out the book, FEAR Marketing Online.)
The first step in the FEAR Selling System is all about how to grab your
prospect’s attention.
You need to create two things in the mind of your prospect: curiosity and
trust – both of which are related to their fears and hopes.
By creating curiosity, you will tap into a fear – the fear that they might have
of missing a potential opportunity. Or, if you look at it from the flip side,
you are tapping into a hope – the hope that you have some product/service
that can help them reach their personal goals in a faster and easier fashion.
But that hope is not easy to conjure. They are not going to get excited
every time a salesperson calls them. You must differentiate yourself from
the hordes of other salespeople that ring their phone every day. In addition
to curiosity, you must create trust.
By creating trust, you will ease other fears that they might have – fears that
you aren’t credible – that you will waste their time or make them
uncomfortable with a sales pitch for something they don’t want or need.
2) Expertizing Yourself
We suggest that you focus more on problems, pains and fears because once
you know what they are trying to avoid, you typically understand the other
side of the coin – what they want, what they hope for.
Plus, every salesperson is out there talking about product benefits, which
are related to prospects’ hopes. With FEAR Selling, you’ll differentiate
yourself from the hordes of other salespeople by focusing on your
prospects rather than your products. And by focusing on their emotional
hot buttons – their fears, you’ll have a better chance of capturing their
attention.
By showing prospects that you understand their problems, you will have a
better chance of getting them to trust you a bit and getting them curious
enough to meet with you.
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And don’t just limit your thinking to the problems, pains, fears and hopes
that your product or service can solve. The key is to focus first on your
prospect rather than your product’s benefits. If you focus on product
benefits first, you may fall into the trap of assuming that a prospect has the
problems or fears that your product can solve. What you want to do is hear
about your prospects’ problems and fears from their perspective first, and
then tailor your pitch appropriately. This is a much more effective strategy.
So what are your prospects’ needs? What are they concerned about? What
are their worries? Their problems? Their fears? Their hopes?
So at the very beginning, when you are first starting to sell something new,
before you make your first prospecting call, before you step out onto the
street to visit your first prospect and try to make your first sale, you need to
gather as much information as possible about the personal problems and
aspirations of your potential buyers in a general sense. With this
information, you will create what we call your Prospect Fear and Hope
List.
We will show you how to use your Prospect Fear and Hope List to arouse
their curiosity, but first let’s talk about how you conduct the market
research needed to create the List.
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There are two main sources that you should tap in order to gather the
information that you need to create this List:
· yourself
· your fellow salespeople
· your colleagues in the marketing department – if you are lucky
enough to have one
· others within your company who may stimulate your thinking.
Keep in mind that such self-questioning is not the best type of market
research. You are relying on what you and your colleagues think are the
problems that your prospects need to solve. At this point, you are asking
people who are one step away from the real problems. You are asking
people who are emotionally divorced from the true pains and fears that are
haunting those who are really experiencing them in the industry.
But you have to start somewhere, and thinking about these issues before
talking with prospects will help prepare you to better gather information
once you are in front of a prospect.
Again, you are only making assumptions as to the worries, concerns, fears
and hopes of your prospects. And if you’ve read The 7 Deadly Sins of
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Selling, you will recall that making assumptions, which is related to the Sin
of Pride, is the most deadly sin that you can commit in sales. If you make
the wrong assumptions about your prospects upfront, you will pitch to
them with ineffective positioning and almost undoubtedly lose the sale.
Ideally, you want to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth – from
prospects and customers themselves. But at first, you must rely on those
who have made the calls before you and have already talked to or
conducted some form of research on your prospective customers. Just
remember not to simply rely on what your more-experienced colleagues
tell you is the truth about your prospects’ problems. You have to find that
out for yourself. So again, asking yourself and your colleagues lots of
questions is only the first step in an ongoing process of market research.
“What are our prospects’ hopes? What are they trying to accomplish on
a personal level?”
Once you are on the phone or out in the field, think of yourself as a
detective. You are trying to find out as quickly as possible the kinds of
frustrations that your target market of prospects are facing everyday as well
as what their aspirations are. So you must ask lots of questions.
Once you are in a conversation with a prospect, ask for their help. Say
something like:
“I was hoping you could help me out. Could you give me some advice?”
Pause – wait for them to give you permission to ask your question.
And remember, don’t be shy about this – people love giving advice. You’re
stroking their egos by asking them for their help. You’re basically saying:
“You’re smarter - and therefore better - than me in some way – can you
help me?” This is very appealing positioning since people like to have their
egos stroked. People like to see themselves as smart and important.
“I’m just trying to get a better sense of what is currently going on in the
industry…what do you think are the top three problems that people in your
position are facing right now?”
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This is a sly way of asking them what their specific pains and fears are
without coming right out and asking. They may tell you their specific
problems or they may share with you problems that they have heard or read
about that are relevant in their industry.
Either way, listen and make a note of what they tell you, because you are
going to use this information later.
Whether they tell you one problem, three or a dozen, always ask: “Is there
anything else? Are there any other problems that you see coming down the
road for you and others in your position?”
“Maybe you can share with me – how does that problem affect you
personally?”
Once you have explored the negative (problems, fear) side of the equation,
ask them:
The objective here is to gather the material for your Prospect Fear and
Hope List, which you will use to open new doors and engage new
prospects.
Remember, as it says in the Bible, “Ask and it shall be given.” This research
is priceless because the information that you gather now is going to help
you seal more deals later.
Your Prospect Fear and Hope List will help you build trust with your
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prospects since they will feel that you have some understanding of the pain
that they are going through. As we will discuss later in the Empathy Step,
by asking such questions, you are “feeling their pain” and walking in their
shoes. As Stephen Covey says in his best-seller The 7 Habits of Highly
Effective People, you must “Seek First To Understand, Then To Be
Understood.” In other words, you want to understand how your prospect
thinks before you try to sell them your product/service.
So remember, focus first on research. At this stage you are trying to get a
sense of the problems, fears and hopes of a typical prospect. And keep in
mind that you are constantly gathering information about your prospects’
fears and hopes. It is a never-ending process. This List is a work-in-progress
because companies and industries are always undergoing changes, and so
your prospects’ fears and hopes might change over time.
Don’t start by thinking about how your product can make or save their
organization money. Stop thinking of organizations as entities unto
themselves. Instead, think of your prospects as individuals with personal
pains, fears and aspirations. Don’t think of yourself as selling to IBM or the
Government. Think of yourself as selling to Bob Johnston, an individual, -
who happens to work for IBM – but more importantly someone who has
personal goals that he wants to achieve, in addition to satisfying his
company’s needs.
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Think about the person who is sitting across the table from you. What are
their problems, pains, fears and hopes?
· To get a promotion; or
This sounds obvious, but too many salespeople whom we have studied and
consulted to waste their time and energy trying to sell logically to an
organization rather than emotionally to a person.
We’ll cover this more in depth later in the Ask Step, but for now, keep
reminding yourself that you are a person selling to other individuals.
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Creating Your Prospect Fear and
Hope List: An Example
Now, let’s show you how one of our top-performing students gathered
information and created his Prospect Fear and Hope List. It’s easier to show
you an example of how to create the List rather than simply explain it to
you abstractly.
Steve is a salesperson for a graphic design firm that helps companies create
their marketing and advertising materials – business cards, brochures,
presentation materials, etc.
Remember, here are the types of questions that Steve asked in order to
elicit the responses he needs to form his Prospect Fear and Hope List:
“What do you think are the top three problems that people in your position
are facing right now?”
“Maybe you can share with me – how does that problem affect you
personally?”
Remember, do not simply make this list up based on what you think the
problems are. Take the time to find out what your prospects’ real
frustrations and aspirations are. It will be worth the effort.
Here is Steve’s Prospect Fear and Hope List. Remember, Steve works for a
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graphic design vendor, and so, as you can tell, the List is from his
prospects’ perspective:
As you can see, Steve asked not only about the problems his prospects are
facing, but the personal consequences of having to deal with those
problems as well as their hopes.
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Here are some examples of emotional verb phrases that you can use to start
the statements in your List:
Finally, generalize the statements so that they flow from the following
sentence:
Think of each statement as a small portrait that you are painting about a
potential prospect. Try to describe their pains, fears and hopes. You will
use these little stories again and again to show future prospects that you
understand their pain – and that you can work with them to alleviate that
pain – that you can give them hope.
So here is what Steve’s List looks like at the end of the process:
1) Are frustrated with graphic design vendors that give them inconsistent
quality and service. Our typical client is looking for one reliable firm
so that they don’t have to waste time maintaining a lot of vendor
relationships or worry about constantly searching for new design
firms.
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3) Are annoyed with graphic designers who don’t turn around projects
quickly enough. They don’t want to have to stay late at work or work on
weekends to meet deadlines just because their designers screw up.
Remember, the objective here is to find painful issues that your prospect
can relate to - things that could happen to them, things that they are afraid
might happen to them in the future.
Again, we’ll show you how to use this Prospect Fear and Hope List later to
position yourself when talking to a prospect.
Now let’s explore another tactic that will help you create the trust and
curiosity needed to keep the conversation going with a prospect.
Think about it, business owners and companies spend millions each year
sending their employees to conferences to find out what’s going on in the
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industry. As an expert who is calling on lots of prospects and is willing to
share your knowledge, you’re saving them time and money by taking
critical industry information right to them so that they don’t have to seek it
out themselves. So become a respected resource to your prospects.
Then use what one of our more successful students calls the GIA Strategy –
Give It Away Strategy. You want to distribute this intellectual property as
far and wide as possible. Make it accessible on your web site, write lots of
articles for trade magazines and then get copies of them to hand out to
prospects, conduct surveys and share the information when you talk to
prospects. And, of course, always have your contact information on this
intellectual property so that interested readers can get in touch with you.
This is a great way to generate leads.
By positioning yourself as an authority in your field, you will gain the trust
of your prospects – and you will get them curious. They will want to pick
your brain, and so will be more likely to invite you in for a meeting.
We will cover more credibility-building tactics in the next step in the FEAR
Selling System, the Empathy Step, but for now, remember that you must
position yourself as an authority in your field, not in a cocky but rather in a
confident fashion.
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Curiosity and Credibility-Building
Tactic #3: Your Machine-Gun Client
List
As one business owner we work with likes to say: “People are sheep.”
What he means by this is that people have a herd mentality. If they hear –
through word-of-mouth - that other people and companies are using a
particular product/service, they are more likely to get curious about it and
want to find out more.
They’ll follow the rest of the herd of people to try to find out what’s so
special about that product/service. (For word-of-mouth marketing tactics
that work, check out the books, FEAR Marketing and FEAR Marketing
Online.)
And make sure that you have a story to tell to back up each client name
that you mention. You want to be prepared with mini-case-studies that
touch on how you were able to help each client in ways that would be
interesting to your current prospect.
For example, if you are pitching a new technology to a large retail chain,
and you can say that you have worked with Sears, Wal-Mart and Macy’s,
your prospect will be curious as to how you might be able to help them. Of
course, you may not be able to share details of previous projects you
worked on due to confidentiality agreements with your clients, but
typically, you can drop their names and speak generally about how you
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helped such former clients.
And what if you don’t have a long list of former or current clients to rattle
off?
Well, to solve this common problem that many start-up companies face, we
turn to the advice of a master marketer and salesman, Herschell Gordon
Lewis. In his book, Direct Mail Copy That Sells, Lewis refers to the word
“verisimilitude” as “the magic word that can make you rich.” Verisimilitude
is not truth, but rather the appearance of truth.
Now this might all seem a bit underhanded, but, to paraphrase Lewis, the
cornerstone of successful sales isn’t truth but having your prospect regard
what you say as truth.
Now of course, we are not advocating that you outright lie to your
prospects, but you could say that you have “consulted to” or “worked
with” companies including former employers, or perhaps former clients of
companies that you worked for before you started selling this new product
– as long as you had some input into dealings with these “former clients.”
Whatever you do, don’t say that you don’t have any clients. This is a sure-
fire way to lose trust and let your prospects’ curiosity slip through your
hands. The common expression is: “Fake it until you make it.”
Now that you have been introduced to these three powerful curiosity and
credibility-building tactics, let’s move on and show you how you should
weave these tactics into your 30-Second Commercial for maximum impact.
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The Dreaded Cold Call
As many of the top salespeople we interviewed tell us, the difference
between a cold call and a warm call is 30 seconds – that is, if you know
how to fill that first 30 seconds properly.
We’ll get to exactly what you should say during your cold calls in a
minute, but first, let’s talk a little about cold calling generally.
Cold calling is one of the most dreaded aspects of selling. However, if you
want to be successful in sales, prospecting is usually necessary to find and
talk to the right people before being able to introduce your product, make a
presentation, and close a sale. And so, in order to get to the close, you must
start by prospecting - constantly and relentlessly.
Cold calling simply means to call or contact anyone with the purpose of
selling something. In cold calling, leads come from anywhere and
everywhere - from the yellow pages, from reading trade journals, from
finding lists of potential prospects on the Internet – anywhere.
Normally, salespeople do not reach their prospect on the first call, so they
should use the call to gather information if they reach a gatekeeper like a
personal assistant or perhaps a colleague of the prospect. And then you
may want to leave a message, which will provoke a response. After you
understand how to craft your 30-Second Commercial, you’ll be in a better
position to avoid Voicemail Limbo – that is leaving messages that are never
returned. With only a little modification, your Commercial also will act as
an effective voicemail message.
From our surveys, we have found that the vast majority of salespeople
don’t like cold calling. If you think about it, you might not like cold calling
because you know how annoying it is to be on the other end of a cold call.
No one likes to receive an unsolicited call that may come to you after work,
when you’re having dinner and trying to relax with your family.
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Everyone has experienced receiving an unwanted cold call, so you’re
probably at least a little uneasy about making cold calls yourself. But as a
salesperson, it’s your job to interrupt others, and hopefully help them solve
a problem that they have – or that they might have down the line. So think
of it as performing a service. You’re only interrupting your prospects in
order to make them aware of a potential solution to their problems.
As you may already know, cold calling can be frustrating and discouraging,
especially when not done correctly. And while cold calling is by no means
the most effective way of reaching a prospect, it sometimes is the only way,
making it a necessary evil that you must get comfortable with.
Either way, make sure you have a 30-Second Commercial and that you are
constantly practicing it so that you are ready when opportunity knocks.
And by the way, you never really know when opportunity is knocking so
give your 30-Second Commercial to everyone and always ask for referrals.
Your Commercial is like bait that you dangle in front of a prospect to hook
them into engaging in a conversation with you. You must cut through the
clutter and make a good impression with your Commercial. So, we’ll show
you how to structure it so that it makes the greatest impact in the shortest
period of time.
You also must remember that you have to be flexible with your 30-Second
Commercial. You may encounter prospects in different industries that have
different problems, pains, fears and hopes than your typical prospects. You
must be prepared to customize your presentation to get the person in front
of you curious.
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In the next couple of sections, we are going to dissect the 30-Second
Commercial so that you understand exactly why you are saying what you
are saying. If you understand what your objectives are at each step, you are
more likely to achieve those objectives, even if you decide to stray from our
formula for your 30-Second Commercial.
1) Brief Introduction
“Maybe you can help me, did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Maybe you can help me find the right person in your organization that
might be interested in speaking with me?”
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· Frustrated with…
· Struggling with…
· Trying to avoid…”
“Maybe you can help me then… who do you know who may be
experiencing these challenges?”
“We have done work with (three or four company names from your
Machine-Gun Client List).”
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Don’t Do What Most Lazy,
Unsuccessful Salespeople Do: Don’t
Wing It
The underperforming salespeople who come to us for training typically
have one thing in common:
Instead of preparing what they are going to say before they pick up the
phone or go to a networking event, they simply decide to say whatever
comes to mind at the time.
When we asked why they don’t prepare, they usually say that they want
to sound natural or that all situations are different and so they want to
be flexible in their presentation.
3) Be prepared.
You should invest a significant amount of time planning and writing your
30-Second Commercial.
Through our ongoing research with the Sales Career Training Institute,
we have found that the majority of salespeople spend too little time in
researching, crafting, practicing, using and rewriting sales collaterals like
sales letters, sales scripts and 30-Second Commercials. (The FEAR
Selling System provides you with the formulae for each step in the sales
process, so you no longer have any excuse not to be prepared.)
Of the low percentage of salespeople who actually write out their 30-
Second Commercial over 70% are saying the wrong things from the very
beginning of the sales process.
When you are in a networking situation or making a cold call, you are
looking for prospects and/or people who may be able to refer you to
prospects. Your Commercial might be the only opportunity you have to
grab their attention and create interest in your product or service.
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The Main Goal of the 30-Second
Commercial
Now, let’s go step by step through putting together your 30-Second
Commercial. It is important that we walk you through the process slowly
and explain not only what to say, but also why each step works.
You many not be completely comfortable using the exact words and
phrases that we present here, but if you understand the purpose behind
each step, you’ll be able to craft your own effective 30-Second
Commercial.
Each step, each thing you say, is moving you toward your main goal of
capturing your prospects’ attention so that they’ll want to engage in
further conversations with you and hopefully invite you in for a face-to-
face meeting.
You must first give a Brief Introduction that leaves them curious.
This does not keep your prospect curious for long. Too many
salespeople launch into their pitch without permission. You’re not going
to do this. When you don’t pause to ask for your prospect’s permission,
their defenses will probably go up immediately.
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You will invoke fears in them, but they will not be the type of fears you
want to generate. You’ll create the fears that are usually associated with
salespeople:
• The fear that you are going to waste their precious time with a sales
pitch.
• The fear that you are going to be pushy and try to get them to buy
something or get an appointment with them.
• The fear that you are going to put them in the awkward position of
having to reject your offer.
You want them to get curious. You want them to fear hanging up on you
because you might have something that could help them and they don’t
want to miss out on the opportunity to better themselves.
What if it was their boss or a friend who suggested that you call them?
They wouldn’t want to be rude to you. So they’ll want to find out who
you are before telling you that they don’t have time for you. Keep them
in suspense for a bit regarding exactly who you are.
And don’t just fly into your pitch. Don’t label yourself as a salesman
right off the bat.
So instead…
You want to say, “Hi Tom, this is …” and then say your full name but
nothing more.
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Resist the urge to even say, “Hi Tom, this is Bob Smith with XYZ
Company.”
Think of yourself as just one human being talking to another. You don’t
know what kind of relationship you will have with the person. Don’t
label yourself as a salesperson right off the bat.
If they do ask you what company you are with, then tell them, but at
least you will have engaged them in an initial back-and-forth
conversation. This is better than just rolling into your pitch.
Right after your Brief Introduction, the second step is for you to…
This is the first of many times in the sales process that you will be asking
for your prospect’s permission. You ask for permission to give your
prospect the sense that they are in control of the process. This will make
them more comfortable with you and thus more willing to accommodate
you.
The truth of the matter, as you will see later, is that the person asking the
questions is always the more powerful person in a dialogue because they
lead the direction of the discussion.
But by asking permission, you are giving your prospect the illusion of
control.
So, the next thing you want to do after your Brief Introduction is to get
their permission to engage in a conversation.
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explore the importance of eliciting decision-making strategies in the third
step of the FEAR Selling System, the Ask Step.
• Ask them if it’s the right time for you to introduce your product or
service.
You should be asking for permission throughout the whole sales process.
Your prospect will feel in control. They will feel more comfortable with
you because they will not group you with the typical salesperson who
just bursts right into presenting their product without asking permission.
They’ll think that they have a choice, and they will.
“Maybe you can help me? Did I catch you at a bad time?”
Then wait for their answer. If it is a bad time, ask them when you can put
down in your schedule to call them back.
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If your prospect gives you permission to proceed, ask:
“I don’t know if you are the right person to talk to, but maybe you can
help me find the right person in your organization who might be
interested in speaking with me?”
You’re right if you are thinking that this flurry of questions might be
confusing to your prospect. We have found that typically when someone
is a bit confused, they’ll give you permission to proceed.
Now, let’s take a second and explore why asking for help is a good
strategy for gaining their approval to move forward.
To ease their own discomfort, people will usually try to reach out and
help a person who is struggling. And not only does seeing others in
uncomfortable situations make us uncomfortable, but helping them
makes us feel better about ourselves.
When you ask for someone’s help, you are basically saying, in one form
or another, that that person is “better” than you – at least at that point in
time. You are acknowledging that they are more powerful than you, that
they have more information, or more ability than you do.
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By asking for a prospect’s help after you briefly introduce yourself, you are
flattering them. By asking others for advice, you are showing them respect.
You are saying: “You are wiser than I am…please help me.” And typically,
people will offer their help to those in need.
“I don’t know if you are the right person to talk to, but maybe you can help
me find the right person in your organization who might be interested in
speaking to me?”
Here is what they are probably thinking when you ask this question: “To
help this person, all I’ll probably have to do is transfer them to the proper
person in my organization. If I do that, I’ll feel good about myself.”
Remember, you are presupposing that they are not the right person to talk
to. This will lower their defenses. Even if they think you are a salesperson
from the get-go, they’ll assume that all they have to do is pass you off to
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someone else.
“I don’t know if you are the right person to talk to – I’ve been transferred
around to so many people in your organization. Maybe you can help me?”
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3) The Prospect Fear and Hope List:
Getting Your Prospect
Comfortable… And Uncomfortable
With You
After gently getting their permission – which is a type of pacing because
you are starting to get them to be comfortable by interacting with you, you
must then lead. They have given you permission to lead – at least for the
moment.
In the next several seconds, you must make them comfortable and
uncomfortable at the same time.
What you are going to do is talk to them about the personal fears that you
gathered when conducting market research as we discussed at the very
beginning of this section.
First, it may show your prospect that you understand their common fears
and problems. It may get them more comfortable with you because you
understand their situation. Maybe.
Even if they don’t have the problems that you mention, you want to play
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on the fear that they might have those problems in the future – or that they
have those problems now but are not yet aware enough about them. Even if
they don’t have those problems now, you want to plant a seed in their mind
that they might have that problem later because others in that industry
already have the problem.
They want to mingle with others who are in their same industry. They want
to find out what problems others are having, and they want to find out
solutions as to how others are solving those problems. Their hope is that
they’ll find out how to solve the problems others are having before they
even happen to them. They want to allay their fears and prevent future
pain.
So what is the substitute for going to a conference? You can always read a
book on the topic or magazines or search for articles about your problems
online. But typically, these are one-way information flows. You read the
book or the article, but you can’t ask about your specific situation.
The Sales Career Training Institute conducts a wide variety of surveys but
not only of salespeople. They also ask buyers questions to find out what
motivates them in their buying strategies.
One senior vice president at a large bank told us that one of the main
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reasons he agrees to listen to cold-calling salespeople or to invite them in is
to “pick their brains” about industry trends.
Once we heard this story, we conducted several surveys around this issue,
and were surprised to find that many potential buyers carve out time for
salespeople, not with the expectation of buying anything from them but
rather simply to stay current on industry problems and solutions.
Think about it…the prospects you are pitching to can’t go over to their
competitor and share war stories too easily. People in the same industry
sometimes resist sharing competitive information due to the fear that it
might be used against them.
But here you are, someone who talks to their competitors every day. If they
are smart, they’ll want to pick your brain. You just have to give them the
opportunity to do so.
And remember, you’ll be even more credible if you have created some
intellectual property – a book, magazine articles or even just survey results
- on issues that may be important to your prospects. All you have to do is
get them to think that you know even just one thing that they don’t know
that might help them.
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Curiosity May Have Killed The Cat,
But It Opens The Door In Sales
Remember when you were a kid - did one of your brothers, sisters or
maybe a friend taunt you by saying repeatedly: “I know something you
don’t know…I know something you don’t know”?
Maybe it drove you crazy – you wanted to know what they knew.
Why? Maybe because it was something that could give you an advantage
that you didn’t want to miss out on. You were motivated to find out
because of your curiosity – because of your fear that they knew something
about the situation that could help you or maybe even hurt you.
It’s the same concept in cold calling. You want the person on the other end
of the line to think: it might be better for me to stop what I’m doing right
now even for just one minute to find out what this person might want
because it might be in my best interest to do so.
Also, dropping names helps in this process – especially if you drop the
name of a superior of theirs. If they hear the name of an authority figure in
their minds, they might be thinking – I should listen to what this person has
to say because they might have access to someone who can make my life
miserable for me.
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Using the Prospect Fear and Hope
List to Fish for Your Prospect’s Needs
Remember, all the market research information that we taught you how to
gather at the beginning of this process? Before sitting down to write your
30-Second Commercial, you must have a powerful Prospect Fear and Hope
List.
We are going to put that inside information to good use in getting your
prospects interested in continuing the dialogue with you – or perhaps even
inviting you in to see them.
Think of yourself as fishing right now. You are casting out personal fears
that you know from your market research that others like your current
prospect have. You are hoping that they bite on one of them – that they
either are currently experiencing one of those fears or are in a position to
experience one of those fears in the future. If your prospect can identify
with one of the fears that you mention – one of the frustrations, pains or
annoyances – that someone else has, then that fear can be transferred to
them.
That’s how you get someone’s attention. By hitting them with something
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that they can relate to that is very emotional – very fear-inducing. If you
strike the right chords, and hit on the right fear, you will have their
undivided attention. That’s is what your exploring for in this step. You
want to find their own personal fear.
“I don’t suppose you are facing any of these challenges then, are you?”
By asking this question, you are hoping that they start telling you about
their problems so that you can use this information about them to guide the
rest of the conversation.
But, if they don’t key off of one of the Prospect Fear and Hope Statements
that you mentioned, you want to try to get them to talk about their
particular personal fears so that you can keep the conversation going about
something that is near and dear to them right now – one of their current
fears.
Or you might say: “Maybe you can give me some advice, do you see any
problems coming down the road for you or others like you in the
industry?”
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Again, at this point, they might blow you off, in which case, you should ask
them for referrals. Remember, always ask for referrals.
Ask: “Is there anyone else in your organization who might be having these
concerns?”
You want to be ready to fire off the names of current or former clients to
allay the prospect’s fears by ensuring them that you are experienced in your
field. You want to get comfortable rattling off the names of current clients
in rapid succession, like machine-gun fire. By doing so, you will project an
image of confident competence in your field. Again, people are typically
like sheep. If they hear that you’ve worked with other well-known
companies in their industry, they are more likely to hear you out.
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6) Ask For The Meeting
Once you find a prospect who has a need – a fear – that you can latch on
to, you want to try to get a face-to-face meeting with them. You want a
face-to-face meeting because it will be easier to build rapport with the
person that way, and it will be easier to explore their needs if you have
them as a captive audience right in front of you.
In our experience, too many salespeople try to sell over the phone. Instead,
most of you should be using the phone to prospect and set up face-to-face
meetings. Now, you might be selling a small-ticket item, which doesn’t
warrant a face-to-face meeting, but if you are selling a more complex,
bigger-ticket item, chances are that your prospect will want to meet you
before buying anyway.
You can phrase this any way you feel comfortable. The one strict
suggestion that we have is that you ask to be invited in. By being invited in,
you will be setting up the dynamic of that first meeting such that your
prospect is the host and you are the guest at the meeting. This is a subtle
yet powerful way of building rapport with your prospect since, if you are
their guest, they will feel some obligation to treat you more courteously
than they would a typical salesperson who might have forced his way into
getting a meeting with them.
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Remember, this formula for your 30-Second Commercial is only a model
for you. You do not have to follow it exactly. Use it as a guide, but realize
that our clients across industries have used this formula to achieve
significant success.
a) Try saying: “I probably don’t have all the right answers, but I’m pretty
sure I have most of the questions.”
By the way, that’s what a good consultant knows how to do – ask the right
questions. And in the Ask Step of the FEAR Selling System, we’ll provide
you with the right questions to ask in order to understand your prospects’
problems and then get them to pay you for the solution.
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b) You might try this statement: “We might not have the solution for you,
but I can share with you non-confidential information that we’ve found in
our industry research.”
c) Or: “If you invite me in, I can offer you some of my time as a free
consultation.”
In both of these cases, you are trying to get them curious enough to invite
you in. You want to imply that you know something that might help them.
And, by offering it free, you are lowering their defenses. We have found
that salespeople who have taken the time to conduct market research to
find out their prospects’ fears will often be invited in to share their
knowledge.
Later, we’ll show you how to run that first face-to-face meeting to qualify
and maybe sell your prospect.
Sometimes, your prospects will not want to meet with you, but will ask you
to send them information. Instead of just sending your product brochure,
consider sending them a list of the types of problems that you are
experienced in solving. In other words, send your Prospect Fear and Hope
List.
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Remember, you want to focus on your prospect, not your product. You
have a greater chance of keeping the conversation going with a prospect
who believes that you understand their pains, fears and hopes.
Here’s how to present your Prospect Fear and Hope List to a prospect in
written form.
Position your Prospect Fear and Hope List as “survey results”, which, of
course they are. You should be constantly surveying your prospects and
customers, either with written surveys that they can respond to or by
gathering Prospect Fear and Hope Statements in your face-to-face meetings
with them.
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You may title your handout like this:
You then can list the Prospect Fear and Hope Statements. You may want to
make your “survey results” more interactive to get your prospect more
involved. We suggest putting a check box in front of each statement, and
then asking prospects to check off those problems that are relevant.
You may also want to leave some blank spaces under your list, and then
ask your prospect to fill in the blanks with their own problems and
frustrations.
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Here is what your “survey results” sheet might look like:
The following list has been compiled from ongoing interviews with senior marketing executives in a
wide array of financial services firms, including banks, insurance companies and mutual fund companies.
These executives report that they are:
• Frustrated with graphic design vendors who give them inconsistent quality and service. They
always have to be looking for new vendors to replace the ones that aren’t giving them the
attention they need. They would like to find one good, reliable firm to work with.
• Concerned about competing with organizations that have bigger budgets than they do. It makes
them look bad in front of their bosses when they compare their brochures to those of their
competitors. They’re looking for graphic design firms that can give them bigger bang for their
buck.
• Annoyed with graphic designers who don’t turn around projects quickly enough. They often
have to stay late at work or work on weekends to meet deadlines because of mistakes that
their designers make.
• Etc.
Please help us with our ongoing survey by sharing with us the top three challenges that you and your
company are facing:
1) ____________________________________________________________________________
2) ____________________________________________________________________________
3) ____________________________________________________________________________
Thank You
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Using Your 30-Second Commercial in
Networking Situations
As we noted earlier, once you put together your 30-Second Commercial,
you can use it for a variety of different prospecting tactics, including: cold
calls, voicemails, letters, faxes, emails and networking. Just like TV
advertisements, you want to get your Commercial heard by as many people
as possible.
It’s the same in networking. By letting the other guy go first, you can find
out key information about what they do, and therefore you’ll be able to
refine your 30-Second Commercial to make it more relevant to their
situation.
Now that you know what to say when talking to a prospect, let’s talk about
how to target prospects.
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Targeting Prospects: Finding The
Right People To Pitch Your 30-Second
Commercial To
As we mentioned earlier, your prospecting strategy is about two main
issues:
If you’ve followed our guidance, you already have a pretty good sense of
what to say to a prospect. We started with and spent much more time on
positioning because that is where most salespeople have problems.
The truth of the matter though is that targeting is more important than
positioning. Years of research in direct mail have shown that nearly 70% of
the effectiveness of any mail campaign is determined by targeting the right
prospects, while only 30% depends on the positioning, or what you say in
your mail piece.
Basically, you can have the best 30-Second Commercial in the world, but if
you don’t deliver it to the right people then you will not succeed in
prospecting.
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Many of the top salespeople that we have interviewed regarding sales
prospecting divide the targeting aspect of prospecting into three distinct
tasks:
We have found that many new salespeople are much too anxious to get out
and make their pitch to anyone who will listen. This strategy might be okay
if you just want to practice your pitch, but don’t fool yourself. Think of
who your target audience is. Visualize the type of person who has the fears
and hopes that your product/service can address and focus your limited
time on them.
Are your most likely prospects married women who are 25 to 35 years old
with children?
Or perhaps you are looking for retired men who like to golf?
Start with your inner circle of friends and family members. They might not
be prospects themselves but could refer you to others who might be
prospects.
Even though we suggest that you carefully target your prospects in order to
save time and energy, we still suggest that you tell everyone you know
about what you are selling. You never know who knows whom. Your
friends and family more than anyone else should be open to hearing your
sales pitch and helping you to get started.
Business Associates
Secondly, try those with whom you’ve done business before. Talk to your
doctor, dentist, barber, your kids’ teachers. In effect, you are giving them
business – putting money in their pockets – so ask them to help you as
well.
Current Customers
Check out your company’s current customer list. Many times, salespeople
leave money on the table by not tapping their current clients for referrals
into other divisions of their companies. Or maybe you have a new or
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updated version of your product that you can upsell your current customers
on.
The Internet
The Internet is one of the most incredible prospecting tools ever created. It
is amazing how many potential new prospects you can find by using the
Internet wisely as a sales prospecting tool. (For more on how to use the
Internet to find customers, check out the book, FEAR Marketing Online.)
Also, once you have your list of prospects, you can use the Internet to do
more in-depth research on the company to find out about decision-makers,
current strategies and thus the potential needs of these prospective
customers.
Your goal is to find out as much as possible about the company before you
call into it so that you can focus your questions appropriately. You might
only get a certain amount of time on the phone to ask qualifying questions,
so make sure you know all the basics first so that you don’t waste precious
time asking your prospect about things you could have researched on your
own.
Just as your prospects’ time is limited, so is yours. You must use the
telephone to qualify – or rather disqualify – prospects. How your prospect
reacts to your 30-Second Commercial will help you determine if they are a
qualified prospect or not. The biggest waste of your time is taking a trip on
a plane or a long drive to have a face-to-face meeting with a person who is
not really ready or able to buy from you.
So use the telephone to make the initial contact when appropriate. This
way you can ask key questions that will help you to decide whether it is
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worth it or not to visit the person – or spend your time finding more
qualified prospects.
For time management reasons, many of our successful students rely on the
telephone for prospecting because it is time- and cost-effective. The
downside of using the phone, however is that you have little control over
the situation. The prospect can cut you off abruptly or even refuse to take
your call. All too often, you’ll get caught in Voicemail Limbo – always
getting the prospect’s voicemail and never getting a return call.
If you’ve tried repeatedly and can’t get through to a prospect, leave your
30-Second Commercial on their voicemail and move on. Don’t get fixated
on any one prospect. Keep hunting for new ones all the time.
Direct mail and email are very cost-effective, but because it is so cheap and
easy to send a letter or an email – your competitors are flooding your
prospects’ inboxes just as you are.
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Because of the prevalence of mail and email, many sales pros that we have
interviewed send faxes to break through to decision-makers. You might
want to try faxes as well.
Whatever you do, test all of these methods and keep track of what works
best. If after a while, you find that you are getting better responses through
certain methods and not from others, shift the time you spend to the better-
response methods.
All too often, when it comes to sales prospecting, salespeople only rely on
one method. They get comfortable just making calls or knocking on doors
or sending out fliers. It is important to find out what has worked for others
in the past – and keep testing to see what keeps working and what doesn’t.
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these new technologies, it is taking even longer to engage a prospect. So be
patient, but persistent.
This is not something that needs to be planned but rather something that
is present throughout the day. Networking should be a reflex – a mindset
that you are in all the time. Remember, everyone is a potential prospect
or perhaps one step away from a potential prospect.
Every opportunity is a good one to approach someone who can turn into
a prospect or someone who can give you a lead or a referral.
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Regardless of the situation, networking should be cordial and a little
informal. Do not try too hard to make a sales pitch. Networking is all
about learning about a person and discovering ways in which they can
become prospects.
You should be trying to network with everyone you meet. And, while
quality matters more than quantity, a salesperson will probably have to
meet several dozen people before finding a quality prospect.
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Taking Advantage of Referrals
No matter what anyone says, sales is a numbers game. You’ll have to
talk to a lot of people just to find the few who are potential prospects.
This is why we suggest that you always ask for referrals in order to
increase the number of potential prospects you can get in front of. When
it comes to sales prospecting techniques, no technique is more powerful
than asking for referrals.
The very first – and sometimes, most difficult – thing to do is to ask for
those referrals. Salespeople often forget or have a hard time asking a
prospect or client for a referral.
Your clients are the most obvious people to give you referrals. If they are
already benefiting from your product/service, then they most likely
know people in other businesses with the same needs.
Other people who can provide referrals are family members and friends.
Ask them if they know anyone who will benefit from your product or
service. Chances are someone knows one or two people who meet your
criteria.
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Ask your old prospects for referrals as well. If you pitch a product to
someone but didn’t make a sale, contact this former prospect.
Congratulate him for finally making a decision (despite the fact that they
didn’t choose you). Ask for feedback and also ask for contact
information of potential prospects. If this is not possible, offer to give
them extra business cards so that they can pass it along to referrals.
Once someone is willing to give you contact names make sure that you
follow some basic rules like:
2) Make sure you write the referral name and contact information
immediately in order to avoid spelling and other errors. Get as much
contact information as possible (address, phone numbers, fax, emails,
etc.)
3) Write a note to yourself that will explain who your referral is, who
referred them to you and how can you help them.
If you are obviously getting a “no” from someone you cold call, always
ask for referrals.
To do this, first you need what we call a Quick Label. Many salespeople
use what we would call a Quick Label to always explain what they or
their company does.
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They might say something like: “I am a graphic designer”, or “I sell
mutual funds for a bank.”
But it’s different with referrals. You probably don’t have time to play
out your typical 30-Second Commercial or you already have and the
person is not interested or not a good prospect for you for other reasons.
That’s when you quickly want to get them thinking about others who
might need your product or service.
Start by saying: “I couldn’t help you but maybe you can help me.”
Then say: “Who do you know who might be looking for a (insert your
Quick Label here)?”
For example:
That makes it too easy for someone to dismiss you with a quick “no”.
You want them to quickly go through their mental Rolodex for you. By
phrasing your question, “Who do you know who…?” you will lead
them to do this for you.
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Getting Past The Gatekeepers To
The Decision-Makers
When prospecting, you’ll often run into what are known as
gatekeepers: secretaries, assistants or subordinates who work for the
person you are trying to get to.
One of the most common questions we get from our students is: how do
I get past the gatekeeper to the decision-maker?
Gatekeepers are a necessary evil that all salespeople have to deal with.
Many of your prospects don’t have time to take calls throughout their
day and so they screen their calls through individuals like assistants and
receptionists. You may have to deal with such gatekeepers a few times
before you are finally granted access to your prospect.
The key is to get the gatekeeper comfortable with you. You must build
rapport with them quickly. You can use many of the rapport-building
techniques that we present in the next step, the Empathy Step, to gain
the trust of gatekeepers.
If you are doing cold calling, contact the receptionist and ask her for the
name of the person in charge of making decisions for your product/
service. Typically, receptionists will help if approached cordially and
professionally.
Make sure you are as cordial with gatekeepers as you are with your
prospects. Since these employees often decide who sees their boss and
who doesn’t, they will be instrumental in getting you in touch with your
prospects faster, easier and smoother.
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Whenever possible call early, at the very beginning of the day. Assistants
and receptionists are often at work before their bosses and even before
anybody else. Unlike in the middle of their day when they have lots of
interruptions, at these “off-hours” they might be able to give you a little
bit more of their time and even answer questions that could expedite
matters with your prospect.
The same technique works at the end of the working day. Many of these
employees are done or almost done with the bulk of their work close to
the end of the day, but they may still be in the office finalizing
paperwork. This is your time to tackle them and use their available time
to your advantage.
Relentless Follow Up
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As we’ve said, competition is getting fiercer, and busy prospects have
less and less time to meet with salespeople. That means that it’s getting
harder and harder to get through to your prospects, let alone sell them
something. And that means that it will take you several attempts to get
through.
There are plenty of excuses you can use to follow up – it’s just a matter
of finding the right one for each contact. You can call or email a contact
many times for different reasons or simply just to check in and see how
they are doing.
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Final Thoughts on Prospecting
The first step in the FEAR Selling System is to Find and Focus On Your
Prospects’ Fears and Hopes.
In the next step of the FEAR Selling System, which we call the
Empathy Step, we will show you how to build rapport with your
prospect and thereby set the groundwork for the presentation of your
product/solution.
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Empathize With Your Prospect: How
To Build Trust By Making Your
Prospect Feel That You Understand
Their Pains, Fears and Hopes
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Perception Is Reality
We all perceive reality differently. For example, certain people have fears or
phobias that others don’t. To one person, riding a rollercoaster might be
fun and exhilarating, yet to another, just the thought of doing a loop-the-
loop might cause him to vomit.
To a typical person, the world might not seem like such a bad place, yet to
someone who is clinically depressed, the world can be a horrible
nightmare, filled with reasons to be anxious, worried, and fearful.
In reality, that typical person, that clinically depressed person, you and I all
live in the same world – yet each of us looks at that world through different
eyes, from different points of view, based on different experiences, holding
different beliefs, harboring different fears.
After the sale was lost, however, we at the Sales Career Training Institute
interviewed the would-be buyer. Almost invariably, the reason why the sale
did not take place was because the prospective buyer and the salesperson
did not “see eye to eye” in the words of one of our most insightful buyer
interviewees.
This might sound like an extreme case, but unfortunately, such sentiments
are all too often expressed to us by potential buyers.
What Is Empathy?
According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language, Fourth Edition, empathy means “identification with and
understanding of another’s situation, feelings and motives.” If we turn to
Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition, the word empathy is
defined as “a very close understanding between persons.”
In order for you to sell more and to sell faster, you must empathize with
your prospect.
As the old Native American saying goes, “You do not really know a man
until you walk a mile in his moccasins.” We will share with you techniques
that will help you get into your prospect’s moccasins. Between the
empathizing techniques we cover in this step and the questioning
techniques we share in the following step, you will be better able to get
your prospect to like you and trust you enough to buy from you.
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The Basics Of Empathy
In order for you to connect with your prospects enough so that they will
open up and tell you their problems, listen to your advice as though it were
credible and finally buy from you, keep these three concepts in mind:
3) People like and trust other people whom they perceive to be similar
to themselves.
Let’s explore the validity of these concepts a bit further by introducing you
to the concept of rapport.
There are two main characteristics that you must have with your prospect if
you want to build rapport with them. Again:
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If you think about your own dealings with other people, it is probably not
very difficult to get you to agree that you would rather do business with
people whom you like rather than people whom you don’t like.
So for instructive purposes, let’s assume that this is true of the relationship
between yourself and your prospect. If they don’t like you, they will be
less likely to want to do business with you. And, if they don’t like you, you
can be pretty sure that they don’t trust you.
But assuming they do like you, that doesn’t mean that you are going to
instantly build rapport with them so that they will buy from you.
Think about it, you probably know someone whom you like but do not
really trust. For example, you might have a friend who is very funny and
enjoyable to spend time with, but despite the fact that you like him, you
might not trust him enough to babysit your child.
Your prospects might like you because you are a funny guy, but they might
not trust you enough to listen to your advice.
Later in this section, we will show you how to make yourself more
trustworthy in the eyes of your prospects through specific empathy tactics.
Simple enough.
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People Tend To Like And Trust Other
People Whom They Perceive To Be
Similar To Themselves
Think of a tribe of cavemen with very dark hair. A blondish caveman
stumbles into their territory. The dark-haired cavemen have never seen
someone like this before. This blondish caveman is obviously not like them,
and so they do not like him from the start.
And if they don’t like him, they definitely don’t trust him. Is he here to
steal their women? Their land? Or maybe he is there to kill them? They
don’t trust him.
With the advent of online dating, there has been an increase in the number
of studies regarding compatibility among couples. And the overwhelming
majority of these studies reveal that couples with similar personalities,
values and beliefs are more likely to stay together than those who do not
share these traits.
In fact, in order to participate in many dating services, you must first fill out
a personality profile so that the “matchmakers” – whether they are humans
or computers – can match you up with others who share your interests and
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personality traits. The thinking goes that the matchmaking will be much
more successful if they pair people up who are similar to one another in
many ways.
In every case, you share common interests with the other members of your
group. You come together to enjoy a sport or a hobby; to discuss business
interests or similar goals; or, if it is a religious group, you share common
beliefs.
People like to associate with others who share common traits and beliefs.
People like to associate with people whom they perceive to be similar to
themselves.
Similarly, given a choice, most people prefer not to associate with people
who are not like themselves.
While some people might find that variety is the spice of life, and thus like
to have variation in their friends and acquaintances, most people tend to
want to “stick to their own.” As the saying goes: “Birds of a feather flock
together.”
If given a choice between having to spend time with a person who thinks
like you, looks like you, acts like you, shares your beliefs or a person
whom you might consider is opposite to you in all of these regards, which
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would you choose?
Study after study of infants to children and from middle-aged adults to the
elderly - regardless of culture, race or nationality - prove that most people
would choose similarity over difference. They feel more comfortable with
those who seem familiar rather than those who seem different from
themselves.
Them And Us
Typically, in order to form a group, you are simultaneously separating
yourself from others, even though you might not think of it that way.
There are members of your Bible reading group and those who do not
belong or do not even share your beliefs in Christianity.
There are members of a specific New York Yankee fan club and those who
aren’t. Some of those who aren’t members of the fan club might also be
New York Yankee fans, but they might not be as interested in the baseball
team as the members of the fan club are. Others who are not part of the fan
club might be indifferent as to which team wins baseball games. And then
there are those who might be fans of another baseball team.
In all of these cases, you have members and you have non-members.
The simple point is that we are all members of certain groups and not
members of other groups.
Differences Lead To
Misunderstandings, Fear and War
In fact, members of one group may dislike or even see themselves as bitter
rivals to those in other groups. There can be such rivalry between members
of different baseball fan clubs, weekend rock bands or even members of
different racial, ethnic or national groups.
In the United States, there has long been a tension between African
Americans and whites. However, slowly, people from these distinct races
are getting used to one another, finding similarities and even marrying one
another. The perception of differences is starting to fade, albeit slowly in
some areas of our country.
Even now, tribal groups in Africa are waging wars with one another
because of ethnic differences that an outsider could barely understand.
To you or me, a member of the Tutsi and Hutu tribes in Rwanda might look
similar, speak similar languages and share similar beliefs. But to the Tutsis
and Hutus, there is a world of difference between members of these two
tribes - enough of a difference that hundreds of thousands of these tribal
people have killed each other in recent years. Think about it – hundreds of
thousands of people killed because they are somehow perceived as being
different from one another.
If you can somehow show your buyer that you are like them in some
significant way, then they are more likely to like and trust you and
therefore, more likely to buy from you.
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This concept is at the heart of all human persuasion strategies, whether you
as a salesperson use the most basic psychological tactics or the most
advanced Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques.
Remember, you want to keep impressing upon your buyer that you are like
them in many ways. We are going to show you how you can show your
buyers that you are similar to them.
Well, before we dive into specific empathy tactics, let’s talk a bit about
trust.
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The World Is A Scary Place
Let’s take a look at the world we live in – and the world we sell in.
If you think about it, we live in a world of fear – or at least, the media
would have us think so.
Just look at the newspaper headlines or the evening news. What catches
your attention?
As the old newspaper industry saying goes: “If it bleeds, it leads” referring
to the uncomfortable truth that we humans are drawn to death and
destruction. It seems like most traffic jams are caused more by the “rubber-
neckers” who are slowing down and trying to catch a glimpse of the car
wreckage rather than the crash itself.
· As you read this, the next deadly strain of some virus is evolving,
ready to break out and spread across the world as it did with the
respiratory ailment, SARs, in 2002.
· Sharks are lurking in the gentle waves just off the shore from where
your child is playing in the sand.
There are many “bad guys”, but what about the “good guys” who are
supposed to serve and protect us?
We once could turn to our institutions for guidance and safety, but not
anymore.
· Martha Stewart, that bastion of all that is good and homey, has been
indicted for wrongdoing related to insider-trading scandals.
We know we can’t trust “the bad guys”, but now, it seems that we can’t
even trust “the good guys.” If we can’t trust these people and institutions
whom we rely on to bring order and justice to our otherwise chaotic world,
whom can we rely on?
Our point here is to show you that if our reputation as snakeoil salesmen
and crass promoters in the past, how much trust and respect do we get
now?
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1) I get worried when salespeople don’t take the time to get to know my
specific problem.
3) I’m afraid that they won’t be able to deliver what they say they can
deliver.
Again, these answers reflect buyers’ fears and lack of trust of salespeople.
You are interrupting someone’s workday. Stealing from them – maybe not
their women or other physical possessions, but you are certainly stealing
one of the most important things that people covet today. You are
“stealing” the prospect’s precious time.
So assume that they don’t like you and don’t trust you. It’s your job to
build a bridge, to make the connection, to create rapport between you and
your prospect. And you want to do this as quickly as possible or else they
will perceive you as someone who is trying to steal their time.
In some sense, your prospects actually fear you. Think about it.
When you first meet a prospect, think of what fears that they might have of
you as a salesperson.
You must take them from feeling fear, to overcoming mistrust, to getting
them curious, to making them comfortable with you, to getting them
somewhat attracted to hear more, to getting them intrigued with your
proposition, to getting them to trust you as if you were their advisor, and
then finally hopeful that you can solve their problem.
· Active Listening
In this section, we are going to show techniques that top salespeople use to
accelerate the trust-building process.
Even though we present this as the second step in the FEAR Selling
System, you should be weaving these trust-building tactics throughout the
entire sales process from when you first meet, talk to or correspond with
your prospect through the very end of the sale and beyond.
By taking the time to research common pains, fears and hopes, and sharing
them with your prospects, you are attempting to say, “I understand you” or,
as President Bill Clinton famously said, “I feel your pain.”
But remember, just because you do this research and find a trend of
industry problems doesn’t mean that the unique prospect sitting in front of
you will identify with those general problems or fears.
You must ask them about their own personal fears, which we will cover in
the third step, the Ask Step. Again, don’t assume because the last ten
prospects you saw had a particular problem that the person you are sitting
in front of now has that same problem.
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Agreement And Stroking Statements
People like those who acknowledge their opinions and agree with them.
We are all looking for positive acknowledgement. Maybe some are looking
for the pat on the head more than others, but think about it. Don’t you like
it when someone compliments the way you look or one of your
accomplishments or something you say.
Didn’t you feel a rush of pride as a child when the teacher called on you,
you gave an answer, and the teacher told you that you were right.
Earlier, we discussed the fact that humans form groups and identify
themselves as members of those groups, at least in part, by distinguishing
themselves from others who are not part of their group.
Just as such distinctions lead to the concept of “them and us”, we each see
ourselves as separate from others around us. We are individuals. I am not
you, and you are not me. This seems like a fairly basic concept, yet it is at
the core of all of the world’s conflicts –and one of the keys to sales.
We are, each of us, individuals. Yet being human, and having the needs that
Maslow describes, we seek to fulfill those needs by joining groups in order
to obtain love, friendship, that feeling of being needed and respected.
One could say that because of these needs, humans have an urge to connect
with others – to be heard, to be understood, to share their time with others
who are like themselves. We are therefore attracted to people who listen to
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us, understand us and share time with us – especially if we perceive them as
being similar to us.
Therefore, it follows that people are more likely to buy from people who
strengthen their egos rather than those who attempt to weaken their egos.
Such agreement early on will help you build rapport faster with your
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prospect. This is all part of pacing – getting in synch with your prospect. If
you pace correctly, and get on the same page as them, they are more likely
to follow your lead as you reveal your product/service as the solution to
their problems later on in the process.
One of the easiest ways to build rapport is to simply agree with your
prospect and stroke their ego.
You are going to take advantage of this human need for participation and
approval by listening to your prospect, acknowledging their point of view
and agreeing with it, and maybe even praising it with what we call
Agreement and Stroking Statements.
“I agree…”
“Good question…”
“Good observation…”
“Good point…”
As you will see later, we will show you how to answer a prospect’s
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questions or objections with another question, essentially by deflecting
their question back to them by using what we call Boomerang Questions.
But this is just one use of Agreement and Stroking Statements. You should
try to use them throughout your conversations with prospects as much as
possible without seeming too fake and flattering.
Remember, if you give them a reason, if you say, I agree with you because,
you’ll sound much more credible than if you say that you agree without an
explanation why.
Matching and mirroring are forms of pacing through which you build
rapport with the buyer by imitating their words, tonality, body movements
and postures.
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Verbal Versus Non-Verbal
Communication
As many of you may know, in face-to-face interaction, our body language
(non-verbal communication) is much more important in conveying our
message than our words (verbal communication).
Therefore, at the very most, only 42% of the meaning of a message can be
attributed to the verbal aspect of our communications.
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All we are trying to say here is that as salespeople, we need to pay a
significant amount of attention to what we are “saying” in a non-verbal
fashion – what we are expressing through our body language.
Note that even though the buyer can’t see you on the other end of a regular
telephone line, your posture could affect your voice tonality.
Few know that hypnosis has been in use for thousands of years not only to
influence the behavior of others but also for therapeutic purposes to heal
human beings of mental illness such as phobias. Erickson mainly used his
conversational hypnosis techniques to treat such mental disorders.
As you may have suspected and will see as you follow through the rest of
this book, these four steps closely relate to the four steps of the FEAR
Selling System, except for the fact that they are modified to reflect the
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selling objectives of our strategy.
For now, we will focus on the pacing techniques of matching and mirroring.
Non-Verbal Mirroring
One of the classic methods for hypnotizing person is to have the person
look into a mirror while the hypnotist counts backwards and speaks
soothingly. Essentially, when you match and mirror a person’s body
movements and postures, you are showing them a hypnotic mirror image of
themselves.
If you think about it, we all do this with small children when we bend over
or squat down to be on the same level as them. We seem to instinctively
know that by looking at them on the same eye-to-eye level, we will make
them more comfortable with us.
As we discussed earlier, people are more likely to like and trust others
whom they perceive to be similar to themselves. Through matching and
mirroring, you are sending messages on an unconscious level that you are
similar to that person. Studies have shown that such matching and
mirroring can have a significant impact on one’s ability to influence
another.
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Verbal Matching
Not only should you be mirroring your prospect on a physical level, but
you should also be matching them verbally.
Pay attention to words or phrases that your prospect uses repeatedly. Use
those same words or phrases when you speak to them.
Also, you should try to match your prospect’s verbal tonality. Speak at the
same rate that your prospect speaks. If they speak quickly, do the same. If
slowly, slow down your speech to match their rate. Match the volume of
their voice. If they speak loudly, try to match their volume level without
sounding too artificial. If they speak softly, follow their lead and speak
softly.
Active Listening
Be forewarned. We are going to drill this concept into you in the next
section. We are going to repeat it many times and in many different ways
because it is one of the most important techniques you can use in building
rapport with your prospect.
The key is to listen more than you speak. In fact, the next step in the FEAR
Selling System is the Ask Step, which will force you to listen more than
you speak since you will be asking questions that force your prospect to
respond with more than just yes or no answers.
Most salespeople prefer telling rather than listening. You feel as if you are
the one in control when you are talking, but actually, the opposite is true.
You are giving away information as you talk, but your goal – especially
early on in the FEAR Selling System – is to gather information. So you are
in a better position to do that if you are in listening mode.
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You can’t understand where a person is coming from until you hear their
perspective. Before you can lead them to your solution, you must find out
what their problem is – in their own words.
As Dale Carnegie says, if you want people to like you, become genuinely
interested in them.
Or are they just sitting there patiently – waiting for you to stop blabbering
so that they can speak their mind? If that’s the case, you’re not using
effective persuasion techniques.
Just listening to your prospects can have an incredible effect upon your
ability to persuade them. Furthermore, the top salespeople that we’ve
worked with show that they are listening by taking notes while they listen
and by asking questions to prove that they are interested in what their
prospects are saying.
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Several surveys of buyers indicate that they have more appreciation for
salespeople who take notes about the conversations that they are having.
Most buyers feel that they are doing salespeople a favor by taking the time
to talk to them, and so they appreciate it when the salesperson shows
interest enough to jot down what they have to say.
Also, be aware of your body language while you are listening. Lean in
slightly to show the prospect that you are interested in connecting with
them.
Always let your prospect finish their train of thought. Never interrupt or
finish their sentences for them.
Again, typically, everyone around you is too preoccupied with their own
situations, their own self-interest in order to listen to you.
Not so.
You might go through the motions of asking the right questions at the right
times, but if you are not perceived as being a listener, you will miss out on
making an important impression upon your prospect. You want them to feel
important, and you want them to see you as a trusted advisor. So show
them that you are listening intently, hanging on their every word.
To maximize the effectiveness of the listening tactic, you must not only
listen and try to pull out as much information as you can from your
prospect, but you must also be perceived as being a good listener –
someone who cares about their problem on a personal level. This is how
you begin to bond and build trust with your prospect.
Think about a salesperson who has called your home. Have you ever
received a call at night from a phone company or maybe someone offering
you a credit card?
You probably noticed that they didn’t listen to you. It wasn’t part of their
strategy. Their strategy was to barrel through their prepared sales script.
They are trained to talk over your objections.
Unfortunately, this is how the general public – and the buyers that we
surveyed – describe the typical salesperson who calls upon them. They
describe salespeople as fast talkers who don’t listen and don’t care about
their point of view but only want to sell them something or else just move
on to the next prospect. Most people do not feel any empathy with
salespeople. They do not feel comfortable or connected to salespeople.
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Enter, The Trusted Advisor
As we said before, most products and services are hard to differentiate from
competing products and services. So how does a buyer choose which
product to buy?
As is often said – and our research bears out, buyers don’t buy the product,
they buy the salesperson.
You must break down your prospect’s natural resistance to sales pitches by
not being perceived as giving one. Of course, you will be giving a sales
pitch, but it will be done much more subtly than the typical sales pitch as
we will show you a little further on.
The question is, how do you listen better – and how can you be perceived
as a better listener.
1) Start by asking your prospect, “Can you tell me more about that?”
(This applies to whatever they are discussing at the moment.)
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2) Take notes in your head or preferably on paper.
3) After your prospect makes a point – and you must use your judgment
in determining when you do this – you interrupt the prospect when
they come to a comfortable pause. Stop them with a motion of your
hand as well as verbally.
5) Then repeat back the bullet points of what you heard them saying.
Paraphrase what they said sometimes – that is, repeat back to them in
words similar to but not the same as the ones they used. Other times,
try to use some of the key phrases that they used. Try to mix things up
a bit. Keep it conversational. Don’t follow this process like a robot or
it will be uncomfortable for your prospect, and you will lose rapport
with them.
6) Ask them, “Is that what you are saying?” before asking them to
continue.
You may feel awkward the first several times that you use this tactic, but
keep using it. The awkwardness is only in your head.
Don’t interject your own judgments regarding what the person is saying.
Just nod your head and take in what they are saying in a neutral fashion.
Focus on your prospect. Forget about solving their problem for now. In the
next main section, the Ask Step, we will share with you a series of
questions which will help you to focus on your prospect and their problem.
Remember, your goal here is to get them to reveal their true emotions about
the situation they are in. Get them emotionally involved and keep them
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talking about their favorite subject: themselves.
Some of the top salespeople we interviewed specifically said that they ask
for permission to take notes at the beginning of a meeting. They claim
prospects rarely say no.
In discussing this issue with prospective buyers, we found that most buyers
actually prefer when salespeople take thorough notes during their meetings
since they hope not to have to cover the same issues again with the
salesperson.
Buyers also report that they believe that salespeople who take notes are
“more professional.” In any case, your goal in taking notes, whether
mentally or physically, is to show that you are listening actively.
One top salesperson that we interviewed on this topic shared the following
advice:
“You really want to show someone that you are listening. The way I do it is
to get them talking first, and then I’ll interrupt them, and say something
like: ‘I’m sorry…could you wait a minute…this is important…I’d like to
take notes…is that okay?’”
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Using Stories To Influence: The
Marketing of Religion
It is indisputable that one of the most highly successful religions in the
history of the world is Christianity.
Let us begin by saying that our discussion here is not meant in any way to
belittle Christianity or any other religion in any way by discussing its
worldwide adoption in terms of how it was “marketed.”
The fact of the matter is, however, that religions, just like political
movements and consumer products must be promoted in order for them to
be adopted widely.
Our objective here is not to focus on the specifics of how Christianity was
promoted to further various political agendas throughout the centuries.
There are many books that document how concepts of Christianity were
used by many world leaders from the Roman Emperor Constantine to the
Spanish Empire, and from the Hapsburgs of Austria to Hitler in order to
further political agendas.
Many like Karl Marx, the father of Communism, described religion as “the
drug of the masses” used by leaders to keep their people law-abiding and
less likely to revolt. The kings of old ruled by divine right meaning that
they justified their position as king by claiming that God gave them the right
to rule over their people.
Part of the reason that Christianity became so widespread was due to the
fact that the stories and rules that make up the religion were written down
and then, with the advent of Gutenberg’s printing press in the 15th century,
easily distributed and passed down from generation to generation in book
form. The beliefs of other earlier religions had been written down by hand,
but typically only the wealthy or wisest of men (such as Jewish rabbis) had
access to such books.
Unlike previous religions that were passed along mainly orally, the written
Bible widely distributed gave credibility to the Word of God. Even today
studies show that people believe concepts that they read in print more
readily than what they hear – even when the source of the material is
highly questionable as is the case with a great amount of the information
available on the Internet. This is part of the reason why we suggest you
position yourself as an expert through creating intellectual property -
books, articles, white papers, etc.
Certainly, Gutenberg’s printing press helped catapult the Bible into the
best-selling book that it remains to this day, but even so, why was the
message of the Bible so readily adopted by people around the world?
The Bible is divided into two Testaments – the Old and the New Testament.
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The Old Testament, which is also part of the Hebrew Bible depicts an angry
God who lays down the laws, such as the Ten Commandments, and
punishes those who do not follow his laws by sending them to a fiery hell.
The fear of going to Hell certainly has influenced human behavior over the
centuries.
The New Testament introduces a second side of the Christian God who is
loving, forgiving and open to accepting all who believe in Him into a
heavenly afterlife.
Now that we have uncovered the core messages of hope and fear embedded
in this highly successful – in terms of marketing – religion, let us go one
step further and explore how the Bible delivers this dual message.
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The word “parable” comes from ancient Greek and Latin root words that
mean “to compare.” As you will see, we suggest that you write out various
parables to illustrate the various selling points that you would like to make.
You want your prospect to “compare” themselves with the main characters
in the stories that you tell. In this fashion, you will be able to influence
your prospects on an emotional level by having them empathize with the
positive or negative consequences that your characters’ actions or inactions
lead to.
Top salespeople use stories to paint pictures in their prospects’ minds and
to show by analogy a story character or company, that was struggling as
they are now, yet has overcome their problems by finding a solution. You
want your prospect to believe first that others have the same or a similar
problem that they have and that others have overcome that problem –
because they used your product/service, of course.
Think about the last time you went into a movie. If it was a good movie,
you got sucked into the storyline and forgot the reality that you were sitting
in a theatre surrounded by others who were also staring at images flashing
on a big white screen.
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In some ways, we can say that the movie hypnotized you. It took you out of
your own reality and let you experience a fantasy for a couple of hours.
Jesus, in telling his stories to his followers, did the same. And in order to be
effective in using the FEAR Selling System, you must follow Jesus’ lead.
Tell stories.
What you want to do is show them that they should buy your product/
service - that they will avoid pain and experience pleasure if they buy your
product/service.
How do you do this? You tell stories of others like them who had similar
problems, were introduced to your products/services and then achieved
similar objectives – the solutions that they also are looking for.
There are really only two main purposes to telling stories – pacing or
leading.
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Pacing With Stories: I’ve-Heard-
That-Before Stories
Remember, you pace - or get into synch - with your prospect in order to
build rapport with them. You acknowledge that what they are saying to you
is valid. You can do this with simple Stroke and Agreement Statements or
by using I’ve-Heard-That-Before Stories.
In the case of pacing stories, show your agreement by using a Stroke and
Agreement Statement followed by an I’ve-Heard-That-Before Story.
So for example, if someone tells you about a problem that they have been
having with a certain aspect of their job, you as the salesperson should
agree with them and then tell a quick story that shows that you’ve
experienced that or heard that someone else has that problem, too.
Remember, misery loves company. The buyer will appreciate it if you show
that you understand and can empathize with their situation.
So you can say: “I know what you mean…I’ve heard that a lot lately. I was
just with a client of ours and….” and then you tell your I’ve-Heard-That-
Before Story.
Of course, you should have the basic points of your stories already written
out and memorized. And you might have to be flexible with your
storytelling in order to make it relevant to the situation.
As we discussed in the first step of the System, you should have mini-case-
studies or stories that illustrate how you helped the clients in your
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Machine-Gun Client List.
Note: Although we don’t suggest you lie, don’t let the truth get in the way
of a good story either. Your objective is to show that you are an expert in
your field and have heard about their problems before.
Once you create trust by showing that you are familiar with your prospect’s
problem, you are in a better position to show that you can solve that
problem with a leading story.
Either:
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You only want to use leading stories once you are sure that you have
gained enough trust with your prospect that you can lead them and they
will follow and believe you.
Remember, you typically do not build up trust in just one or two meetings.
It typically takes some time to build the foundation of a bond before you
can begin to effectively lead your prospect. So be patient but persistent
with your prospects.
If you follow the questioning patterns that we provide to you in the next
step, the Ask Step, you will be forced to listen and focus on your
prospects’ problems.
So now, let’s discuss the core step in FEAR Selling System. Let’s now
focus on how to…
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Ask The Right Questions At The
Right Times In The Right Way: How
to Allay Your Prospects’ Fears and
Break Down Any Barriers That They
Have That Are Stopping Them From
Buying
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You might never have been to a psychiatrist, but if you have, you probably
realize that the good ones know how to ask the right questions to get you
to open up to them.
Remember, people buy for their reasons, not yours. They make decisions
based on their buying criteria – they don’t decide based on the features or
benefits that you think should persuade them. It’s all about their agenda,
not yours.
Too often, salespeople keep throwing out the benefits of their products
without really knowing whether or not those general benefits are indeed
benefits in the eyes of the prospect on the other end of the phone or sitting
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across the table from them.
Behind every problem and every need, there is an underlying fear. Behind
every objection, there is a fear. Your objective is to uncover those fears.
Questions.
You must ask much more than you tell. So err on the side of asking
questions.
At the end of the day, you will not be able to push your prospect into
the sale. This is what most people do. We have worked with countless
salespeople who think that their product is the answer to their prospect’s
problem, and they push and push and push to show their prospect that
they have the answer.
But people resist, especially when you push too hard. That’s why you
must use questions not only to find out about your prospects’ problems
but also to make your prospect aware of the consequences of their
actions or rather inactions, that is, what could happen to them if they
don’t buy your product.
We have simplified the process of asking questions for you. We’ll show you
what to say, how to say it, when to say it, and why it works.
We will cover many questions throughout this section, which you can use
to get yourself out of the many tight situations that you might find yourself
in as a salesperson.
First, let’s make sure that you understand the difference between open-
ended questions and closed questions.
Trigger Questions
As we said, just like a psychiatrist or a detective, your job is to get your
prospect to open up and tell you what is on their mind.
To do this, you will ask open-ended questions – that is, questions that
require them to respond with a relatively complex answer rather than a
simple “yes” or “no”. Remember, you want to get them talking. Closed
questions, which allow your prospect to answer you with a “yes” or a “no”,
don’t get them to open up. Open-ended questions do.
We will be teaching you to ask many different types of questions, but when
in doubt, rely on the open-ended questions that we call Trigger Questions.
Whereas Trigger Questions typically are used to start getting your prospect
to open up, Orphan Phrases are used to keep your prospects spilling their
guts.
Keep them talking. Remember, you as the listener are in a more powerful
position than your prospect when they are talking. You are gathering as
much information as possible. That’s your job. You will use this
information to give a killer sales presentation later – a sales presentation
during which you will say exactly what they want to hear. But how do you
find out exactly what they want to hear? You keep them talking.
“And…?”
“I’m sorry, I missed that last part.” (This works especially well when you
are taking notes and you missed something that your prospect said.)
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“You mean…?”
There are many Orphan Phrases. I’m sure you use some already without
really being aware that you are using them. Think of some that you are
comfortable with and use them.
Why are they called Orphan Phrases? Remember the British author Charles
Dickens’ famous orphan character, Oliver Twist. When he’s in the
orphanage, he begs for more food and says: “I’d like some more, please?”
Well that’s what you are doing with these Orphan Phrases, you’re begging
for more information. You are creating a vacuum by using one of these
phrases and then keeping quiet. By forcing yourself to be quiet, you will
then force the prospect to fill the uncomfortable silence, and you’ll get
more information.
Resist the temptation to talk. Try to use as many Orphan Phrases as you
can without becoming annoying to your prospect. Remember, it is a
conversation. You have to contribute a bit, but make sure that they are
doing the majority of the talking.
Floater Questions
Another type of question that will allow you to test the waters – to test
what your prospect is thinking is the Floater Question.
Here are some examples of Floater Questions that the top salespeople we
interviewed use:
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“I don’t know if this is appropriate to ask right now, but what would you
say if we made the following offer…”
You see, the person isn’t making a “real” offer, they are just floating one by
their prospect to see their reaction.
“Let’s say that I can get my boss to agree to what you are looking for, do
you think you would then be able to do the deal?”
“If I could get my colleagues to …., do you think you could get your
colleagues to…?”
Again, what you are doing is feeling your prospect out by putting them in a
hypothetical situation. They will give you at least some idea of how much
they are willing to spend, or what is important in the negotiation for them,
or how close to buying they are.
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Use Floater Questions to test the water before you try to close the deal.
If you remember, one of the first questions we suggested you ask when
interrupting someone with a cold call is: “Am I catching you at a bad
time?”
Our studies over thousands of calls reveal that a majority of people (64%)
will either say “No, I have a moment” or politely tell you when you can
call them back. Salespeople get a much less friendly response if they ask,
“Is this a good time?” because people will tend to disagree and say, “No,
it’s not a good time.”
Through our own studies and many others that we have researched, we
have determined that people generally tend to disagree with others. Some
psychologists label this natural reaction as an ego-defense mechanism.
Most people want to project an image of themselves as independent of
others’ opinions, so their natural reaction is to say no, say they want to
think about your questions or offers - or otherwise stall.
Instead of saying, “You really are going to want to hear about my product”,
take a more humble stance by saying, “You might not be interested in
hearing about my product or would you?”
Not only will Negatively Positioned Questions help you take advantage of
the natural human tendency to disagree, but they will also help you from
getting boxed in when you are questioning your prospect.
The prospect might say, “No”, thus putting them in a negative state that you
would rather them not be in. Of course, as we discussed in the Empathy
Step above, you want to be in alignment with your prospect.
You would rather have them agree with you, so you should ask:
“I don’t suppose you would want the car in dark blue, would you?”
If they say, “Yes, I would” then you are okay, and if they say, “No”, you are
okay too because all you have to say is: “I didn’t think so” and you move
on in the conversation.
The most popular Negatively Positioned Question that we have found top
salespeople using is actually a Negative Floater Question. It starts with:
As you will see in the final section of the FEAR Selling System, you will
be using a similar test-the-water tactic by using the Thermometer Close.
People are either going to say “no” and try to hang up on you or walk away
from you. Or they are going to make an objection as to why they are not
interested in buying right now.
They could give you what we call Bland Prospect Responses by say things
like:
“I’m just gathering information right now but am not ready to buy yet.”
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You can keep the momentum going after such Bland Prospect Responses
by using one of our favorite Negative Floater Question:
They might try to brush you off again by giving you another Bland Prospect
Response, but remember that your objective is to keep them talking at all
cost. Get them involved, even if it’s only long enough to determine that
they are not a good prospect for you.
But what do you do when your prospect actually confronts you with an
objection.
And many salespeople believe that their greatest enemy in sales is the
Prospect Objection. We will show you how to easily disarm your enemy,
but let’s get to know our seeming enemy a bit first. Let’s explore a bit about
what objections are all about and how they can actually help you sell more
and sell faster.
2) Searching for ways to keep the sales process going – even if their
prospect makes a strong objection as to why they don’t want to buy
now.
3) Looking for sales tactics that enable them to pre-empt objections that
commonly occur in their particular selling situation.
4) They do not know the best way to weave answers to these objections
into their product presentations.
We will cover all of these concerns in this section and the final section, the
Reveal Hope Step.
2) Objections may occur because the prospect is ready to buy but wants
to confirm the purchase decision with another decision-maker, get a
better deal or otherwise stall you in order to meet their own
objectives.
3) Objections may occur simply because the prospect does not want to
buy.
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Objections: Get Used To Them,
Welcome Them, Or Better Yet, Ask
For Them
One of the biggest complaints of sales managers is that their salesforces take
too long to close deals. With greater competition, prospects need more time
to send out requests for proposals, review all of their available choices, set
up meetings to qualify vendors and then finally make a decision.
Waiting for prospects to call you back can be one of the most frustrating
parts of the sales process. The way to avoid this is to find out more about
the objections that your prospects might have about your product or service
as early as possible.
All too often, salespeople don’t know the most effective way to answer
objections. They would rather try to avoid the hard questions as long as
possible in the hopes that they can seal a deal without having to deal with
those tough objections.
First of all, many prospects who don’t reveal their objections to you may
want to back out of the purchase later on, which, as many of you know, is
usually even more frustrating than not winning the deal in the first place.
Secondly, if you are using this strategy of bulldozing through the sales
process quickly in order to avoid objections, it usually means that you are
talking to the wrong people in the organization. If you don’t get any
objections, you’re probably fooling yourself into thinking that you are
actually talking to a decision-maker.
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Most decision-makers in organizations have gotten where they are by being
careful about decisions they make. Such people cover the bases by asking
lots of questions. If you are talking to someone who doesn’t ask a lot of
questions and raise at least some objections, you are probably pitching a
person in the buying organization who is too low to actually make a
decision to buy. This is a waste of your time.
We’ll show you how to ask the right questions that will help you find out
who the decision-makers are and how they make their decisions later in the
Ask Step. But for now, understand that you must deal with objections.
Indeed, you should welcome objections.
Again, it will take some practice, but you must start thinking of objections
as positive signals.
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2) Objections may be simply a stalling technique used by the prospect
because they are still unsure that they want to buy your product - or
whether they want to buy the product from you. In this case, you should
look at the objection as an opportunity to engage the prospect - and start
building rapport.
Here are some of the most popular objections that you might hear:
8) “We can do that in-house and keep the cost down and maintain better
control.”
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9) “We’ll need to get several other bids before considering your proposal.”
10) “We’re aware of your product/service, but it’s not the right fit for what
we need.”
The important thing to remember when you hear such sales objections is
that you can overcome them by asking what we call Boomerang Questions.
You may find, however, that a prospect’s objections are valid and therefore
you should move on to a new prospect and not waste your time anymore.
But our advice is not to take such objections at face value – at least not at
first.
You may have been taught when taking tests that your first answer is
probably the right answer. Well, in sales, the first objection that you hear is
most likely not the real objection. That is why you are going to use
Boomerang Questions to find out the real objection that’s usually hiding
behind the objection that your prospect tells you at first.
If you ask not-so-smart questions, you lose credibility, and most likely, you
lose the sale as well.
If you ask smart questions, you build rapport, get your prospects
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emotionally involved in the sales process, and uncover those deadly
objections sooner rather than later.
From our research, we have found that it is how you handle these
“objections,” which will strongly determine your success as a salesperson.
So as to not keep you in suspense, we’ll give you the short answer on how
to answer most objections that your prospects put to you.
Most of the time, top salespeople answer objections or questions with what
we call a Boomerang Question.
Similarly, when your prospect asks you a question, we suggest that you
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mostly throw another question – a Boomerang Question - back to them.
Their answer to your Boomerang Question will help you move closer to the
sale because when your prospect responds to it, he or she may provide you
with more information about their needs, pains, fears or hopes, and
otherwise give you a clue as to why they are resisting your attempts at
selling them.
We’ll get into the details of how to throw Boomerang Questions most
effectively later. But for now, remember that, especially in the beginning
stages of your interaction with your prospect, you mostly want to answer a
prospect’s questions with another question – a Boomerang Question.
Well, if you think about it, always answering a question with another
question could get your prospect annoyed if not done smoothly. You could
easily break rapport with your prospect by coming off as too pushy and
seeming to ask too many questions. And remember, you must gain rapport,
trust and permission early on– and maintain it on an ongoing basis – during
this Ask Step. That’s why we emphasize the Empathy Step before moving
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on to the Ask Step.
In order to maintain the sense that you are just having a friendly, let’s-get-
to-know-each-other conversation, you can’t simply keep asking questions
and taking and taking information. A conversation is a two-way street. You
have to give back sometimes, so you’ll have to take a stand sometimes and
give up some information. By mixing Boomerang Questions in with your
normal dialogue, it will seem as if you are having a natural, normal
conversation rather than interrogating your prospect.
More on this later, but for now, remember – most of the time you are going
to answer your prospects’ questions – and statements for that matter – with
another question – a Boomerang Question.
We don’t want to imply that all prospects lie, but the reality is that we all
lie – or at least withhold the truth – sometimes. But that’s exactly what you
want to get at – the truth.
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Three Ways To Ask Boomerang
Questions Effectively
Some of you may be thinking that you would be uncomfortable not giving
a direct answer to your prospects’ questions. You may not want to seem as
if you are dodging their questions.
That’s okay.
We can safely say that nearly everyone whom we have trained with these
techniques feels this uneasiness with Boomerang Questions at first. But
they soon get over that discomfort once they realize how really effective
Boomerang Questions are.
Plus here are three delivery techniques that you should use in order to vary
the way you throw your Boomerang Questions. These techniques will help
you seem less abrasive in your attempt to get more information out of your
prospect.
Keep this in mind. Even if you disagree with what a prospect says, still try
to use an Agreement and Stroking Statement to show that you are at least
somewhat on the same wavelength as your prospect before digging deeper
to find the real objection with a Boomerang Question.
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By using an Agreement and Stroking Statement, you will be able to avoid
the tension that may result from a disagreement between yourself and your
prospect. Remember, it doesn’t help you to flex your muscles and protect
your own ego by arguing with your prospect.
In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie has many
simple yet powerful recommendations that are related to this technique.
He suggests:
· Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re
wrong.”
· Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
With these wise suggestions in mind, let’s quickly review some examples of
Agreement and Stroking Statements:
“I agree…”
“Good question…”
“Good observation…”
“Good point…”
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“I’m glad you brought that up…”
So the first technique to alleviate any resistance that you get by asking a
blunt Boomerang Question is to soften it by agreeing with your prospect
first and then follow up with the question.
For example:
Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of
your competitors.”
You: “I’m glad you brought that up…we are more expensive than
some of our competitors. Is that going to be an issue for you?”
In this example, you want to find out early on if they are not willing to
make the investment in your product. In many cases, you can combat this
argument by trying to prove that your product provides more value than
your competitors, and so it warrants a higher price. But don’t launch into
that defensive behavior by simply flexing your muscles and explaining why
your product is better than the competition’s.
Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of
your competitors.”
You: “Okay, so you are wondering why we price our products higher
than our competitors. Well, first let me ask you…Is a higher
price going to be an issue for you, even if we can justify higher
value?”
“That’s a fair question…so you are wondering why we price our products
higher than our competitors. Well, first let me ask you…Is a higher price
going to be an issue for you, even if we can justify higher value?”
With this technique, you are showing your prospect that you are listening
to them. This may seem simplistic, but our research shows that you should
not underestimate this Active Listening technique of repeating the
prospect’s question to them before you hit them with a Boomerang
Question.
We are not suggesting that you dodge your prospects’ questions forever. Of
course, that’s unrealistic. But we do suggest that you gather as much
information about your prospects’ problems, pains, fears, buying criteria,
and buying strategies before you launch into your product presentation.
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Sometime, it is hard to fight the urge not to answer prospect questions.
Many salespeople whom we have interviewed are very anxious to get face-
to-face with a prospect and tell them how great their product is. They might
have spent days or weeks prospecting on the phone, and so are as excited
as puppies to get out and jump all over their prospects.
Let’s face it, we are all trained to answer questions from our earliest days in
school. If we knew the answer, our hands would shoot up in the hopes of
being called on, answering the question correctly and getting a compliment
from our teachers.
That’s okay. Sometimes, you will naturally launch into your response when
your prospect asks a question.
The third Boomerang Question delivery technique allows for this natural
urge to answer questions. This will probably be the most natural of the
three Boomerang Question delivery techniques for you to use. And it may
be the most effective, in the sense that it meets your natural need to answer
a question and makes it seem as if you are answering their question… but
then you stop and throw your Boomerang.
Here’s an example…
Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of
your competitors.”
You: “You’re right, we are more expensive. And I’ll take you through
some of the reasons why we’re a better value. First of all,
we………well, there are a lot of reasons, but before I do that,
can you share with me why that might be an issue for you?”
Notice that you pause after starting to answer their question. This will make
it seem as if you want to give them the information they requested. It will
take the pressure off of you since you are “responding” at least to some
degree. But again, you want to turn this potential objection around on them
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in order to find out information, perhaps about their budget or their current
vendor or their buying criteria.
We’ll get deeper into how to draw out key information later in this section,
but for now, review these three techniques to deliver your Boomerang
Questions. Trust us, this one technique will help you enormously.
Well, when you combine the power of the Negatively Positioned Question
with that of the Boomerang Question, you have what is perhaps the most
the most powerful way to ask questions.
Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of
your competitors.”
You: “I’m glad you brought that up…given the seriousness of your
problem though, your budget shouldn’t be too much of a
problem for you, right?”
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In this example, you have now opened the door to explore your prospect’s
budget with them. This will help you qualify them. You might not be in the
same ballpark in terms of what they think they can spend to solve their
problem. You want to know as much about your prospect as soon as you
can so that you can either:
2) move them into what we call the Values Elicitation Process to help
them understand that the costs of buying your product are much less
than the costs of having to deal with the consequences of their
problem.
But before we introduce you to the series of highly effective questions that
make up the Values Elicitation Process, let’s take a step back and talk a bit
more about how you should prepare for common objections that you face
over and over again.
Consider this market research as well. Just as you started the FEAR Selling
System by trying to find out typical prospect pains, fears and hopes by
asking your co-workers and prospects themselves, so to are you going to be
collecting objections and looking for patterns so that you are better
prepared to answer common ones as they come up in the future.
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We have found that top salespeople keep track of sales objections that they
hear in order to find patterns, and then they test different sales strategies
either to overcome those objections when they hear them - or even do what
we call “pre-emptive strikes” when they see the objections coming.
Several top salespeople that we work with set aside a section of their
records on each prospect to list the objections - or potential objections -
that might come up in future discussions.
Not only do you want to find out the most prevalent objections that your
prospects have about your product/service, you also want to keep track of
the Boomerang Questions that you find best enable you to overcome these
common prospect objections.
Our research indicates that f you want to be successful in sales, you must
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get used to asking Boomerang Questions. But some such questions may be
too uncomfortable for you to ask. Try to overcome your discomfort by
getting used to asking them through constant practice with your co-workers
or even your family and friends.
Or, try varying the way you deliver the questions so that you are
comfortable with asking them and therefore sound natural doing so.
You must know what your prospects’ real objections are – their real
concerns, real fears about buying from you - before you can try to
overcome those objections, so try to find out what you’re up against as
early as possible.
Write down the objections as well as your notes on what those who
critiqued you said about your presentation. This could be difficult because
your ego is at stake - but remember, you’re in this game to sell, not to
protect your ego.
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3) Write out scripts to answer these objections.
This is where Trigger and Boomerang Questions come in. You should be
keeping a list of questions that you can ask the prospect to get them to
open up and reveal more to you. Remember that you want to keep it
conversational though. This way, you will keep your prospect comfortable
by having them feel that they are in a two-way conversation rather than just
having them feel as if they are on the receiving-end of a volley of questions.
Remember, you want it to be as much like a friendly conversation as
possible, not an interrogation.
Don’t stop at just writing down the answers and reviewing them once in
awhile. Try to get used to comfortably responding without stumbling
through your responses. For this, you need to practice with colleagues - or
again with friends and family who are willing to help you grow in your
sales career.
When you write sales letters or have materials such as testimonials that
address these common objections, you will gain credibility in the eyes of
your prospect. They’ll feel as if you have “walked in their shoes.” You can
“feel their pain” – you know their fears, and they’ll appreciate it -
hopefully, by giving you the business.
6) Constantly rework the scripts and your sales collaterals as you obtain
more feedback.
This way, you’ll have them ready to review before you meet a prospect who
is likely to bring up the objection. We suggest using a three-ring binder to
reinforce the fact that you must be making modifications and improving and
replacing these scripts as you receive more feedback from your colleagues,
prospects and customers.
So now, you know that you must fight fire with fire. Stop yourself from
simply answering your prospects’ questions aimlessly. Remember, you have
a strategy. Information is power. And so you always want more information.
We know we’ve drilled the concept of asking questions into you a lot by
now, but our experience shows that even our most conscientious students
fall back into the natural habits of wanting to present their products/
services, more than ask questions in order to find out needs, pains, fears
and hopes first.
Hopefully, by now, you understand that you must fight this urge to spill
your guts all the time. Your goal is to get your prospect to spill their guts
first, so that when you finally spill yours – when you present your product/
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service as the solution they are looking for – as we will show you in the
Reveal Hope Step, you will be better able to position your product/service
so that your prospect will want to buy now.
These are incredibly effective tactics to use. You should use these tactics
throughout the entire sales process, but there is a more structured series of
questions that we have developed for you to use over and over.
We call this series of questions the Values Elicitation Process. This process
enables you to elicit – or draw out – from your prospect what they value –
that is, what is important to them. Once you understand their values, you
can then pitch your product/service more effectively, which we will cover
in the final step of the FEAR Selling System.
This series of questions is the most effective way to get someone to talk
about:
· their ability to solve their problem (whether they have the authority
and budget).
As you will see, initially you will ask your prospect open-ended
questions to find out what’s on their mind. You can be sure that
whatever they talk about is at least of some importance to them. And
you will benefit greatly from just shutting up and letting them talk to
you about what their problem is generally and why it is important to
them.
Once you understand what your prospect values (that is, what is
important to them), you will be better able to position your product/
service in such a way as to make it more attractive to them.
You want to qualify your prospect by finding out how serious they think
their problem is. If you find that they consider their problem at least
somewhat significant, then you know that you’re not wasting your time.
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If their problem doesn’t seem significant to them, then you might not
have a good prospect on your hands. This doesn’t mean that you
shouldn’t keep probing them. They either might not be fully aware of
the seriousness of the consequences of their problem or they might not
be the decision-maker whom you need to talk too.
What will also help you determine if they are serious about solving their
problem is if they have taken some action in the past to try to solve it.
This step also will help you determine if you have competition – either
by another vendor or by their own staff. Someone else might already
have tried – or currently is trying – to solve the problem. You want to
know about such competition as early as possible. We’ll show you how
to find out about competition without being blunt about it.
Your objective is to get your prospect to do more than simply talk about
their values and their problem. You want them to act on solving the
problem by buying your solution.
In order to get your prospect to act – to get them to move outside of their
Comfort Zone far enough so that they realize that they must buy your
product or service now, you must get them to acknowledge their current
pains or experience their fear of potential pain in the future.
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Once you understand your prospect’s fears and hopes, you can paint a
picture of how your product/service can help them overcome those fears
and reach those hopes.
You will do this by having them explore with you the negative
consequences of not solving their problem as well as the positive benefits
of solving their problem. In other words, you want them to become acutely
aware of possible outcomes. You want them to talk about, and through
their imagination, experience the pain of not solving their problem or the
relief of solving their problem.
As we’ve said elsewhere, you cannot convince someone to buy from you.
You can only make your prospect aware that they should buy from you. Do
not see yourself as trying to sell your prospect or you will come off too
pushy. Rather, see yourself as trying to guide them towards taking some
action to solve their problem – and most likely, they’ll strongly consider
buying from you in order to solve that problem.
Here, you are trying to get a sense of how ready your prospect is to take
action on their problem. You are further exploring the pain, fears and hopes
of your prospect.
Once you know why they are stalling, you can maneuver to try to get them
to take action – or make a note to check in on the prospect in the future but
move on in your prospecting so as not to waste your time.
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Ability To Solve Their Problem
It’s one thing to be willing to solve the problem, but it’s another thing to be
able to solve it.
There are two aspects to qualifying your prospect for their ability to solve
their problem – that is, their ability to buy your solution:
1) authority
2) budget
Regarding authority, you want to find out who the decision-makers are.
Can they make the decision on their own or do they need approval of
others, perhaps a boss, an oversight board or a spouse?
You want to make sure that you understand who actually signs off on the
purchase or else you might be wasting your time pitching a subordinate.
You also want to know what the process is for their decision-making. In
this step, you are eliciting their decision-making process. You are probing
for their decision criteria. What do you have to show them, tell them, prove
to them before they make a purchase.
Once you understand who makes the decisions and how decisions are made
in your prospect’s organization, you will have a better sense of whom you
should be pleasing with your presentation and the hoops you will have to
jump through in order to get a buy decision.
Regarding budget, you want to find out how much they are willing to
spend to solve their problem. If your solution costs $1,000 and they are
only willing or able to pay $500, then you are in trouble. Budget is another
potential deal-breaker that you want to uncover early on in the process.
Once you understand how much your prospect is willing to spend, you can
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start exploring with them their willingness and ability to spend a bit more
in order to really solve their problem.
Now that you have a basic understand of what the Values Elicitation
Process will do for you, let’s dive into specifics. Next, we’re going to tell
you what questions to ask in order to extract these important pieces of
information from your prospect.
The more, good-quality insights you have about their problems, pains,
fears, their willingness and ability to take action, and their hopes, the better
off you will be able to position your solution in the last step of the FEAR
Selling System, which is called Reveal The Hope Of Your Solution.
Before we get started with the specific questions, let’s be realistic. You may
not be able to ask all of these questions, in this order, in one sitting, if at
all. But this is what you are aiming for, because if you can get these
questions answered honestly by the right people in the buying organization,
then you are ready to seal the deal in the final step of the FEAR Selling
System.
Do you remember the process we went through to Find and Focus on your
prospects fears in the first step of the FEAR Selling System?
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Let’s briefly review it here.
You started by doing some market research to find out what others thought
might be current problems. To do this research, you surveyed your
colleagues at work, prospects and current customers. You gathered
statements that make up your Prospect Fear and Hope List so that you
could share that list with prospects in the hopes of triggering their fears.
This is how you capture your prospect’s attention and get them interested
in giving you a bit more of their time.
Once you have identified one or more of their pains, fears or hopes, you
then use the Values Elicitation Process.
2) get them more interested in taking action now and buying from you.
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Of course, you can use variations of these questions that you are
comfortable with. This is just an overview, but we will speak to each of
these questions so that you understand the reasoning behind each and thus
can be more effective in pacing and leading your prospect to the sale.
Of course, if you can, ask all of these questions – and in this order. That
will work best. But don’t be frustrated if you have to jump around a bit.
Just make sure that you cover the basics.
To make it easy for you to review the Process, we have marked the key
questions in red. The more you practice, the more you’ll understand the
key questions, and how you can be most comfortable asking them.
These two questions are ways to open up the conversation with the
prospect.
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If you recall, we suggested that you get your prospect to invite you in rather
than forcing yourself in. If you are the guest, it changes the power dynamic
of the meeting. You’re there trying to help them solve their problem, not as
a salesman trying to push your product.
“And…?”
Phrases such as these will keep your prospect talking, which is exactly
what you want. You are probing for their problems at this point. Try not to
interrupt except to use the Active Listening techniques we taught you in the
last step.
In the early stages of the Process, you want your prospect to open up. You
want them to be comfortable, so you want to pace them. You are going to
show and tell them that you’ve seen the problem before – and that it is not
uncommon.
You pace your prospect by nodding your head, agreeing with them by
saying “yes”, and otherwise showing them that you understand where they
are coming from. Show that you are interested. Show that you are
concerned. Again, think of yourself as an actor and try to act genuinely
interested, genuinely concerned.
Again, your goal here is to get them to realize that others have their
problem, and so, you imply that they should be worried about it too.
But you must not only make your prospect aware that their fears may come
to pass, but also that if they do nothing to prevent their fears then they will
suffer significant consequences as well. You want them to think about the
potentially serious consequences of not taking action now.
By asking permission, you will feel more comfortable asking the questions.
You have positioned yourself as someone who is trying to help them so
they should invite you to ask the questions.
With these two questions, you want to find out how long they have been
struggling with this problem. If it’s a new problem, they might not be ready
to take action yet because they haven’t yet experienced the negative
consequences of not solving the problem.
The answers to these questions will help you further determine how serious
they are about solving the problem. If they have taken action, it means that
the problem caused enough pain or fear of future pain to get them out of
their Comfort Zone to take action. You want to know if this is the case.
Also, you want to know if there is someone else in the picture with whom
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you are competing to solve the problem for them. It could be another
vendor or in-house staff or they could even be trying to solve the problem
themselves with no outside help. By finding out who your competitors are,
you will be better able to position yourself as a better alternative.
They might say nothing. But if they say that they tried something or are
doing something currently, ask about it, whatever it is. If they say they are
looking for vendors, ask: “Could you share with me who else you are
talking to?” They might not tell you, but again it never hurts to ask. You
might want to try an Orphan Phrase such as: “You are talking to people/
companies like…?” And then shut up.
This is the heart of the Values Elicitation Process. This is where you are
really finding out the consequences of your prospect’s inactions – and you
are getting them focused on the consequences of their inactions. You are
uncovering their pains, fears and hopes.
You are going to use the word “problem” when talking to your prospect,
but remember, that what you are trying to do is explore the fears that
underlie what they are acknowledging as “problems.”
That’s what you are trying to get to: the fears about the consequences of
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their problems. If you understand these fears, you’ll be better able to sell to
your prospects on the most powerful level possible: the emotional level.
If you can, you want your prospects to work with you to calculate how
much the problem is costing them. You want them to figure out a dollar
amount associated with them not taking action and living with the problem.
You can use this dollar amount later in comparison with the budget they
are willing to spend to show them that the cost savings (benefit) of taking
action outweigh the cost of buying your product.
With these two questions, you are trying to project your prospect into the
future emotionally. You want them to experience the pain of not solving the
problem. You are trying to get them uncomfortable. By getting them to
acknowledge and experience this pain, you are trying to move them out of
their Comfort Zone of inaction. You’re trying to get them more interested in
taking action and buying from you in order to avoid that painful future.
These questions will force your prospect to project themselves into the
future and think about at least some of the problems that could occur if
they fail to act now.
Again, try to keep them thinking through and exploring the consequences
of their inaction.
Here, you must paint a picture of a very painful future that someone else
who has their same problem – their same fear – experienced. You must be a
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storyteller at this stage, telling them about the significantly painful
consequences that might occur if they don’t take action to avoid that
painful future now.
By asking this question, you are trying to get them to react to the pain and
fear that you tried to dredge up with the previous questions. You want to
see if the pain of having the problem is great enough for them to take action
to solve it.
Again, the problem might not be big enough for them to take action now,
they might not perceive the problem to be big enough, or there might be
other circumstances stopping them from taking action to solve this problem
now. You want to find out what might be the obstacles to them taking
action and buying from you.
This is your sly way of finding out if they are the decision-maker or not.
You don’t want to insult your prospect by insinuating that they have no
power to make the decision by themselves. That’s why you are asking
about others – besides themselves – who need to be part of the problem-
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solving process.
Again, how they answer this question will determine how you proceed.
If there are others involved in the decision-making, you must try to set
up another meeting to get the others on board.
15) What are the key things that you (or they) are looking for in
order to move forward?
Here, you are probing for their decision-making process. You want to
find out buying criteria. What do they need to make a decision to buy
from you? Do they need references? Do they want a demo? What’s the
next step?
Budget
16) Would it make sense to talk about what you’re able to invest
to solve the problem?
But let’s face it, all salespeople have encountered prospects that have a
problem, want to solve it, but don’t have the money to solve the
problem. As a salesperson, this is a waste of your time.
You want to find out not only if the person has a problem, but if they
can solve it by buying your product/service. You want to qualify the
prospect’s ability to pay for your product/service. And this question will
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help you gently get their permission to open up the conversation about
what it costs to solve the problem.
Many of your prospects will not have “budgeted” to solve the problem,
because most people don’t think that way. It is your job to get them to
think that way. Remember, you’ve hopefully already gotten the prospect
to calculate (even if only roughly) the cost of living with the problem.
If they don’t have a number in mind that they are willing to spend, try to
at least get a ballpark figure of what they think they need to spend to
solve the problem. You could say:
“Do you think you can spend $100, $1,000 or $5,000? I’m just trying to
get a general sense of your budget.”
You can then begin to share with them the cost of your product/service.
You already know what it’s going to cost them to live with the problem,
so it’s your job to show them that the cost of living with the problem is
much greater than the cost of buying your product/service and solving
the problem.
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You cover the budget at the very end of the process because you want
your prospect to understand the consequences of their inaction – and
the cost of their inaction – before tackling the cost of solving their
problem. By doing this, you are able to frame the price of your solution
relative to the cost of them living with the problem.
This will greatly enhance your ability to get them to buy your product/
service. When people hear your price upfront, they may react negatively.
If they react negatively at this point, you can at least discuss the cost that
they must bear of living with the problem and thus be in a better
position to influence them of the logic of buying your product/service.
As a matter of fact, if they ever ask you why you are asking any of these
questions, your response should be something like:
“I really want to help you, I just need to understand the problem before
I make any suggestions. Actually, we might not even have the solution to
your problem.”
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This is a real credibility-builder. Most salespeople would never admit
that they couldn’t solve a prospect’s problem.
Also, if you ended the first step of the FEAR Selling System correctly,
you asked them to invite you in. You positioned yourself as a guest – an
expert guest willing to share with them your non-confidential research,
your experiences with their competition.
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Once the psychiatrist understands their patient’s pains and their fears, he
or she will be able to diagnosis the patient’s condition and then
hopefully go about treating the patient.
Similarly, once you know the pains and fears of your prospect, you will
be in a better position to present your solution to their problem – your
product or service – in a manner which will drastically improve your
chances that they will buy it from you.
So, we have not only given you the questions to ask in the order that
they should be asked, but, most importantly, we have explained why you
should ask these questions. By knowing your objective at each step, you
are better able to be flexible in your approach.
Now that you have taken your prospect through the Values Elicitation
Process, you have:
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1) obtained information that you can use to qualify them;
At different points in the Ask Step, you hopefully found out key
information about the prospect. You determined if the problem was
significant to them. If it isn’t significant, you might not want to spend
time pitching them further.
You also found out if they are the decision-maker. If they are not the
decision-maker – or if others are needed to make the buy decision, you
must set up additional meetings.
You found out what they thought it might cost to solve the problem. If
what they are willing or can spend to solve the problem is not in line
with the cost of living with the problem or the actual price of your
product/service, you may want to move on and not waste more time
trying to pitch to someone who can’t afford the price of your product/
service.
One of the key sections of the Values Elicitation Process is when you try
to get your prospect to reveal their personal pains, fears and hopes. By
knowing these emotional trigger points, you can work them into your
sales pitch. Show them how your product/service can help them to solve
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their pain, overcome their fears and achieve their hopes. We’ll expand
upon this technique in the final step of the FEAR Selling System.
Our research shows that prospects who have gone through the Values
Elicitation Process are nearly five times more likely to buy than those
who have simply heard a pitch without experiencing the Process. Of
course, the information gathered from the Process is helpful to the
salesperson when they pitch their product/service, but we have found
that what is even more powerful is how the Process gets prospects
thinking about the consequences of their actions/inactions.
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How FEAR Selling Helps
Differentiate You
The main difference between the FEAR Selling System and other sales
systems is that FEAR Selling forces you to conduct an extensive
information-discovery process focused on your prospect and their
situation before pitching your product/service.
But you must tell them about your product/service eventually. In the
next section of the FEAR Selling System, we will show you how to
leverage:
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Reveal The Hope of Your Solution:
How To Position Your Presentation
So That You Play Off of Your
Prospect’s Fears and Hopes
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Let’s face it. You can’t be 100% sure that your product/service will solve
your prospect’s problem. So remember, what you are really selling is the
hope that your product/service can solve their problem.
Of course, their trust in you will be greater, and thus their hopes will be
stronger if:
• You built credibility by proving that you know what you are
talking about, that you are aware of the problems they might have,
and therefore that you are somewhat of an authority on issues that
concern them;
These three key goals were the focus of the first three steps in the FEAR
Selling System:
• Triggering curiosity
• Building credibility
• Generating interest.
Hopefully, you have been effective enough in these first three steps that
you will not need to persuade further through a long presentation of
your product/service. Hopefully, your prospect will, in effect, close
themselves at this point and buy your product/service. We have found
that this is indeed possible, especially when selling small-ticket, non-
complex products/services. With such products/services, it is sometimes
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enough to get the prospect’s attention, build some degree of trust and
generate interest in your particular solution.
But again, this is hopeful thinking. Most likely, especially if you are
selling into a larger company, the first three steps in the System earned
you a meeting with others in the buying organization. Now, it’s time for
the sales presentation.
As you will see, your sales presentation does not have to be modified
much from the way you are currently using it. The advantage of the
FEAR Selling System is that it is flexible. It enables you to embed the
presentation you are already giving - or that your company suggests that
you give - into the System’s framework. And as you have seen, the first
three steps in the System is what differentiates you from the masses of
other salespeople. You will actually take the time to find out what your
prospect wants and needs before giving them a benefit-filled
presentation focused on their specific situation.
For the most part, our research has shown that salespeople are fairly
competent in giving presentations and that there are plenty of resources -
books, articles, training materials - that focus on presentation tactics. So
we will focus on some key presentation points that we have found to be
the most important when it comes to selling more and selling faster.
The key is to remember that you have taken your original contact – the
person who facilitated the initial meeting – through the System, but
that’s all. You have piqued their curiosity, built credibility and generated
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enough interest to convince that person to hear you out further – or to
invite you in to talk further with his/her colleagues. In effect, you must
start over again when in front of this group.
You have to find and focus on their pains, fears and hopes.
You have to empathize with them – build rapport and create a bond of
trust.
You have to ask them about how they see their problems. You must
explore the particular pains and fears that they want to overcome and
their personal expectations and hopes.
You can’t just assume that the person who invited you in – let’s call that
person your Champion – shares the same pains, fears and hopes that the
others in the decision-making group do.
In fact, group sales are much more difficult than one-on-one sales since
you have multiple agendas that you have to meet – multiple buyer
personalities to deal with – multiple sets of pains, fears and hopes to
address.
In this section, we will show you how to handle the final stage of the
sales process. We will proceed as if you are presenting to a group, but as
you will see, you can easily modify this step even if you are just
continuing the conversation with your initial contact or if there is only
one other person to present to. We’ll take you through a series of
techniques, which will help you lead your prospects to a faster and
easier close.
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Again, No Assumptions
Too many salespeople that we work with make a huge assumption when
they are invited in. First of all, they think they are special.
Remember though that it’s a buyer’s job to find the right solution to
their problems. If they are doing their job correctly, they are interviewing
lots of salespeople to get a sense of possible solutions. So you aren’t
special. They have probably talked to many salespeople about this
particular problem before they have you in, and they’ll probably have a
parade of other salespeople in after you leave.
So regardless of what your mother told you, you are not special. Your
solution is not the only solution. So, if you are going to make any
assumption at all, assume that you have lots of competition.
Novice salespeople also often assume that if they are invited in that
everyone in attendance has been fully briefed by their Champion – the
person with whom they’ve built rapport and who knows at least a bit
about their solution.
But again, to play it safe, assume the opposite. Be prepared for a group
of individuals who has no idea who you are or what your product does.
Assume, in fact, that they are going to be restless and somewhat hostile
since you are taking away valuable time from their workday. If you make
these rather negative – but probably correct – assumptions, you will be
better prepared to make your presentation.
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Three Basic Keys To Any
Presentation
1) Positive Emotional State
2) Thorough Preparation
But how do you think positively? Easily said, but not easily done,
especially if you’re in a sales slump or the economy is bad and
companies aren’t buying or you’re just not feeling well on the day of
your presentation.
Before his career as a motivational writer and speaker, Dr. Maltz had a
flourishing practice as a reconstructive and cosmetic facial surgeon and
also lectured internationally on his medical specialty.
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throughout the process, and they see themselves succeeding either by
giving a good performance or by winning in some other way.
We suggest that your performance as a salesperson is not much different
that that of a professional golfer or an ice skater. Just like these
performers, you know what your goal is and how to get to your goal.
You want to sell your product/service, and you now have a process – the
FEAR Selling System – which will guide you toward that objective. So
what you want to do is practice making the sale in your mind.
Following is a brief description of the Theatre of Your Mind exercise. If
you dedicate yourself to practicing this technique once a day for three
weeks, you will be amazed at the results that you get. By doing this, you
will join literally millions of others who have used Maltz’ techniques to
succeed over the last four decades.
Your imagination is a powerful tool that you can use to your advantage.
To overcome any fears or nervousness you have about presenting, you
need to get comfortable first in your imagination.
Set aside 30 minutes each day in a place where you can be alone and
undisturbed. Relax, close your eyes and picture yourself in your
imagination. You might want to try picturing yourself sitting in a dark
theatre, watching yourself in a motion picture on a big movie screen –
the Theatre of Your Mind.
Be specific about your motion pictures. Be detailed and vivid in creating
your mental pictures. If your imagination is vivid enough, you can
actually trick your mind into thinking that you are experiencing an
actual event.
During each 30 minute session, see yourself acting and reacting calmly,
successfully, confidently. See yourself acting, feeling, being exactly as
you want to be. See yourself networking with people confidently,
picking up the phone and calling prospects confidently, pitching with
your 30-Second Commercial convincingly, bonding with your prospects,
asking questions smoothly, presenting your product/service successfully
and then having your clients buy from you.
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The Theatre of Your Mind exercise will help you build a new confident
self-image, so that when you actually get in front of people, you will
have already practiced being confident in your mind, many times before.
Our sales clients report that this one simple exercise does wonders in
terms of building their confidence and focusing their attention so that
they can take their prospects through the FEAR Selling System
flawlessly.
For more detail on this and other techniques, check out the recently
revised version of Maltz’ classic book, which is titled The New Psycho-
Cybernetics.
2) Thorough Preparation
The second basic key to presenting is Thorough Preparation. Just as the
Theatre of Your Mind exercise will give you confidence, being
thoroughly prepared also will give you the confidence you need to close
the sales.
Again, as Stephen Covey suggests in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People, begin with the end in mind. Go into each presentation knowing
what you want the outcome to be.
By asking yourself and writing out the answers to the following
questions, you will be prepared for most bumps that you hit along the
way. Knowing that you are prepared will give you the confidence to
succeed.
So ask yourself:
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c) What are the likely main obstacles for me reaching my objective?
d) Who in the audience will likely be allied with me and who may
oppose me?
e) What are the key pains, fears and hopes that I have discovered
from my earlier questioning that could be shared by others in this
audience?
f) What are the likely difficult objections that I will face from this
audience?
g) Who are the likely key decision-makers?
Of course, as you interact with this buying group, you will refine your
answers to these questions, but just as it is helpful to rehearse your
presentation in your mind beforehand, so is answering these key
questions.
Don’t be like the lazy salespeople out there. Answer these questions,
and you are much more likely to succeed in getting your prospects to
buy more and buy faster.
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By using rigid presentations that did not allow for prospect interaction,
they may have been calming their nerves, but we found that they were
also losing sales. As we said at the beginning, FEAR Selling is a system,
but it is purposely designed as a flexible one that you can use to adapt to
any selling situation.
As you doubtless know if you’ve had any experience in selling, each
selling situation is different. Buyers have different personalities, different
needs, different budgets and different decision-making processes, and so
you must be flexible if you want to succeed in sales.
So having good presentation skills rather than a good sales pitch is
important. You want to have basic sales and presentation skills that you
can adapt to different situations rather than a fixed presentation that can
lose you the sale quickly if it is off the mark.
Following are some important points that may seem obvious to you, but
we are always amazed at how salespeople are not aware of themselves
when they present. Make sure that you are aware of how you present
yourself. These techniques will help you grab your audiences’ attention,
maintain their focus, bond with them, get them to open up to you, and
get them to trust and like you.
We’ll get to what you say to position yourself effectively later, but for
now, we’ll talk about how you say what you say, how you should act,
and what you should do with your body. If you recall, how you say
things and your body language communicates a significant amount to
your audience.
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Remember, you want to come off as an authority so speak with
authority. Don’t be cocky, but be confident in what you say. Try to
express your confidence in the tone of your voice.
Start with introductions. Ask if the group can help you by letting you
know who is in the room and what their responsibilities are. Ask
questions once in awhile during these introductions in order to bond
with each person. Don’t overdo it though. Be curious, but be natural.
Be concise when you introduce yourself. You may want to use your 30-
Second Commercial to describe the types of problems you deal with and
also to share your client list. This is another credibility-building tactic.
But don’t go rambling on.
Remember, you are starting from the beginning of the FEAR Selling
System. You want to get them curious and build credibility by giving
them some information about yourself, but you want to reverse the
pressure – just as you do with Boomerang Questions. You want your
audience to do most of the talking. You want to give them a bit of
information, but again, you are here to find out about them.
As we said earlier, don’t assume that your Champion – the person who
invited you in – has briefed the audience or that the other members of
the group share your Champion’s perspective about their problems,
pains, fears and hopes.
You have to start at the beginning again. So keep your introduction
short. Try to get them to open up. But we’ll talk more about how to do
this later.
Eye Contact
Don’t just focus on the person or people whom you think are most
important in the decision-making process. Make contact with everyone
in the room. Don’t stare at anyone but neither should you quickly
glance at people and move on. Sustain eye contact with each person for
a few seconds before moving on to the next person.
Posture
If you are standing, stand up straight and move confidently. If you are
sitting while presenting, sit comfortably with your back straight. Don’t
be stiff. Use your hands to help you express your points, but don’t
overdo it by waving your hands wildly about.
As simple as it may sound, the main point to remember when it comes to
presenting is to be natural. By practicing in the Theatre of Your Mind,
you should be confident in your presentation, so all you have to do is
act naturally, and your confidence should shine through and thus help
you gain your audience’s respect from early in the presentation.
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Start At The Beginning...Again
As we mentioned above, in this final step of the FEAR Selling System, you
are going to be starting at the beginning again. You probably know very
little if anything at all about the values, problems, fears and hopes of the
individuals in front of you before you give your presentation. And so, you
are not just going to launch into a presentation without finding out how
best to position yourself and your product/service to this particular group.
How do you find this information out? You start at the beginning again.
Your goals in this step are the same as your goals before. Don’t assume that
this group is curious about how you can help them. Don’t assume that they
have already bonded with you only because you have bonded with the
person who invited you in. Don’t assume that you know all the answers to
your questions before you ask this new group and find out their
perspectives.
Of course, the information that you gathered in the first three steps of the
FEAR Selling System will give you valuable hints as to how to position
yourself and your product/service. But again, don’t assume that this
information that you gathered previously is the truth. Perception is
reality,and what is important now is the perception of your new audience.
Remember, you are guilty until proven innocent. You are a salesperson, and
so most likely, this new group (or any new person whom you meet –
whether it be a business partner or a spouse or whoever has to meet you
before the buy decision is made) probably is going to greet you with at least
some skepticism. They don’t know you so you have to start all over in the
bonding process with them.
For your brief introduction, you can use your 30-Second Commercial if
you are comfortable with it. Thank the audience for taking time out of their
schedules to meet with you, and then say something like:
“I have a general sense of your situation from earlier conversations with
Janet (your Champion), but I don’t want to assume anything so perhaps
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you can help me. What would you like to accomplish during our time
together today?”
This technique allows you to reverse the dynamic of the situation. Your
audience must participate in the presentation. You are not just going to let
them just sit back and suck information out of you. You want to get them
involved because all of our studies, and many others, show that in order to
gain the compliance of your audience, you want to get them involved in
your presentation early on.
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Story Time Again
After you understand your audience’s concerns, pains, fears, and hopes,
weave stories into your presentation that show that you understand their
concerns, that others have had your same concerns, but that they can trust
your product/service to overcome those concerns because it worked with
other clients. In other words, tell It-Could-Happen-to-You Stories that put
a positive spin on your product/service, showing how it helped others
achieve their goals with minimal effort and at relatively low cost. Instead of
focusing on bland facts and figures, tell stories because they will be
remembered long after you are out of the meeting.
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Conclusion: The Cart-Before-The-
Horse Syndrome
So as you can see, you still will be giving your benefit-packed presentation.
However, you will be positioning it somewhat differently every time, given
the problems, pains, fears and hopes specific to each audience.
The biggest mistake that the FEAR Selling System solves is what we call
The Cart- Before-The-Horse Syndrome. That is, the tendency that most
salespeople have of wanting to pitch before they know the emotional hot
buttons of their prospects.
By forcing yourself to focus first on your prospect - as we discuss in each of
the four steps of the FEAR Selling System, you will be in a much better
position to make a more effective, persuasive presentation to your prospect.
FEAR Selling helps you to position your presentation so that you have a
better chance of selling more and selling faster.
If you only learn one thing from this System, learn this: Don’t put the cart
before the horse. Find out as much as you can about your prospect’s
situation and emotional hot buttons before pitching your product/service to
them. Just this slight modification to the typical sales process will do
wonders for you in your sales career.
Good luck and happy hunting!
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About The Author
Paul Borgese is an author, speaker, consultant and the creator of two series
of business books, The Business of FEAR and The 7 Deadly Sins of
Business. In his marketing and sales books, Paul shows how proven
systems coupled with customer-centric emotional triggers lead to significant
growth in sales.
Paul has more than 16 years of experience as a business advisor on a wide
array of strategy, finance, business development, sales and marketing
challenges for emerging-growth companies, financial institutions, not-for-
profit organizations and global corporations.
He helps executives and small business owners:
• confront the challenges of the increasingly cluttered marketplace and the
demands of the new age of marketing accountability;
• execute integrated marketing plans that leverage new online and offline
techniques, including pay-per-click advertising, affiliate programs, and viral
marketing.
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Financial Professionals. He also worked as a bank examiner for the
Federal Reserve.
Paul has lectured and written books, articles and white papers on a wide
range of business topics, including: corporate strategy, sales
management, marketing, entrepreneurship, information technology, risk
management, business communications, banking relationships and
corporate finance. He has served as a Teaching Fellow at New York
University’s Stern School of Business and is the author of the best-
selling book, M&A From Planning to Integration: Executing
Acquisitions and Increasing Shareholder Value, which was published
by McGraw-Hill. This book was recently featured on CNBC’s
PowerLunch with Bill Griffeth and CNNfn’s The Money Gang.
As an author, he is most famous for his series of books, which include
FEAR Selling: How You Can Sell More and Sell Faster By Tapping
Into Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated Emotional Needs; The 7 Deadly
Sins of Marketing; and The 7 Deadly Sins of Marketing Online. For
more information, please visit www.FEARMarketing.com.
Paul was educated in the United States and Europe. He holds five
degrees, including: an MBA in finance and marketing from New York
University; a Master of Governmental Administration from the Fels
Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was
named a Samuel S. Fels Scholar; a Master of Arts in English from
Trinity College Cambridge University in England after being awarded
the prestigious British Marshall Scholarship; a Bachelor of Arts in
English from the University of Pennsylvania; and a Bachelor of Science
in economics from The Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania. Paul is proficient in Spanish and was awarded a
Certificate in Spanish from the University of Salamanca in Spain where
he was a Cambridge Scholar.
You may contact Paul at 201.533.9282 or via email at
paul@FEARMarketing.com.
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BOOKS THAT MEAN BUSINESS
BY THE FEAR MARKETING GROUP
In addition to our consulting work, the FEAR Marketing Group also conducts a
significant amount of research on sales and marketing effectiveness.
FEAR Selling: How You Can Sell More And Sell Faster
By Tapping Into Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated
Emotional Needs
Typically, before we worked with them, our clients were selling and marketing
based on traditional features and benefits. If you’re still using these outdated
tactics, you are in trouble.
Recent studies by the Sales Career Training Institute and the Performance
Marketing Institute have broken new ground when it comes to sales and
marketing effectiveness strategies. Studies conducted by these not-for-profit
Institutes have led to the development of the FEAR Selling System. One of
the key findings of both of these Institutes is that today’s marketers are using
hopelessly outdated selling strategies. Benefit selling (or what we call
HOPE Selling) is only one half of the powerful Persuasion Equation.
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To get people out of their Comfort Zones and take action by buying your
product/service, you must focus not only on the positive consequences of
buying but also on the negative consequences of not buying your product/
service.
Many of our clients sell complex products/services which require long sales
cycles and therefore demand superior relationship-building sales skills. FEAR
Selling shows how to overcome these challenges by finding and focusing on
your prospects’ personal pains and fears as well as their hopes and
dreams. By using both carrot AND stick persuasion techniques, you will
easily multiply your persuasion effectiveness exponentially.
It covers everything you need to know to sell more and sell faster. Find out how
to: cold call with confidence, position yourself effectively through your 30-
Second Commercial, get your prospects curious enough to invite you in to sell
them more, bond quickly through proven trust-building techniques, ask the
right questions at the right times to the right people, and present through
powerful strategies that get your prospects to buy now.
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FEAR Selling For Financial Advisors
Top financial advisors earn big bucks and so have the luxury of hiring staff and
investing in sales and marketing systems that keep them winning clients with
little effort. But you know if you are starting up as a financial advisor that the
going can be rough at first. Recent turnover statistics show that up to 68% of
new financial advisors fail within their first year. Why do they fail?
Well, whether you are working for a large financial institution or if you are an
independent advisor, you basically are running your own small business. You
have to brand yourself, market yourself, and sell yourself. Unfortunately, many
financial advisors whom we train don’t understand that they are in business for
themselves. They have little formal sales training and limited marketing
knowledge. They don’t know how to set up their own sales and marketing
systems – but that’s exactly what they have to do if they want to survive in
today’s cut-throat financial services arena.
This version of FEAR Selling includes all the information from the original 5-
Day Boot Camp plus newly developed strategies, tactics and techniques
specially designed for Financial Advisors.
FEAR Selling For Financial Advisors covers everything you need to know to
be a top producer. Keep a steady stream of prospects calling you. Find out how
to: target wealthy investor segments, set up a highly leveragable referral
system, cold call with confidence, position yourself effectively through your 30-
Second Commercial, get your prospects curious enough to invite you in to sell
them more, bond quickly through proven trust-building techniques, ask the
right questions at the right times to the right people, and tailor your offerings
to your prospects so that they buy now.
Note: This second edition of FEAR Marketing does address the new online
marketing technologies that many corporations and small businesses are now
using to capture new clients at the lowest cost possible, but for a more
comprehensive coverage of interactive, performance-based strategies, check
out FEAR Marketing Online.
With the recent success of companies such as Google, Yahoo and E-Bay,
marketers are waking up to the fact that the Internet is here to stay. But
recent research by the Performance Marketing Institute shows that too
many marketers and business owners do not realize that these hyper-growth
Internet companies are basically marketing services companies that can help
you catapult your own business to success. The Internet is not a business
model in and of itself like the 1999 bubble-investors hoped it was. Rather it is a
highly leveragable marketing tool that you must incorporate into your
integrated marketing strategies if you want to survive today.
In addition to showing you how to lead, this book also will show you how not to
lead. This version of FEAR Leadership also includes excerpts from the
previously published book, The 7 Deadly Sins of Leadership.
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The Financial Services Marketing Handbook: Tactics
and Techniques That Produce Results
By Evelyn Ehrlich, Ph.D. and Duke Fanelli
Everyone in the financial industry can benefit from The Financial Services
Marketing Handbook (Bloomberg Press, 2004), from senior corporate
management to independent financial advisors. Case studies illuminate both
the innovations practiced by industry leaders—companies like Merrill Lynch,
American Express, and Citibank—and perhaps more tellingly, marketing
initiatives that failed.
The 21st Century has already seen a major stock market collapse, unrolling
scandals involving commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds and
mutual funds, and industry-shaking changes in the regulatory environment.
The Financial Services Marketing Handbook gives financial marketers and sales
professionals the tools they need to survive—and thrive.
All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling
201.533.9282.
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M&A From Planning To Integration
Mergers and acquisitions are designed to build market leadership and create
long-term value - in theory, anyway. M&A from Planning to Integration
provides complete guidelines for ensuring these optimistic theories become
reality, and outlines a systematic plan for developing, implementing, and
monitoring a successful M&A deal.
Examples from companies including Cisco Systems, GE, Microsoft, and others
reveal M&A strategies that have worked in the real world, illustrate the book’s
concepts in action, and help you apply those concepts and strategies to your
own company.
All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling
201.533.9282.
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