The Alchemy of Sales

The Ancient Art of Closing High Ticket Deals

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: ​Introduction

Chapter 2: ​The Recipe

Chapter 3: ​Mindset

Chapter 4: ​The​ ​System

Chapter 5: ​Communication

Chapter 6: ​Handling Objections

Chapter 7: ​Post-Call Best Practices

Bonus 1: Scripts

Bonus 2: Additional Resources (Facebook group + explainers)

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INTRODUCTION

Sales is a passion of mine.

Ever since I was a young kid, I’ve been in love with selling, and persuasion. In some
form or another, I’ve always been involved with sales. Whether it’s the time I was 13
years old selling my dog walking services door to door, or during university when I
worked as a cold caller for various wealth management firms. Sales is something
I’ve always done.

It wouldn’t be genuine for me to say I’ve always loved sales though. As someone
who is naturally introverted, sales was brutal. I would stutter on sales calls, mumble
words, sweat profusely before calls and get crippling anxiety. So believe me when I
say this - most good salesmen aren’t born, they’re bred. A small minority are what
you’d call “naturals”, but they’re rare.

Most rockstar salesmen I know learned from someone else. They weren’t born with
an innate ability to close deals. So if you’re someone who has never closed a deal
before, or you are crippled with fear over the prospect of closing a deal on the
phone, don’t worry. There is hope for you yet!

I learned sales through a variety of sources. One of my lifelong mentors - and old
boss at the bank named Neil - instilled in me a lot of the current beliefs I hold about
sales. Through him, I learned how to sell on the phone, how to network, how to
schmooze clients and how to structure your days in order to be productive. A lot of
the mindset information you’re going to discover in this book, I learned from him
many many years ago.

During university, I even lived with him and his family for a few months. I got to see
how a rockstar salesman lived, worked, and spent his time. He was, at the time, one
of the top financial planners in Canada for both assets under management, referrals
and client retention.

He was a sales machine, and at the time I had never seen someone so proficient at
closing clients. At the same time, he was down to earth, honest, ethical and his
clients loved him. When he walked into a room, everyone looked at him and they
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valued his opinion. Needless to say, he’s been a major influence on my sales &
business philosophy (he’s still one of my mentors to this day).

Anyways…

When he first hired me, I was a 17-18 year old acne-riddled novice. I had done sales
before, but never like this. I was tasked with setting appointments for high ticket
financial services. I had to cold call high net worth families, and convince them to
trust me. I was petrified.

During the first few days, I would dial numbers and pray no one picked up. When
my call hit the answering machine, I would breathe a huge sigh of relief. I’d do
anything to avoid talking to anyone...and when the homeowner did pick up, I’d
often hang up over the fear of talking to them and being rejected.

I’m not lying when I tell you I was terrified of ​phone sales. I emphasize phone sales
because to me, going door to door was much easier. I figured (rightly so) that
people are more likely to be rude on the phone, so I was scared of being yelled at,
or accosted. Whenever I sold door to door, people were friendlier. This was likely
the basis for a lot of my phone sales fears.

When it came to an actual script, I wasn’t given anything. I worked at various

wealth management firms, and was never given a proven script. I was basically told
to figure it out on my own.

They gave me an offer to pitch, and I had to make do. What does one do in the age
of the internet when given a task? Head to Google. I ended up creating my own
script based on some old Grant Cardone videos, and some Real Estate Agents I
found on YouTube who recorded themselves cold calling FSBO (for sale by owner)
listings. Some of the FSBO calls were pretty nasty, so it was great to watch these
Realtors persevere after getting rejected pretty roughy.

I would even pump myself with motivational videos, run around the office when
nobody was there, do some pushups, but I still couldn’t build up the courage to pick
up the phone, dial and set meetings. Two weeks in, I had barely done any calls, and I
hadn’t set any meetings.
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Now, I was only being paid $50/day. Most of my income was supposed to come in
the form of commissions from setting meetings. These were also cold calls, not
warm leads and they certainly weren’t inbound.

In any case, eventually my mentor sat me down.

“What’s going on Ryan? When you applied, you were so motivated, excited, and now
you seem to have lost that spark.”

“The fear of calling these guys is freezing me up” I said.

What he said next was something that completely changed my mindset. The way I
viewed sales, and business in general was altered after one simple conversation. In
chapter 3 (Mindset), I’m going to tell you exactly what he said to me, and why it’s
necessary that you understand this concept.

The important thing to keep in mind here is that you’re not alone. Most people hate
sales. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the reason a lot of people are
afraid of sales in the first place, is because you think of it as “selling.” Selling itself
isn’t really natural.

“Selling” feels icky. It feels socially weird to pressure someone into buying
something even if you know they need it, or that it’s not a big deal.

But if there’s one overarching principle I want you to come away with after reading
this book it’s that, a big part of selling is how you think about sales. If you think
about sales as “taking” from someone, or “weaseling” someone, you’ll never be
successful.

I used to think this way.

I used to believe that I was a greasy car salesperson calling someone up pitching
them on something they didn’t need. But that’s because I was viewing sales as
something that it wasn’t really about. Something I had been taught to believe ever
since I was a young kid.

Here’s the thing…

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If you approach sales like you’re providing value, and that your job is to consult as
opposed to push something on someone, you’ll be successful because that’s exactly
how you become an effective salesperson.

Anywho…

My goal in this book is to help you discover how to close more deals on the phone,
not by implementing some phony techniques, but rather by understanding the
fundamental ingredients of an effective sales call, and which make up a good
salesperson.

While I will be focusing on inbound calls in this book (discovery calls & strategy
calls which I explain in chapter 4), a lot of what you learn in this book will translate
to cold calls as well.

The reason I titled this book ​The Alchemy of Sales is because I believe sales to be
an alchemical process, wherein an identity transmutation occurs. What I mean by
this is, right now you are not the type of person who could sign clients through the
phone. There’s a disconnect between who you are, and who you want to be - a sales
rockstar, if you will. In order to become the type of person who is proficient at
sales, you must become your ideal self - not in 5 years - right now.

In addition to this obviously contrived excuse for giving the book a call name, sales
is an going process which requires experimentation, feedback, refinement (I talk
about this in chapter 2). Sales calls never follow a linear pattern. Sometimes you’ll
be taken outside the scope of what I’d call a normal sales call, so you’ll have to bring
the prospect back to reality.

My hope is that you’ll start to enjoy this process, because once you realize that
what we’re doing is not “selling” but “consulting” you’ll enjoy helping people achieve
clarity, and you’ll start to see sales in a whole new way.

If I’m being honest I initially didn’t want to write this book. I wasn’t sure if I’d be
able to translate the ideas I had in my head into writing. Traditionally I’d teach
something like this through a video course (which is why I’m going to post some
training videos that explain in further depth some concepts in each chapter to give
you different modalities of learning).

But then I reminded myself that I was overthinking things.

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At the end of the day, sales isn’t that complicated. If you follow a set of time-tested
principles which allow you to properly structure the conversation in a way which
leads to the desired outcome, you’ll do just fine.

I realized that I can relay these principles to you through writing, so that’s exactly
what I believe I’ve done.

Within this book, I’m going to provide you with the information necessary to help
you ​ethically close more deals using consultative selling, regardless of your prior
sales experience. The principles you’ll discover here ​will apply to any situation;
whether that means on the phone or in person meetings.

The reason I place an emphasis on ethically closing deals, is because I detest

scammy, sneaky salespeople that will do anything to close a deal. These types of
people give a bad name to ethical closers. So if you came here expecting weasel
tactics you’re shit out of luck.

Now, before I dive into the meat of the book, I want you to keep a few things in
mind.

At the end of the book, I do give you scripts. You might be tempted to flip to the
end of the book to grab the scripts, and ignore the rest of the book. I’m going to
advise you - and I know you might ignore this - to not implement the scripts
without going through this entire book.

Arguably the most valuable part of this book is the chapter on mindset. Using the
scripts without understanding how to cultivate the right mindset, and without
understanding the fundamentals is like buying a car without knowing how to drive.

You’re bound to crash and burn.

Lastly, and I’m going to talk about this later, you must use the scripts until they
become second nature. Until you can recite the scripts as if you were talking to a
friend, use the scripts.

I see this happen time and time again. I give people scripts, they read them, then
they don’t use them on the call and they wonder what went wrong.
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If you don’t use the scripts, you’ll screw something up, lose track, stumble, lose
focus and ruin your chances of closing the prospect.

Until you’ve done at least 100 sales calls with the script, don’t even think about
putting the script down.

Anywhoodle…

I know you’re already annoyed by my obnoxiously long introduction, and you’re

probably chomping at the bit. So let’s dive into what you really bought this book for.

P.S If you haven’t already, check the email I sent you about this book for access to the
private Facebook group. This group is going to be an invaluable supplemental
resource for you, as it’ll allow you to ask me any questions you have about sales, and
it’s a great way to find others to do mock calls with you.

So be sure to join the group!

- Ryan
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THE RECIPE

What makes a good salesman?

Since forever, people have been trying to bottle up sales magic and distribute it to
all those who would buy. Everyone boasts about their “secret trick” to magically
improve your sales and help you close more deals.

As much as I want to blame salesmen themselves for hawking crap, it’s not really
their fault. It’s what the market craves. Every day, I talk with people who ask me for
that one tip to help them close more deals. They all want the shortcut to becoming
the next Jordan Belfort.

“Ryan, I botched my last sales call. How can I close more deals?”

Sales is such a broad topic, that there’s no one size fits all, magical cure for your
problems. I can’t give you the one trick to help you double the amount of deals
you’re closing, or take you from 0-10 in 5 minutes. If that’s what you’re expecting,
you’ll never be successful at sales.

In order to become a successful salesman, you must completely rewire your mind,
and your beliefs about money in general. You can’t think about money, sales and
business like most average people.

That being said, the best way to fully understand something is to break the concept
down to its fundamental truths.

It took me a while to codify these fundamental truths as they pertain to selling.

Different people will give you different answers, and there might not be a right
answer here. I’ve also never really asked myself what makes a good salesperson.

But after spending some time on the question, I came up with 5 ingredients that I
believe make up a good salesman. If you fully understand each element here, and
you actively implement + practice them, I believe you can become rapidly proficient
at sales.
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These ingredients are:

1. Pre-selling mechanism + process

2. The right mindset
3. Communication
4. Volume & consistency
5. A feedback loop

I’ve set aside an entire chapter for mindset & communication, so in this chapter I
want to cover the other 3.

PRE-SELLING MECHANISM + PROCESS

Going in depth about a pre-selling mechanism is beyond the scope of this book, but
I think it’s important that I cover it.

Two big mistakes I see salespeople making are having a weak pre-selling
mechanism, and a poor process for closing deals. Your pre-selling mechanism is
how you “pre-sell” people (hence the name), and your process is how you take
people from cold prospect, to signing a deal with you.

As this book focuses on inbound calls that are generated through your prospecting
methods (paid traffic, organic outreach), your pre-selling mechanism is whatever
you in place which pre-sells them prior to the phone call.

For my business, our pre-selling mechanism is a value video which explains our
offer, and pre-sells them on the idea of working with us. For you, this could be a
simple process of sending an organic message on LinkedIn, or via a cold email and
getting them to book through your calendar.

Your process is what happens once these prospects book a call.

For our business, we utilize a two-step system which I’m going to outline for you in
chapter 4. To give you an idea though, our system involves a discovery call and a
strategy call. But again, I’ll tell you more about that in chapter 4.

Moving along…
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I can’t tell you how many times a poor pre-selling mechanism and sales process has
ruined sales calls.

The problem is this…

There’s often a lack of clarity. Most prospects have no idea what you’re offering, or
what the purpose of the call is. This lack of clarity leads to confusion, decreasing
your chances of closing the sale (no matter how slick of a salesman you are).

Even worse, most businesses don’t have a pre-selling mechanism. You might be
able to get someone on the phone, but if they have no idea about what you’re
offering, and they aren’t even clear on what your business does, you’ll have your
work cut out for you.

When you’re starting out, most of you won’t have a pre-selling mechanism, since
it’s the path of least resistance. It’s not ideal, but as long as you have a structured
sales process (like the one I’m going to show you), you should be fine.

Once you sign a few clients, you’ll need to start thinking about adding in a
pre-selling mechanism like a value video, to qualify your prospects prior to the call
by ensuring they know what you’re offering before the call (so they’re already
warmed up).

To give you an idea of how to structure a sales process, here’s ours:

If the prospect is coming from organic:

1. LinkedIn message/cold email

2. 15-minute discovery call
3. 45-minute strategy call
4. Invoice + Onboarding document
5. Kick off call

If the prospect is coming from paid traffic:

1. Funnel
2. Calendar/survey
3. Strategy session
4. Invoice
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5. Kick off call

The only real difference here, is that if the prospect is coming to you organically,
there will be no survey, and the discovery call will act as the survey.

VOLUME & CONSISTENCY

The most difficult thing to do when starting out, is one of the most important
things - practice. They say sales is a numbers game because you’ll only close a
certain percentage of the people you call.

That’s true.

Beyond that though, it’s also a numbers game because as you call more people, you
become better. Part of becoming good at sales means getting in reps. Like working
out your bicep, the more curls you do, the stronger you become. Of course you’ll go
through a period of “muscle soreness”, but as you get more familiar with the phone,
you’ll naturally become more confident.

I once had a student of mine message me after a sales call.

He told me how the call went, and said he was feeling down, ready to give up. So I
asked how many calls he had done total. I was thinking that if he was ready to give
up, he must have done 100s of calls!

Nope.

It was his 3rd call.

You need volume before you become skilled. It’s really that simple.

At the risk of overusing the gym metaphor, working out feels uncomfortable at first,
but over time there’s less muscle soreness and more muscle memory. With sales
calls the more you do the more confident you become. Even without any sales
training, you’ll get better. Your voice will sound more fluid, your tonality will
improve as will your delivery because there’s less fear.

By increasing the amount of calls you do, objections won’t be as big of an issue
because you’ll have seen everything! You won’t be frozen by fear of rejection either.
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Part of this section was consistency.

What do I mean by that?

Consistency is as important as volume.

If you do 100 sales call in a week, then have a 3-week layoff, followed by another full
day of calls, you will never become proficient at sales. Most people don’t realize
this, but consistency is huge. It only takes a day or two to be rusty.

A few months back, I wasn’t onboarding new clients. I was focusing on some other
projects of mine, so I wasn’t really doing any sales calls. A month ago that all
changed. We started to onboard new clients.

I bombed badly. My first few calls were terrible.

The technique was there, but like a muscle, if you don’t use it, it’ll atrophy. It took
me a few reps to get back into the swing of things.

Right now, I try to schedule 5-7 strategy calls per day, as well as some cold calls,
just to stay fresh.

Now, I know...not everyone has a system in place to generate 5-7 calls each day, but
that’s where cold calling comes into play. And if, for some reason, you don’t want to
cold call, the easiest thing to do is to roleplay sales calls. It’s one of the single most
effective methods for improving your sales chops.

I got this from Grant Cardone. Every morning, he has his sales staff role play with
each other for 20-30 minutes. This enables his team to stay fresh, hone their skills
and shake off any rust they’ve accumulated.

The best way I’ve found to roleplay, is to find someone familiar with sales and take
turns where you and your peer interchange roles, alternating between salesman
and prospect (again, this is another reason why the Facebook group will be
invaluable to you).
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Hit each other with the most common objections you face, handle them
appropriately, then repeat. In a perfect world you should do this ​every ​morning for
30 minutes.

FEEDBACK LOOP: TESTING AND ADJUSTMENT

None of the other ingredients matter without feedback.

Without feedback, you’ll only be reinforcing poor habits. This is how most salesmen
approach sales; flying by the seat of their pants. They don’t track anything, and they
don’t make the right adjustments.

From day 1, you need to be recording your calls.

I promise, there’s a good reason for this.

We do this to create a feedback loop.

This allows you to test new things, listen to your calls and analyze what you did
well, what you did wrong, and adjust based on your findings & results.

The faster you can do sales calls and get feedback, the quicker you become a skilled
salesperson. This is why car salesmen take so long to get good at sales; they wait
around all day waiting for leads to come in, and they don’t record their calls, so
they’re unable to create this juicy feedback loop.

You can record calls using a phone recorder, but I typically recommend getting a
Skype number and an international plan. Next, grab ecamm recorder
(​https://www.ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder/​). It’s pretty cheap, and it’s only a
one time fee.

Record everything.

● Your discovery calls

● Your sales calls
● Your kick off calls (when you sign a client, and are in the process of
onboarding)

Everything.​
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I can hear it now.

“Ya ya Ryan, I’ll get to it.”

Stop reading right now, and go buy the program. I tell everyone to record their
calls, and most don’t, but I can’t overstate enough how important recording your
calls is and getting that feedback.

So start recording now!

Also, another pro-tip: have them transcribed.

Going through transcriptions is another way to look at your conversation on paper

and realize what an idiot you were on the call (or what a genius you were for
handling that objection so brilliantly).
Make sure you save your recordings on your computer, and follow a systemized
naming convention.

You can use whatever name you want for your calls, but I typically structure them
as such:

Name + Call Type + Date + Result

John Smith - Strategy Call - June 29th 2019 - Closed

I know naming your call recordings seems like a tiny detail, but everything I teach
stems from a foundation of proper organization and proper planning.

Everything I do is backed by data & analysis.

Another benefit of recording your calls and transcribing them, is that if you ever
plan on hiring sales staff, you’ll be able to easily train them. This is important
because one of the most difficult things to do is finding a good salesperson.
Everyone claims to be good - most aren’t.

Because of that, I typically recommend people hire & train their own sales staff.
Having your best ​and worst calls recorded, is a great way to train them your
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system, your script, and the best way to handle specific objections (this is where
the transcriptions come into play as well).

Now that I’ve summed up what I think makes a good salesperson (and what I’ll
cover in the following chapters), I should mention that there’s a lot of nuances here,
and you ​will​ get different answers from different people.

It’s tough to codify traits which make someone great at sales.

And I don’t want to claim that I have the magical sauce.

But I think if you nail everything I listed above, that you can turn yourself into a
rockstar at sales.

Onwards!

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER -- KEY NOTES

● Record your calls from day 1

● Volume is key -- you need to increase your volume before you get good
● The right mindset is crucial to your success as a salesperson
● Pre-selling mechanisms are a way to pre-sell your prospect before the call
● Sometimes, there’s a lack of coherency between you and the sales process,
so you need to get clear on your process

EXPLAINER VIDEO: ​http://www.ryanholmerconsulting.com/video2

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THE MINDSET OF A SALES ALCHEMIST

Knowing something is different than believing it.

When I was starting out, I theoretically knew how to be a sales shark, but I didn’t
believe it, which is why I was trembling in my space boots before every single sales
call.

That’s why I feel that any truly ​great ​book on sales must cover mindset. I’d go so far
as to say that sales is 90% mindset. So it stands to reason that any book, or program
which doesn’t cover mindset should be tossed in the fire, because having the right
mindset about sales, money and business in general is one of the best predictors of
future success as a salesman.

You can be the best “theoretical” salesperson and still be horrible in practice, as I
was when I was starting out.

When I was pricing this book, I actually said to myself that this chapter alone is
worth 10x the price of the book.

Today, I still stand by that.

The reason I emphasize mindset, is because mindset dictates your actions, and
your perception of everything. If you have the wrong mindset, the wrong beliefs,
rejection will completely throw you off your game. With the right beliefs, you’ll
brush it off and move on as if nothing happened. You’ll glean a lesson from the
rejection as opposed to taking it personally, as so many people do.

Having the right mindset is the difference between viewing rejection as a personal
attack, and viewing it as valuable feedback.

When I was younger, I was big into pickup. The “PUA” community, as it’s called. One
of the best things I hold with me from those years, was how important mindset is,
and how influential your mindset is on your external self - your voice/tonality, your
facial expressions, everything.
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Certain guys would be able to go out all night, approaching every single girl they
saw without fear of rejection. A girl would say no, they’d smile and go to the next,
the next and the next one.

At the end of the night, they’d go home with a girl.

Then, you had the other type of guys.

The ones who would never approach a girl because they were afraid of being
rejected. They never did end up getting rejected, but guess what? They never went
home with a beautiful woman either.

The difference here was that the guys who approached girls saw each “no” as
inching closer to a “yes” whereas the other guys saw it as being personally rejected;
so they didn’t bother putting themselves out there.

My point here is that having the wrong mindset can be absolutely crippling.

Let me illustrate the importance of mindset using a real world example I overheard
from my business partner.

He was working as a salesman a few years back at a company here in Canada that
sold solar panels. He worked with two people -- Jessica & Steven (names changed).
Both were equally versed in the fundamentals of selling, they both took the exact
same training.

Steven was a nice guy though, who didn’t like to push people and was very
empathetic towards his prospects situation. Jessica was nice too, but each and
every call she went in for the kill.

In her mind, she knew the people she was talking to needed what she was offering.

Unsurprisingly, Jessica had much better numbers than Steven, because she never
hesitated when closing. In this case, Steven felt way too “salesy” to close, whereas
Jessica didn’t care because she had the right underlying beliefs about what she was
doing.
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When it comes to your beliefs about selling, I think they’re a byproduct of this
promulgation of anti-salesman rhetoric that parents, the media & Hollywood love
to promote. We all know the stereotype of the greasy snake oil salesman who will
do ​anything​ to close the deal and rake in that juicy commission.

This makes people feel weird about selling.

“I don’t want to be THAT guy” they all say.

“What if I come across as too salesy?”

Unfortunately, what this does, is it prohibits a lot of people from building

businesses and reaching their income goals because of their preconceived beliefs
about sales.

Let’s take an even further step backwards though.

Why does selling feel so icky?

I think it’s because modern generations are socially awkward. You might disagree
with me, but hear me out.

If you think about sales in the way that I do (not the typical way most people think
about sales), it’s quite natural. Sales, when you boil it down to its frothy entrails, is
all about approaching someone with a problem, and asking if they want your
solution to that problem.

“Hi, sir. I see you have a broken leg. I have the solution, and guess what - it’s your
lucky day. Today, and today only, you can have it for just $1,000. How does that
sound to you?”

Hundreds of years ago, Children as young as 7 or 8 would be hustling strangers on

the street for money, selling whatever they could. A few weeks ago, I was on
vacation in Annapolis Royal, a small fishing community in rural Nova Scotia.

I heard the story of a 9-year old orphan who, during the 1800s, noticed a problem.
When sailors disembarked their boats, they would be weary from the long voyage,
and would have to cart their luggage to the inns.
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She saved up some money, and purchased a wheelbarrow and started cold
prospecting. She’d cart their luggage from the boats to the inns they were staying
at. Her business grew, and ended up being operated by 3 more generations of her
progeny (as an aside, some of her relatives still live in that town).

Even now, kids are selling goods all over the world. I onced lived in Costa Rica for
3-months. Not a day went by when I didn’t have a kid come up to me and, in broken
English, try to sell me handcrafted jewelry his mom made.

Make excuses if you will. But ask yourself -- why is this so prominent everywhere,
with the exception of the Western world?

It’s my belief that most people are raised in a way which insulates them. This is
evidently true in the West.

We’re taught from the time we’re born that we shouldn’t be rambunctious, we
shouldn’t ask a lot of questions, and we shouldn’t talk to strangers (although I
suppose this is a good one). This impacts the way we think about social situations.

I don’t want to go off on a sociological rant since I’m not a Sociologist, but I would
put forth that these lessons from childhood negatively impact the way we think
about sales-type situations which push us outside of our natural comfort zone.

But that’s enough on that.

What I really want to talk about are limiting beliefs when it comes to sales. Mental
roadblocks, if you will. Some people can overcome these and 10x their income,
whereas others can never overcome these hurdles and are destined for mediocrity.

Over the years I’ve noticed a common theme among all people who struggle with
sales. Most people invariably struggle with 1 (or more) of these 9 roadblocks, which
are causing crippling doubt on sales calls.

The most common limiting beliefs I’ve noticed are:

1. The fear of being “salesy”

2. Imposter syndrome
3. Self doubt
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4. The fear of charging high prices

5. Frame (when dealing with people who are perceived to be higher status)
6. Neediness
7. Fear of rejection
8. Talking too much
9. Self-assigned labels

Now, let’s dive into each one, and attempt to rewire yo’ brain!

THE FEAR OF BEING TOO SALESY

The fear of being too salesy stems from two areas - your beliefs about sales, and
how you’ve been taught to sell in the past.

Most people think about selling as force feeding prospects something they don’t
need. That’s exactly how most sales trainers teach selling too - “always be closing”
“mirror!” “NLP!” “Talk super fast.”

This is all wrong.

Here’s how I want you to think about sales:

Ask smart, diagnostic questions and then suggest a solution.

Think of a doctor, or a surgeon. They prescribe pills, treatment plans and cures. Do
doctors ever sound salesy? No, they don’t.

Doctors ask diagnostic questions, they care about the patient, then they prescribe a
solution based on the patients problem.

That’s all we’re doing.

You should never force a solution on a prospect who doesn’t:

A) Need it, or
B) Can’t afford it
 20

Through consultative selling, we approach every strategy call with a stethoscope,

trying to hone in on pain points - if there even is a pain point, and then we present
the solution we deem fit.
So stop thinking you’re a “salesman” and instead start considering yourself a
consultant, who has a solution to sell, provided the prospect is a good fit and
actually needs the solution.

I’d also like to mention something that my old boss told me, which I mentioned in
the introductory chapter. Here’s what he said to me:

“If you have the solution to someone’s problem, it’s your moral and ethical duty to
present it to them.”

This clicked instantaneously, and completely altered the way that I view sales. If all
we’re doing is helping people solve a painful problem, why bother worrying about
being salesy? These people need our help, so it’s our damn job to help them even if
they don’t think they need it right away!

IMPOSTER SYNDROME

This is the #1 mindset issue people deal with on a daily basis.

You likely have dealt with this yourself. Heck, I have to deal with it too.

There are two ways you can think about imposter syndrome.

The first is how most people think about it:

● I’m a fraud
● I’m not an expert

Imposter syndrome usually arises when people believe someone will find out
they’re not an expert, and that they shouldn’t be doing what they’re...well, doing.

This is common if you don’t have any clients.

Here’s the way I want you to think about imposter syndrome:

● This uncomfortable feeling is a sign that I’m growing

 21

● To become my ideal self, I must do things my ideal self would do

Because here’s the truth…

Imposter syndrome is a sign of growth. Think about your current habits, traits &
characteristics. Are you someone who regularly closes deals? Likely not. If so,
closing high ticket deals is going to feel weird.

That’s normal!

It’s a sign you’re growing as a person!

I call this “Identity Transmutation.”

It’s a process wherein you transmute the traits & characteristics of your ideal self,
to your current self.

Don’t wait 5-years to become your ideal self. Become ideal self right now.

SELF DOUBT

Self doubt is super normal if you’re new.

It’s normal to have doubt in your skills. You would be delusional if you didn’t.

You overcome this, typically, by doing a lot of strategy calls. There’s no hack to
overcome this roadblock. The more calls you get under your belt, the more
confident you’ll become.

If you’ve only done 10 calls, you’re going to doubt your ability to close deals, and get
the results you’re promising for your clients.

Over time, this will pass.

And if it doesn’t, partner up with someone with experience delivering the offer
you’re promoting.

THE FEAR OF CHARGING HIGH PRICES

 22

Nearly every beginner struggles with charging high prices on strategy calls.

There are a lot of reasons for this but it typically boils down to 1 of 3 issues:

1. You’ve never invested that much in yourself

2. No one else in your market charges that much
3. You don’t believe in your offer

Let’s dive into each:

1. You don’t invest that much in yourself

If you’ve never invested $10,000 in yourself, how could you possibly expect
someone else to invest $10,000 with you?
If you only ever buy cheap e-books, programs, you’ll only be cultivating a cheap
mindset. That’s why I always laugh at people who download programs illegally; it
doesn’t benefit them in the long run.

This is exactly why I recommend investing in yourself.

Start making large purchases, and you’ll have no problem charging high prices,
because it’ll more ​normal​ to you.

2. No one else in your market charges that much

I get this a lot.

“This other guy in my industry charges $1,500 - how could I possible charge $3,000
for the same service?!”

Listen, most people have no clue what they’re doing when it comes to price.

Here’s how they typically come up with their price:

They look at the competition, and say “hey, that seems right. Let’s go with that!”

Instead of charging based on value (which I recommend) most people charge based
on some hourly rate, an arbitrary margin, or some other concoction.
 23

Never look at what other people are doing when it comes to pricing, because they
have no clue what they’re doing.

Focus on your own business.

3. You don’t believe in your offer

This goes back to self-doubt, as I discussed earlier.

Once you get that first client under your belt, this starts to subside. You’ll get better
over time.

FRAME

A lot of my students complain about getting rolled over on sales calls by wealthy
business owners, and people who are perceived to be higher status.

The script that I’m going to give you in this book, and the system we use helps to
prevent this issue. We prevent this issue by taking the lead at the beginning of the
call, and keeping that dynamic going throughout the rest of the sales call.

Here’s what you need to realize: EXPERTISE IS RELATIVE.

It doesn’t matter how wealthy or “high value” these people are, they’re coming to
you because you are an expert at solving their specific problem.

You may not think you’re an expert at whatever you’re offering, but you’re more of
an expert than them - if that wasn’t true, they wouldn’t be on the phone with you.

NEEDINESS

This is a common issue, and one that I partially learned to deal with when I was
heavy into pickup.

People can sense desperation.

They can tell when you NEED to make a sale happen.

 24

Secondly, when you start diverting attention away from your prospect and their
problems, and focus only on you, your sales calls start to go downhill.

Sales isn’t about you, or the money you’re going to make if you close the prospect.
Sales is about accurately diagnosing a problem, and presenting the right solution.

Also -- neediness lowers your standards for which type of client you’ll work with.
You’re less likely to be picky, and more likely to sign crappy clients.

My business partner calls this being a sales prostitute.

The easiest way to overcome this is by not being outcome dependent. What this
means, is that you should not be expecting any specific outcome on the strategy
call.

You must remove your attachment to a “yes”, and instead focus on accurate
diagnosis.

The hardest people to train on sales are those who are desperate; those who have
no money in the bank account and must close the deal in order to be able to pay
rent.

Desperation is good for a few things, including motivating people to get off their ass
and get to work.

It’s not good for sales calls, because it makes you NEED a yes.

TALKING TOO MUCH

Sales isn’t about being a suave orator.

It’s about asking the right questions.

On any given call, you should be talking about 20% of the time. If you’re talking
more than your prospect, you’re doing something wrong.

Whenever you’re done asking a question, stop. Breathe. Let the prospect get the
chance to completely finish their thoughts without your interruption.
 25

A good way to get over this issue, is by following the script verbatim.

FEAR OF REJECTION

Rejection is part of the game.

Even Grant Cardone doesn’t have a 100% close rate.

Recall my story earlier on about picking up women? Rejection isn’t a bad thing.

Consider every “no” a learning experience.

The best way to get over a “no” is by asking yourself afterwards “What did I learn
from this? How can I improve going forward?”

My business partner and I call it the “No Game.”

We try to figure out how much a “no” is worth. If you close 10% of people for
$5,000, each now is worth about $500. How many calls would you do for $500
each?

The other thing you need to realize is that a rejection isn’t a personal affront to you.
They aren’t rejecting you, they’re saying now isn’t the right time to go through with
your offer.

That’s it.

There’s no need to overthink it and start creating stories in your mind about why
they rejected you, and whether or not they “hate” you.

SELF-ASSIGNING LABELS

This is my least favourite mental hurdle.

I hate when people attribute labels to themselves, as it’s very self-sabotaging.

People have this weird tendency to live up to their own distorted self-fulfilling
prophecies.
 26

The most common label people assign themselves is being introverted. Even I used
to call myself introverted. It my excuse for why I was bad at sales, and hated talking
to people.

The first way to overcome this, is to stop labeling yourself things which are
detrimental to your success.

You’re going to have to put in the work to overcome your own mind.

This goes back to what I mentioned earlier - Identity Transmutation. You need to
stop living in the body of your current self, and start living as your ideal self;
embodying those characteristics, traits & habits right now.

This mindset chapter was designed to help you start proactively thinking about the
way you approach situations, and the way you think about things. Even though you
may “understand” this chapter, there’s a big difference between understanding it
and believing it.

The only way you’ll be able to inculcate the right beliefs in yourself, is by going out
and taking action. Your mind needs this sort of stimulus in order to convince it to
change the way it perceives things.

No amount of reading will help you with that.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER -- KEY NOTES

● Mindset is arguably the most important aspect of sales

● Overcoming these 9 limiting beliefs is crucial to becoming a person
capable of closing high ticket deals
● You must transmute your identity to become who you want to be right
now, as opposed to in the future

EXPLAINER VIDEO: ​https://ryanholmerconsulting.com/video3

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THE SYSTEM

A salesman is only as good as his sales process, and his pre-selling mechanism. You
could be the best salesman in the world, but if there’s a serious disconnect between
the lead generation process, the sales call and what you’re offering, you won’t be
able to close the deal.

You want to get crystal clear on:

● What you’re offering/what problem you’re solving

● Your sales process

1. What you’re offering

One of the biggest mistakes I see is that people don’t really know what they’re
offering. They have an idea in their head, but when it comes time for saying what
they do, they fumble. There’s a gap between what they want to offer, and what they
actually have the balls to offer.

Make sure you know how to recite your offer by heart. Think of this like an elevator
pitch. I’ll go into more detail about this later, but keep this in mind for now.

2. Sales process

This is where 99.9% of people will screw up.

Here’s something I learned many years ago that I hold with me to this day - your
goal on a sales call isn’t to sell the prospect on your services, it’s to sell them on the
next step. Now, that next step may be the solution (your services), but it could also
be the next call. You ​must know the objection of the call, and you must have your
sales process nailed.

At the end of the day, every call is a conversation. But it’s good to know what the
objective of each call is, and have a sales process which is designed for conversion -
which is exactly what I’m about to give you.
 28

I use a two-call system.

1. The Discovery Call

2. The Strategy (or Consultation) Call

Each call serves a different purpose.

THE DISCOVERY CALL

The discovery call is a ​quick​ 15-minute chat.

You won’t always use this call.

If you’re using LinkedIn, cold-emails, or any form of cold outreach to book calls,
you will be using the discovery call because it’s an important step.

If you’re using a pre-selling mechanism such as a value video, or a paid-traffic

funnel, you won’t have to use a discovery call, and you can typically skip right to the
strategy call since your prospects are already qualified (they’ve been through your
system, and have booked a call by filling out a survey).

The discovery call serves a very important purpose.

1. It helps you qualify the prospect.

2. It helps you determine whether or not the prospect is a weirdo
3. It reduces your neediness, and
4. It’s another valuable touch point

1. Qualification

In most cases you won’t send someone from a cold outreach message to a calendar,
since you want to reduce friction between them and booking a call. Because of that,
you’ll need to qualify the prospect on the call.

You won’t ask super in-depth questions, but it gets the conversation started. At the
back of this book, I’ve put the discovery call script, so you can go dive into that after
reading.
 29

2. Is he/she a weirdo?

I’ve never heard anyone else mention this reason for a discovery call, but after
talking to some weirdos, it’s one of the most important reasons.

Personally, I don’t want to work with weirdos. People who seem sketchy, not
grounded, and people I know will be terrible clients.

I use this call to chat with people, and see if I’d want to work with them.

3. Reduces your neediness

Salesmen love to jump to the sale as fast as possible. People don’t like to be sold.
They like to know that the person they’re talking to actually cares about them.
There’s no need to rush the sale. Focus on building a relationship with the prospect.

4. Touch points

I’m about to reach back to my PUA days again, but it’s an apt metaphor.

There’s a concept in pickup called the “venue change.”

If you’re on a date with a girl, you start one place, move to another, and keep
switching venues so that at the end of the night, the girl feels like she knows you
super well.

Sales is similar.

All of these additional touch points are huge in building rapport between you and
the prospect. I like to focus on building a relationship with prospects, as opposed
to seeing them as a dollar sign.

THE STRATEGY CALL

The strategy call is a ​long conversation which typically spans 45-minutes. That’s it. I
don’t want you to think of this as a “sales call” because that’s not really the objective
of the call. Sure, your goal at the end of the day is to close the client and start
working with them.
 30

But…

I want you to think of this call as a conversation, so that you’re not dependent on
outcome. In other orders, you aren’t reliant on the outcome so you don’t come
across as desperate.

Not being dependent on outcome enables you to be both more free, but also less
nervous as your mood isn’t tied to a specific outcome on the call that you’re hoping
to achieve.

Think of it like this:

“I don’t need to close this deal. My goal on this call is to accurately diagnose this
person’s problem, whether that means they need my help, or they don’t.”

The strategy call contains many components.

They are (in order):

● Rapport building
● Framing the call
● Why they’re here
● Understanding their current situation & diagnosis: agitating their pain &
researching their business
● Determining their desired situation
● Roadblocks
● Is their urgency, and commitment?
● Position your offer
● Close
● Objections (separate chapter)

As we go through each of these components, you’ll discover more about what the
purpose of this call is, and why we structure it the way we do. The genius of this
call structure is that it doesn’t come off as salesy.

I’ve had people thank me after the call and nearly cry!

This call is almost too powerful.

 31

1. Rapport

How do you take someone who has never heard of you, and convince them to
know, like and trust you?

You build rapport.

People judge others quickly. It’s important to start the strategy call off on the right
foot. Unfortunately, this is where so many people fumble.

If you have normal social skills, this section is fairly basic; small talk is something
people do often, and this isn’t any different.

“Hey Tom, how’s it going?”

“Awesome, where are you calling from?”

“Louisiana? I have an uncle who lives there!”

I’m not going to harp on this part. You can play around with it, and see what works
best.

2. Framing

Earlier in the book I spoke about leading the sales call.

Framing is how you do that, and it happens very early on in the call (right after
small talk). If you’re a beginner, this will seem hard. I remember by first few months
in sales, it felt odd.

I was a young student with limited sales experience and I was trying to close high
net worth people. There was a serious disconnect between what I was doing and
what I was comfortable with. I didn’t know how to lead sales calls.

That was until I realized I was overcomplicating things.

You see…
 32

Leading a sales call is no different than leading a dog. You train the dog, early on,
that you’re the Alpha.

Dog’s have a natural tendency to fight back, to lead, but if you train them from a
young age, they’ll ignore these natural tendencies and respect you.

The easiest way to lead the sales call, is to position yourself as the one in command
of the call. You are setting the direction, dictating the rules and flow of the
conversation.

Here’s how to do it..

“Here’s how these calls typically go John. I’ll start off by asking you a few questions
about your business, and we’ll go over some of the survey questions you filled out
there. From there, if it makes sense, I’ll tell you what I do, and you can decide
whether or not you want to be apart of it. Sound good?”

From there, the prospect is being led by you.

Occasionally (often when you’re starting out), your prospect will stray of course, so
it’s your duty to keep them on the right path, and within the bounds of the calls
objective.

I had a call last week where the prospect told me how much loved European
women. As someone dating a European girl, I could have spoken to him for hours
about Eastern European women. But, that’s beyond the scope of the call.

You can listen to your prospects rant (and you should), but make sure you bring
them back to reality when they’re done speaking.

“That’s awesome John. But let me ask you. What are currently doing to get clients?”

Acknowledge their rant, but bring them back.

Anyways…

3. Why they’re here

 33

After some small talk, and after you’ve framed the call, it’s time to find out exactly
why they’re on the call with you. You might already know why they’re talking to
you, because they responded to your advertisement, your outreach message or
whatever it was - but you need to get them to verbalize it.

When I was first getting involved with sales, I used to explain why I thought people
were on the call.

“So you’re calling today because you’re having lead generation problems, right?”

This never worked, because all I was really doing was putting words into their
mouth. Having them internally realize something is far more valuable.

Instead, ask them:

“So John, what made you take the time out of your day to book a call with me?”

Ideally, we want them to give us the goods and say flat out they need lead gen
problems, but we might have to probe a bit further.

I want to go back to having them internally realize the value of something though. A
lot of people have a tendency to force how valuable their solution is down their
prospects throat.

But let me ask you…

What’s more valuable - telling someone something is valuable, or having them

realize the value of what you’re offering on their own? Obviously, the latter. It’s a
psychological principle which has been proven time and time again.

People like to “discover” things.

They don’t like to be “taught.”

That’s one of the reasons copywriters like to use the word discover vs. learn.

“Discover the ten steps to build your own home” always performs better than
“Learn the ten steps…”
 34

You need to apply this to sales as well.

4. Current situation & diagnosis: research & pain agitation

Contrary to most sales trainers, our goal isn’t really to sell on strategy calls. That’s
why we call them strategy calls. We consult. The way we “sell”, is by using
something called “the gap.” The gap is simply the distance between where your
prospect is now, and where they want to be.

The red square is their current situation. The green square is their desired
situation. The distance between is the gap.

You can think of your offer as the bridge between the gap.

The bridge is designed to take your prospect from where they are now - an agitated
state, to where they want to be - a state of bliss, or heaven.

Since our goal is to bridge the gap, we need to find out where they are right now.

We do this by asking diagnostic questions to find out what their current situation
looks like. Now, this is going to be different depending on what you’re offering; if
you’re offering lead gen services maybe you’ll ask about revenue, if you’re selling
weight loss, you’ll ask about the current situation of their health. You get the idea.

The other reason we start by getting detailed on their current situation, is so that
we can pain an accurate picture of your prospects current pain.

When someone comes into contact with your offer, whether via paid traffic,
organic messaging or some other means, if you’ve done your job right they should
become agitated.
They start looking for solutions.

Their mind is full of painful emotions and jungled thoughts.

 35

It’s our job on the strategy call to help them escape this pain and confusion, and
point them towards a state of confidence, certainty, clarity and decisiveness.

The process is fairly simple.

But that’s why we get a snapshot of where they are now, and where they want to
be, so that we can stretch the distance between those points. By showing them how
far away they are from achieving their desired situation, the value of our solution
naturally increases.

One more thing: you might feel weird ask revenue questions, but in B2B situations
it’s actually quite normal.

You might feel like ignoring the revenue question, but you do need to ask it; in fact
you can’t move on without getting a figure.

After finding out where they are, it’s time to start digging up some more
information, and start agitating the prospects pain.

You want real-world quantifiable numbers here.

What you’re really after is more information about their current situation.

As most of you reading are likely doing lead-gen, I’m going to give you some
suggestions for digging into your prospects business.

1. “Who is your ideal client?” “What’s their biggest problem?”

2. “What’s your offer?” “How do you price your offer?”
3. “What does your sales process look like?”
4. “How do you currently get leads?”

Part of diagnosing is eliciting pain through agitation. Most people you’ll talk to want
to avoid talking about the problem; they’ll do this until their problem is so painful
that they’re forced to take some form of action.

That is one of our main goals on the strategy call. We want to accelerate this
process.
 36

Imagine you’re in debt. You have no money. You have a family to provide for.

We get on a sales call, and I ask you…

“Are you financially able to provide for your family in case of an emergency?”

You’d answer “no.”

This won’t feel good. You’re going to feel pain, anxiety, stress.

Your goal is to make your prospect feel this pain, without solving it for them.
Solving their problems on the call is like scratching someone’s itch, when we want
to sell the cure for this itch.

It doesn’t make any sense.

Now, I’m including a full script at the back, but I’m going to give you some ideas of
what to say here.

1. “How are you currently getting clients?”

2. “What’s your cost per acquisition?”
3. “Do you have a reliable way of generating leads?”
4. “Are you comfortable relying on this method of running your business?”

We want the goods.

We want them to sit, think and do mental calculations before giving us a real
substantial answer. Getting people to think about their problems, and how much its
costing them to do something helps them realize that it might not be the best way
to do business.

These questions should feel uncomfortable for you to ask. But part of being good at
sales is being OK with asking the “hard” questions.

5. Desired situation (a state of bliss)

Next up figuring out where they are.

 37

If you recall this graphic from earlier, the red box is their current situation (which
we already know), now you need to find out what’s in the green box (their desired
situation, their situation of bliss and where they want to be).

This is where a lot of people trip up.

They don’t get a real figure, but as before, we ​need a

​ real number here. You don’t
want them to just say “I want to grow my business.” What you need is for them to
say something along the lines of “Well, ideally in 12-months we’re doing
$80,000/month, so 2x what we’re doing right now.”

Boom. If they give you something like that, you can create a quantifiable bridge
between where they are, and where they want to be.

Why is this important?

Remember. People aren’t buying you, nor are they buying your service. They aren’t
even really buying a solution to a problem. In a sense, all they’re buying a
transformation - a result, if you will.

In order to accurately diagnose their problems, and figure out if you can even help
them, it’s important that you know where they want to be.

How can you help someone if you don’t know what they want?

You can’t.

That’s why I frown upon so many salespeople.

They push their services, their offerings, and products on people, without really
even knowing what their prospects desired transformation is. Without knowing
what their desired transformation is, you’ll have no idea whether or not your
service can help them!
 38

You must ask poignant questions which gets the person on the other line to tell you
where they want to be. What their aspirations are. Their revenue goes, and why
that is important to them.

This is a problem a lot of people have.

They ask a good question like “How much revenue do you want to make in
12-months time?”

Then, when the person answers, they don’t even follow up asking why that number
is important. So be sure to ask follow up questions. Anything which furthers your
research is a good idea.

Note: if you aren’t selling a service which is related to money, your questions will be
different. I.E If you’re helping people with weight loss, you won’t ask how much
revenue they want.

You’ll maybe ask what their target weight is, or how much they want to bench
press, or any other goals they want to achieve. I’m only using money as a point of
illustration, and since most of my audience will relate to it.

It’s also a good idea that you get them to verbally state what their goal is, and if
you’re selling something related to money, you should get an exact figure. Not a
range. Get an exact number.

P.S Your prospect might have a tendency to aim low. For example, if they’re making
$10,000/month now, they may only say they want to get to $15,000. Part of our job
is to help them aim higher so that we’re able to stretch the distance between their
current and desired situation.

6. Roadblocks

Now that you know where they are, and where they want to be, you need to find
out what is that one thing stopping them from getting there. What causes them to
lay awake all night, looking up at the ceiling, causing deep anxiety?

We’re looking for a few things here.

 39

1. They don’t know how to achieve their desired transformation themselves

2. They want to achieve their goal faster
3. They want a turnkey system (most people don’t want to be coached, they
want someone to do it for them)

If they say one of these three things, they probably aren’t going to buy from you.

If they don’t fit one of these three, they probably aren’t going to buy from you.

7. Is their urgency, and commitment?

We now know a lot about their business, and their problem. But now we want to
know:

● If there’s committed
● If there’s urgency

To do this, we ask more probing and straightforward questions. It’ll feel weird to
ask these questions, but you need to ask them.

The first thing I always ask is why they want to make a change. I want to know if
they have a real, deep reason for wanting to change, then I try to find out when
they want to make this change (to gauge for urgency).

“Alright. So, John. Based on what you told us on this call, you’re making
$5,000/month and you want to be at $25,000/month. Why not just stay where
you’re at?”

Then, I follow up by asking them if there is a sense of urgency.

“Sounds good, John. And when are you wanting to hit your goals? How quickly do
you want this problem solved?”

Sometimes they’ll give you the goods, others they’ll be cagey because they don’t
want to give up too much.

“Yeah, you know. It’s not super urgent.”

 40

In that case, you’ll need to emphasize the pain that comes with their current
situation.

“I get that John. But let me ask you -- is this issue affecting any other areas of your
life?” You and the prospect both know it’s painful. You just need him to get to admit
that it’s urgent.

Lastly, you need to get commitment.

“How committed are you to solving this problem?”

Most of the time, to be honest, you won’t get a straight answer. You’ll have people
saying nothing is urgent, or they’ll be non-committal. It’s important that you keep
digging, and keep agitating their pain.

At the end of the day you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, but if
they’re in the call with you it means they’re at least somewhat interested in what
you’re offering, and they likely have a problem which you can solve.

8. Position your offer

It’s finally time to explain what you do, and to position your offer as the bridge
between the chasm (where they are, and where they want to be). I feel like a broken
record at this point, but I can’t emphasize enough how powerful this concept is.

Anyways…

At this point, they’ve spilled their guts to you. They’ve told you their life story, you
know their desires, fears, needs, wants and pain points. You also know how
committed they are to changing their current situation..

Now, we want to tell them what we do, in case they don’t already know.

“Based on what you’ve told me John, it sounds like you’d be a good fit for what I do.
Would you like me to explain how I can help?”

When the client says some variation of yes, tell them what you do. This part will
vary based on what you do. Here’s a good template to follow:
 41

“Well, I help <your niche> who are <exactly where they’re at> get <the exact result
they want>.”

“Well, my company helps Financial Planners grow their business from

$5,000/month to $50,000/month in less than 90 days.”

When you finally do get to the point of stating your offer, it should click. They
should be thinking “This is awesome. It’s a perfect fit, and exactly what I’m looking
for!”

Naturally, their next question is usually some variant of:

“Ok, so how can you help?”

Or…

“How do you do it?”

Now, this is another area of concern for most. They explain their offer way too
in-depth.

“So what I do, is we help Financial Advisors get more clients by using a sales funnel.
We build a Facebook page, a ClickFunnels page, an email follow up system and
connect it to your CRM….”

That’s way too much.

My advice is to give as little as possible, and let them ask any questions they have.
There is a risk with divulging too much; conversely, however, there is no risk with
giving as little as possible.

Your prospect will ask what they need to know.

So, instead of giving an entire spiel on your offer, give them the basics.

“I help Financial Planners grow their business to $50,000/month through online

marketing.” Your prospect will ask you what they need/want to know. Don’t give
them extra information, without them asking, because you'll risk revealing too
much.
 42

Why bother telling them you need to use a specific software, or service, when they
may not even care?

My advice -- say your offer, then shut up. The next thing they’ll ask you is how
much it costs.

9. The close

This is the moment you’ve been waiting for.

You’ve taken your prospect through a journey. They’ve told you everything about
them and their business, you’ve led them the entire way. You’ve positioned yourself
as the best chance of success they’ve got.

Now it’s time to tell them what you charge.

There are two ways to do this:

● Regular close
● Incentive based close

REGULAR CLOSE

“Sure. So the everyday price for this system, is $3,000/month plus ad spend. Are
you comfortable with that, John?”

I used to avoid asking a question at the end of the close.

Recently, however, I’ve been asking a question at the end of the close, and it’s been
working well. It enables us to keep control of the conversation, and keep leading
even during a potentially difficult part.

I’m going to save explaining the objections for the next section.

INCENTIVE BASED CLOSE

Using this method, we give an incentive for signing with us on the call. I didn’t
invent this method, but after using it for 3+ years, it’s what I recommend you use.
 43

“Well, John, the everyday price for this system is a $10,000 setup fee in addition to
$3,000/month for us to manage it, plus ad spend. But, we’ve generally found that
those who make quick decisions turn out to be the best clients, and we do great
work together. For that reason, if you make a decision today on this call, I’ll cut the
setup fee in half, so your initial investment is only $5,000. Are you comfortable with
that, John?”

Then, shut up.

Wait for the prospects response.

You’ll get one of a dozen possible objections, or you’ll get the Golden Goose “Let’s
do it. What’s the next step?”

In that case, continue with your onboarding process. And if you don’t have one,
here’s ours (note that step 2 is ensuring we reduce buyers remorse).

1. “Great John. I’m going to send you over an agreement & an invoice right now.
Once the invoice is paid, we’ll book a kick off call where we can dive into your
business a bit more, figure out who your ideal customer is, and get started on
building out the system. Sound good?”
2. “Awesome. Now, is there any reason you won’t be able to get to that invoice
today John?”
3. “Perfect. Congratulations. We’re looking forward to working with you.”

What we’re really looking for is a yes, or a no.

We don’t want to be thinking about the result of this call for any amount of time
after the call, so we don’t want “maybe.”

Now, it’s time for the fun part -- objections.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER -- KEY NOTES

● You need to be asked the price. If they don’t ask the price, they aren’t
ready to buy.
● People aren’t buying a service, or you - they’re buying a brighter future, or
some desired transformation.
 44

● The sale doesn’t start until you get the first no.
● You need objections. If a prospect doesn’t have any objections, you should
be worried because the call can only go down from there.

EXPLAINER VIDEO -- ​https://ryanholmerconsulting.com/video4

 45

COMMUNICATION

One of the good (or bad depending on how you look at it) things about closing deals
on the phone, is that the other person doesn’t get the chance to see how bad you
dress, or that you haven’t trimmed your beard in 300 years.

Because of that, the “verbal” elements of a conversation are amplified. People will
judge you in under 5 seconds. Now a poor start won’t ruin your sales call - it
requires a series of mistakes to screw up a call - it will handicap you. Because of
that, it’s probably a good idea that you nail the beginning of the call.

I remember the first sales call I ever made.

I was 17-18 years old, and I was working for a Financial Planner here in Canada. He
tasked me with calling high-net-worth neighbourhoods to pitch them on a new
service he was offering. He sat me down, didn’t give me a script, and told me to
start calling.

This was a cold call, by the way. In this book I focus more on sales calls, which as
you know is different, but the point remains the same.

I was petrified.

I picked up the phone, dialed a number and prayed the person on the other end
didn’t pick up. When they did, I mumbled “H-h-ello there, this is Ryan calling” in the
most uninterested, nervous voice you could imagine.

The call went terribly.

Over time, I started to have conversations with people, despite botching the
introduction. People still wouldn’t buy from me. Eventually I realized people could
sense my nervousness, and were just being polite.

This sense of nervousness partially stems from lack of belief in your product or
service, but also over fear of rejection. Having these fears, however, manifest in
your behaviour, and your voice.
 46

People can sense your nervousness. This isn’t easy to overcome in the beginning,
but I have found a little hack (and I hate that word) to overcome this fear of
rejection leading to your voice suffering.

Enthusiasm.

My old boss told me an excited advisor can outsell the most knowledgeable advisor
in the industry - and it’s true. I regularly met with advisors who were exceptionally
knowledgeable, and knew everything about the market, however, their books of
business were small. Conversely, I’d meet new advisors outselling these old dogs,
because they were enthusiastic and excited.

Prospects can tell when you’re excited about something.

Now, you don’t want to be so excited that your voice & excitement is 10 levels
above that of your prospect but you do want to be a level or so above them, as you
lead them through the conversation. Tony Robbins says to build rapport, you
should mirror - however, I prefer the Jordan Belfort method of being one level
about your prospect.

Being excited about your product, service, or helping the client will go along way.
Who do you think someone wants to buy from - a guy who is THRILLED to be
talking to them, or someone who sounds like he could care less?

A little trick for sounding excited, enthused or at least happy is an old Investment
Banking trick I learned from my friends in the industry many years ago.

“Smile & dial” is a saying in the industry, which means that no matter how bad the
calls are going, keep on smiling. The reason for this, is that it’s been scientifically
proven that people can tell when you’re smiling. This all goes back to being
enthusiastic about being on the phone with someone.

Try it right now.

Put your shoulders back, puff your chest out, and smile.

This “energy” you feel right now will transfer to the person on the other end of the
call. Having the right energy is a good way to show the other person that you are
someone worth listening to.
 47

Beyond ​enthusiasm​, ​excitement and ​energy​, you also need to focus on your
tonality. I’ve mentioned this a bit, and while I’m no vocal expert, I think it’s
worthwhile to cover.

Here’s what has worked for me:

● Sit up straight on sales calls (or stand)

● Rehearse the script dozens of times, and record yourself (be viciously
ruthless in your criticism of yourself)
● Drink water before a call
● Prior to every call, I yell at the top of my lungs, yelling “wooooo.” This clears
my airways, makes blood rush to your head and awakens you
● Join a Toastmasters group (and actually go). You need to learn vocal
resonance, and you need to be able to have confidence in speaking to a
large group of people
● Wearing a suit to feel good internally which manifests externally

No amount of tips will give you the results you’re looking for. In order to properly
communicate, and gain the confidence of someone else, you must have the belief
that you’re someone who should be listened to.

I’ve attached a little training video which you can find in the resource section about
vocal tonality, since it’s easier to explain through video.

In addition to ​enthusiasm​, ​excitement​, ​energy ​and ​tonality​, part of any effective

communication is asking the right questions.

One of my favourite sales books is called: ​How I Raised Myself From Failure to
Success In Selling b
​ y Frank Bettger.

His favourite question to ask, which gets people to open up is to ask: “How did you
ever happen to get started in the construction business?” Frank says he prefers to
ask “How” questions vs. “What” questions, because it gets the prospect into a state
of deep-thinking.

When you ask someone “what” you’re pointing them towards a specific thing. When
you ask them “how”, you’re asking them a more vague question, which usually leads
to them opening up and spilling the beans!
 48

Asking the right questions (AND LISTENING) is key to any communication.

Let me give you an example..

Last week, a prospect told me he was making $10,000/month. Most people would
stop here, and move on to the next question.

Instead, what I did (and what you should do) is probe further.

“I get that John. But let me ask you -- why is that number important to you. Why do
you want to hit $10,000/month?”

“Well, it means I would hire more staff.”

“Yeah I understand. Why is more staff a goal of yours? How would that improve
either your business, or your life?”

“Well, I’d be able to spend more time at home with the wife.”

The idea is to keep proving. But, in order to prove, you must not only ask the right
questions, you must also listen. It’s not enough to hear your prospect, you must
listen to them.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER -- KEY NOTES

● Wear a suit. How you sound externally is based on how you feel internally.
The better you feel, the better you sound/act.
● Sit up straight
● Listen!
● Smile
● Yell at the top of your lungs
● Practice the script, nail it, memorize it
● Be enthusiastic!
● No amount of reading will improve your communication; so focus on
asking the right questions, and practicing your speaking as much as you
can through toastmasters, or some other method (mock calls, etc)...

EXPLAINER VIDEO --​ ​https://ryanholmerconsulting.com/video5

 49

OBJECTION HANDLING

Some people say the sale doesn’t begin until you hear your first no.

When I first started selling, I would look all over the internet for different methods
of handling 1,000 different objections.

I felt so good about myself.

“Ha ha! Now, I can conquer sales, and become a master salesman, because I know
how to handle any objection!”

I would get an objection on the phone, refer to my master sheet of objections and
spew off each word verbatim. I started closing deals left, right and centre, made
millions of dollars and bought myself a yacht.

Ok, none of that is true.

What is true is that I continued to suck.

I would regurgitate these lines, and they’d get thrown right in my face.

“What am I doing wrong?” I continually thought to myself. I have these amazing

methods of handling objections, given to me by who I thought were sales legends,
but nothing seemed to work.

Did I look internally for what was wrong, and try to introspectively solve my
problem? Nope, of course not. I searched the Internet for more methods of
handling objections, jumping from one sales program, to another one. I started
consuming all of Grant Cardone’s free videos.

You know the story.

Nothing else worked for me.

None of my bosses - all of whom were good sales people -- gave me objection
handling scripts. That idea was a concoction of my own.
 50

I shouldn’t give you methods to handle different objections, but against my better
judgement that’s exactly what I’m going to do. But, I’m also going to go in-depth
into what an objection really is, and why having “scripts” to handle them isn’t the
best thing.

The first thing I want to ask yourself, is what an objection is?

Think back to a time when a salesman approached you to buy something. Most of
the time, you had no interest in buying what they offered. But I guarantee there
was a time or two where you interested.

Did you whip out your wallet, open it up, and give him your left kidney? No,
because that isn’t your initial reaction, no matter how much you want what the
salesman is selling.

People do not like to be sold.

People do not want you to get that commission cheque.

Most objections are just a smokescreen, or some sort of automated

self-preservation system which gets enabled whenever you try to sell someone
something.

It’s as if the body says…

“You do not want to buy this service, because it’s uncomfortable. It’s new. You’ve
never done this before. Reject. Reject. Reject. Insert bullshit.”

Most objections are automatic, and not well thought-out. To be honest, I don’t even
want you to think of them as objections, but rather potholes you need to navigate
around.

Anywho…

Let’s dive into how to handle some of the most common sales objections, and why
the arise. If you have any questions about objections that I don’t cover here, go to
the end of the book and join the secret Facebook group where you can ask me
 51

questions (the price you paid for this book includes access to that secret group,
where I give free training, etc…)

Before I do that though, I want to give you a good framework for handling any
objections without a script:

1. Agree
2. Clarify
3. Suggest

What do I mean my this?

Well, most of the objections below are using this framework. The reason I want to
give you this framework, is because you shouldn’t need a script for each objection
(even though I am giving you a few).

1. Agreement

The first step when someone hits you with an objection is to agree.

Let’s say the prospect wants you to send him more information.

What most people do is they challenge the prospect. “You don’t need more
information, John. Let’s just do it.”

I think you should always be agreeing with the prospect. That doesn’t mean they’re
right, but the worst thing you can do is challenge them.

“Yeah, I get it John.”

“Yeah, I completely understand John.”

All we’re doing here is basically saying that we understand where they’re coming
from, and most importantly that we actually listened to what they had to say.

2. Clarify

This part is just re-stating what they said.

Using the example above:

 52

Agree: “Yeah, I get it John.”

Clarify: “You want more information, so you can look everything offer and make a
decision.”

We don’t stop after clarifying, we keep speaking, but this shows again that we heard
them.

3. Suggest/Re-Frame

Agree: “Yeah, I get it John.”

Clarify: “You want more information, so you can look everything offer and make a
decision.”
Suggest: “Usually when I send people information though, I never hear back from
them. Sometimes, people just want to be nice and don’t like saying no. Is that the
case here, or is it a price, or cash flow issue?”

Using sleight of hand, we’re acknowledging their complaint, then suggesting a

solution to this complaint without really doing what they asked.

This is the basis for how you should handle any objection.

Anyways, let’s go into 5 examples.

OBJECTIONS

1. Send me some testimonials, and I’ll get back to you

The ironic thing about this testimonial, is that the more testimonials you get, the
less you’ll be asked this question.

The first thing you have to realize is this: your prospect doesn’t give two shits about
testimonials. I have data to back up the fact that if you send testimonials, your
chance of closing a deal decreases drastically.

Needless to say, you shouldn’t be saying “Sure, John. Let me send you some
testimonials.”

During my first sales call, I was asked for testimonials.

 53

I was nervous, and said exactly that. I had zero testimonials, but I asked a friend for
his (I know, it was a bit shady). The testimonials were excellent.

I ​never​ heard from the prospect again.

Instead of adjusting course, I did the same thing for the next 10 calls. Invariably,
every prospect ghosted me, never to be heard from again, despite my best, most
desperate​ follow up attempts.

There are a few reasons you may get this objection.

Yes, one of them is trust. But in my experience, it’s beyond that. What is usually
comes down to, if you’ve done a good job on the call so far, is price or value. Price
or value are the two biggest factors on a sales call.

They either:

● Think what you’re offering is too expensive, or

● They don’t think it’ll deliver a high enough ROI

The common response to this objection is to send testimonials, and hope

everything will be rainbows and unicorns.

That’s not how it works.

In any case, you may get this testimonial sporadically.

Here’s how I recommend handling it.

Prospect: “Please send me some testimonials, and I’ll get back to you.”

You: “Yeah, I understand you wanting a testimonial John. But typically whenever I
send someone a testimonial, I never heard back from them. I can send you the best
testimonials in the world, but I don’t think that will change your mind. So what’s the
real issue here, John? Is it a price issue? Or is it a value issue, or cash-flow issue?
You can tell me.”

What we’re doing here is agreeing with them (because it’s important not to
challenge the prospect), clarifying our statement by saying most people ghost
 54

(which is true), and then we re-direct & suggest by cutting through their
smokescreen, and getting to the route of the real issue, which we know isn’t the
testimonials.

Again, sometimes it could very well be a trust issue.

If you sound nervous, and aren’t confident, they could be sensing that. But if you’ve
done a good job, and you still get this, it could very well be an automated
self-preservation technique.

2. Can you show me some examples?

This is a common objection if you’re doing any sort of lead generation system, or
paid-marketing. Even to this day, I occasionally get this objection - where people
want to see examples of our clients funnels.

Whether you have examples, or not, my way to handle this is typically the exact
same. Last week, we had a prospect ask us this exact question. As I was writing this,
I went back to check the recording to make sure I write down verbatim what I
usually say.

By the way, the prospect ended up signing with us, paying us a juicy $7,500 setup
fee.

“Great, Bill. So you want to see an example of a client system we’ve built? Because I
can assure you, everything we do for you is boutique and custom. When we’re
done, we’ll send you a rough draft which you can approve, or recommend
adjustments. Everything we do, will be cohesive with your brand, so we do run
everything by you first.”

He agreed, and never mentioned seeing an example again.

Now, I should note - you don’t want to lie to people and say you have clients when
you don’t. That is unethical. However, showing an example of a system doesn’t do
anything for your prospect. It doesn’t show them results it’s simply a visual.

It’s not even an objection, but I threw it in here because I do get asked about how to
respond to this question often.
 55

3. It’s too expensive

You will get some variation of this on most of your sales calls when starting out,
even when dealing with highly qualified prospects who have the money to afford
whatever you’re offering.

Now, before I get into what you should do, let me tell you what you shouldn’t do.

“Well, it’s a valuable offer. It’ll solve your problems. Just do it anyways.”

Remember what I said earlier?

People are more likely to buy from you if they discover how valuable your service is
themselves, as opposed to you telling them how valuable it is. People love to
discover, they hate to learn.

Needless to say, you don’t want to explain how valuable what you’re offering is.

Here’s what you should do.

Have them widen the gap between their current situation of agitation, and their
desired situation of heaven.

You: “I totally get that John. I know cash flow can be a problem sometimes. But let
me just get clear on something. You’re currently at <current revenue/situation>
and you want to get to <desired revenue/situation>, is that correct?”

Prospect: “Yes”

You: “Great. So you’re letting <price> get in the way of <additionally revenue>?”
I.E “Great, so you’re letting 60,000 get in the way of an additional $300K per-year?”

Prospect: “I get it man, it’s just too much right now.”

You: “I understand, John. So what would make you comfortable? What can I do
right now, to make you willing to do business with me today?”

They’ll either flat up tell you, or they’ll find more excuses and shift to another
objection.
 56

But what you’re doing here, at first, is asking them to mentally widen the gap
between where they are and where they want to be, and discover, in their own
mind, that the potential ROI is massive, and the price is almost a non-issue.

That being said, if you did a poor job throughout the call, if you failed to state your
offer in a concise way which demonstrated value, the prospect won’t feel like
there’s enough ROI to justify your high price, and the call could be lost.

You’ll get some more variations of the price objection. Here are some more
common price objections you’ll get and how I’d handle them…

Prospect: “Well, I don’t have the money now. But once I make some more, and sign
some more clients, I’ll work with you in the future” (the seldom do).

You: “Fair enough John. But let me ask you. How would that work? When do you
think you’ll be comfortable enough to move forward?”

Prospect: “Well, my birthday is in March, so if I’m not ready by then, I would be

upset with myself.” (This is a real statement I got to these exact questions).

You: “March, ok. Let me see if I got this right though. You’re going to keep doing
what you’re doing right now, which isn’t working for you. You’re going to continue
slowly building your business (add more stuff about struggles, yadda yadda), so that
in the future, you’ll have enough money saved up to invest in this solution? Is that
correct?”

The idea here is to re-emphasize how bad their current situation is, and help them
discover how ridiculous this objection really is.

You: “So how can we make this work?”

Here’s another one…

Prospect: “Well, let me ask my spouse and I’ll get back to you.”
You: “That makes total sense, John. When do you think you’ll be sitting down with
your spouse to talk about it?”

Prospect: “XYZ”
 57

Get an exact time here.

You: “Ok, perfect. So let’s set a time to talk around <1-3 hours after the time they’re
talking with their spouse>. Sound good, John?”

We don’t want to give them weeks to decide. Ideally, within 24-48 hours so that
they’re still warm and in the buying mood.

4. I need time to think it over

This is my favourite.

The classic uncertain Nelly.

They’re either too polite to reject you, or they are having second thoughts.

Here’s what I typically say..

“I get it, John. This is a big decision,. But let me ask you. What haven’t we discussed
right now, that you want to think about? The purpose for these calls is to hash out
everything, and see what concerns you have about moving forward.”

If they still need time, that’s fine.

Some sales trainers would tell you to push. I don’t.

“Yeah, I understand John. How much time do you need to think this over? Why
don’t we set a time next week to chat, so that we can go over everything again and I
can answer any questions you may have.”

Then set the time, and make sure you send them a Google Calendar invite.

5. Send me a proposal

“Sure John. I understand wanting to look everything over. But everytime I send a
proposal, I never hear from the person again. You have me on the call right now, so
let’s get down to the real issue. Is it price or value? What can I help with to make
you comfortable with moving forward.”
 58

I mentioned before that if you send testimonials your chances of closing decreases.

Same goes for proposals.

There’s no need to send a proposal. You’re on the call with the prospect, so answer
any questions they may have.

When you join the Facebook group, I’m going to post a master document with more
objections, and any specific objections you have dealt with.

I purposely wanted to avoid putting many objection handling counters here,

because it makes you too reliant on them. I’d rather you be a self-sustaining
salesperson, as opposed to relying on weaselish little countering devices.

And when in doubt, use the ACS framework - Ask, Clarify, Suggest/Re-Frame.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER -- KEY NOTES

● Use the ACS FRAMEWORK when in doubt.

● Most objections aren’t even objections; they’re complaints or statements
● Objections are normal, they are natural. Expect them.
● The sale doesn’t begin until you hear the first no, or objection
 59

POST-CALL BEST PRACTICES

This book isn’t really about what happens post-call, but I figured it would be a good
idea to give some best practices.

POST CALL TIPS

When the sales call ends, provided the prospect said “yes”, then congratulations.

But, the sale isn’t finished yet!

You still need to get results for your client, onboard them, and cultivate a real
long-term mutually beneficial (and profitable) business relationship. Prior to the
prospect actually signing, nothing is certain. People can easily back out of deals,
and the “closing” process is delicate.

That being said, there are a few things I like to do which reduce the chances of the
prospect flaking.

1. Text message follow up

Once someone says “let’s do it” and I’ve sent him the proposal/agreement + invoice,
I ​always​ shoot them a text message (if I have their number).

“Hey John. Ryan here from <company>. Congratulations! I just shot you over an
invoice. Let me know if you have any questions. We’re thrilled to be working with
you, and look forward to a profitable relationships.”

If you don’t have their cell phone number, email them that.

2. Handwritten note

I’ve been using this for years.

Whenever someone starts working with us, even before they’ve paid, I send a
handwritten note. I used to manually do this, but recently I’ve been using
www.handwrytten.com​. It’s a cheap service which sends postcards out, and you can
 60

automate this process using Zapier. This adds a nice personal touch, and the
postcards ship fast.

The entire idea here is to assume the sale.

3. Add on LinkedIn + Facebook

I like to build a real relationship with clients. Because of that, I always add them to
Facebook & LinkedIn. People want to know you aren’t just a machine, they want to
know that you have real hobbies, interests, family etc.

Don’t be afraid of feeling vulnerable about adding them to these social media
profiles.

4. Review proposal over the phone

I personally don’t do this, but I know people that do. They send the proposal, and
set a date and time to review it. The reason I don’t do this, is because it defeats the
purpose of incentive based pricing.

You can review the onboarding document with them; that’s normal and part of the
30-minute kickoff call, but I personally don’t do this (although I know people do, so
that’s why I threw it in here).

The biggest thing you need to worry about is the prospect being overwhelmed, or
flaking, which is why you have to show them that you’re there to support them
throughout the process.
 61

COLD CALLING

While this book isn’t about cold-calling, I thought it would be a good idea to add a
section on cold-calling, since I do typically teach my students about it (and I spent
a while cold-calling back in the day).

I’m by no means an expert at cold calling. I have, however, done boatloads of cold
calls.

When it comes to cold calling there are a few things you need to keep in mind:

1. You only have a few seconds to get their attention

2. Cold calling is 100% a numbers game
3. The goal on the call isn’t to sell them, it’s to ​set a meeting
4. The cold call transitions into a discovery call

1. Grabbing their attention

By definition, you should be expecting a cold reception. That being said, the
mindset required to cold call is the same as the mindset you need to close people
on a strategy call.

You have a valuable solution. You’re trying to find out if the person on the phone
has a problem, and if so, if it’s one you can solve.

With that in mind, you only have a few seconds to grab the prospects attention.

“Hi Smith! This is Ryan calling from <COMPANY>, does that ring a bell?”

“No worries! Well, the reason I’m calling is because most <niche> I talk to tell me
they hate <problem>. I help <niche solve problem>. If this even remotely interests
you I’d love to ask a few questions to see if it’s a fit for your business.”

Straight and to the point.

2. Numbers game
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If someone ever tells you cold calling isn’t a numbers game, they’d be lying through
their teeth. Similar to strategy calls, you need volume to get good. Let’s also face
the fact that most people you’ll be calling won’t be qualified even if they are
interested.

Cold calling works. That’s undoubtable.

But it is kind of like shooting in the dark. You’re calling everyone who fits your ideal
client profile, giving them your 15 second pitch, and moving on.

A week ago, I watched a video interview of Jordan Belfort and Grant Cardone. Both
have different cold calling philosophies, but I prefer to side with Belfort on this
topic.

Grant believes that ​everyone is a sale. He’d like his sales guys to spend more time
on each prospect, and sell them anything he could. This is because he has a large
product catalogue.

Most of you won’t have this.

That’s why I side with Belfort; his philosophy is to smile n’ dial, hammering as many
numbers as possible in as short a window as is humanly possible.

Most people actually won’t be a good fit for your services, so it’s important to
qualify or exclude them early on in the call. There’s no use fighting prospects that
are overly difficult.

Hang up, move on to the next.

3. The goal of the call

People make a blunder here.

They mistakenly believe the goal of a cold call is to close the prospect. It’s not. Your
only goal is to sell the prospect on the next step; the strategy call. Thinking you
need to sell on the cold call is the main reason for feeling nervous, or anxious; you
feel like you ​have​ to make the sale.
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You don’t.

All you need to do, is to interest them enough that they’re willing to hop on a longer
call with you to see if there’s a real fit.

4. Call transition

Most people can open a cold call.

Where they struggle, is the conversation.

“What do I say if they are open to talking more?”

The cold call sort of switches to a discovery call. Once they’ve said they’re open to
seeing if there’s a fit, you can start asking some questions to see if they are even
qualified to work with you.

“Great, John. How long have you been in business?”

“7 years? Perfect. Have you ever worked with a marketing agency before?”
“How many staff do you have?”
“What’s your marketing budget/current revenue?”

There’s no use setting the strategy call if they don’t have the money to pay you in
the first place.

At the end of the cold call, ask to book a strategy session later in the week, ideally
within 3-5 days of when you’re cold calling them.

If they’ve answered your questions up until then, it shouldn’t be a huge problem.

If you want some more help with cold calling, join the Facebook group I invited you
to (linked in the email), and I can help you out. You can even find someone else in
the group to practice some mock calls with.

Cold calling takes practice, there’s no way around it.

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CONCLUSION

Now we’re at the end of the book.

This book was hard to write, because sales is such a broad topic, and there are so
many nuanced areas to cover that I didn’t want to miss anything. Despite that, I’m
absolutely positive that I did miss plenty.

To improve your sales experience, and to account for anything I may have missed, I
created an exclusive Facebook group where you can ask me any questions you may
have, and interact + practice with others in the group. The link to that group is in
the resources section.

Here’s the thing about sales: 90% of your skill will come from pure volume. You can
study every sales system, theory or program in the world, but if you don’t get in
trenches, dig deep and get in hundreds & thousands of reps, you’ll never grow into
a proficient salesman.

I can’t overstate the importance of “volume.”

Everything improves with volume:

● Your confidence
● Your objection handling
● Your tonality
● Your flow
● Your bank account

Everything.

Beyond that, I hope that I’ve instilled in you a belief about sales that will change the
way you view things. At its core, sales is a process wherein you have a solution to a
problem, and through the “sales” process, you’re trying to see if the prospect is a fit
for that solution.
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Sales isn’t about “selling.” It’s about finding out what problem your prospect has,
and presenting them a solution for that problem. Cultivating this mindset is how
you significantly improve your strategy calls.

You’ll stop viewing people as a dollar sign. You’ll start viewing them as real people
with a painful problem that you have the solution to. Your calls will improve, you’ll
feel better, and you won’t have that pre-call anxiety that most salespeople have.

The last thing I want to leave you with is this…

Until you get your mind right, no amount of volume will save you. You need to
believe in yourself, and most importantly, the product/service you’re selling. When
you combine the right beliefs, with the grit and tenacity to power through
hundreds of calls, and a feedback system you have a recipe for success.

I hope that you’ve learned something useful in this book.

I will be periodically updating it over time, and when I do -- you will receive a free,
updated copy.

In any case, that’s where I leave you.

Best of luck.

Ryan
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SCRIPTS
DISCOVERY CALL (5-15 MINUTES)

Rapport/Small Talk:​ “Hey how’s it going? Where are you calling from today?”

“Awesome”

State the Agenda: “Okay so the reason I’m calling is to be sure I can actually help
you before I schedule a strategy session, where we actually dive deep into your
business, and how we can help. Is that cool?”

Determine their ideal Outcome:​ "What is it that made you ask for this session?"

Also, find out their current + desired revenue.

State the Facts + Ask Questions:

1. “Okay, great <restate their goal>, is that right? Anything else I’m missing?”
a. For example: “Okay, so you want to grow your business from $15,000
per month to $30,000 per month this year. Is that right? Anything else
I’m missing?”
2. “Great. Assuming I can help you, would you be interested in becoming one of
our clients (if they say no, say great well, it doesn’t make sense for us to do
this call then and cancel)
3. “Perfect. Do you need a business partner to be on the call with you?”

Expectations

1. “Here’s what to expect during our next call. I’m going to show you ask you
some more questions, dive deeper into your business, what you’re struggling
with and what’s going well. Then I’ll show you XYZ, and you’ll either want to
be a client or you won’t. Does that sound good to you?

Framing the next call

1. “This sounds really good. I’m excited to talk to you further. In order to help
me prepare, can I ask you a question? What specifically do you need to see
 67

from me in order to make a decision when we talk? (so you know exactly
what to demonstrate on the strategy session). If they’re not specific about it,
don’t move forward their not serious.

Schedule

If they’re a fit, go ahead and schedule the strategy call 3-5 days out. Any further,
and you risk them forgetting about it. Don’t forget to send a Google Calendar invite.

STRATEGY CALL (45-60 MINUTES)

The goal of the sales call, is to accomplish two things - dictate the conversation,
and take your client from their current to their desired situation.

Each call is unique, however, so use this script as a guideline, but feel free to add
relevant facts for your offer, your niche etc…

Cardinal Rules:

1. Listen (speak less than them)

2. Ask open-ended questions
3. Ask proactive questions which gets them to think
4. When you list the price, don’t qualify it - just state it, then stop speaking, and
wait until they speak
5. Handle objections, by being firm, and diving into the real reason behind them
(if they say “call me back” get a firm date/time, so that they’re actually
invested).
6. Sound confident
7. Be affable (again, don’t be robotic)
8. Don’t accept anything other than YES/NO. We don’t accept maybes.

INTRODUCTION

YOU: Hey John, it’s Ryan here from Affluent Attraction. How’s it going today?

YOU: Awesome. Are you calling from your office?

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[Feel free to insert some chit-chat.. I had a client once on the road while calling, so
I started to ask him whether he was going to see a client etc..or whether the wife
had him doing errands. We’re not robots, and I’ve found it easier to sell if we
connect on a personal level).

YOU: Great. Well, if you’re ready, why don’t we just dive right in.

HOUSE RULES

YOU: Ok. So how these calls typically work, is I’m going to ask you a few questions
about your business and the answers to your applications you sent through. Then,
if I feel like we can truly help you, and we’re a good fit, I’ll explain what we do, how
it can help you, and how it all works. Then at the end you can make a decision on
whether you want our solution, or not. Either way, there’s no sales pressure on this
call.

DIAGNOSIS + WHY THEY’RE HERE

YOU: Perfect. Since your time is valuable, I want to ask you. What made you decide
to schedule a call with me today?

They’ll either say something like “it seemed interesting” or “I just want to see
what you’re offering.”

But sometimes, they’ll come straight out and give you a juicy answer. Let’s
assume they say something like… “Well, my business isn’t really where it should
be now”

YOU: What do you mean by that?

YOU: Why do you think you have this problem?

The idea is to understand their current situation now.

YOU: Based on your application, you said you you’re business is [current
situation]...What’s your main product, what do you want to sell most of?
YOU: How are you currently generating clients?
YOU: Do you know how much it costs you to get a current client?
YOU: What’s your clients average LTV?
 69

So far, we’ve found some useful information, and caused some pain. Sometimes
they won’t know this information, and that’s fine. The idea is to get them to do
some proactive thinking.

When I was cold-calling for financial advisors I used to ask, “When’s the last time
you spoke to your advisor?” which got them to analyze the question in their own
mind, and verbalize their answer, as opposed to me forcing an answer on them.

YOU: How much are you making per-month right now with your business? (current
situation).

MOVING FORWARD - UNDERSTANDING

YOU: Ok, so I know where you’re at now..but where do you want to be in a year?
YOU: Is this motivation purely business-related, or do you want to hire more staff,
have more time off...is there an underlying motivating here?

YOU: What’s stopping you from achieving this goal?

Wait for an answer.

“I’m too busy, and I don’t know where to start”

YOU: So, you can’t reach your goals, because you’re kind of busy, and you’re unsure
where to start, correct?

We get them to affirm, as it’s a form of admitting to themselves, which is very

powerful in sales.

YOU: So, if you’re making XYZ per-month, why not stay where you’re at?
YOU: Ok. A lot of people say they want to make big changes, but they never really
go through with them. Are you committed to making these changes happen?

CLOSING PHASE 1

YOU: Awesome. Good to hear. Well, we (or I), can absolutely help you accomplish
these changes. Are you interested in hearing what we do, and how we can help you
now?
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CLOSING PHASE 2

YOU: We help Financial advisors generate pre-qualified consultations by using

social media marketing. We usually work with advisors who’ve been in business for
at least 5 years, and we help them stop cold-prospecting forever. ​[stop talking.
Don’t say anything]

Remember. We want the prospect to be emotionally invested

The prospect will say one of two things. 1) Interesting. How does it work, or 2)
How much does it cost.

If they ask how it works, go into detail about how it works, focusing on the
results.

YOU: We work together with you to develop a unique marketing strategy, so that
you’ll never have to cold-call again.

THE PRICE QUESTION

How much does it cost?

YOU: Our regular price is $5,000 per-month, with a $10,000 setup fee. But because
we’ve found that people who act quickly make the best clients, and get the best
results, if you make a decision with me on the call right now, I’ll reduce our setup
fee to zero, so then it’s just the $5,000 per-month. Are you comfortable with that,
John?

Don’t speak.

“He who speaks the least, wins”

The client with either say no, “maybe”, or let’s get started.

If the client says let’s get started, you know what to do.

If they client says maybe, we don’t accept that.

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COLD CALL SCRIPT

You shouldn’t have to explain the system on the call.

Here’s a list of our criteria for a qualified prospect:

- PUT INFO HERE THAT YOU NEED FOR CLIENTS TO BE QUALIFIED

Cold Call Script

INTRO

Hey <Name>, how’s your Tuesday going ​(or whatever date it is)?

Great.

Well, my name is <name> and I’m calling from COMPANY. The reason for my call is
this. We help Financial Planners (​or advisors depending on what designation they
use​), grow their businesses to 6-figure per-month, by using online marketing, so
that you can stop cold prospecting forever.

If this even remotely interests you, I’d love to ask you a few questions to see if we
could do the same for your business. It would only take a minute or so.

If yes…

Cool.

Question 1: ​So this system typically works best if you have an ideal client in mind.
With that being said, who’s your ideal client? How many assets do they have?

Great.

Question 2: ​An in terms of growth goals; where do you want to grow your business
to revenue-wise in, let’s say, 12-months?

Awesome.

Question 3: ​And how far is the gap between your desired revenue, and where you
are right now?
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Cool.

Question 4: ​Lastly, what do you think your main challenge is, to get from where you
are, to your desired revenue goals?

Yeah, that makes sense.

CLOSE

Well, it sounds like we can absolutely help you get to where you want to be.

Why don’t we schedule a time later this week for a more in-depth strategy call, with
one of our senior advisors, where they can go into a lot more detail, and paint you a
picture of how this would work, specifically, in your business.

TIME -- The idea here is to give them a two call close -- give them two days, then
afternoon or morning, then hours.

Great.

I have time this week on <two days>.

Thursday? Perfect.

Morning or afternoon?

Morning? Great.

How’s 9 or 10am?

THEN BOOK THE APPOINTMENT

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RESOURCES

In order to further increase your chances of success, I have created a Facebook

group.

Here is the link: ​https://www.facebook.com/groups/422323708489795/

Videos:

1. Chapter 2 Explainer: ​http://www.ryanholmerconsulting.com/video2

2. Chapter 3 Explainer: ​https://ryanholmerconsulting.com/video3
3. Chapter 4 Explainer: ​https://ryanholmerconsulting.com/video4
4. Chapter 5 Explainer: ​https://ryanholmerconsulting.com/video5