Paul Borgese - Fear Selling

By The Best-Selling Author of The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling and FEAR Marketing

How To Sell More And Sell Faster By Tapping Into Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated Emotional Needs Paul Borgese

FEAR SELLING: How To Sell More And Sell Faster By Tapping Into Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated Emotional Needs Copyright © 2005 By Paul Borgese [email protected] www.FEARMarketing.com Sales Career Training Institute www.SalesCareerTraining.com No part of this material may be reproduced, transmitted or presented in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher. It is licensed solely to the registered subscriber who downloaded it. To encourage others to download this document, please suggest that they visit http://www.FEARSelling.com for their own licensed copy. Distribution and/or duplication of any part of this material by any form or means is a violation of copyright law. This includes electronic and mechanical means such as photocopying, recording, email and computer storage and retrieval systems. Sales Career Training Institute 20 River Court, Suite 1007 Jersey City, NJ 07310 201.533.9282 To license and/or private label this material for use at your company, please call 201.533.9282 or email the author at [email protected]. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 2

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Who Needs This Book “We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack. This tendency is the greatest tragedy on earth. It has probably caused more misery than all the wars and diseases in history.” -Dale Carnegie

Life is all about sales. You must persuade: · · · · · · ·

your kids to go to bed early your boss to give you a raise someone to give you a job your staff to work harder your husband to mow the lawn this weekend your wife to spend less money your car repairman to do a good job.

The FEAR Selling System has been designed to help anyone who is trying to persuade someone else – anybody else - to their way of thinking. We will focus on what you should do in your role as a salesperson, but don’t forget that these strategies and tactics are applicable to any situation in which you must try to persuade someone to do something.

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Why Everyone Needs To Learn How to Sell Leadership, management and sales all use the same set of people skills. Some might say that a boss has more control over her employees than a salesperson has over his prospects, but only the illusion of control separates the two situations. Many managers believe that because of the employer/employee relationship they have a certain amount of power over their employees, and that is true – but that power is limited. We are a mobile workforce. It is a freelance economy with no loyalties. Unless you are in Japan where there is a cultural expectation of lifetime employment – and even that sense of entitlement is fading fast due to economic pressures - you must remember that all jobs are temporary. If you don’t perform, or if your boss doesn’t like you, you could be let go. Similarly, if you as an employee find a better job tomorrow, you can quit and move on. In today’s mobile economy, if you want to stay employed you have to possess the skills that are in demand – and be able to persuade others that you have those skills. So, persuasion skills are more important than ever. Competition is fierce. If you are looking for another job, remember, there are dozens of other candidates with similar backgrounds to yours. The question is: how can you position yourself so that you stand out from the crowd? Similarly, as a salesperson, don’t be fooled into thinking that your product/ service is so much better than other competing products/services. It is ___________________________________________________________________________________ 8

difficult nowadays to differentiate one product from another in the mind of your prospect – but this is exactly what you have to do.

Learning What They Don’t Teach You In Business School At the time of the writing of this second edition of FEAR Selling, most business schools in the United States still do not offer a substantive sales or sales management course in their curriculum. From our experience in reviewing a great number of business school marketing courses, we have found that many of them do not adequately cover the human dimension of marketing and sales. They do not pay enough attention to the consumer-behavior aspects of the process. Marketing and sales skills– and the core skills of writing and speaking which underlie the marketing/sales processes - are crucial in today’s service economy. Yet one of the most common complaints of employers is that their employees do not have good communication skills. They can’t write well or present well. They lack good basic persuasion skills. This is why the Scholastic Aptitude Test (S.A.T.) is being modified to test writing and other language knowledge such as grammar. The S.A.T. is being changed in order to meet the needs of a changing world. Most undergraduate colleges and universities require that applicants provide S.A.T. scores. In our discussions with employers, we have discovered that many companies are already – or are planning to – require job applicants - including salespeople - to submit their S.A.T. scores. They want people who can write well, present well and persuade effectively. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 9

FEAR Selling will help you in all of these areas of persuasion.

Political Skills Versus Technical Skills In our early surveys of salespeople, we asked how many of them had taken a psychology course or had taken part in persuasive communications activities such as joining the debate team at school. Fewer than 14% responded that they had. Understanding human psychology, specifically how to influence others, is the key to sales and marketing. Yet our business schools focus more on technical rather than political (or people) skills. Why is that? Well, for one, it is easier to test technical skills like how to value a company by using the mathematics of discounted cash flows than it is to test political skills like making a sales presentation that will close the sale. Valuing a company by means of a certain mathematical technique has only one right answer. But judging whether or not a sales presentation was effective is very subjective. Focused as we are on measuring progress through testing, we gravitate toward teaching subjects that can easily be tested. It is much easier to attach a grade to one’s knowledge of financial mathematics than to the person’s actionable understanding of sales skills. Similarly, it is relatively easy to teach technical skills such as the steps you should take to launch a new product or do an initial public offering. But political persuasion skills are far more elusive. How do you teach someone to conjure the magic ingredients of charisma, rapport and credibility? This is where the FEAR Selling System comes in. This System is designed ___________________________________________________________________________________ 10

to fill this all-too-common gap in our formal education.

Who Leads? Sales or Finance As we mentioned earlier, the same persuasive skills needed to lead are the same ones that are needed to sell. Interestingly, during our research into sales effectiveness, we also discovered that there has been a change in the types of people chosen to lead organizations over the last three decades. It used to be that financial professionals – chief financial officers (CFOs), treasurers, chief accountants - were the ones who would rise to the top leadership positions more often than any other professionals in a company. Nowadays, however, a majority of leadership slots in Fortune 500 companies are filled with individuals with sales backgrounds. To run complex organizations, you need significant political skills – skills similar to those that a salesperson needs to persuade.

What Is FEAR Selling? If you’re reading this right now, odds are that you have hit a brick wall – or at least some of the pretty big speed bumps and potholes that await anyone on the road to success in sales. Whether you are a novice salesperson or a battle-weary veteran, FEAR Selling can help you. First off, let me say that we don’t presume to have all the right answers. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 11

Anyone that tells you that their system works for every type of product or service, in any economic environment and with every type of buyer (and many desperate sales consultants will tell you that their system will) – is selling you a dream. As we will see, the famous Greek philosopher, Socrates, knew how to get to the truth – and it’s not by having the right answers but rather by asking the right questions. And what we can guarantee you is that by the end of FEAR Selling, you will know most – if not all – of the right questions to ask, and perhaps more importantly, how to ask them. FEAR Selling is a flexible framework that you can adapt to your product or service, depending upon the specific economic conditions, competitive situations, and buyer objections that you face in your day-to-day life as a salesperson.

How Was FEAR Selling Developed? In my more than 16 years as a business consultant, I have found that increasing sales is the biggest challenge that my clients have to face. Cracking the sales code has been a problem I have been grappling with since my earliest days in the business world. So early on, I began to study the sales process from several angles. First, I first studied at the Wharton School of Business and focused on marketing. Oddly enough, at that time, most business schools, including Wharton, didn’t offer courses in sales. And even as I write this, most business schools still do not have serious sales or sales management programs. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 12

I quickly learned that sales is all about psychology and communication skills, so I concurrently enrolled in the liberal arts program at the University of Pennsylvania to develop my persuasion skills as a writer and speaker. I continued my education by obtaining a master’s degree in English at Cambridge University as a British Marshall Scholar, a master’s degree in public administration at the University of Pennsylvania as a Fels Scholar, and finally an MBA in marketing and finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. All told, up until my last day of graduation, I had spent nearly 14 years of my life and had obtained more than $250,000 worth of education – but all that education didn’t seem to do me much good in the real world. I obtained most of my five degrees on a part-time basis, while I worked fulltime as a marketing and salesperson. My formal education had given me a good foundation in sales, marketing, communication and psychology theory, but I was still fairly clueless when it came to applying all I had learned about human nature when I was under pressure in front of a prospect. It was depressing when I finally realized that even after all that time and money spent, I had not even scratched the surface of all there was to know about the selling process. It was only later when I gathered the experts necessary to piece together the entire FEAR Selling System did I appreciate how important this formal foundational education was.

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Sales Training, Sales Training Everywhere I next began to read all the books, newsletters and self-study programs that I could get my hands on. I listened to all the popular and most of the lesserknown sales tape series in my car, on the train, anytime I had a free moment. I spent tens of thousands of dollars attending courses, not only on sales but on psychology, marketing, philosophy, leadership and business strategy. As you will see, this multidisciplinary approach to sales is what makes FEAR Selling more powerful in influencing buyer behavior than the majority of other systems that you may have already encountered. My results as a marketer and salesperson improved significantly because of all of this reading and training, but I knew I could do better. I knew that I was familiar with the individual tactics that worked but wasn’t really sure when to use them or if they could be more effective if I used them in a different way.

Piecing Together The Sales Puzzle My situation reminded me of that old Indian tale about the blind men who bump into an elephant and try to figure out what it is by touching the different parts of the body. One of the blind men puts his arms around the elephant’s legs and thinks it’s a tree. Another feels its long trunk and thinks that it is a snake. A third feels the elephant’s side and thinks it’s a wall. I felt like those blind men, fumbling around in the dark. I knew bits of the sales puzzle, but I also knew that the big picture was eluding me. And because I didn’t have the proper perspective, I was blind to the real power of having an effective sales process. I knew tactics but didn’t know how to ___________________________________________________________________________________ 14

piece them together into an effective overall strategy. But I at least knew that I didn’t know. And I knew that I needed a system.

Surveys From The Trenches About six years ago, my colleagues and I at the Sales Career Training Institute decided to conduct a series of surveys, which our organization continues to build upon even today to keep up with trends in marketing and sales. The purpose of the surveys was to determine the biggest problems that salespeople were encountering as well as the main reasons why buyers weren’t buying. Following is a summary of the seven most prevalent problems encountered by salespeople as reported by sales managers and salespeople: 1) Our sales cycle is too long. 2) Our closing ratio of proposals to actual sales is too low. 3) Too often we are dealing with prospects that don’t have decisionmaking power. 4) Our prospects use our quotes to get better prices from our competition. 5) We constantly must compete on price and so we must discount to win business. 6) We can’t get enough qualified leads. 7) The prospects we do get into the pipeline never seem to develop into actual sales. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 15

These are all very common problems that salespeople encounter, and we will address each of these issues and many more as we delve into the FEAR Selling System. But we can only begin to understand how to solve these problems by studying buyer attitudes and behavior. Following is a summary of the five most prevalent reasons for not buying as reported by prospective buyers: 1) I get worried when salespeople don’t take the time to get to know my specific problem. 2) I don’t feel that salespeople have my best interests in mind. 3) I’m afraid that they won’t be able to deliver what they say they can deliver. 4) My job is on the line, so I can’t trust new vendors. 5) I don’t trust salespeople that talk at me instead of with me.

As you can see, the majority of the answers to this survey revolve around fear and mistrust. Our research on buyer behavior and attitudes – as well as many other studies that we will reference throughout FEAR Selling – reveals that people buy emotionally rather than intellectually. The decision to buy or not to buy is more subjective than you might think. We have found that despite bidding processes and return-on-investment analyses that your prospects might demand, they typically buy based on emotions.

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The Promise of the FEAR Selling System As we explore in the FEAR Selling System, one of the top reasons that salespeople fail is that they don’t have a system. Even though we suggest that you use the FEAR Selling System because of its multi-disciplinary approach to influencing human behavior and its extensive field-tested, results-oriented tactics, our greatest piece of advice is to use a system – even if it’s one that you’ve developed on your own. As difficult as it sounds, you must test and track your results to avoid wasting time with strategies and tactics that just don’t work. According to our research - as well as that of dozens of other credible sales effectiveness researchers and organizations - is that having a system – with a constant feedback loop, which will tell you if the system is working or not – is necessary if you are to achieve success in sales. FEAR Selling will take you step-by-step through such a system. Before we compiled these best-practices in sales into this edition of FEAR Selling, the Sales Career Training Institute’s students paid thousands of dollars for participating in our Webinars, teleconferences, live seminars and Boot Camp to discover the short-cuts to what works and what doesn’t when it comes to sales. Now, with help from the professional affiliates of the Sales Career Training Institute, we are able to offer this comprehensive course at a fraction of the cost of attending an SCTI-sponsored event.

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THE 7 DEADLY SINS OF SELLING

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Why We Focus First On What NOT To Do From our review of the major sales training systems currently available, we have found that they simply tell you what to do in general terms - but not exactly how to do it - and then let you loose on the world. The research conducted by the Sales Career Training Institute indicates that the majority of sales professionals have built up unproductive habits over the years that they are unaware of. Many of these habits have their foundation in flawed advice provided to them by sales training that was not properly field-tested. Furthermore, we have found that even when salespeople are exposed to virtually fail-safe strategies of how to close deals, they often revert to their old detrimental habits. This is basic human nature. We find our Comfort Zones and then will fight even against our own best interests to remain in those Zones. Therefore, unfortunately, we have found that many salespeople who have been exposed to the foundational strategies of the FEAR Selling System do not achieve success as easily as we would have expected - regardless of their exposure to even the most easy-to-use sales strategies and tactics. Interestingly, research has shown that complete novices in sales exposed to effective systems often outperform veteran salespeople with years of experience. We attribute this to the fact that such novices are “clean slates”, unburdened by the baggage of years of bad sales habits. Salespeople who are taught effective technique from the beginning of their careers are at a significant advantage. Others must be deprogrammed from their bad habits and then reprogrammed correctly. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 19

Whether we would like to admit it or not, all of us have been guilty of losing sales because of something that we do or don’t do during the sales process. We’d like to believe that we lost the sale due to circumstances outside of our control, but this attitude of avoiding personal responsibility will only lead to underperformance in the long run. Our first objective, therefore, is to break down your bad sales habits and build you back up again using habits that lead to success, which are built on a firm foundational understanding of human motivation.

Don’t Talk To Strangers Many of our counterproductive attitudes and behaviors are ingrained in us at a young age. For example, take our parents’ common warnings against talking to strangers. This strategy may work when we are young and surrounded by potential dangers such as kidnappers, pedophiles and rapists. But when you are grown-up and you choose sales as a profession, your livelihood often depends upon how comfortable you are with picking up the phone and calling total strangers. As ridiculous as it may sound, psychologists have determined that such advice planted in children at an early stage often affects their behavior throughout their adult lives. In the sales literature, such resistance to cold calling is often referred to as call reluctance. It is a fear of rejection that inhibits a great many salespeople from taking the consistent action that they must take on a day-to-day basis in order to succeed. We will deal with this fear of rejection and call reluctance later in the FEAR Selling System, but we refer to it here only to give you a simple example of the many psychological roadblocks and unproductive behaviors that you must overcome in order to succeed in sales. You will become ___________________________________________________________________________________ 20

aware of your own limiting beliefs and unproductive behaviors as you are exposed to the proven techniques of the FEAR Selling System.

Stand Up And Acknowledge Your Sins As with any bad habits, you must first acknowledge their existence before attempting to replace them with new, more effective strategies. For this reason, we have found that focusing on what salespeople are doing wrong before introducing the field-tested strategies that work is the most effective way of speeding you toward your goal of selling more and selling faster. For those of you who would just like to learn what to do without thinking that you have to waste time on finding out what doesn’t work, please bear with us. We guarantee that this time will be well spent. Our research has shown that most sales are lost, not because salespeople fail to do the right things but more often because they do the wrong things at various points in the sales process. We refer to these “wrong things” as The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling. It is not by chance that the 7 Deadly Sins that were so influential in early Christian teachings also are at the root of failed sales strategies today. The original Deadly Sins refer to flaws in human behavior and attitudes that cause all of us to: (1) misjudge reality; (2) be motivated by instincts that are counterproductive to our own best interests; and (3) continue to follow behavioral patterns that lead us inevitably to failure. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 21

Building On The Wisdom Of The Ages: Technical Versus Political Skills Like the original Deadly Sins, the Sins of Selling are, for the most part, failings in “political” rather than “technical” skills. To succeed in sales, you do not have to focus so much on skills that are technical in nature, like the mathematics you need to be an engineer or the grammar you need to understand in order to be a good writer. Rather, to master the profession of sales, you need to develop “political” or “interpersonal” skills. That is, you need to understand what makes people tick, and then use this knowledge in order to influence your prospects to take the actions that you want them to take. You want to get your prospects to buy from you. And you want them to buy from you now.

Learning From The Wisdom Of The Past When it comes to understanding human nature, we have a number of great thinkers whom we can turn to in order to speed up our understanding of our prospects. The foundations of the FEAR Selling System are firmly based in the research of prominent psychologists of the modern age such as Freud, Pavlov, Skinner and Lorenz as well as the ancient thinkers, Plato, Artistotle and Aquinas. Of the thousands of business books published each year, very few acknowledge this vast reservoir of wisdom about human nature, which has been accumulated by man over the millennia. If they do try to tap into the 19 leadership secrets of Genghis Khan or the 46 marketing methods of Adolph Hitler, they usually only use the historical connection as a promotional hook.

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Although the great works of literature and philosophy often are part of many a thinking-person’s library, they usually are layered with dust because they are not thought of as helpful in the realm of day-to-day business. On the contrary, however, the works of the great thinkers of our past are filled with lessons that are extremely applicable in today’s business environment. With the FEAR Selling System, we acknowledge that we are simply standing on the shoulders of giants by taking the time to analyze the wisdom of the past and reveal how relevant it is to each and every decision we make in our daily lives as salespeople. Our goal with the FEAR Selling System is to help you become what has been termed an “action-intellectual” – that is, someone who has the ability to reflect upon the subtleties of intrapersonal (that is, self) knowledge and interpersonal (that is, interacting with others) power dynamics and then execute based on that strategic thinking.

Leadership And Sales Are The Same Thing In order to be an effective salesperson, one must be effective in leadership. Just as one must lead a group or company through influencing and motivational tactics, so too must you, as a salesperson, lead your prospect in order to make the sale. Leadership is about power - the ability to get people to do what you want them to do. Sales – and indeed, business as a whole, is, at the end of the day, an exercise in power, influence and persuasion. So in this sense, as we are teaching you sales strategies, we are, at the same time, teaching you to be leaders. And leadership skills are some of the most essential skills _____________________________________________________________________________________ 23

necessary for survival in these times of mass economic upheaval and rapid technological change. Our business schools may have a corner on the market for technical skills such as accounting and operations, but when it comes to the political and emotional realms of sales, leadership and management, the Ancients have much to teach us. Although our technologies have advanced, the human psyche has not evolved beyond the fight-or-flight mentality of our earliest ancestors, who huddled in ignorance, fearing the mysteries of the darkness, fire and the other unknowns of nature that ruled them through intimidation just beyond the safety of their caves. Keep this in mind, the next time you are sitting across the table from a prospect. Also keep in mind that the great thinkers of the past from Aristotle to St. Augustine to Shakespeare to Freud can help us avoid many of our daily intrapersonal and interpersonal problems. Unfortunately, because of our rush toward short-term solutions, we fail to reflect upon their often-simple concepts that could pull us out of the quagmires of our muddled thinking and catapult us toward success. To paraphrase the English poet, William Wordsworth, we are too busy getting and spending to realize our true potential. Ignorant to the wisdom of the ages, we have all but forgotten the great lessons of the past. The FEAR Selling System is designed to correct this imbalance by focusing on the political aspects of sales and leadership. It is our intention to take you out of your daily habitual thinking so that you may become more self-aware and thus more effective as you strive toward success.

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A Brief Word On Power and Ethics “You can have everything in life if you will just help others get what they want.” - Zig Ziglar Understanding human nature and how to manipulate the actions of others are powerful skills that we will explore throughout the FEAR Selling System. It is our job to provide you with the tools to understand and influence your prospects. But it is your responsibility to use this power in an ethical fashion. Remember, your main objective is to maintain a customer base that will buy from you over and over again. As any good salesperson or marketer knows, it is much less expensive and time-consuming to sell more of your product or service to an existing customer than to go out and find and convince a new prospect to become your customer. Also, you must think of yourself as building a reputation that will spread by word-of-mouth and be more effective than even the flashiest, mostexpensive advertising campaign. And so it is in your best interest to provide your prospects and current customers with solutions that solve their problems and help them to get closer to their hopes and dreams – on a consistent basis. If you use the political skills that we teach you here in order to help your prospects, we guarantee that you will be successful. Again, this information is powerful. Use it to help your customers succeed and you will help yourself sell more and sell faster. Use it selfishly, and it will come back to haunt you.

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The 7 Deadly Sins Revealed One could argue that the religions that have succeeded in dominating the world have done so because they have foundations in core truths about human nature. Christianity, Judaism and Islam all share common core beliefs regarding sins or vices. Although Nietszhe declared that God was dead, and Marx argued that religion is the drug of the masses, the very fact that a framework of human frailties such as the 7 Deadly Sins survived the many philosophical upheavals of the last few centuries is a testament to the truths that such thinking holds. These same sins have been handed down to us not only through Sunday school teachings but also through the writings of humanists of the Renaissance such as Shakespeare and Machiavelli and of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire and Ben Franklin. As you may know, Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac is filled with simple sayings that warn against the excesses of the various vices and praise the counterbalancing effects of the human virtues. In The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling, we will explore the flawed thinkingpatterns and behaviors that cause us to fail as salespeople. We draw heavily upon concepts in the study of human behavior, which find their origin in ancient philosophy and modern psychology and then were rigorously fieldtested in order to make you aware of the Deadly Sins that doom many salespeople. To be fair, we will even point to some of our own experiences as full-time sales consultants and part-time sinners. And then we will attempt to prescribe some solutions by suggesting methods on how to eliminate these seemingly ingrained sinful sales behaviors.

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Throughout the FEAR Selling System, we will explain exactly how to use the strategies and tactics that make up what we term The Success Habits, which should replace the 7 Deadly Sins of Selling.

The 7 Deadly Sins Summarized PRIDE: Assuming Your Way Out of the Sale SLOTH: Stumbling Due to Systemless Selling GLUTTONY: Gorging Your Way To A Loss of Credibility LUST: Sexy But Substanceless Marketing ANGER: Losing Sales Because of the Blame Game GREED: Putting Your Own Needs Before Those of Your Prospect ENVY: Blindly Following the Masses Instead of Leading Through Differentiation

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Learning From Your Sins The 7 Deadly Sins have a long history as central subjects in art, literature, theology and philosophy. Although many believe that they come from the teachings of the early Christian Church, as with many other ecclesiastical doctrines, we can find their roots much deeper in history – and indeed in other religions. As one example, we can look to the Bhagavad-Gita, which is the main holy text of India’s majority religion, Hinduism. In its Sanskrit verses, we find that “Hell has three doors: lust, rage and greed.” However, despite the rich and varied discussion of sin in almost every one of the world’s cultures and religions, for our purposes, we will find it most useful to limit our exploration to the writings of the great Western philosophers and theologians. Since our world-view has evolved mainly from Greek and Roman thought, we find that their philosophies are most relevant when it comes to translating ancient wisdom into action in today’s business world. Most of us have heard of the 7 Deadly Sins, either by being exposed to them in some religious setting or even perhaps through the 1995 movie starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey. The plot of this thriller revolves around a serial killer who takes it upon himself to wake up what he sees as an apathetic world – a world that chooses to ignore the horrific sins practiced on every street corner every day. The killer selects victims who have committed or exemplify the sins of Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony and Lust. Similarly, our intent in this section - and throughout the whole FEAR Selling System - is to wake up sales managers and salespeople so that they look at themselves and their organizations in a more rational, objective light.

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Of course, in the movie, the killer’s sin is one of Pride in that he believes that it is his place to play judge, jury and executioner. But as it says in the Bible passage, Romans 12:19, “Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, vengeance is mine.” In other words, it is not our place to blame or judge others. In the same fashion, we suggest that you use the FEAR Selling System to condemn your own sins – or those of your salesforce - while forgiving the sinner(s) – which by the way, is a good management technique for maintaining the respect of those whom you must oversee. Now, let’s dive in to the first and deadliest sin…

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PRIDE: Assuming Your Way Out Of The Sale PRIDE Defined – the excessive belief in one’s own abilities, which interferes with one’s recognition of reality “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” - Socrates Traditional Selling Strategy: Focus on developing and delivering an impressive product presentation FEAR Selling Strategy That Works: Focus on asking questions and listening to your prospects’ needs

Pride Before The Fall There is an old saying that goes: if we have two ears and one mouth, why is it that we typically talk more than we listen. It is pride – our egos – our need to prove to our prospects that we are smart and worthy of their respect – that often leads us to losing the sale. We talk too much and listen too little. We blurt out features and benefits without first finding out if that information is relevant to our prospects. Or even worse, we neglect to find out if revealing such information will actually lessen our chances of winning the sale. The rule of thumb here is: Never talk your way out of a sale.

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Questioning Is The Key Pride typically gets in the way of successful sales due to assumptions that we make that are often simply wrong. We assume to know things that we have no idea about. That is why asking questions is such an important aspect of the FEAR Selling System. As the Bible says: “Ask and it shall be given.”

Assumptions, Assumptions Everywhere As the old saying goes: when you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of U and ME. We make assumptions about our products and services. We assume that what we have is exactly what the prospect wants before even asking them what’s on their mind. Then, with blinders on, we typically fail to differentiate our products and services from our competition. Actually, from our surveys, a majority of salespeople admit that they do little or no research about their competitor’s products, services and sales strategies. We assume that our product is better for our prospect than those of our competitors. Instead of being confident about our product, we often come off as too cocky and thus turn off the prospects by flexing our muscles too much. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 31

We make assumptions about our prospects. Sometimes, we assume that a given prospect is not worth our time, and so we may not even call upon them or qualify them properly. Conversely, we may think that a prospect is more of a sure-thing than they really are and so we hang on and wait for them to say yes – thus wasting valuable time that could be spent nurturing other relationships that could lead to sales. We make assumptions about our sales strategies. Sales and marketing people often do too little in the form of testing different strategies and tactics. Our research has shown that many of us fall into the rut of doing the same thing over and over, thinking that it is the best strategy to use without testing our assumptions. There is always a better way – even if you can only improve slightly upon your current strategies – one small improvement can make a drastic difference in results. So you must test, test, and test some more. Test your assumptions constantly by trying and tracking the results of different sales letters, different scripts, different questions. We will show you how to significantly improve your chances of success by incorporating FEAR Selling into your sales strategy, but as you will see, you must constantly test even these proven techniques to make sure that they will work for you and your particular selling situations.

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It’s Not Enough Just To Ask The Right Questions As trite as this might sound, our research has found that listening skills are one of a handful of key skills that determine success in one’s sales career. Everyone says that they listen well, but you must really take a look at your overall sales strategy from start to finish and determine if you are truly listening to your prospects enough - and at the right times. Research by several prominent psychologists shows that most people are thinking of the next thing to say to their prospect when they should be listening to what the prospect is saying to them. Most sales strategies focus too much time on the presentation – the telling part of the sales process – and not enough on asking the right questions at the right times in order to qualify your prospects properly and then lead them to the sale. By relying more on telling the prospect about your product or service, you are making assumptions about prospects’ needs and wants. Such assumptions are usually at the root of all lost sales. We categorize such mistakes under Pride, since this sin blinds salespeople into thinking that they know what their prospects want and need without even asking them.

The Harder You Push, The More They’ll Resist As the physicist Sir Isaac Newton taught us, every action generates an equal and opposite reaction. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 33

As our research bears out, the pushier you are as a salesperson, the more defensive a prospect gets – and the more objections you have to deal with. Most salespeople believe that it’s their job to convince the prospect of the value of their product, service – or as some might say - their solution. Nothing could be further from the truth. You’re assuming that you know what your prospect’s problems are and can solve them without their input. It’s as if you are making a diagnosis without even examining the patient. Your job as a salesperson is two-fold. You must: 1) help them to realize the seriousness of their problem – if one exists, and; 2) show how you can solve that problem for them with your product or service. As you will see in FEAR Selling, these two objectives are really different sides of the same coin. One side deals with your prospect’s fears, while the other deals with their hopes. Furthermore, research bears out that most people cannot be convinced of anything. Not only are most people’s beliefs hard-wired by the time they are sitting on the other side of the table from you listening to your pitch, but they are also very wary of salespeople. As everyone knows, sales professionals – along with politicians – typically have very poor reputations as a whole, either because of individuals’ personal experiences with pushy salespeople or else due to the general association between salespeople and scams.

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As in any sales and marketing endeavor, it is your job to differentiate yourself from your competition – your fellow salespeople. How do you achieve differentiation? Well, first of all, don’t sound like the rest of the salesperson herd. Since most salespeople are ready to launch into their spiel at the drop of a dime, you must have a different strategy if you are to expect to differentiate yourself. FEAR Selling will give you the strategies you need to set yourself apart from your competitors.

We Provide Great Value, Great Service, Blah, Blah, Blah…. Our researchers are always amazed by the answers that they receive when they ask research participants about what differentiates their product or service from those of their competition. They typically say something along the lines of: “We have a better quality product with more personalized service, and...” If you think about it, who doesn’t say that? If anything, such a pat, prideful, almost cocky response will destroy your credibility, which, through our research we have found is essential for building the long-term relationship necessary to close not only the first sale but to keep your customers happy enough to keep paying you, and maybe even purchasing something else from you in the future. So again, the question is: How do you differentiate yourself from the competition? _____________________________________________________________________________________ 35

It all comes back to not making assumptions about them. And how do you do that? Err on the side of asking more questions.

Walk In Your Prospect’s Moccasins It turns out that after all of our research, we have found that the answer is best summed up in Dale Carnegie’s classic book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. According to Carnegie, you must have a genuine interest in people. For our purposes, this means that you must ask more questions, listen more and empathize more with the specific situation of your prospect if you want to gain your prospect’s trust and respect. According to Carnegie, and supported by a significant amount of psychological research, most people feel under-appreciated. They don’t feel as if anyone listens to them. Our wives or husbands are too stressed out to listen to us. Our bosses have their own problems and don’t want to hear about ours or anyone else’s. And our coworkers are all out for themselves. Even our kids are preoccupied with their own lives and don’t appreciate all the sacrifices we’ve made as parents. Imagine the power you could have in building a relationship with someone if you would just listen a bit more than you speak. Also, the only way you are going to learn how your prospects think – and thus, how they buy - is by listening more. As an old Native American saying goes: you don’t really know a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 36

This is your challenge. You must see the world from your prospect’s perspective, walk around in their moccassins, feel their fears, and dream their hopes. You must understand your prospect’s deep-seated emotional needs. This is the start of building credibility and trust, which will help you to win their business. We will take you through a powerful bonding process in FEAR Selling, but for now, be aware that you must constantly be building credibility and trust in order to win your prospects’ business.

Spend More Time Learning About Your Prospects and Current Customers Than About Your Products This brings us back to the concept of Pride and how it is often our downfall as salespeople. Typically, the first couple of weeks at a new sales job, you learn product features and benefits. You are like a tape recorder, trying to memorize all of the good stuff that you can spew out when in front of a potential client. Too many salespeople believe they know what their prospects want. And too often they think that what their prospects want is exactly what they have to sell. So they end up talking and talking until their prospects’ eyes glaze over. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 37

Research conducted jointly with the Sales Career Training Institute indicates that most prospects absorb only about 17% of what they are told. If you couple this with the likelihood that they don’t believe most of what they are being told by a salesperson, then most of your babbling is worthless anyway.

Asking Questions: The Socratic Method of Selling At the beginning of this section, we cited a very famous quote from the ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates. He is known for being one of the wisest men of his age, and he himself credits his wisdom to his stance of never assuming anything about the world. As he so famously said, the only thing that he truly knows is that he knows nothing. It turns out that this philosophy is a core tenant of the successful sales strategies that we have tested over the past six years, which we reveal in detail in later chapters of FEAR Selling. Asking questions early on in the sales process drastically improves your chances of building rapport, winning trust, avoiding saying the wrong things during the remainder of the sales process and finally tailoring your presentation to home in on the buying criteria of your prospect. A well-known sales researcher and proponent of asking questions is Neil Rackham, the author of SPIN Selling. According to Rackham’s research, the more successful salespeople ask more questions than those who are not as successful. According to our research, however, the key to success lies not only in asking more questions, but also in asking the right kinds of questions at the right time and to the right people. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 38

We will address such questioning strategies throughout FEAR Selling; however, keep in mind from this moment forward that to be successful in sales – you must ask and listen much more than you must talk. So next time you are confronted with the opportunity to throw out product features and benefits, see yourself as if you are vomiting all over the prospect. Hopefully, this nasty association will enable you to slow down and ask more questions, rather than just tell your prospect what they probably don’t want to hear, aren’t listening to, and probably aren’t believing, even if they are listening. So to avoid the Sin of Pride - the sin that we have found to be the deadliest of the 7 Deadly Sins of Selling, assume less, ask more questions and listen more.

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SLOTH: Stumbling Due To Systemless Selling SLOTH Defined– the avoidance of physical or mental work Traditional Sales Strategy: Rely solely upon and blindly follow the “sales strategy” provided by your company - or just “winging it” FEAR Selling Strategy That Works: Develop a personal selling system that can be tested and improved upon over time

Reputation Is Everything As many know, salespeople have one of the worst reputations among the general public. Surveys show that the words most associated with salespeople are: “snakeoil,” “liar,” “shyster”, as well as many other unsavory terms that paint the picture that all salespeople want to do is take your money and get out of town before you figure out that you’ve been taken. It’s bad enough that salespeople have this reputation among the general buying community but an even more disconcerting finding in our research was the bad reputations that salespeople have in the eyes of their very own sales managers. Typically, managers whom we’ve surveyed blame the poor attitudes and work ethics of their salespeople for their companies’ poor sales results. In surveying sales managers from Fortune 500 companies across the United States and Canada, we found that many managers describe their salespeople with words such as “lazy”, “disorganized” and “undisciplined.” ___________________________________________________________________________________ 40

Of course, it is the responsibility of sales managers to set goals and help in strategy and tactic formation for their sales forces, and FEAR Selling helps you put in place a flexible framework that has proven to lead you to success.

Pointing The Finger Many salespeople, on the other hand, blame their managers or their marketing departments – claiming that these colleagues are not giving them the tools that they need to do their job well. We have found that this blame game is very common in sales organizations around the world, and we will discuss how damaging such blame-shifting can be in our section on the Deadly Sin of Anger. As the old saying goes, “When you point one finger at somebody, there are even more fingers pointing back at you.” As a salesperson, you must take control of the situation. Playing the blame game will not get you more sales. Even if your company’s marketing department or your sales manager has a system set up for you, we have found that certain aspects of any system work better for some salespeople than others. It all depends on personality, work style and personal habits. And so the only way to achieve personal success is to set up your own system, test it and then refine the system based on the results of the test. If you are a sales manager, this feedback-loop concept is one of the keys to getting the most out of your salesforce. If you are a salesperson, it can help you determine what works best for you so that you can save time and energy on future sales calls. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 41

Pick A System, Any System One major finding of our research is that systems work when it comes to maximizing sales. As we’ll say throughout FEAR Selling, sales is all about testing different strategies, honing them and being flexible in using what works in any given situation. Naturally, we have been interviewing sales executives, buyers and other professionals to determine best practices in selling in order to develop the FEAR Selling System, so ours is the system that we suggest you use. But that aside, we still say that any system - no matter what system you use - is better than no system at all.

Work On Your Business, Not In It Invariably, we as salespeople, will fall into slumps. There will be times when we can’t get through to prospects or prospects don’t return our calls for days, weeks or even months. It is when we are in these valleys of desperation that we must stick with a system. Setting up a system helps salespeople fight against laziness – also known as the deadly sin, Sloth - and keeps us from drifting into bad habits that will inhibit our sales performance. Michael E. Gerber, in his popular book on entrepreneurship titled The EMyth Revisited makes a very important point that is relevant to salespeople as well as small business owners. In fact, you must look at your sales career as a small business that you are constantly building. Gerber’s advice is to work on your business rather than in your business. In other words, spend time working on your systems so that you are not stuck working in a business for the rest of your life with little to show for it. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 42

You should be looking to automate your sales process as much as possible. And we don’t just mean automate with computers or other technologies. We mean that you must work on developing systems – habits, scripts, typical questions – that have proven to be effective in any given situation. The FEAR Selling System is your shortcut to such systems. It will help you find what works best for you. Once you find what works, stick with it. Of course, as we keep saying, test other strategies, but the main goal is to find what works as fast as possible and then keep repeating it time after time to reach extraordinary sales goals. One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is that they do not set up repeatable strategies that work. Those salespeople who do set up systems have a competitive advantage. They free up their minds so that they can truly listen to their prospects. They know what their next steps are so they don’t have to think too much about their process and so can focus more attention on their prospects’ specific needs. Of course, the FEAR Selling System is designed exactly for this reason. It helps salespeople who are starting from scratch and need a blueprint to refer to throughout the entire sales process. However, we have even tested this System with veteran salespeople, who have invariably found some useful aspect of it that they can work into whatever system that they’ve been using for years to create even greater success. So again, whatever you do, early on in your new job or in your career in sales, work with a system that you can test and modify. Based on our research, we can guarantee that this one strategy of using a system will make a huge difference in your sales performance throughout your career. So don’t be lazy, don’t succumb to the Sin of Sloth. Use systems. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 43

GLUTTONY: Gorging Your Way To A Loss of Credibility Gluttony Defined - the desire to consume more than that which one requires Traditional Selling Strategy: Try to win as much of a prospect’s business as you can from the start FEAR Selling Srategy That Works: Build a relationship with your prospect by starting small and increasing your business with them as you prove yourself In sales, you have to be aggressive. However, your prospects are expecting you to be aggressive and so they are ready to defend against you. They will lie to you, they will refuse to return your calls, they will suck information out of you and then use it to negotiate better deals with your competitors. As everyone knows from Marketing 101, what you have to do to sell yourself is differentiate yourself from the masses. While everyone else out there is being aggressive and wanting to win all of a prospect’s business in one bite, our research shows that you should try a different strategy. Remember, you can’t push your way to success in sales. You must set up the dynamic of your relationship with your prospects so that they pull you into doing business with them. We will explore this fundamental difference in strategies in the early stages of the FEAR Selling System.

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For now, know that building trust and lowering your prospect’s resistance to change are your biggest challenges. For any number of reasons which we will explore later, your prospects fear doing business with you – or any other salesperson. Therefore, what you need to do is slowly build trust and rapport with your prospects. Avoid Gluttony. Don’t go in trying to win the big deal without first building credibility. How do you build credibility? By slowly winning their trust, bit by bit.

Eating The Elephant There is an old saying that in order to eat an elephant you must do it small bit by small bit. The same applies in sales. Our research over a six-year period shows that those salespeople who try to win small pieces of business and then build incrementally end up with a much greater portion of their customers’ share of wallet. Even more striking is that those who use this strategy manage to break into many more accounts than those who simply try to go out and bite off more than their prospect’s will allow them to chew.

Pigs Get Slaughtered On Wall Street, the expression is: “Pigs get slaughtered.” Gluttony will kill you. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 45

By trying to devour too much of your customer’s business at once, you either won’t get it, or if you do win the business, you might not be able to deliver, and thus you’ll lose them as a potential customer forever. So what tactics should you use to win trust and eat the elephant one bite at a time? 1) Offer a trial. As we repeat throughout the FEAR Selling System, you must allay your prospects’ fears. If they have to sign up for a year of your service without the ability to back out of doing business with you, you probably won’t get as many people nibbling on your offer. The risk is too high – they don’t want to get burned. So lower their risk by allowing them to get out of the relationship if it goes south. If your product or service is as good as you say it is, they’ll stick with you through the trial and maybe for many more years to come.

2) Offer a guarantee. Similar in effect to a trial is a guarantee. Our research shows that the word “guarantee” definitely breaks down resistance. Of course, you must go through all the steps that we outline in FEAR Selling in order to build up enough credibility with a prospect so that they believe in your guarantee. But after you follow that process, winning a new prospect should be relatively easy if you provide them with a money-back guarantee. You may already be aware that numerous marketing studies have shown that few people will actually ask you for their money back – even those who are unhappy with your product or service.

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They are either too embarrassed to do so, too lazy or too time-constrained. Of course, we are not advocating that you sell crappy product, because such a strategy will invariably push many more customers to take the extra time and energy to get their money back from you - or simply not renew their order with you. But again, remember, like the trial offer, the guarantee enables your prospect to taste without having to swallow your offer whole.

3) Offer to perform a part of the service at a discount. In order to beat out your competition, you might try to offer a part of your service at a loss. This strategy is often called the Getting-Your-Foot-In-The-Door Strategy. Think about it. Would you rather have some business at a little bit of a loss, with a chance of staying in the game or would you rather walk away from a potential client because they won’t submit to your terms. Remember, it’s all about breaking down the natural resistance that most everyone has to salespeople. As many of the top performing salespeople that we interviewed kept saying: People hate to be sold to, but love to buy. You must win the goodwill of your prospects if you want them to stick around. Also remember though, that you have to make money eventually so don’t sacrifice your margins too much in the long run. It’s true that many buyers today say that they buy on price alone, but at the end of the day, any buyer with experience knows that they get what they pay for.

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So you might want to budge on price to get in the door, but make sure that this is a short-term strategy or else you’ll end up with lots of low-paying customers who expect you to never raise your prices – and you will never make a profit. Don’t be like many of the salespeople that we have worked with over the past six years. Don’t try to win all of a customer’s business in one fell swoop. It probably won’t happen, and you’ll lose credibility in the process thus ruining your chances of winning business from them at any point in the future. Be somewhat humble. Say things like: “We don’t want all of your business – we just want to prove to you with a trial. Once we prove ourselves to you, we’re confident you’ll want to do more business with us.” So to avoid the Deadly Sin of Gluttony, remember to eat the elephant piece by tiny piece.

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LUST: Sexy But Substanceless Marketing LUST Defined – an excessive desire to gratify the senses Traditional Selling Strategy: Sell the sexy sizzle, not the steak FEAR Selling Srategy That Works: Sell based on prospect-centered relevant benefits and fears instead of cutesy, flashy ad campaigns

Internal Strife Over the past six years, we uncovered many interesting – and unexpected problems – that today’s salespeople are facing in the hyper-competitive marketplace. Typically, the issues that were most on the minds of the salespeople whom we interviewed - or accompanied on sales calls - concerned the conflict between themselves and the buyers. However, one of the most interesting – and potentially detrimental – issues that we found in our surveys of sales and marketing executives throughout companies large and small in a wide range of industries is that there are significant conflicts within organizations that are potentially hurting sales. Over 36% of salespeople who responded to a particular study that focused on barriers to their success mentioned that there was a significant level of disagreement between sales and marketing executives regarding sales strategies, sales collaterals and/or advertising. These disgruntled salespeople complained that their advice was not taken as seriously as it should be by their marketing colleagues. They believed _____________________________________________________________________________________ 49

that they should have significant input into the marketing messages used to advertise and inform their prospects. Most of these salespeople reported that their recommendations were mostly – if not totally – ignored when it came to preparing marketing messages that they had to use in scripts, brochures, sales sheets, etc. In larger organizations, most salespeople blamed outside advertising agencies for developing ads and sales materials that were cute and catchy but not substantive when it came to meeting the informational needs of the prospect. These same salespeople reported that they encountered significant resistance from their marketing departments when trying to influence the development of sales materials. In smaller organizations that did not use advertising agencies, we found a similar problem. Although there was not a third-party agency involved, salespeople still felt that they did not have enough input into the sales collateral development process. The salespeople surveyed felt that their opinions should be taken seriously since they were “in the trenches” talking to prospects and customers faceto-face, day-in and day-out. However, they felt that their marketing colleagues spent too much time and money – and paid too much attention to market research and their own concept of the needs of prospects. One top salesperson explained it this way: “Advertising agencies and marketing departments are usually made up of highly creative people. They want to out-do their last campaign with something flashier. They want sexy rather than solid. Sexy wins advertising industry awards. But for us salespeople, we’d rather have solid creative sales strategies that work.” So while many marketing and advertising executives are seeking the instant gratification of highly creative, flashy campaigns, salespeople are looking for substantive strategies that sell. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 50

The Sexy Versus The Solid There is an old saying that goes: sell the sizzle, not the steak. Based on our research regarding what makes people buy, we must disagree with this saying – or at least clarify the definitions of “sizzle” and “steak”. For our purposes here, think of the “sizzle” as the sexy features of your product/service and the “steak” as the solid benefits. Some products are all about “sizzle” – for example, luxury products like jewelry, high-end cars and designer clothes. Sometimes, the instant gratification of how something looks is enough to make the sale. But most other products need substance – they need “steak” to sell to today’s wary buyer. People want to know the benefits of the product or service. As any good salesperson knows, all the prospect cares about is WIIFM – What’s In It For Me. But, most advertising and marketing dollars are spent selling the sizzle. The peak of such marketing came in the Internet boom years when small dot-com companies spent fortunes for 30-second spots during the Super Bowl just to catch the consumers’ attention with cutesy dog-puppets or hamsters being fired out of cannons. Such ads were all about sizzle and very lean on steak. Now there is a definite need to break through the clutter and get people’s attention, and we will address this need at the beginning of the FEAR Selling System when we discuss Finding and Focusing On Your Prospect’s Fears.

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However, after getting attention, you must focus on the solid benefits of the product - the WIIFM. And this is where many marketing departments and advertising agencies fall flat on their faces. In our experience, in many cases, these marketing “experts” would rather go for the instant gratification of creating a cute, catchy ad or clever brochure rather than provide solid sales materials that help salespeople in their attempt to make the sale. Later, we will explain the drastic difference in effectiveness between features and benefits – as well as an extension to the already powerful benefit-strategy of selling, which is at the core of the FEAR Selling System. For now, it is enough that you are aware of this issue. It’s okay if sales collaterals, messages, or tradeshow booths are flashy and attentiongrabbing. Just make sure that there is good-tasting cake under the frosting. Remember, relevance is more important than creative. Sell steak, not sizzle. So when it comes to sales collaterals and sales messages, avoid the all-too-common urge to concentrate too much on the sexiness of your marketing and sales efforts . Some sexiness may be necessary upfront to get your prospects’ attention, but don’t succumb to the instant gratification of cutesy, creative marketing – don’t give in to the Deadly Sin of Lust.

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ANGER: Losing Sales Because of the Blame Game ANGER Defined – the blinding passion by which one lashes out to blame another often due to one’s own frustrations - also known as wrath Traditional Selling Strategy: Protecting one’s ego by blaming others or one’s situation when sales are down FEAR Selling Strategy That Works: Using sales techniques and behaviors which combat poor attitudes We have already touched on how there is often conflict within sales organizations - such as the disagreements that often take place between the sales and marketing divisions of a company. But this is only one manifestation of the Deadly Sin of Anger that we have studied during several of our sales effectiveness research projects.

Anger Leads to Frustration, Complaining and Blame Anger often rears its ugly head when reality does not meet one’s expectations. Many salespeople, especially early in their careers, are discouraged by: • the amount of work it takes to succeed in sales; • the amount of rejection that one must endure; and _____________________________________________________________________________________ 53

• the many factors that are outside of one’s control as a salesperson. Although there are many factors that a salesperson cannot control, one very powerful factor that they have total control over is their attitude.

The Three Keys To Success In Sales As we will discuss in FEAR Selling, success in sales is a combination of three distinct factors: • technique – effective sales strategies and tactics that anyone can learn • behavior – the actions that you take on a daily basis • attitude – how you think and react to what happens to you. The Deadly Sin of Anger falls under this final category – it is a failure in attitude.

Poor Attitude Is A Significant Contributor To Failure In Sales Obviously, the effect that your attitude has on your success in sales is difficult to measure. Although it is difficult to quantify, however, our sales effectiveness researchers estimate that at least 30 to 40% of the average salesperson’s time is wasted on unproductive behaviors triggered by negative attitudes. We have significant (and we might add, shocking) anecdotal evidence that we have shared with sales managers who now understand the importance of proper motivational strategies as well as systems that ensure what they can control - effective behavior by their salesforces. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 54

The Big Three Time-Wasters Our research indicates that a significant amount of the typical salesperson’s time and energy are wasted on: 1) blaming their companies’ management and products/services for their own ineffectiveness in sales; 2) complaining about the poor treatment that they must endure at the hands of their prospects and customers; and/or 3) otherwise unproductive activities that do not lead to sales.

But Attitude Isn’t Everything… Although all three of these time-wasters are related to attitude and thus stem from the Deadly Sin of Anger, they are difficult for a manager – or even salespeople themselves – to control. Shifting the responsibility for failure to others is a natural ego-preservation, defense strategy practiced by all humans. It is necessary to protect one’s ego, and so people all too often blame others or their situations instead of looking to solve their own problems that they create for themselves through their own poor attitudes and ineffective behaviors. We will explain this in more depth in FEAR Selling as it impacts not only the effectiveness of salespeople that must work in teams, but it also does damage to the trust that must be built between salespeople and their prospects/customers.

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Effective Techniques + Effective Behaviors = Positive Attitudes = Long-Term Success In Sales So although the Deadly Sin of Anger revolves around attitude, salespeople – and their managers – must learn how to control this sin by focusing on effective behaviors. Our research bears out that proper techniques used in conjunction with effective behaviors will create positive impacts on attitudes - which will then lead to effectiveness in sales. And on the cycle goes. These positive attitudes will reinforce the use of the techniques and behaviors necessary to sustain long-term success in sales. So to fight the Deadly Sin of Anger, you must change your attitude. You must take responsibility for your own success. And you change attitude by focusing on behaviors and techniques – all of which we will cover in FEAR Selling.

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GREED: Putting Your Own Needs Before Those Of Your Prospect GREED Defined– the desire for material wealth or gain often at the expense of others Traditional Selling Strategy: Try to sell your prospect on what you have to offer regardless of whether or not it solves his problem FEAR Selling Strategy That Works: Build a reputation as a trusted advisor by being honest about your ability to meet your prospect’s needs Just as Anger is rooted in a person’s poor attitude, so does the Deadly Sin of Greed spring from a counter-productive attitude. As we will clearly show you in FEAR Selling, your main goal as a salesperson is to win the trust of your prospects and customers. In order to do this, you must first overcome the many fears they have: • the fear of change • the fear of salespeople • the fear of making the wrong decision • the fear of losing their job • and many more fears which we will learn to overcome throughout FEAR Selling.

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Stop Thinking of Yourself As A Salesperson – You Are A Trusted Advisor In order to overcome your prospect’s fears, you must build credibility so that they trust you. You must place their interests in front of your own. Too many salespeople walk in to appointments with an adversarial mindset. They think that they must “beat” or “out-think” their “opponent” – the buyer. This attitude invariably seeps through – and it becomes obvious to the prospect. Buyers all too often report to us that salespeople have their own selfish interests in mind rather than trying to work with them as a trusted advisor.

How Greed Kills Relationships In today’s business environment, buyers are skeptical. And so building trust is essential if you want to succeed – and maintain long-term success – as a salesperson. In recent surveys of buyers across industries, when asked to describe salespeople that they have encountered, 78% of respondents indicated that most salespeople are “transactional” rather than “consultative” in their sales approach. In other words, these buyers felt that most salespeople did not want to create win-win situations, but rather wanted to make the transaction as quickly as possible regardless of the buyers’ needs or the needs of the companies that these buyers’ represented. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 58

When we surveyed salespeople in a wide range of industries, an incredible 94% of respondents described themselves as “relationship builders” rather than “transactional salespeople.” Obviously, there is a mismatch in perception between buyers and sellers that must be rectified through a shift in attitudes, behaviors and techniques.

How Greed Kills Sales Greed drives salespeople to: • rush the prospect to buy instead of taking the time to build rapport and create trust first; • sell products/services that do not solve their prospects’ or customers’ problems; and, • at best, make one sale but lose potential future sales by ruining their reputation with the customer.

The Miracle On 34th Street Sales Style One top car salesperson shared the following suggestion with us to avoid the Deadly Sin of Greed. He believes that in his business, long-term reputation is more important than making the one-time sale. And this certainly has proven to be the case in his sales career. He says that when he comes to a point in a discussion with a prospect when he realizes that he cannot service the prospect’s needs as well as a competitor, he simply thinks of the movie, Miracle On 34th Street. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 59

Miracle on 34th Street is an old black-and-white Christmas movie about a man named Kris Kringle who truly believes that he is the real Santa Claus. In the movie, Kris Kringle gets a job working as the Santa Claus for the Macy’s Department Store. His main job is to greet young children and ask them what they want for Christmas. Everything works out well until the Macy’s management finds out that Kris is telling parents to go to Macy’s biggest competitor, Gimble’s, if they can get a better deal over there. At first the management is upset, but when sales at Macy’s skyrocket due to the goodwill created by this “trusted-advisor” mentality, Kris Kringle becomes a hero to the department store – and the management quickly makes it store policy for all of its employees to make recommendations that keep their customers’ best interest in mind.

Trusted Advisor, Not Greedy Salesperson The lesson is that if you look out for the best interests of your prospects and customers, you will earn their trust and respect and thus will win their business over the long run. The car salesman that told us this story has made an effort to build his reputation in his community as a trusted advisor. Consequently, many people in the market for a car in his area visit him first. And though he sometimes points prospects to competitors, he outsells all of his fellow salespeople. So fight against the temptations of the Deadly Sin of Greed. Position yourself as a trusted advisor. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 60

ENVY: Blindly Following The Masses Instead of Leading Through Differentiation Envy Defined - the desire for others’ traits, status, abilities or situation Traditional Selling Strategy: Mimicking other salespeople’s behavior and blindly listening to anecdotal advice from popular business books and unproven training programs in search of successful strategies FEAR Selling Strategy That Works: Differentiate from other salespeople by using a flexible framework system that can be modified based on various selling situations encountered, and mainly letting your prospect dictate how you sell to them Invariably, the successful salespeople whom we encountered in our ongoing research are constantly looking to improve their selling skills. They look to training seminars, sales books, and audio/video courses to improve their skills. Too many, however, look for best practices and are frustrated when those best practices don’t seem to work for them. The reason for this failure is that most of these sales training aids fall into the category of tactical tools rather than strategic frameworks. Tactics are essential; however, typically, where these courses, books and tapes fall short is in tying their tactics together into an overall flexible strategy. One key here is flexibility. As we have discussed, sales – like leadership – is a political (i.e., people) skill, and so it is not easily taught. This is because selling is situational. And so what works well with one buyer might prove disastrous with another. You must learn how to “read” your prospect and act accordingly. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 61

But reading your prospect is not so easy. The prospects you encounter and situations you find yourself in will vary depending on millions of variables. Therefore, it is impossible for any book or teacher to tell you exactly how you should approach or respond to a particular buyer or situation in the future. What we can do is provide you with a map of the territory, an understanding of the basics of human motivation, and the tools for you to adapt your understanding of motivation to any given situation. We cannot tell you exactly what notes to play, but we can give you the sheet music that you can interpret and play based on what sounds right for you given your style and what sounds right for your buyer, given any situation that confronts you. So don’t just blindly follow sales advice from books, tapes, your colleagues or any sales trainers or consultants. Don’t be envious of the success of others and therefore blindly model your behavior after what is taught to you as “best practices” in sales. Again, what works for others might not work for you. In order to sound credible in front of your prospect – which is one of the keys to FEAR Selling – you must find your own voice. The most you can hope for is guidance, and this is what we will provide to you throughout FEAR Selling. The FEAR Selling System is the best guidance that we have collected from a six-year research study distilled from hundreds of books, articles and audio sales training courses and more than 14,000 sales calls observed by our team of sales effectiveness researchers.

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FEAR Selling: Your Way To Success FEAR Selling is a collection of tools – a flexible strategy that will catapult your sales career to success – but only if you pick up the tools and start experimenting with them. FEAR Selling – and the other books in The Business of FEAR Series are our attempt to shake up and wake up current and future leaders, managers and salespeople, and not merely to make you aware of the great thinking of the past or obscure psychological research for academic purposes. Our aim is to provide you with actionable knowledge you can take into the field that actually gives you the ability to sell more and sell faster. We will attempt to organize the thinking of the ancient and recent past for you in such a way that gives you a framework for effective thought and action in a sales environment. But we can’t do all the work for you. You will have to work too by thinking through the relevance of this framework given your character, management style and the variety of situations that confront you every day. You must take from our advice what you are comfortable with, make it your own, and test it constantly to see if it works for you. In the end, it is our hope that you will be able to apply these fieldtested, proven lessons to your daily lives, not only to help your companies grow but also to help you succeed personally. So let’s get started...

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FEAR Selling: How To Sell More And Sell Faster By Tapping Into Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated Emotional Needs

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Introduction to FEAR Selling Over the last several million years, a small, fragile monkey-like primate has been slowly evolving into the dominant creature on the planet earth. We have been molded into what we are today by reacting to the nature around us and the nurturing of our families and societies. Like other animals, our main motivational drive is to survive. This deep desire for self-preservation extends beyond ourselves to our families, to our countries and to humanity as a whole in that we know that we are reliant upon others to survive. We know that others can do us harm, and so we must either destroy those enemies or compromise with them so that we may live together peacefully. Most animal species are similar in this respect. They band together for protection and fight off predators. However, one major characteristic makes us different from the rest of the animals that we share this world with. We can think abstractly. As far as we know, we are the only animals who are conscious enough about our existence to be called self-aware. We are the only animals that can grasp a sense of time. We do not live in an eternal “now” like the rest of the animals that can only react to current stimuli. We can consciously remember the past, apply lessons we learned back then to our present, and then prepare for the future. And, as you will see, this is one of the key foundational concepts in the FEAR Selling System. The drive for self-preservation is at the core of practically all other drives. All of our behaviors in one way or another try to move us away from the fear of death toward the hope of life. Even suicide is a tactic that some succumb to in order to avoid present pain in the hope of a more peaceful future. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 65

But What About Sex? As we will see a bit later, many psychologists believe that there are multiple drivers of human behavior. One of these is sex. Obviously, many advertisers use sex appeal to sell their products. But it is our contention – and the belief of many others in the psychology field - that all other drivers of human behavior lead back to one overarching motivation – the drive for self-preservation. So what does sex have to do with self-preservation? As Charles Darwin explored in his revolutionary book, The Origin of Species, all creatures fight a battle of survival of the fittest. All are driven to pass on their genes to future generations – to survive, in some sense, beyond their own limited lifetime by having children. We learn from our parents and our societies how best to adapt to our changing world in order to survive. We learn by imitating others and by constantly looking for new ways to better our situations. And we pass on this knowledge to our offspring in the hopes that they will live better lives than we have.

Greed Is Good Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie, Wall Street, was right from a self-preservation perspective. He said, “Greed is good.” We all must have food and shelter to survive – and so we all strive to acquire property – money – so that we can buy food to avoid starvation and buy a house or rent an apartment, to protect ourselves from the harsh elements around us. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 66

Such security distances us from death. The more we have, the better we can fight our battle of self-preservation. At the extreme, we could all be living on the streets, begging for food and perhaps starving or freezing to death. So we go about acquiring property to avoid discomfort, and ultimately, death, for as long as possible.

The Focus On Fear So it all comes down to fear – fear of death. Just as a herd of deer will sense the stalking lion and flee from it, so to do humans react to avoid death. Now, of course, you might see the connection between the main driver of self-preservation and what we call sub-drivers like sex and greed. We are biologically wired to want to stay alive as long as possible. We strive to reproduce and to acquire property, but what about all of the other behaviors that don’t seem to be linked in any way to self-preservation. Biological necessity is not the only thing that influences our behavior. Man is one of the most social creatures on earth. How we react to situations comes from millions of years of living together in groups that helped us continue to live, reproduce and gather resources more effectively. As we will see, the survival instinct is not only biological but psychological as well. We are not only trying to avoid the physical death of our bodies but also the psychological death of what Freud would call our egos – our sense of self. For our purposes, we will refer to this as the drive to maintain self-esteem. Our sense of ourselves is mostly relative. In other words, we think of _____________________________________________________________________________________ 67

ourselves as better off or worse off than other members of society. As Thomas Harris explains in his classic book on transactional analysis, I’m Okay – You’re Okay, we all strive to feel better about ourselves – sometimes by putting others down. So in a sense, we all have a fear of egodeath. We all want to protect our self-esteem, which, you will see, is important to remember when dealing with buyers who challenge you. For now, it is enough to understand that we try to avoid being embarrassed or otherwise being out of synch with social norms. As we will see, society strongly influences us to reciprocate favors or feel shame if we respond inappropriately or feel guilt if we do something that society tells us is “wrong.” These norms can be used to your advantage as a salesperson.

Pain Versus Fear At this point, it might be a good idea to explain the difference between pain and fear – and why our research shows that fear – and not pain – is what you should be focusing on when you sell. Many sales experts talk about selling to people’s pains. Indeed, the concepts of pleasure and pain are at the center of many motivational theories, such as those of Sigmund Freud. Typically, we are motivated to move toward pleasure and away from pain. And it is true that people in pain are your easiest prospects to sell. They are already out of their Comfort Zones and won’t need much help from you to get them to buy your product or service if they believe it will relieve them of their current pain. There are some people who are in pain right now and will pay big money to get out of that pain. Think about it. If you or a loved one gets seriously injured in a car accident, you’ll probably rush to the emergency room of a hospital and pay whatever it takes to solve that pain – whether or not you ___________________________________________________________________________________ 68

have health insurance – especially if it is a life-or-death situation. Doctors are in the ultimate pain business. People usually only visit them when they are in pain and want relief from that pain right now. So if pain is so powerful a motivator, why isn’t this book called Pain Selling instead of Fear Selling?

Fear = Awareness Of Potential Future Pain Well first, think about how fear is related to pain. You experience fear when you are aware that you might experience pain in the future. To make our point, let’s assume that you are an aspirin salesperson, and that aspirin is not available in stores or online or through mail-order. For the purposes of this example, people can only buy aspirin directly from door-to-door salespeople like you. Unfortunately, the majority of prospects that you encounter will not have a headache right now. In fact, there is a greater possibility that they’ll have a headache at some point in the future rather than now. Do you want to waste your time knocking on people’s doors only to sell to people who have headaches now – only to people who have pain now? Of course not. If you do stumble into someone in pain, that’s great. You’ll probably have an easy sale. But there are a greater number of prospects – a bigger market – for people who may experience the pain of a headache in the future. It’s your job to get those prospects to realize that they can avoid that future pain of a headache by buying your product now and being prepared for it _____________________________________________________________________________________ 69

when the inevitable headache comes in the future. So you are better off selling to their fear of future pain than just focusing on their current pains.

The Now And The Unknown Future To make this point even clearer, let’s assume that there are basically two types of people in the world – people who focus mainly on the Now and people who focus mainly on the Unknown Future. In reality, we all focus some of the time on the Now and some of the time on the Unknown Future, but hopefully, by grouping people into these two categories, you’ll better understand why fear is such a central part of this effective selling strategy. First, let’s look at the people who focus mainly on the Unknown Future. Actually, very few of us consciously live in the Now on a consistent basis. Instead, in our minds, we are constantly thinking about the future. As Eckhart Tolle explains in his book, The Power of Now and Dale Carnegie describes in How To Stop Worrying And Start Living, humans by their very nature worry about an unknown future. As both of these authors believe, much of the world’s psychological suffering could be solved if we could all just focus more on and live in the current moment without worrying too much about a future that might never come to pass. Mark Twain captured this human tendency to worry needlessly about the future when he said, “I’ve seen many troubles in my time, only half of which ever came true.” Next, let’s look at the people who live in the Now. Just as some people worry too much and are constantly dwelling on the Unknown Future, some people focus too much on the Now. Remember the fable of the ant and the grasshopper? In the summertime, the grasshopper played around and lived for the moment, while the ant ___________________________________________________________________________________ 70

prepared for the future. When winter came, the grasshopper suffered for not thinking ahead while the ant lived comfortably. The grasshopper was living in the Now, while the ant was preparing for the Known Future. Like other animals, the ant knew instinctively to prepare for the inevitable coming of winter and so he prepared for it. Many of us act like the grasshopper at times. We want instant gratification and don’t care about the consequences of our actions. Some kids drop out of school, not thinking about how they’ll earn a living later. Some of those kids will turn to crime, stealing now, not thinking of the consequences that they will have to face when they get caught. As we all know, many people in the United States are drowning in credit card debt. They are not saving enough for their futures. They live one paycheck away from bankruptcy. Every day they make a choice between spending for pleasure now or saving to avoid pain in the future, and they mostly choose to spend frivolously now, and let tomorrow take care of itself. They act like the grasshopper in the fable, practically unaware that they are not saving enough to retire comfortably – that is, if they’ll be able to retire at all. As many of us know, to live a good life, you probably need to live in a balanced way between the Now and the Unknown Future. You should be able to relax and enjoy yourself sometimes as well as work hard and prepare for your future. Now how does this relate to sales? Depending on the type of product you sell, you want your prospect to focus more either on the Now or on the Unknown Future. For some of you who sell instant-gratification products, such as beer or cigarettes or other forms of entertainment, you want your prospect to think in the Now. You want them to achieve instant gratification by buying your product. You want them to forget about the consequences of having less _____________________________________________________________________________________ 71

money to spend on other things that might be necessary later – or on the negative long-term effects of your product. But for those of you who sell most other products or services, your job is a bit more challenging. Your job is to get the prospect to think into the future about all the negative consequences that will occur if they don’t buy your product or service now. Some examples: · if they don’t buy your resume-writing service now, they might not find a job for a long time and may have to live uncomfortably because they don’t have sufficient money; · if they don’t buy your marketing services, they might not sell as much of their product as they need to sell in order to stay in business; · if they decide to buy a less expensive car than the luxury car you are trying to sell them now, their friends and colleagues might not have as much respect for them; · if they don’t buy the life insurance that you suggest they buy now, their family may suffer if they die or are disabled; In FEAR Selling, we will explain step-by-step exactly how you make your prospects realize their potentially painful future now. When we say “realize”, we mean that you have to take them through a process – a process that leads them to an awareness of their needs. As we will discuss later, you can’t really convince anyone of buying anything. You can only help make them aware that they need what you are selling. Through the process laid out in the FEAR Selling System, you will attempt to make that potentially painful future real for them now. You want them to experience that painful future – to see it, feel it, live it now – enough so that you get them out of their Comfort Zones and buy your product or ___________________________________________________________________________________ 72

service in order to avoid that possible painful future. By now, you should understand what you have to do. Your goal is to focus your prospects on their potential future pains – their fears.

We Think Therefore We Do Unlike other animals, man can think about the consequences of his actions and consciously decide whether or not to do something based on whether or not the consequences will be beneficial to him. Animals merely act on instinct. They only live in the Now. Of course, they too instinctively “plan” for the future by, for example, storing acorns to eat in the winter. But this is something that is hard-wired in them biologically. Mostly, they only react to current stimuli. A dog sees a cat and starts chasing her. Man thinks and can choose what he does. Of course, like all other animals, we also have unconscious, instinctive reactions to things like loud noises, which make us freeze, run, attack, scream or whatever our instincts tell our bodies is the most appropriate response at the time. But for the most part, we have the time to think before we act. What we must understand as salespeople is that the mind does not only react to what is “out in the world.” It also reacts to its own activity – its own musings. The mind cannot clearly distinguish between stimuli that are real and those that are imagined. In other words, things don’t have to be real to trigger a reaction. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 73

Think, for example, about the last time you went to a horror movie. Of course, you weren’t in any real danger, but at points, your heart probably raced a little faster than normal – or you may have jumped in reaction to a sudden scary movement on the screen. As they say, perception is reality. And our minds sometimes find it very difficult to distinguish between a simulated reality, like a movie, and our own true reality. As long as we perceive something, our subconscious mind will react to it – perhaps not as strongly as if it were a clear and present danger – but it will react nonetheless. Salespeople and marketers take advantage of this fact that stimuli don’t have to be real to cause mental reactions and resulting behaviors. Through words and imagery, marketers can trigger reactions in much the same way that reality does. By linking the biological and psychological appeals of self-preservation in its many forms (sex, greed, self-esteem) to their products, they can stimulate a reaction. They can get people to buy their products. The basic sales process is as follows: 1) The buyer has a current or potential future problem that he is already aware of –or that an advertisement or salesperson helps him to become aware of. 2) The selling organization claims that they have the solution to that problem in the form of their product/service. 3) The selling organization attempts to persuade the buyer to take action and buy the product/service now. The buyer purchases the product/ services with the hope that they can avoid their future problem - or at least relieve themselves of some of the pain that they are already ___________________________________________________________________________________ 74

experiencing from the current problem. The marketer or salesperson attempts to make it appear as though buying the product can improve the buyer’s chances of staying alive, reproducing, gathering more resources, and/or improving their self-esteem. The positioning – or how the marketer presents the product in relation to the person’s problem – is the key determinant in whether or not the person will buy. Positioning is what FEAR Selling is all about. We will teach you how to exploit this aspect of the human mind to better your chances to sell more and to sell faster. What you must remember as a salesperson is that you cannot force anyone to do anything. Research bears out that children and teens are much easier to influence than adults. But assuming that you are selling to adults, it is best if you start with the assumption that you cannot convince them of buying your product. You can only help show your prospects that it is in their best interest to buy your product. You can’t get behind them and push them toward buying. They will resist. You must rather coax them toward buying your product. And as we will see, successful salespeople pull prospects toward buying by selling emotionally rather than intellectually.

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Understanding What Makes People Tick The more you think about sales, marketing and advertising, the more you will come to realize that it is all about motivating people. So in order to become the most effective salesperson or marketer that you can be, you must understand the basics of human behavior and motivation. The study of human nature is complex. It entails the study of biology, psychology, communication theory, cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis, sociology, and several other branches of the social sciences. Our purpose here though is not to give you a complex understanding of human nature but rather to break it down into a model that can be easily understood, easily remembered and easily used in the real world of sales. So in addition to revealing the results of our field studies with thousands of salespeople, we also will share with you the conclusions of many years of more theoretical research, which will help you understand why the strategies and tactics that we teach you work so effectively. Studies have shown that if you understand why something works, you are more likely to use it – and more likely to find better ways to use it in your particular situation. So by taking the time to understand the reasons why FEAR Selling works, it will be easier for you to remember the System and apply it to the various situations you encounter. You might have to modify your use of this information given the nature of your product, your own personality, the personality of your prospects or the state of your industry or the economy at any given time. But knowing what makes people tick generally will help you adapt more readily to any given situation. And knowing the process of how to discover what makes a ___________________________________________________________________________________ 76

particular person tick will help you sell more and sell faster.

Why People Do What They Do In order to begin our exploration of why people do what they do, let’s begin from the other side of the coin. Let’s ask: “Why don’t people do certain things?” As you will see, it will be much more interesting – and much more useful – to explore human motivation from this perspective. If you remember your elementary physics, you will recall two general laws: 1) a body in motion stays in motion; and 2) a body at rest stays at rest. At this point, you might be asking, what does physics have to do with selling? Well, the same laws of momentum apply when it comes to human motivation, but let’s change the laws into terminology that might make their application more clear. When it comes to human motivation: 1) a person who is comfortable will probably not take action; and 2) a person who is uncomfortable might take some action. The first law is very clear. If a person doesn’t have an immediate problem or have a great enough sense that they might have a problem in the future _____________________________________________________________________________________ 77

(that is, if there is no fear), then they will not take any action. They are in their Comfort Zone. The second law is not so clear cut. A person who is uncomfortable with their current state might take action or they might not take action. This person is not in his Comfort Zone, but they might not be far enough outside of their Comfort Zone – they might not be uncomfortable enough – to take action. In either case, it is your objective to get people uncomfortable enough with their current situation to take action. This is where FEAR Selling comes in.

Habits Are Comfortable No one likes change – except maybe a baby with a dirty diaper. Human beings are creatures of habit. Similar to other animals, we fall into routines and typically resist any changes from those routines. This is a critical concept in sales. It is your objective as a salesperson to get your prospects to take action – to buy your product or service. But when you first meet them, they probably don’t own your product or use your service – and might not even be aware of it. They are, in some ways, comfortable enough without it. Several things might be going on. They might: · not know that they have the problem that your product/service solves; · know that they have the problem, but it is not a great enough problem ___________________________________________________________________________________ 78

for them to take action to resolve their problem; · know that they have the problem, and it is important enough for them – or, we might say, painful enough for them - to want to take action, but they don’t think they have the resources (the money) to solve their problem; · know that they have the problem, and it is painful enough for them to want to take action, but they don’t know that any solutions for their problem exist; and/or · know that they have the problem, and it is painful enough for them to want to take action, but they don’t think that your product or service is the solution to their problem. Regardless of the situation, you, as a salesperson, have two main objectives: 1) You must make your prospect aware that they have a significant problem currently – or that there is a high probability they will have a significant problem in the near future; and that 2) Your product or service will solve their current problem, or prevent their future problem from occurring. That’s sales in a nutshell.

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What Keeps People In Their Comfort Zones - And Not Buying From You You must show your prospect that the sum total of their fears that motivate them to take action is greater than the sum total of the fears they have that paralyze them into doing nothing, maintaining the status quo and staying in their Comfort Zones. Only by realizing this will your prospect take action and buy your product to alleviate their pain and allay their fears. In order for them to buy from you, you must show them that: The negative consequences of not buying are GREATER THAN the costs of buying. You might have to take a moment to re-read that and really absorb it. It may be confusing because you are not used to thinking of it that way. Typically, you might think of the buying process the other way around. You might think that in order to get someone to buy from you, you must show your prospect that: The benefits of buying are greater than the cost of buying. Of course, this is an equally valid way of looking at the sales process. But, as you will see, fear is typically a more powerful motivator than gain (benefits). This is why FEAR Selling is more powerful than even the most advanced benefit-focused selling strategies. Note, however, that FEAR Selling incorporates many aspects of benefit selling, or what we refer to as HOPE Selling. So as you will see, what makes FEAR Selling so powerful is that you are compounding your case ___________________________________________________________________________________ 80

by taking into account your prospects fears as well as their hopes. FEAR Selling motivates through carrots (hopes) and sticks (fears). Let’s explore the concept of the Comfort Zone a bit more in order to better understand the obstacles that you have to overcome as a salesperson.

Trapped In The Comfort Zone Many of us want to improve our lives. And many of us know how to improve our lives. But most of us are unwilling to take the steps necessary in order to achieve that better life. We’d rather just stay in our Comfort Zones rather than risk trying to break through to that better life. Many of us would like to lose weight, but we keep eating the same unhealthy foods and refuse to exercise. We enjoy eating those foods because it brings us immediate pleasure, and we resist exercising because it takes too much energy, which our minds interpret as pain. Many of us would like to make more money, but we stay in the same job and would rather complain about our situation than take action to better our financial situation. It’s easier that way. Why? Well, it’s not easy to change. There are many pressures keeping us in place, right where we are in our Comfort Zones. Change is often painful. We might be in a lot of pain currently, but as they say: the devil you know is better than the one you don’t know. And so we don’t take action. In order to sell something to someone, you must overcome the pressures (the fears) that are working on them to maintain the status quo. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 81

But remember, fear works both ways, and so you must: 1) minimize the fears that a person has about the consequences of taking action – that is, about buying your product; and 2) maximize the fears that a person has about the consequences of not taking action – that is, about doing nothing and refusing to buy your product.

Fears That Cause Us To Resist Buying First, let’s look at the fears that you as a salesperson are fighting against since they are your strongest enemies. Think about why a prospect might not want to buy your product or service. 1) Your prospect might be afraid that you are lying to them - that your product won’t work – that it won’t solve their problem - and that they will have wasted time, money and/or energy by dealing with you. They might not trust you. For example, think about a get-rich-quick scheme that you might have been thinking about buying. It might have sounded too good to be true. You might have bought a similarly hyped product in the past, and it didn’t work for you then. So you are wary about getting cheated out of your money again. 2) Your prospect might be afraid that your product/service won’t work – that it won’t solve their problem - and that they’ll then look bad in front of their spouse, their friends, their boss, or their colleagues. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 82

Think about the last time you had to make a decision at work to hire a new vendor. Wasn’t it more comfortable to share the responsibility of the decision with others so that if the vendor turned out bad, you wouldn’t have to take all the responsibility and look bad in front of your superiors? Note that this is where the power of brands come in. Well-known brands are all about trust. If you buy a brand product, and it doesn’t work, you can always simply say: “They have the best brand name out there. There was no better choice.” And you can shift the blame away from yourself to the brand. Brands work because of the positive reputations they’ve built in the minds of their customers. 3) Your prospect might be afraid to draw attention to – or even admit having - the problem in the first place. Think about someone who is uncomfortable being bald or sexually impotent or someone who has a psychological problem. They might be too embarrassed to seek out help. 4) Your prospect might even be afraid that your product will work, but that it will change things, and people will not like them because of their success. As odd as it may sound, what holds back a lot of people is such fear of success. Many people believe that if they get out of their Comfort Zone and succeed once then people will expect them to succeed all the time. This fear sometimes paralyzes people so that they don’t try to succeed at all. You can boil all of a buyer’s fears down to two distinct types: 1) fear of actual loss – money, time, energy – or What Might I Actually Lose If I Buy This; and _____________________________________________________________________________________ 83

2) fear of self-esteem – or What Will Others Think About Me If I Buy This And It Fails In FEAR Selling, we will teach you selling techniques that will help you to minimize both of these types of fears.

Why Can’t We All Just Take Action Just think about something you should do that you haven’t done. Perhaps it’s something like: · eating better and exercising · cleaning up around the house · mowing the lawn · looking for a new job Now think about why you haven’t done that thing that you should have done. Why haven’t you done it yet? Let me ask you this: what is it that makes you finally do it? Most likely, you end up doing it because the pain of not doing it has hit a point where it is worse than the pain of doing it. And that pain forces you to take action. You take action in order to avoid the consequences of not taking action. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 84

To illustrate this simple yet key point, let’s explore each of the above examples in turn: · You may have gotten so fat that you don’t fit into your clothes, and you have to go and spend money to buy new clothes. Or, perhaps your spouse, or friends or co-workers start making fun of you. You may be so embarrassed that you force yourself to diet and exercise. · Your house might get so dirty that you have to pay a lot of money to have an exterminator come in to get rid of the mice and bugs. Or, your in-laws come over, and it’s embarrassing because they don’t want to step foot in your house. So you quickly clean up. · Your lawn might get so high that when you finally do get someone to come and mow the lawn, they charge you a lot of money. Or, your neighbors might start complaining about it and embarrass you into getting the lawn mower out. · You might get to the point where you cannot pay your bills with your current paycheck, and so you simply are forced to go and look for another job or else go live on the street. Or, you might be embarrassed that you can’t go out to eat with your friends as often because you don’t make as much money as they do. So you get your resume together and start sending it out. In all of these cases, you change – you decide to take action – because you believe that the consequences of not taking action are worse than the effort of taking action. The key word here is “believe.” It’s all about your personal standards. It doesn’t bother some people if _____________________________________________________________________________________ 85

· they are fat · their house is dirty · their lawn is overgrown · their current job is unsatisfying financially and emotionally. For most people, these things don’t bother them up to a point. But there is always a Breaking Point, which forces them to take action – whether it is an actual loss or a loss in self-esteem. It is important to realize that this Breaking Point is different for everyone. Different people have different value systems. By “values” we means, things that are important to them. Each individual’s Breaking Point depends on many variables ranging from: · the cost of the product or service; · the buyer’s level of self-esteem; · what outcomes are important to them; and · many other issues that we will explore when we present the Values Elicitation Process. It is your job as a salesperson to guide your prospect to that Breaking Point at which they believe – they fear – that the consequences of not buying your product outweigh the costs (money, effort, risk of self-esteem) of buying your product. It’s your job to help them discover their Breaking Point. And we’ll show you how to help them reach their own personal Breaking Point. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 86

FEAR Selling will show you how to pull people out of their Comfort Zones far enough to get them to want to buy your product or service – because buying your product will help relieve their current pain or alleviate their fears of future pain.

FEAR AND OTHER OBSTACLES THAT KEEP US IN OUR COMFORT ZONES CHANGE

CHANGE

FEAR OF FAILURE

NO TIME

LAZINESS

CHANGE

FEAR OF UNKNOWN

COMFORT ZONE (The Status Quo)

NO MONEY

LIMITED KNOWLEDGE

CHANGE

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Motivational Drives As we mentioned briefly above, many studies have been conducted in an attempt to isolate and label all of the human motivational drives. Following are some of the drives that have been identified: · · · · · · · ·

Self-preservation Sex Greed Enjoyment Self-esteem Curiosity Imitation Altruism

We agree that all of these are motivators of human behavior, but in order to simplify yet at the same time create a more powerful understanding of human behavior, we will label most of them as sub-motivators.

Self-Preservation: The King Of The Motivators As you already know, the most powerful motivator is that of selfpreservation. We all strive to at least survive and hope to live an even better life day-by-day. Sex, as we have discussed, is a drive common to all animals in their attempt to continue the spread of their genes, and thus, in a sense, live longer through their offspring. Greed – or the acquisition of property – is our attempt to distance ourselves from the death that awaits us if we are denied shelter, food or ___________________________________________________________________________________ 88

other necessities such as basic healthcare. We move toward acquiring more so as to prepare ourselves against changes in our environment that might cause discomfort or death. Money can solve many problems in today’s society. Many people spend thousands of dollars at casinos or in the lottery partly to enjoy themselves, but one could argue mainly in the hopes of acquiring wealth and thus avoiding the pain of work. Enjoyment, like greed, is our attempt to seek pleasure and flee from pain. We need to relax, to give ourselves a break from the stresses of work, and so the more property we can obtain – the richer we are – and the more enjoyment we can experience. Self-esteem. How we feel about ourselves in relation to others is a very strong motivator. Millions of people around the world have been diagnosed with depression, which is often accompanied by a feeling of inadequacy. On the whole, people want to feel good about themselves. They want to feel that others respect them. They long to feel that they are somehow important in the world. As we will see, this is one of the strongest human motivators. The key is to remember that just as we humans have a physical body that we must protect against harm and death, so to do we have a sense of self – an ego – which we must protect from harm and “death.” One’s ego can be harmed through embarrassment or other feelings of inferiority in the face of stronger egos that may surround us. We will explore this in more depth in the sales tactics to follow, but for now, it is enough to understand that self-esteem is a powerful force in the realm of human behavior. Curiosity may have killed the proverbial cat, but it has been very helpful in keeping the human race alive and evolving. Through exploration, we have found new lands full of resources that we can exploit. Through space exploration, we have developed many products that can be used in everyday life here on earth. Our early ancestors explored with their hands. They banged rocks together _____________________________________________________________________________________ 89

to make primitive tools that could help them in their struggle for survival. Their curiosity kept them exploring for better, more efficient ways to survive – to make better tools, to discover agriculture, which would enable them to settle down in a particular area and not have to wander constantly to find food. Even today, we are all in search of a better, easier way to make money. Everyone at one time or another has been curious about a get-rich-quick scheme. We wonder: “If it worked for others, can it work for me?” You as a salesperson probably sought out this book in the hopes that its strategies and tactics will bring you more wealth and overcome the daily struggles of selling. It is such hope that keeps us constantly looking to improve, constantly seeking the better mousetrap. Again, curiosity is linked to selfpreservation. Imitation. One of the most successful – or certainly wealthiest product endorsers – is Michael Jordan the famous Chicago Bulls basketball player. Men want to be “like Mike” as the ads say. The athletic shoe company, Nike, taps into our drive to imitate successful members of our society by implying through their ads that if you buy their shoes, you will be a better basketball player, or better athlete, or more respected male – just like Mike. And along with that increased respect – or so the implication goes, you will also enjoy more money and maybe even more sex. If you want to be as successful in life as the celebrity promoter, you’ll need to buy the product that they are endorsing. If you buy the product, you’ll have a better chance of “survival.” Altruism – or the motivation to help other’s without any apparent benefit to ourselves – can also be linked to the main motivator, self-preservation. Mothers of many species will put themselves between danger and their offspring – and even sacrifice themselves – to help their offspring survive. Clearly, such seemingly altruistic behavior is merely one’s attempt to keep their genes alive – if not by keeping alive themselves, then by protecting their offspring. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 90

What may seem baffling is altruism when it is directed toward total strangers. Why do we give to charity? Much of the motivation can be attributed to many of our religious beliefs that we should help our fellow humans who are less fortunate than ourselves. But even so, most of our religions have an afterlife where the good will be rewarded and the evil will be punished. Selfishness is definitely classified as an evil trait, and so we feel guilt when a beggar approaches us, and so we might give him the change in our pocket. In this sense, by helping others, we are trying to help ourselves – either by relieving ourselves of the pain of feeling guilty or, if you believe in the concept of karma, that our good deeds will somehow help us in the future or perhaps even that our charitable actions will ensure us a place in heaven. We can find many cases of wealthy individuals, who, toward the end of their lives, give away enormous sums of money. Some have reported that it is their way of “giving back,” perhaps since they feel that they have “taken away” from their fellow man during their lifetime of accumulating wealth. In a way, such rich people might be succumbing to the fears that haunt Ebenizer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Only guilt and his fear of death as embodied in the three visiting ghosts force him to change from a greedy old wretch to a kind, giving human being. In the end, fear motivates him to do good. Others have admitted that they are in some way seeking immortality by giving away their wealth in exchange for a chance to keep the memory of their existence alive. For example, many donations are rewarded with the naming of some building in the donor’s honor. And so, if a hospital wing or a building on a school campus is named after the person, the donor may believe that they, in some way, will live on beyond their physical death. They will live on in the memory of those who will see their names on the sign of the hospital or the college dorm. So again, all of these sub-motivators move us toward the hope of a better life and away from the fears of a painful existence or death. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 91

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs In 1943, Abraham Maslow published his theory of the hierarchy of needs, which has become one of the most popular and often cited theories of human motivation. Here, we distill the most powerful aspects of Maslow’s work. According to Maslow, human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and that certain lower needs have to be satisfied before higher needs can be satisfied. The levels of needs from lowest to highest are as follows: 1) Physiological: hunger, thirst, bodily comforts. When these needs are not satisfied, we may feel sick, irritated and uncomfortable. 2) Safety/security: out of danger. Safety needs have to do with establishing stability and consistency in an unstable, constantly changing chaotic world. Here is where psychological needs start to enter the equation. We need to feel the security of a home and a family. Religions help us in our search to find meaning in our chaotic lives by giving us the hope of a safe secure place after we die – after we leave the challenges of this world behind. 3) Belongingness and love: affiliations with others, the need to be accepted. Humans are social beings. We desire to belong to groups, whether they are clubs, cliques at school, religious groups, family, gangs or any other social network that bring us a sense of security and comfort. We need to feel love – in a non-sexual way – and respected by others. We need to be needed. Think of beer commercials – not only do they typically play off the hope that you might make yourself more desirable to the opposite sex if you drink their particular brand of beer, but such commercials also paint a picture of camaraderie – ___________________________________________________________________________________ 92

often men having fun in a group. 4) Esteem: the desire to achieve, be competent, and perhaps most importantly, gain approval and recognition from others due to achievements and competence. With such admiration and respect comes a feeling of power. Advertisements for luxury cars often play on this need for respect. The implication is that if you drive a more expensive car, then you have achieved a level of success that is worthy of the praise of others. 5) Self-actualization: the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming. People who have met all of the lower needs can then focus on self-actualization. They are free to pursue the more pleasurable things in life whatever that means to them. They are not burdened by looking for food and shelter, they feel secure with their economic and social situation, and are comfortable with who they are.

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The Pyramid of Needs

SELFACTUALIZATION NEEDS

ESTEEM NEEDS

BELONGINGNESS AND LOVE NEEDS

SAFETY/SECURITY NEEDS

PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS

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Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is an alternative to the more pessimistic theories of human nature, which depict man as naturally violent, lazy and stupid. Other theories of human motivation such as those of Freud and Skinner paint a much more negative picture of man by treating him as any other animal which follows natural instincts. By contrast, under Maslow’s hierarchy, man is actively trying to better himself. He is basically honest, good and able to govern himself. Only when human needs are thwarted do people turn violent, lie, cheat and steal. It is not our role here to argue whether man’s nature is basically good or evil. Our sole concern is to understand what motivates human behavior, so that you will have an advantage in persuading your prospects to consider buying your product/service or otherwise winning them to your way of thinking. Under Maslow, man is driven up the hierarchical pyramid as much by fear of falling toward death as he is by the hope of reaching up to a better life. Actually, many believe that the fear of loss is a greater motivator than the hope of gain. So even though human beings may be constantly struggling to climb Maslow’s hierarchy toward the higher needs, they may be more concerned with not falling down the side of the pyramid. Study after study proves that the average person is more motivated by the fear of losing what he has than by the hope of gaining something better. This is where FEAR Selling departs from the currently accepted strategy of focusing mainly on product benefits. Again, fear and hope are the main drivers of human behavior. And as we will see, successful salespeople use these two motivators together to drive people to buy their products.

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Hope Selling: The Basics of Selling Benefits Of course, it is better to focus on selling benefits than on selling features. Too many salespeople that we have worked with focus on the features of their products and services rather than translating them into benefits. Many of them think that they are focusing on benefits, but they are really just focusing on product features. Don’t fall into this basic trap. Features are focused on your product or service. Features define and describe your product. Of course, you may have to spend some time on describing product features – if they are important to your prospect. But on the whole, you should be focusing on benefits. By focusing on benefits, you automatically must put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. You must answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” which is what is always on the mind of a prospective buyer. They want to know what pain they can avoid with your product or what pleasure they can attain from it. So, the first step in positioning your product so that it is more attractive to your buyer is to transform features into benefits. This will force you to be client-centered. The simple trick in transforming features into benefits is to use the phrase “so that…” People aren’t interested in the features themselves but rather the benefits that those features will give them. Let’s take some basic features of a car: · Side airbags · Four-wheel drive · Gets good gas mileage ___________________________________________________________________________________ 96

These are simply features. Don’t assume that your prospect can translate these features into benefits by themselves. We’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here because one of the keys to FEAR Selling is asking questions to find out what is important to a prospect before presenting to them. But let’s assume that we know from initial conversations with the prospect that safety for their teenagers is important. Instead of just saying: “This new model has side airbags,” you want to say something like “This model has side airbags so that if your son or daughter gets into an accident, they’ll have a higher chance of walking away from the accident unharmed.” As you can see, you have now painted a picture of the benefit (safety) of one of the car’s features (air bags). Instead of just saying: “This model has four-wheel drive,” you can say, “This model has four-wheel drive so that the next time it snows you’ll be able to get around much more safely.” Again, as we will see later in FEAR Selling, you want these stories to relate to a given prospect’s particular hopes or fears. For example, you may make the above statement to a prospect who indicated their need for safety during the winter. Another example of converting product features into prospect benefits is by saying: “This model gets good gas mileage so that you’ll spend much less money on your weekly transportation costs.” So always try to maintain a focus on benefits. If your prospect asks for features then discuss them, but try to always bring them back to the benefits of any given feature. Stop just rattling off the features of your product as if they mean something. They are meaningless unless you translate them into benefits that matters to _____________________________________________________________________________________ 97

your prospect. We will explore how to find out which benefits are most important to a particular prospect when we lay out the Values Elicitation Process, but for now, it is important that you understand that you must focus on benefits.

The Carrot And The Stick Translating features into benefits is a powerful step that is often overlooked by salespeople. To really supercharge the effect of your product’s presentation, however, you must go one step further. This is where fear comes in. Fears are the flip side of the benefits. Now many marketers will argue that using fear to motivate will turn people off – and they are right if you don’t know how to use your prospects’ fears to your advantage. Often fear can paralyze people and stop them from making any decision at all. But think about any political campaign. Savvy politicians – who are really selling nothing more than ideas – often rely mainly on scare tactics to win office. They try to paint a negative picture for voters of life under their opponent – while at the same time, they portray themselves as the candidate who will lead their people to a hopeful future. Like any politician, you must learn to use fear and hope appropriately, and you will learn how to do this as we move through the FEAR Selling System. For now, you should understand that you must apply the dual pressures of benefits – or, hopes, as we will call them from now on - and fears. You must position your product/service so that it gives them the hope of personal reward. And you must imply that the lack of your product will probably lead your prospect to a painful future. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 98

As we interviewed successful salespeople, our researchers watched their strategies and tactics – we watched for what was going on beneath the surface of their interactions with their prospective buyers. From these observations, we found that using the carrot (benefits) and the stick (fears) is much more powerful than just using the carrot of benefits.

A Brief History of Neuro-Linguistic Programming As you will see throughout this book, we draw upon many far-ranging fields of research from neurobiology to philosophy to psychology. One of the most powerful technologies that we will reference is known as NeuroLinguisitic Programming (NLP). NLP is a relatively new discipline that began to take shape in mid-1970s. It has become famous for its techniques that bring about effective, longlasting change in human thinking and behavior. For example, there is a technique in NLP called The Fast Phobia Cure, which has been proven to cure phobias (fears) in a matter of minutes. There are processes that can now cure phobias of water, heights, public speaking, flying and many other fears. You can use such techniques to help you overcome any internal resistance you have that may be hindering your sales. You may be hesitant to pick up the phone and make cold calls. You may be uncomfortable giving presentations. You may prefer sending materials to a prospect and hope they respond rather than actually engaging them in a conversation. These are all in some sense “fears” that we must overcome if we are to be effective in sales. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 99

Not only can you use NLP techniques to improve your own effectiveness, but you also can use them to help influence the behavior of your prospective customers.

NLP Defined NLP was developed from several different intellectual disciplines and organized by its co-founders – Richard Bandler and John Grinder. Grinder was a professor of linguistics at the University of California in Santa Cruz, and Bandler was a math and computers student there. Bandler and Grinder studied various famous therapists including Fritz Perls, who was known for his study of Gestalt Therapy, and Milton Erickson who had developed a model of hypnosis. From this research, Bandler and Grinder developed a model of communication that described how humans get “programmed” by languages so that we develop predictable responses to stimuli such as words. The techniques of NLP have been combined with other disciplines ranging from philosophy to cognitive psychology to neurology in an attempt to leverage its power in changing human behavior. Today, NLP techniques are being applied to health, business, education, athletics and many other areas of human endeavor. Okay, enough of the vague general introduction of NLP. Now, we will introduce some basic NLP concepts so that we can really use it in our everyday lives to modify our own behavior as well as that of our prospective clients. “Neuro” refers to our nervous system and mind. It is concerned with how we process information by experiencing the world through our five senses and then recording the memory of those experiences in our bodies. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 100

“Linguistic” refers to how we think about, label and order our external world in our minds. We use language to do this. Language is what enables us not only to communicate and share abstract thoughts with others, but it is used to build our memories. Our minds process raw information that comes to us in the forms of pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells and turns them into words. “Programming” refers to the process by which our minds organize the sights, sounds, feelings, smells, tastes – and the words - that then “tell” us what to do in any given situation. In effect, we are “programmed” just as computers are programmed. In the world of the computer, when someone presses the key for the letter O, the computer responds by creating the image of a circle on the screen. The computer has been programmed to respond in certain ways to the pressing of each of its buttons. Similarly, human beings are programmed by their environment (families, society, etc.) to react in certain ways when they experience certain stimuli – when certain emotional buttons are pushed. FEAR Selling helps you find your prospects’ buttons and push them to your – and hopefully, your prospects’ - advantage. For example, we are “taught” that fire can be dangerous to us, and so if someone yells, “Fire!” we will react in a certain way. We may become more alert, start watching for what others around us are doing and then follow them as they run away from the area of danger. If you think about it, a simple four-letter word triggers a massive amount of reaction in our bodies. The adrenaline in our bodies begins to flow, we focus our attention more intently on our surroundings, and we probably expend significant amounts of energy to run away. All because of a simple four-letter word that we have been conditioned to respond to. This brief background is a very crude way of explaining the concept of NLP, but it is all we need for now. Again, our goal here is not to bury you in the theory but rather to give you just enough so that you understand the _____________________________________________________________________________________ 101

basics of how techniques work so that you can maximize their effectiveness when you use them in the real world. We will be using the techniques of NLP and a variety of other disciplines to help you sell better. By understanding how humans are typically “programmed,” you will learn how to react to their behavior more effectively and how to get them to react to you in ways that will move you toward what you want – to sell more and sell faster.

Pacing And Leading There are several techniques in NLP that we will be referring to throughout the book, but one of the most basic is the concept of pacing and leading. Pacing refers to the ability to gain and maintain rapport with another person by understanding how they perceive the world and then showing them that you understand their world. We will explore how to draw out or elicit how people think. We also will describe tactics that you can use to make others feel more comfortable with you. Basically, think of pacing as bonding with your prospect and building a level of trust so that you can then take them to the next step – leading. Leading follows pacing. After you have reached a level of bonding and trust with your prospect, you can then use that level of rapport as a foundation to build upon. Once you have obtained their trust, you can then lead them – and they will follow your lead. You will use your own behavior to guide your prospect toward what you want them to do – that is, move them closer to the sale.

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The FEAR Acronym The FEAR Selling System is based on this basic concept of pacing and leading. First you must get your prospect’s attention and build trust, and then you can lead your prospect to the sale. The F and the E in the FEAR acronym are all about pacing; with the A, you will be pacing and then leading; and the R is about leading. So as a quick overview, the process is as follows: Find and Focus On Your Prospect’s Hopes and Fears: How To Uncover Your Prospect’s Emotional Hot Buttons And Use Them To Grab Their Attention Empathize With Your Prospect: How To Build Your Credibility By Making Your Prospect Feel That You Understand Their Hopes and Fears Ask The Right Questions At The Right Times In The Right Way: How To Find Out Your Prospect’s Specific Hopes And Fears That You Can Then Use To Sell To Them Reveal The Hope Of Your Solution: How To Position Your Presentation So That You Play Off of Your Prospect’s Hopes and Fears As you will see, the first three steps in the System focus more on listening while it is only at the end of the process that you launch into your presentation. Typically, salespeople use the complete opposite strategy. They talk at their prospect from the beginning without gathering the crucial information that can close the sale at the end. They immediately plunge into presenting first – providing their prospects with information without gathering the key _____________________________________________________________________________________ 103

information about their prospects’ hopes and fears that they should be inputting into their presentation. If you follow the FEAR Selling System, you will avoid this all-toocommon mistake since the System forces you to ask questions and listen upfront as much as possible.

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Find and Focus On Your Prospect’s Hopes And Fears: How To Uncover Your Prospect’s Emotional Hot Buttons And Use Them To Grab Their Attention

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Before we dive into the first step of the FEAR Selling System, we want to note that many sales training organizations teach you that the first step in the sales process is to bond with your prospect. Typical sales training systems start with the second step in the FEAR Selling System, which is the Empathy Step. Our research shows, however, that one of the most difficult aspects of selling involves prospecting through cold calling and networking. So the FEAR Selling System starts with how to approach a prospect in order to get them to sit down with you, listen to your pitch, give you the opportunity to bond and qualify them as a potential prospect. FEAR Selling doesn’t jump the gun by assuming that your foot is already in the door. So, let’s first talk about strategies that you should use to get the attention of your target prospects and get that first meeting.

Everyone Talks Strategy, But Few Walk the Walk Here’s the best definition of sales strategy that we have found throughout our years of research. Sales strategy is about Targeting and Positioning: 1) finding the right people to talk to who are most likely to buy your product/service – this is the Targeting aspect of strategy. 2) crafting a persuasive message to get their attention, build their interest in your product/service, create an emotional desire to purchase your product/service and then take action by buying your product/service – this is the Positioning aspect of strategy. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 106

Let’s tackle Positioning first. How do you represent your product/service in order to get a prospect’s attention?

How The Media Uses Fear Tactics To Get You Curious Enough Not To Switch Channels If you have ever seen a commercial for a news program, you have probably had this technique used on you. They typically tease you with a news story that invokes some fear. A killing, a robbery, a rape, a terrorist threat – anything graphic that will get your attention since it may affect you and your loved ones. They don’t tell you too much in the commercial, but rather just enough to get you interested to stay up and tune in at 11 o’clock that night. They might tease you with the latest terrorist threat. And so, you might be anxiously awaiting that nightly newscast so as to ease your fears about the situation. Maybe you’ll find out something from the news that will help you avoid injury or even death. That’s how the news networks keep you glued to your TV set. It’s all about fear. For a more in-depth look at how the media uses fear to get your attention, you might want to refer to the book, The Culture of Fear, by Barry Glassner, Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. Glassner has written for many magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune. Through his studies and broad experience with the media, he gives a detailed inside look at how the media sells itself by using fear. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 107

Now that you are aware of this technique, look out for it being used by your local TV news stations. Understanding how to use fear in order to grab attention will undoubtedly help you sell more and sell faster.

Cutting Through The Clutter As we all know, we live in a cluttered, confusing and competitive world, so you must get your prospect’s attention first before you even have a chance to engage them in conversation. Getting people to raise their hands and ask you to pitch them on your product or service is getting more and more difficult. Generating leads for salespeople to call on typically falls into the realm of marketing. (For more on how to get people to call you, check out the book, FEAR Marketing.) If you are lucky enough to have a great marketing department that funnels you leads – or if you know how to take advantage of Internet-enabled leadgeneration strategies like pay-per-click advertising or affiliate marketing, then you are in good shape, but nowadays, we find that salespeople are doing more and more of their own prospecting. You typically must take the first step and call on your prospects. (But for more on how to use the Internet to generate leads, check out the book, FEAR Marketing Online.) The first step in the FEAR Selling System is all about how to grab your prospect’s attention.

Getting In The Door By Creating Curiosity and Trust In order to get your prospects’ attention, you must understand what drives them – you must understand their fears and hopes. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 108

In the third step of the FEAR Selling System, the Ask Step, we will show you how to explore a particular prospect’s fears and hopes through what we call the Values Elicitation Process, but before you get to question and qualify your prospect face-to-face you have to get a meeting with them first. So, how do you get that initial meeting? You need to create two things in the mind of your prospect: curiosity and trust – both of which are related to their fears and hopes. By creating curiosity, you will tap into a fear – the fear that they might have of missing a potential opportunity. Or, if you look at it from the flip side, you are tapping into a hope – the hope that you have some product/service that can help them reach their personal goals in a faster and easier fashion. But that hope is not easy to conjure. They are not going to get excited every time a salesperson calls them. You must differentiate yourself from the hordes of other salespeople that ring their phone every day. In addition to curiosity, you must create trust. By creating trust, you will ease other fears that they might have – fears that you aren’t credible – that you will waste their time or make them uncomfortable with a sales pitch for something they don’t want or need. So how do you create curiosity and trust? Let’s talk about three specific attention-grabbing and credibility-building tactics: 1) Know Your Prospects’ Fears and Hopes 2) Expertizing Yourself 3) The Machine-Gun Client List _____________________________________________________________________________________ 109

We will show you specifically how to use these tactics together in the context of an actual prospecting call when we show you how to create your 30-Second Commercial later, but for now, let’s explore each one in turn.

Curiosity and Credibility-Building Tactic #1: Know Your Prospects’ Fears and Hopes When writing a speech, you must know what your audience is interested in hearing. It’s the same with sales. It starts with market research. When trying to prepare yourself to speak to your audience – your prospects - you must ask yourself: Generally, what types of problems, pains, fears and hopes do my prospective customers have? We suggest that you focus more on problems, pains and fears because once you know what they are trying to avoid, you typically understand the other side of the coin – what they want, what they hope for. Plus, every salesperson is out there talking about product benefits, which are related to prospects’ hopes. With FEAR Selling, you’ll differentiate yourself from the hordes of other salespeople by focusing on your prospects rather than your products. And by focusing on their emotional hot buttons – their fears, you’ll have a better chance of capturing their attention. By showing prospects that you understand their problems, you will have a better chance of getting them to trust you a bit and getting them curious enough to meet with you. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 110

And don’t just limit your thinking to the problems, pains, fears and hopes that your product or service can solve. The key is to focus first on your prospect rather than your product’s benefits. If you focus on product benefits first, you may fall into the trap of assuming that a prospect has the problems or fears that your product can solve. What you want to do is hear about your prospects’ problems and fears from their perspective first, and then tailor your pitch appropriately. This is a much more effective strategy. So what are your prospects’ needs? What are they concerned about? What are their worries? Their problems? Their fears? Their hopes? So at the very beginning, when you are first starting to sell something new, before you make your first prospecting call, before you step out onto the street to visit your first prospect and try to make your first sale, you need to gather as much information as possible about the personal problems and aspirations of your potential buyers in a general sense. With this information, you will create what we call your Prospect Fear and Hope List.

Gathering Information For Your Prospect Fear and Hope List You must get your prospect curious enough and trusting enough about you and your product/service first so that you can keep them on the phone long enough to engage in a conversation and then get them to invite you in for that first meeting. We will show you how to use your Prospect Fear and Hope List to arouse their curiosity, but first let’s talk about how you conduct the market research needed to create the List. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 111

There are two main sources that you should tap in order to gather the information that you need to create this List: · yourself and your colleagues · your prospects and customers

Ask Yourself and Brainstorm With Your Colleagues In the very beginning, you can only make educated guesses about what really concerns your future prospects. You are limited to exploring this issue by asking questions to: · yourself · your fellow salespeople · your colleagues in the marketing department – if you are lucky enough to have one · others within your company who may stimulate your thinking. Keep in mind that such self-questioning is not the best type of market research. You are relying on what you and your colleagues think are the problems that your prospects need to solve. At this point, you are asking people who are one step away from the real problems. You are asking people who are emotionally divorced from the true pains and fears that are haunting those who are really experiencing them in the industry. But you have to start somewhere, and thinking about these issues before talking with prospects will help prepare you to better gather information once you are in front of a prospect. Again, you are only making assumptions as to the worries, concerns, fears and hopes of your prospects. And if you’ve read The 7 Deadly Sins of ___________________________________________________________________________________ 112

Selling, you will recall that making assumptions, which is related to the Sin of Pride, is the most deadly sin that you can commit in sales. If you make the wrong assumptions about your prospects upfront, you will pitch to them with ineffective positioning and almost undoubtedly lose the sale. Ideally, you want to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth – from prospects and customers themselves. But at first, you must rely on those who have made the calls before you and have already talked to or conducted some form of research on your prospective customers. Just remember not to simply rely on what your more-experienced colleagues tell you is the truth about your prospects’ problems. You have to find that out for yourself. So again, asking yourself and your colleagues lots of questions is only the first step in an ongoing process of market research. Ask yourself and others: “From a personal perspective, what are our prospects’ biggest fears, problems or challenges?” “How do those problems affect them personally? Do those problems cause our prospects to work more hours? Do those problems put their job in jeopardy? Do they cost them money personally?” “What are our prospects’ hopes? What are they trying to accomplish on a personal level?”

Ask Your Prospects and Customers Many successful salespeople start – not with prospecting calls – but rather with simple information-gathering calls – so that they can find out how to position themselves when approaching future prospects. They may begin by interviewing current customers if they are lucky enough to have any when they first start a new position. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 113

We recommend this strategy since our studies have proven that the more time and effort salespeople spend in developing their Prospect Fear and Hope List and generally getting to know what makes their typical prospects tick, the better their chances are of engaging and then closing their future prospects. Once you are on the phone or out in the field, think of yourself as a detective. You are trying to find out as quickly as possible the kinds of frustrations that your target market of prospects are facing everyday as well as what their aspirations are. So you must ask lots of questions. Once you are in a conversation with a prospect, ask for their help. Say something like: “I was hoping you could help me out. Could you give me some advice?” Pause – wait for them to give you permission to ask your question. And remember, don’t be shy about this – people love giving advice. You’re stroking their egos by asking them for their help. You’re basically saying: “You’re smarter - and therefore better - than me in some way – can you help me?” This is very appealing positioning since people like to have their egos stroked. People like to see themselves as smart and important. Typically, your prospect will say something like: “Sure, how can I help you?” Then you can ask: “I’m just trying to get a better sense of what is currently going on in the industry…what do you think are the top three problems that people in your position are facing right now?” ___________________________________________________________________________________ 114

This is a sly way of asking them what their specific pains and fears are without coming right out and asking. They may tell you their specific problems or they may share with you problems that they have heard or read about that are relevant in their industry. Either way, listen and make a note of what they tell you, because you are going to use this information later. And always politely ask for more… Whether they tell you one problem, three or a dozen, always ask: “Is there anything else? Are there any other problems that you see coming down the road for you and others in your position?” You never know what you might find out. Then, go through each of their answers and ask: “Maybe you can share with me – how does that problem affect you personally?” Once you have explored the negative (problems, fear) side of the equation, ask them: “So what do you hope to achieve over the next year?” The objective here is to gather the material for your Prospect Fear and Hope List, which you will use to open new doors and engage new prospects. Remember, as it says in the Bible, “Ask and it shall be given.” This research is priceless because the information that you gather now is going to help you seal more deals later. Your Prospect Fear and Hope List will help you build trust with your _____________________________________________________________________________________ 115

prospects since they will feel that you have some understanding of the pain that they are going through. As we will discuss later in the Empathy Step, by asking such questions, you are “feeling their pain” and walking in their shoes. As Stephen Covey says in his best-seller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you must “Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood.” In other words, you want to understand how your prospect thinks before you try to sell them your product/service. So remember, focus first on research. At this stage you are trying to get a sense of the problems, fears and hopes of a typical prospect. And keep in mind that you are constantly gathering information about your prospects’ fears and hopes. It is a never-ending process. This List is a work-in-progress because companies and industries are always undergoing changes, and so your prospects’ fears and hopes might change over time.

You Are Selling To People, Not Organizations When conducting this research, it is important that you ask and think about your prospects as individuals rather than as part of an organization. You must think about your prospects’ problems on an individual, personal level. Don’t start by thinking about how your product can make or save their organization money. Stop thinking of organizations as entities unto themselves. Instead, think of your prospects as individuals with personal pains, fears and aspirations. Don’t think of yourself as selling to IBM or the Government. Think of yourself as selling to Bob Johnston, an individual, who happens to work for IBM – but more importantly someone who has personal goals that he wants to achieve, in addition to satisfying his company’s needs. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 116

Think about the person who is sitting across the table from you. What are their problems, pains, fears and hopes? For example, they may want: · To avoid having to work overtime; · To avoid having to take work-related calls on weekends when they would rather be spending time with their families; · To avoid screwing up on the project they are working on; · To look good in front of their boss; · To get a promotion; or · To simply keep their job. You must think on this personal level primarily and on an organizational level secondarily. Of course, you will position your product/service as a benefit to the organization, but you must first prove to the person whom you are selling it to that it is going to help them achieve their goals, their hopes - or avoid their fears - first. This sounds obvious, but too many salespeople whom we have studied and consulted to waste their time and energy trying to sell logically to an organization rather than emotionally to a person. We’ll cover this more in depth later in the Ask Step, but for now, keep reminding yourself that you are a person selling to other individuals.

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Creating Your Prospect Fear and Hope List: An Example Now, let’s show you how one of our top-performing students gathered information and created his Prospect Fear and Hope List. It’s easier to show you an example of how to create the List rather than simply explain it to you abstractly. Steve is a salesperson for a graphic design firm that helps companies create their marketing and advertising materials – business cards, brochures, presentation materials, etc. Remember, here are the types of questions that Steve asked in order to elicit the responses he needs to form his Prospect Fear and Hope List: “What do you think are the top three problems that people in your position are facing right now?” “Maybe you can share with me – how does that problem affect you personally?” “What do you hope to achieve over the next year?” By using these questions, Steve pulled together a list of possible problems that a typical buyer of his services - a corporate marketing executive or business owner - might have. This list was drawn from interviews with colleagues as well as with prospects and current customers. Remember, do not simply make this list up based on what you think the problems are. Take the time to find out what your prospects’ real frustrations and aspirations are. It will be worth the effort. Here is Steve’s Prospect Fear and Hope List. Remember, Steve works for a ___________________________________________________________________________________ 118

graphic design vendor, and so, as you can tell, the List is from his prospects’ perspective: 1) Our graphic design vendors are inconsistent when it comes to quality and service. They waste my time because I am forced to maintain relationships with lots of vendors just in case my current one drops the ball. And I have to always be looking for new ones to replace the ones that aren’t giving me the attention I need. I wish I could find one good, reliable firm to work with so that I wouldn’t have to worry about each job I give to them. 2) We compete with organizations that have bigger budgets than we do, and therefore they have better marketing materials than we do. It makes me look bad in front of my boss when he compares our brochures to those of our competitors. I wish I could get more bang for my buck with my marketing budget. 3) Our graphic designers don’t turn around projects quickly enough, I often have to stay late at work or work on weekends to meet deadlines, and so lose precious personal time with my family. I’d like to hire a more competent graphic design firm. As you can see, Steve asked not only about the problems his prospects are facing, but the personal consequences of having to deal with those problems as well as their hopes. Finally, in order to increase the emotional impact of the statements in his Prospect Fear and Hope List, he edits each one down and then begins each one with what we call emotional verb phrases. You’ll notice that they are all verb phrases, which express various degrees of discomfort.

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Here are some examples of emotional verb phrases that you can use to start the statements in your List: - Uncomfortable with

- Frustrated with

- Annoyed with

- Afraid of

- Concerned about

- Worried about

- Unhappy with

- Unsure of

-Dissatisfied with

Finally, generalize the statements so that they flow from the following sentence: “We work with people/business owners/corporate executives who:” Think of each statement as a small portrait that you are painting about a potential prospect. Try to describe their pains, fears and hopes. You will use these little stories again and again to show future prospects that you understand their pain – and that you can work with them to alleviate that pain – that you can give them hope. So here is what Steve’s List looks like at the end of the process: We work with marketing executives who: 1) Are frustrated with graphic design vendors that give them inconsistent quality and service. Our typical client is looking for one reliable firm so that they don’t have to waste time maintaining a lot of vendor relationships or worry about constantly searching for new design firms. 2) Are concerned about competing with organizations that have bigger budgets than they do. They want a designer who will be able to get them more bang for their buck and make them look good in front of their bosses. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 120

3) Are annoyed with graphic designers who don’t turn around projects quickly enough. They don’t want to have to stay late at work or work on weekends to meet deadlines just because their designers screw up.

Remember, the objective here is to find painful issues that your prospect can relate to - things that could happen to them, things that they are afraid might happen to them in the future. Again, we’ll show you how to use this Prospect Fear and Hope List later to position yourself when talking to a prospect. Now let’s explore another tactic that will help you create the trust and curiosity needed to keep the conversation going with a prospect.

Curiosity and Credibility-Building Tactic #2: Expertizing Yourself By finding out what the problems are in the industry and being able to discuss them intelligently with your prospects, you will create a level of trust that you need as a foundation before you can move on to sell to them. Remember, you must pace before you lead. Building credibility is part of pacing and getting in synch with your prospect. You want to position yourself as someone who is out on the frontlines talking to others in your prospect’s field. You will thereby position yourself as an authority, who possesses competitive information that your prospects don’t have access to – information that they need in order to avoid failure and achieve success. Think about it, business owners and companies spend millions each year sending their employees to conferences to find out what’s going on in the _____________________________________________________________________________________ 121

industry. As an expert who is calling on lots of prospects and is willing to share your knowledge, you’re saving them time and money by taking critical industry information right to them so that they don’t have to seek it out themselves. So become a respected resource to your prospects. One of the most effective ways of expertizing yourself is to create intellectual property – books, survey reports, magazine articles, special reports or newsletters about problems and solutions in your industry. Then use what one of our more successful students calls the GIA Strategy – Give It Away Strategy. You want to distribute this intellectual property as far and wide as possible. Make it accessible on your web site, write lots of articles for trade magazines and then get copies of them to hand out to prospects, conduct surveys and share the information when you talk to prospects. And, of course, always have your contact information on this intellectual property so that interested readers can get in touch with you. This is a great way to generate leads. By positioning yourself as an authority in your field, you will gain the trust of your prospects – and you will get them curious. They will want to pick your brain, and so will be more likely to invite you in for a meeting. We will cover more credibility-building tactics in the next step in the FEAR Selling System, the Empathy Step, but for now, remember that you must position yourself as an authority in your field, not in a cocky but rather in a confident fashion.

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Curiosity and Credibility-Building Tactic #3: Your Machine-Gun Client List As one business owner we work with likes to say: “People are sheep.” What he means by this is that people have a herd mentality. If they hear – through word-of-mouth - that other people and companies are using a particular product/service, they are more likely to get curious about it and want to find out more. They’ll follow the rest of the herd of people to try to find out what’s so special about that product/service. (For word-of-mouth marketing tactics that work, check out the books, FEAR Marketing and FEAR Marketing Online.) So as a saleperson, how can you take advantage of this herd mentality? Well, you can build trust and generate curiosity simply by having a client list to rattle off to a prospect. If you can fire off anywhere from three to five current (or past) clients that you have helped, you have a chance to trigger their curiosity and build credibility. And make sure that you have a story to tell to back up each client name that you mention. You want to be prepared with mini-case-studies that touch on how you were able to help each client in ways that would be interesting to your current prospect. For example, if you are pitching a new technology to a large retail chain, and you can say that you have worked with Sears, Wal-Mart and Macy’s, your prospect will be curious as to how you might be able to help them. Of course, you may not be able to share details of previous projects you worked on due to confidentiality agreements with your clients, but typically, you can drop their names and speak generally about how you _____________________________________________________________________________________ 123

helped such former clients. So be ready with what we call a Machine-Gun List of former and current clients that you can fire off when talking to a client. With such a list, you’ll be able to overcome at least some of the resistance that a typical prospect will have when talking to you early on in the sales process. And what if you don’t have a long list of former or current clients to rattle off? Well, to solve this common problem that many start-up companies face, we turn to the advice of a master marketer and salesman, Herschell Gordon Lewis. In his book, Direct Mail Copy That Sells, Lewis refers to the word “verisimilitude” as “the magic word that can make you rich.” Verisimilitude is not truth, but rather the appearance of truth. Now this might all seem a bit underhanded, but, to paraphrase Lewis, the cornerstone of successful sales isn’t truth but having your prospect regard what you say as truth. Now of course, we are not advocating that you outright lie to your prospects, but you could say that you have “consulted to” or “worked with” companies including former employers, or perhaps former clients of companies that you worked for before you started selling this new product – as long as you had some input into dealings with these “former clients.” Whatever you do, don’t say that you don’t have any clients. This is a surefire way to lose trust and let your prospects’ curiosity slip through your hands. The common expression is: “Fake it until you make it.” Now that you have been introduced to these three powerful curiosity and credibility-building tactics, let’s move on and show you how you should weave these tactics into your 30-Second Commercial for maximum impact.

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The Dreaded Cold Call As many of the top salespeople we interviewed tell us, the difference between a cold call and a warm call is 30 seconds – that is, if you know how to fill that first 30 seconds properly. We’ll get to exactly what you should say during your cold calls in a minute, but first, let’s talk a little about cold calling generally. Cold calling is one of the most dreaded aspects of selling. However, if you want to be successful in sales, prospecting is usually necessary to find and talk to the right people before being able to introduce your product, make a presentation, and close a sale. And so, in order to get to the close, you must start by prospecting - constantly and relentlessly. Cold calling simply means to call or contact anyone with the purpose of selling something. In cold calling, leads come from anywhere and everywhere - from the yellow pages, from reading trade journals, from finding lists of potential prospects on the Internet – anywhere. Normally, salespeople do not reach their prospect on the first call, so they should use the call to gather information if they reach a gatekeeper like a personal assistant or perhaps a colleague of the prospect. And then you may want to leave a message, which will provoke a response. After you understand how to craft your 30-Second Commercial, you’ll be in a better position to avoid Voicemail Limbo – that is leaving messages that are never returned. With only a little modification, your Commercial also will act as an effective voicemail message. From our surveys, we have found that the vast majority of salespeople don’t like cold calling. If you think about it, you might not like cold calling because you know how annoying it is to be on the other end of a cold call. No one likes to receive an unsolicited call that may come to you after work, when you’re having dinner and trying to relax with your family. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 125

Everyone has experienced receiving an unwanted cold call, so you’re probably at least a little uneasy about making cold calls yourself. But as a salesperson, it’s your job to interrupt others, and hopefully help them solve a problem that they have – or that they might have down the line. So think of it as performing a service. You’re only interrupting your prospects in order to make them aware of a potential solution to their problems. In order to make cold calling bearable, many salespeople we spoke to suggest carving out a certain number of hours in the day every day to make cold calls. From our research on time management for salespeople, we agree that getting into a routine is the best way to ensure that you keep prospecting on a consistent basis. This will take discipline – and so you must motivate yourself to make prospecting calls every day – even when you think you are too busy with current deals, because you never know when your pipeline is going to dry up. As you may already know, cold calling can be frustrating and discouraging, especially when not done correctly. And while cold calling is by no means the most effective way of reaching a prospect, it sometimes is the only way, making it a necessary evil that you must get comfortable with.

Capturing Attention With Your 30Second Commercial In the following sections, we are going to show you how to craft what is known in the sales profession as your “30-Second Commercial” or “Elevator Speech.” Some salespeople call it their Elevator Speech because the objective is to be able to tell people about the problems they or their product/service solve in a short yet powerful way. So as we walk you through the ___________________________________________________________________________________ 126

preparation of your 30-Second Commercial, think of yourself as if you are on an elevator engaging someone in a conversation. You don’t know if they are going to get off on the next floor or ten floors from now, but either way, think of yourself as only having 30 seconds to present yourself. Writing your 30-Second Commercial is like writing poetry. It must be concise yet powerful – and every word must count. Remember, you must hit hard and hit fast because if they are getting off on the next floor, you want them curious enough to hold the door open and listen to your Commercial. (Or, like some of the gutsier salespeople whom we know, you can always just get out of the elevator when your prospect gets out and finish your Commercial.) Either way, make sure you have a 30-Second Commercial and that you are constantly practicing it so that you are ready when opportunity knocks. And by the way, you never really know when opportunity is knocking so give your 30-Second Commercial to everyone and always ask for referrals. Before we get started showing you how to create your 30-Second Commercial, it is important for you to realize that your Commercial is a work in progress. You must keep refining it as you learn more about what is of interest to your prospects and what is not. Remember, you want it to be short and powerful. Your Commercial is like bait that you dangle in front of a prospect to hook them into engaging in a conversation with you. You must cut through the clutter and make a good impression with your Commercial. So, we’ll show you how to structure it so that it makes the greatest impact in the shortest period of time. You also must remember that you have to be flexible with your 30-Second Commercial. You may encounter prospects in different industries that have different problems, pains, fears and hopes than your typical prospects. You must be prepared to customize your presentation to get the person in front of you curious. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 127

In the next couple of sections, we are going to dissect the 30-Second Commercial so that you understand exactly why you are saying what you are saying. If you understand what your objectives are at each step, you are more likely to achieve those objectives, even if you decide to stray from our formula for your 30-Second Commercial.

The 30-Second Commercial Formula Overview But before we dive into the nitty-gritty of exactly what to say and why each step works, here’s the formula for the 30-Second Commercial along with some of the key phrases to use at each step. Remember, slightly modify this formula based on the situation – for example, a cold call, a voicemail, a networking event, etc. 1) Brief Introduction “Hi, (prospect’s first name), this is (your full name).” 2) Introductory Permission Questions “Maybe you can help me, did I catch you at a bad time?” “Maybe you can help me find the right person in your organization that might be interested in speaking with me?” 3) Personal Fear and Hope List “I work with (people, business owners, entrepreneurs, corporate executives, etc.) who are: ___________________________________________________________________________________ 128

· Frustrated with… · Struggling with… · Trying to avoid…” 4) Open Up The Conversation “Are either you or maybe a colleague of yours having to confront any of these challenges?” Either get them to tell you about their challenges: “That’s interesting, could you tell me more….” Or ask for a referral: “Maybe you can help me then… who do you know who may be experiencing these challenges?”

5) Machine-Gun Client List “We have done work with (three or four company names from your Machine-Gun Client List).” Be prepared to share mini-case-studies.

6) Ask For The Meeting “We’re constantly doing surveys and research on the most effective solutions to these problems. Would it make sense for you to invite me in, so I can share some possible solutions with you, and then maybe we can see if there is a way we can work together?”

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Don’t Do What Most Lazy, Unsuccessful Salespeople Do: Don’t Wing It The underperforming salespeople who come to us for training typically have one thing in common: They wing it. Instead of preparing what they are going to say before they pick up the phone or go to a networking event, they simply decide to say whatever comes to mind at the time. When we asked why they don’t prepare, they usually say that they want to sound natural or that all situations are different and so they want to be flexible in their presentation. In some ways, they are right: 1) You do want to sound natural; and 2) You need to be flexible in your presentation of your products and services depending upon the situation. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t 3) Be prepared. You should invest a significant amount of time planning and writing your 30-Second Commercial. Just like a commercial on TV, the goal of your 30-Second Commercial is to: ___________________________________________________________________________________ 130

1) capture your prospect’s attention 2) build interest and curiosity in your product/service; and 3) start the rapport-building process with your prospect.

Is Your 30-Second Commercial Written Correctly? We’re assuming now that we have convinced you of how important it is to be prepared with a 30-Second Commercial. It’s our job now to help you craft an effective one. Through our ongoing research with the Sales Career Training Institute, we have found that the majority of salespeople spend too little time in researching, crafting, practicing, using and rewriting sales collaterals like sales letters, sales scripts and 30-Second Commercials. (The FEAR Selling System provides you with the formulae for each step in the sales process, so you no longer have any excuse not to be prepared.) Of the low percentage of salespeople who actually write out their 30Second Commercial over 70% are saying the wrong things from the very beginning of the sales process. When you are in a networking situation or making a cold call, you are looking for prospects and/or people who may be able to refer you to prospects. Your Commercial might be the only opportunity you have to grab their attention and create interest in your product or service.

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The Main Goal of the 30-Second Commercial Now, let’s go step by step through putting together your 30-Second Commercial. It is important that we walk you through the process slowly and explain not only what to say, but also why each step works. You many not be completely comfortable using the exact words and phrases that we present here, but if you understand the purpose behind each step, you’ll be able to craft your own effective 30-Second Commercial. Each step, each thing you say, is moving you toward your main goal of capturing your prospects’ attention so that they’ll want to engage in further conversations with you and hopefully invite you in for a face-toface meeting.

1) The Brief Introduction So how do you start? You must first give a Brief Introduction that leaves them curious. Many novice salespeople start with something like this: “Hi, Tom, my name is Bob Smith, and I am with XYZ Corporation. We produce widgets and…” This does not keep your prospect curious for long. Too many salespeople launch into their pitch without permission. You’re not going to do this. When you don’t pause to ask for your prospect’s permission, their defenses will probably go up immediately. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 132

You will invoke fears in them, but they will not be the type of fears you want to generate. You’ll create the fears that are usually associated with salespeople: • The fear that you are going to waste their precious time with a sales pitch. • The fear that you are going to be pushy and try to get them to buy something or get an appointment with them. • The fear that you are going to put them in the awkward position of having to reject your offer. As we will discuss, the objective of your 30-Second Commercial should be to invoke a fear, but not these fears. You want to invoke a fear that gets them to want to hear you out. You want them to get curious. You want them to fear hanging up on you because you might have something that could help them and they don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to better themselves. What if it was their boss or a friend who suggested that you call them? They wouldn’t want to be rude to you. So they’ll want to find out who you are before telling you that they don’t have time for you. Keep them in suspense for a bit regarding exactly who you are. And don’t just fly into your pitch. Don’t label yourself as a salesman right off the bat. So instead… You want to say, “Hi Tom, this is …” and then say your full name but nothing more. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 133

Resist the urge to even say, “Hi Tom, this is Bob Smith with XYZ Company.” Think of yourself as just one human being talking to another. You don’t know what kind of relationship you will have with the person. Don’t label yourself as a salesperson right off the bat. If they do ask you what company you are with, then tell them, but at least you will have engaged them in an initial back-and-forth conversation. This is better than just rolling into your pitch. Right after your Brief Introduction, the second step is for you to…

2) Ask Introductory Permission Questions But before we go into the Introductory Permission Questions, let’s make sure that you understand why asking for permission works. This is the first of many times in the sales process that you will be asking for your prospect’s permission. You ask for permission to give your prospect the sense that they are in control of the process. This will make them more comfortable with you and thus more willing to accommodate you. People want to be in control. Think about it – if you had a choice between being in control or not in control, which would you choose? In control, of course. Being in control gives you power. Being out of control causes fear. Remember, typically, people want to move away from the fear of uncertainty, the fear of being out of control and toward the certainty and security of being in control. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 134

So give the other person the power – make them feel in control. The truth of the matter, as you will see later, is that the person asking the questions is always the more powerful person in a dialogue because they lead the direction of the discussion. But by asking permission, you are giving your prospect the illusion of control. So, the next thing you want to do after your Brief Introduction is to get their permission to engage in a conversation. Let’s explore this a bit more before moving on… As you will see throughout the FEAR Selling System, it is important to get your prospect’s permission every step of the way. Always be asking Permission Questions that begin like this: • “Is it okay if I…?” • “Would you be alright with…?” • “It seems like the next logical step is to…?” • “Maybe what I should do next is…?” Or some variation of these Permission Questions that you are comfortable with and that are relevant at the time. The main objective is to always get their permission to move forward in the sales process. Or, if you don’t get their permission, at least you’ll find out a little more about how they like to make decisions. We’ll _____________________________________________________________________________________ 135

explore the importance of eliciting decision-making strategies in the third step of the FEAR Selling System, the Ask Step. But for now, keep in mind to ask Permission Questions when appropriate: • Ask them if it’s the right time for you to introduce your product or service. • Ask them if it’s okay for you to take notes. • Ask them if it’s time for them to consider your proposal. You should be asking for permission throughout the whole sales process. You’ll see. It’s magic. Your prospect will feel in control. They will feel more comfortable with you because they will not group you with the typical salesperson who just bursts right into presenting their product without asking permission. They’ll think that they have a choice, and they will. But by positioning Permission Questions correctly, you will have some advantage in getting your prospect to move forward with you to the next step. So let’s see how this works with your Introductory Permission Questions. Right after your Brief Introduction, say something like: “Maybe you can help me? Did I catch you at a bad time?” Then wait for their answer. If it is a bad time, ask them when you can put down in your schedule to call them back. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 136

If your prospect gives you permission to proceed, ask: “I don’t know if you are the right person to talk to, but maybe you can help me find the right person in your organization who might be interested in speaking with me?” Again, wait for their response. You’re right if you are thinking that this flurry of questions might be confusing to your prospect. We have found that typically when someone is a bit confused, they’ll give you permission to proceed. Now, let’s take a second and explore why asking for help is a good strategy for gaining their approval to move forward.

The Rescue Society: Please Help Me Some sociologists describe our culture as a “rescue society.” Many researchers have observed that people feel uncomfortable when they are around others who are clearly uncomfortable. To ease their own discomfort, people will usually try to reach out and help a person who is struggling. And not only does seeing others in uncomfortable situations make us uncomfortable, but helping them makes us feel better about ourselves. Think about it from another perspective… When you ask for someone’s help, you are basically saying, in one form or another, that that person is “better” than you – at least at that point in time. You are acknowledging that they are more powerful than you, that they have more information, or more ability than you do. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 137

By asking for a prospect’s help after you briefly introduce yourself, you are flattering them. By asking others for advice, you are showing them respect. You are saying: “You are wiser than I am…please help me.” And typically, people will offer their help to those in need. Asking for help is powerful. Our religious, governmental and charitable institutions reinforce this rescue-society mentality. We are supposed to help those who are not as fortunate as we are. So there is a strong societal pressure to help those who ask for help. It may seem that we are long-winded in our explanation of why these techniques work, but we have found in our training that it is very important for you not only to know the technique, but also understand why it works. In this way, you can expand your abilities by applying these human motivation techniques beyond the basic situations that we can cover here. So again, you must ask for help: “I don’t know if you are the right person to talk to, but maybe you can help me find the right person in your organization who might be interested in speaking to me?” What else does this question do? In addition to tapping into the natural human motivation to help others, it also presents the prospect with a small challenge that they can probably solve quickly. Here is what they are probably thinking when you ask this question: “To help this person, all I’ll probably have to do is transfer them to the proper person in my organization. If I do that, I’ll feel good about myself.” Remember, you are presupposing that they are not the right person to talk to. This will lower their defenses. Even if they think you are a salesperson from the get-go, they’ll assume that all they have to do is pass you off to ___________________________________________________________________________________ 138

someone else.

A Powerful Bonding Twist When Asking For Help One of the top salespeople whom we know that uses this technique usually throws in another twist if she is calling into a large organization. She says something like: “I don’t know if you are the right person to talk to – I’ve been transferred around to so many people in your organization. Maybe you can help me?” Everyone has experienced the frustration of being transferred around to different people in an organization only to be transferred to more and more departments. Because everyone has experienced this, they typically will sympathize with you, and try to help you out. They will give you permission to proceed. They’ll want to help. Remember, your goal is to get their attention - to interrupt them - to break the pattern of whatever they were doing at the time. In NLP, this is known as a Pattern Interrupt. And it can be a powerful technique if used properly. Asking for help can help you capture their attention.

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3) The Prospect Fear and Hope List: Getting Your Prospect Comfortable… And Uncomfortable With You After gently getting their permission – which is a type of pacing because you are starting to get them to be comfortable by interacting with you, you must then lead. They have given you permission to lead – at least for the moment. In the next several seconds, you must make them comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. Let’s explain these seemingly paradoxical goals… What you are going to do is talk to them about the personal fears that you gathered when conducting market research as we discussed at the very beginning of this section. What does this do? First, it may show your prospect that you understand their common fears and problems. It may get them more comfortable with you because you understand their situation. Maybe. When it comes to knowing what a particular prospect’s hot buttons are, you really don’t have much to go on. So what you are going to do is take your best guess by floating some of the problems on your Prospect Fear and Hope List in front of them. Again, prospecting is like fishing. You have to dangle some delicious-looking bait in front of them and hope they bite. Even if they don’t have the problems that you mention, you want to play

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on the fear that they might have those problems in the future – or that they have those problems now but are not yet aware enough about them. Even if they don’t have those problems now, you want to plant a seed in their mind that they might have that problem later because others in that industry already have the problem. Again, think about it – why do people go to industry conferences? They want to mingle with others who are in their same industry. They want to find out what problems others are having, and they want to find out solutions as to how others are solving those problems. Their hope is that they’ll find out how to solve the problems others are having before they even happen to them. They want to allay their fears and prevent future pain. Conference planners are having a difficult time getting people to come to their conferences lately. Companies are under budget pressures so they send their people on less trips if they can. Some people don’t want to fly as much because of the fear of terror attacks like those of September 11, 2001. So what is the substitute for going to a conference? You can always read a book on the topic or magazines or search for articles about your problems online. But typically, these are one-way information flows. You read the book or the article, but you can’t ask about your specific situation. So what’s the next best thing? Sucking information out of salespeople. The Sales Career Training Institute conducts a wide variety of surveys but not only of salespeople. They also ask buyers questions to find out what motivates them in their buying strategies. One senior vice president at a large bank told us that one of the main _____________________________________________________________________________________ 141

reasons he agrees to listen to cold-calling salespeople or to invite them in is to “pick their brains” about industry trends. Once we heard this story, we conducted several surveys around this issue, and were surprised to find that many potential buyers carve out time for salespeople, not with the expectation of buying anything from them but rather simply to stay current on industry problems and solutions. Savvy salespeople take advantage of this information-gathering motivation on the part of buyers. You should do the same. You must position yourself as an authority – or, if you are uncomfortable seeing yourself as an authority in your field, think of yourself as simply as a reporter. Think about it…the prospects you are pitching to can’t go over to their competitor and share war stories too easily. People in the same industry sometimes resist sharing competitive information due to the fear that it might be used against them. But here you are, someone who talks to their competitors every day. If they are smart, they’ll want to pick your brain. You just have to give them the opportunity to do so. And remember, you’ll be even more credible if you have created some intellectual property – a book, magazine articles or even just survey results - on issues that may be important to your prospects. All you have to do is get them to think that you know even just one thing that they don’t know that might help them.

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Curiosity May Have Killed The Cat, But It Opens The Door In Sales Remember when you were a kid - did one of your brothers, sisters or maybe a friend taunt you by saying repeatedly: “I know something you don’t know…I know something you don’t know”? Maybe it drove you crazy – you wanted to know what they knew. Why? Maybe because it was something that could give you an advantage that you didn’t want to miss out on. You were motivated to find out because of your curiosity – because of your fear that they knew something about the situation that could help you or maybe even hurt you. It’s the same concept in cold calling. You want the person on the other end of the line to think: it might be better for me to stop what I’m doing right now even for just one minute to find out what this person might want because it might be in my best interest to do so. Also, dropping names helps in this process – especially if you drop the name of a superior of theirs. If they hear the name of an authority figure in their minds, they might be thinking – I should listen to what this person has to say because they might have access to someone who can make my life miserable for me.

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Using the Prospect Fear and Hope List to Fish for Your Prospect’s Needs Remember, all the market research information that we taught you how to gather at the beginning of this process? Before sitting down to write your 30-Second Commercial, you must have a powerful Prospect Fear and Hope List. We are going to put that inside information to good use in getting your prospects interested in continuing the dialogue with you – or perhaps even inviting you in to see them. Remember that we’ve already discussed how dredging up people’s fears is a way to get people to move out of their Comfort Zones and get them to take action. Well, your 30-Second Commercial is where you start the process of getting people out of their Comfort Zones. Think of yourself as fishing right now. You are casting out personal fears that you know from your market research that others like your current prospect have. You are hoping that they bite on one of them – that they either are currently experiencing one of those fears or are in a position to experience one of those fears in the future. If your prospect can identify with one of the fears that you mention – one of the frustrations, pains or annoyances – that someone else has, then that fear can be transferred to them. It is a well-researched phenomenon that imagined situations that you conjure in someone’s mind can trigger emotional responses. And this is what you want. You want your prospect to think: “Yes, that is happening to me now, I’m in that same fearful situation, or may soon be in that situation.” That’s how you get someone’s attention. By hitting them with something ___________________________________________________________________________________ 144

that they can relate to that is very emotional – very fear-inducing. If you strike the right chords, and hit on the right fear, you will have their undivided attention. That’s is what your exploring for in this step. You want to find their own personal fear.

4) Open Up The Conversation So, after floating three Prospect Fear and Hope Statements in front of them, you want to test their reaction. You want to gather some information about their personal fears that you can latch on to in order to keep the conversation going. You might try saying something like: “I don’t suppose you are facing any of these challenges then, are you?” By asking this question, you are hoping that they start telling you about their problems so that you can use this information about them to guide the rest of the conversation. But, if they don’t key off of one of the Prospect Fear and Hope Statements that you mentioned, you want to try to get them to talk about their particular personal fears so that you can keep the conversation going about something that is near and dear to them right now – one of their current fears. One of our clients likes using the line: “What’s keeping you up at night?” Or you might say: “Maybe you can give me some advice, do you see any problems coming down the road for you or others like you in the industry?” _____________________________________________________________________________________ 145

Again, at this point, they might blow you off, in which case, you should ask them for referrals. Remember, always ask for referrals. Ask: “Is there anyone else in your organization who might be having these concerns?”

5) Using Your Machine-Gun Client List to Build Trust We have found that at some points in a typical call, prospects take a step back from engaging in a conversation with you. They may start questioning your credentials. Remember, they don’t know who you are. After all, this is a cold call. So this is where your Machine-Gun Client List comes in. You want to be ready to fire off the names of current or former clients to allay the prospect’s fears by ensuring them that you are experienced in your field. You want to get comfortable rattling off the names of current clients in rapid succession, like machine-gun fire. By doing so, you will project an image of confident competence in your field. Again, people are typically like sheep. If they hear that you’ve worked with other well-known companies in their industry, they are more likely to hear you out. Also, be sure to have a mini-case-study about each of the clients in your Machine-Gun List. You want to be prepared to share at least the general problems and results that you achieved for these clients. We’ll talk more about how to craft credible client stories in the next section of the FEAR Selling System, the Empathy Step.

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6) Ask For The Meeting Once you find a prospect who has a need – a fear – that you can latch on to, you want to try to get a face-to-face meeting with them. You want a face-to-face meeting because it will be easier to build rapport with the person that way, and it will be easier to explore their needs if you have them as a captive audience right in front of you. In our experience, too many salespeople try to sell over the phone. Instead, most of you should be using the phone to prospect and set up face-to-face meetings. Now, you might be selling a small-ticket item, which doesn’t warrant a face-to-face meeting, but if you are selling a more complex, bigger-ticket item, chances are that your prospect will want to meet you before buying anyway. So how do you ask for the meeting? Well, again, you may want to paint a picture of yourself as an authority in their field who is willing to share information with them. Say something like: “We’re constantly doing surveys and research on solutions to problems like the ones we’ve been discussing. Would it make sense for you to invite me in, so I can share some solutions with you and then maybe we can see if there is a way we can work together?” You can phrase this any way you feel comfortable. The one strict suggestion that we have is that you ask to be invited in. By being invited in, you will be setting up the dynamic of that first meeting such that your prospect is the host and you are the guest at the meeting. This is a subtle yet powerful way of building rapport with your prospect since, if you are their guest, they will feel some obligation to treat you more courteously than they would a typical salesperson who might have forced his way into getting a meeting with them. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 147

Remember, this formula for your 30-Second Commercial is only a model for you. You do not have to follow it exactly. Use it as a guide, but realize that our clients across industries have used this formula to achieve significant success. Indeed, in our workshops, we help our students customize these 30-Second Commercials further depending upon what they are comfortable with saying. But if you follow this format, we promise, you’ll be 90% of the way to writing an effective 30-Second Commercial that will get you to your first objective – the face-to-face meeting.

More Tactics to Help You Get In The Door Here are some other tactics that we have heard top salespeople use successfully in order to entice prospects to invite you in: a) Try saying: “I probably don’t have all the right answers, but I’m pretty sure I have most of the questions.” This is a credibility-building statement. You’re not flexing your muscles like other salespeople do by saying that they are sure that they definitely have the answer to their prospects’ problems. Rather, you’re saying, let me get to know your problem. You are being humble, but you are also getting them curious by saying that you know the right questions to ask. By the way, that’s what a good consultant knows how to do – ask the right questions. And in the Ask Step of the FEAR Selling System, we’ll provide you with the right questions to ask in order to understand your prospects’ problems and then get them to pay you for the solution. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 148

b) You might try this statement: “We might not have the solution for you, but I can share with you non-confidential information that we’ve found in our industry research.” c) Or: “If you invite me in, I can offer you some of my time as a free consultation.” In both of these cases, you are trying to get them curious enough to invite you in. You want to imply that you know something that might help them. And, by offering it free, you are lowering their defenses. We have found that salespeople who have taken the time to conduct market research to find out their prospects’ fears will often be invited in to share their knowledge. Later, we’ll show you how to run that first face-to-face meeting to qualify and maybe sell your prospect.

Other Ways To Share Your Prospect Fear and Hope List To Open The Door And Get The Conversation Going In addition to using your Personal Fear and Hope List in your 30-Second Commercial, you also can use it as a powerful handout. Sometimes, your prospects will not want to meet with you, but will ask you to send them information. Instead of just sending your product brochure, consider sending them a list of the types of problems that you are experienced in solving. In other words, send your Prospect Fear and Hope List. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 149

Remember, you want to focus on your prospect, not your product. You have a greater chance of keeping the conversation going with a prospect who believes that you understand their pains, fears and hopes. Here’s how to present your Prospect Fear and Hope List to a prospect in written form. Again, you want to position yourself as an industry expert – or at least knowledgeable about what’s going on in the industry. Type out a list of 10 to 15 Prospect Fear and Hope Statements on a sheet of paper, and send it to your prospects along with a request for a meeting. Then, when you call to follow up with prospects to whom you’ve sent your Prospect Fear and Hope List, you’ll have something to refer to that is focused on them and their problems. Remember, the objective of discussing this list with your prospects is to get them talking about themselves and their problems. We have found that such a prospect-focused handout is a much better starting point for a conversation than your typical product-focused brochure. In fact, our studies on this technique have shown that sending and following up on a Prospect Fear and Hope List is about 65% more effective in getting a face-to-face meeting than simply sending a product brochure. Position your Prospect Fear and Hope List as “survey results”, which, of course they are. You should be constantly surveying your prospects and customers, either with written surveys that they can respond to or by gathering Prospect Fear and Hope Statements in your face-to-face meetings with them.

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You may title your handout like this: COMMON CHALLENGES FACED BY (insert your typical target prospect’s title/position here) IN TODAY’S (insert target industry/ organization) Here are some examples: For our above example of corporate marketing executives, for example, at banking institutions, who might be hiring graphic designers, you might title the handout; COMMON CHALLENGES FACED BY SENIOR MARKETING EXECUTIVES IN TODAY’S FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRMS Or another example, with a little bit of a different format: COMMON CHALLENGES FACED BY PARENTS WHO ARE LOOKING FOR THE RIGHT PERSONAL TUTORS FOR THEIR CHILDREN Or another: COMMON CHALLENGES FACED BY SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS WHO ARE LOOKING FOR ADDITIONAL FINANCING You then can list the Prospect Fear and Hope Statements. You may want to make your “survey results” more interactive to get your prospect more involved. We suggest putting a check box in front of each statement, and then asking prospects to check off those problems that are relevant. This is a great way of zeroing in on your prospect’s fears. You may also want to leave some blank spaces under your list, and then ask your prospect to fill in the blanks with their own problems and frustrations. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 151

Here is what your “survey results” sheet might look like: COMMON CHALLENGES FACED BY SENIOR MARKETING EXECUTIVES IN TODAY’S FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRMS The following list has been compiled from ongoing interviews with senior marketing executives in a wide array of financial services firms, including banks, insurance companies and mutual fund companies. These executives report that they are: •

Frustrated with graphic design vendors who give them inconsistent quality and service. They always have to be looking for new vendors to replace the ones that aren’t giving them the attention they need. They would like to find one good, reliable firm to work with.

•

Concerned about competing with organizations that have bigger budgets than they do. It makes them look bad in front of their bosses when they compare their brochures to those of their competitors. They’re looking for graphic design firms that can give them bigger bang for their buck.

•

Annoyed with graphic designers who don’t turn around projects quickly enough. They often have to stay late at work or work on weekends to meet deadlines because of mistakes that their designers make.

•

Insert a fourth Prospect Fear and Hope Statement

•

Insert a fifth Prospect Fear and Hope Statement

•

Etc.

Please help us with our ongoing survey by sharing with us the top three challenges that you and your company are facing: 1) ____________________________________________________________________________ 2) ____________________________________________________________________________ 3) ____________________________________________________________________________ Thank You ___________________________________________________________________________________ 152

Using Your 30-Second Commercial in Networking Situations As we noted earlier, once you put together your 30-Second Commercial, you can use it for a variety of different prospecting tactics, including: cold calls, voicemails, letters, faxes, emails and networking. Just like TV advertisements, you want to get your Commercial heard by as many people as possible. Actually, research shows that face-to-face networking, though perhaps more time-consuming, is much more effective in generating leads than cold calling. When using your 30-Second Commercial in networking situations, you can make it even more effective by modifying your presentation strategy. One of the basic rules in negotiation is to let the other person go first. Information is power. If you know what the person sitting across the negotiation table is thinking – what their fears and hopes are, you have leverage over him or her. It’s the same in networking. By letting the other guy go first, you can find out key information about what they do, and therefore you’ll be able to refine your 30-Second Commercial to make it more relevant to their situation. Now that you know what to say when talking to a prospect, let’s talk about how to target prospects.

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Targeting Prospects: Finding The Right People To Pitch Your 30-Second Commercial To As we mentioned earlier, your prospecting strategy is about two main issues: 1) Targeting – figuring out who to talk to 2) Positioning – figuring out what to say

Crafting your 30-Second Commercial is all about positioning. If you’ve followed our guidance, you already have a pretty good sense of what to say to a prospect. We started with and spent much more time on positioning because that is where most salespeople have problems. The truth of the matter though is that targeting is more important than positioning. Years of research in direct mail have shown that nearly 70% of the effectiveness of any mail campaign is determined by targeting the right prospects, while only 30% depends on the positioning, or what you say in your mail piece. Basically, you can have the best 30-Second Commercial in the world, but if you don’t deliver it to the right people then you will not succeed in prospecting.

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Many of the top salespeople that we have interviewed regarding sales prospecting divide the targeting aspect of prospecting into three distinct tasks: 1) Developing your prospecting list 2) Researching your prospects 3) Contacting your prospects

1) Developing Your Prospecting List The first step in targeting is developing a prospect list. Of course, you will be constantly adding names to this list, but at the very beginning, you should try to pull together a list of initial prospects. We have found that many new salespeople are much too anxious to get out and make their pitch to anyone who will listen. This strategy might be okay if you just want to practice your pitch, but don’t fool yourself. Think of who your target audience is. Visualize the type of person who has the fears and hopes that your product/service can address and focus your limited time on them. Are your most likely prospects married women who are 25 to 35 years old with children? Are you targeting young men who are in college? Or perhaps you are looking for retired men who like to golf? Of course, you might be targeting various groups of people. Just keep in mind that you have to focus your efforts through targeting. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 155

How Do You Start Your Prospecting List Friends and Family Start with your inner circle of friends and family members. They might not be prospects themselves but could refer you to others who might be prospects. Even though we suggest that you carefully target your prospects in order to save time and energy, we still suggest that you tell everyone you know about what you are selling. You never know who knows whom. Your friends and family more than anyone else should be open to hearing your sales pitch and helping you to get started. Business Associates Secondly, try those with whom you’ve done business before. Talk to your doctor, dentist, barber, your kids’ teachers. In effect, you are giving them business – putting money in their pockets – so ask them to help you as well. Next, you should contact members of trade or professional associations that you belong to. Definitely make it a point to join some associations, not only for networking but to keep up with the trends in your industry. Current Customers Check out your company’s current customer list. Many times, salespeople leave money on the table by not tapping their current clients for referrals into other divisions of their companies. Or maybe you have a new or

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updated version of your product that you can upsell your current customers on. The Internet The Internet is one of the most incredible prospecting tools ever created. It is amazing how many potential new prospects you can find by using the Internet wisely as a sales prospecting tool. (For more on how to use the Internet to find customers, check out the book, FEAR Marketing Online.) Also, once you have your list of prospects, you can use the Internet to do more in-depth research on the company to find out about decision-makers, current strategies and thus the potential needs of these prospective customers. We also suggest that you always try to call as high up in an organizational structure that you can. You want to target decision-makers, which usually means that you must call on high-level executives and business owners. They may pass you down the hierarchical ladder in their organizations, but isn’t it better to be referred by a more powerful person down the ladder than by a less powerful person up the ladder? Which referral do you think is more effective? Of course, you’d rather have decision-makers telling subordinates to take your call rather than having subordinates try to convince bosses to take your call.

2) Researching Your Prospects Before you get on the phone and call your prospects, conduct at least some research on them and their companies. Remember, you are trying to portray yourself as an expert. The most successful salespeople do a lot of research on a company before they try to pitch anyone in the company. Read companies’ annual reports, visit their Web sites, follow how their stock is _____________________________________________________________________________________ 157

doing lately if they are a public company, and search on the Internet for individuals’ backgrounds and news stories about your target companies. Your goal is to find out as much as possible about the company before you call into it so that you can focus your questions appropriately. You might only get a certain amount of time on the phone to ask qualifying questions, so make sure you know all the basics first so that you don’t waste precious time asking your prospect about things you could have researched on your own.

3) Contacting Your Prospects Now that you have a better sense of what to say to a prospect and how to target prospects, let’s talk about the different methods you can use to approach your prospects. Phone Versus Face-To-Face Of course when it comes to sales prospecting techniques, if you can get a face-to-face meeting with a prospect, take it, but don’t underestimate the power of the telephone to qualify prospects. Just as your prospects’ time is limited, so is yours. You must use the telephone to qualify – or rather disqualify – prospects. How your prospect reacts to your 30-Second Commercial will help you determine if they are a qualified prospect or not. The biggest waste of your time is taking a trip on a plane or a long drive to have a face-to-face meeting with a person who is not really ready or able to buy from you. So use the telephone to make the initial contact when appropriate. This way you can ask key questions that will help you to decide whether it is

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worth it or not to visit the person – or spend your time finding more qualified prospects. For time management reasons, many of our successful students rely on the telephone for prospecting because it is time- and cost-effective. The downside of using the phone, however is that you have little control over the situation. The prospect can cut you off abruptly or even refuse to take your call. All too often, you’ll get caught in Voicemail Limbo – always getting the prospect’s voicemail and never getting a return call. If you’ve tried repeatedly and can’t get through to a prospect, leave your 30-Second Commercial on their voicemail and move on. Don’t get fixated on any one prospect. Keep hunting for new ones all the time. Remember, the main objective of your 30-Second Commercial is to find individuals who seem at least somewhat willing and able to buy from you, and then get a face-to-face meeting with them. Having such a meeting is your best bet to closing a sale because you’ll be able to control your presentation and build rapport better when dealing with a prospect in person.

Mail, Faxes and Email Similarly, you may send out a sales letter via mail, email or fax, which covers the points in your 30-Second Commercial - and even your Prospect Fear and Hope List - as background to a prospect before you follow up with them on the phone or in person. Direct mail and email are very cost-effective, but because it is so cheap and easy to send a letter or an email – your competitors are flooding your prospects’ inboxes just as you are.

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Because of the prevalence of mail and email, many sales pros that we have interviewed send faxes to break through to decision-makers. You might want to try faxes as well. Whatever you do, test all of these methods and keep track of what works best. If after a while, you find that you are getting better responses through certain methods and not from others, shift the time you spend to the betterresponse methods. All too often, when it comes to sales prospecting, salespeople only rely on one method. They get comfortable just making calls or knocking on doors or sending out fliers. It is important to find out what has worked for others in the past – and keep testing to see what keeps working and what doesn’t.

The More, The Merrier We at the Sales Career Training Institute suggest using multiple contact methods to reach your prospects. By using multiple communication vehicles, you are more likely to break through the clutter and get a prospect’s attention. For example, some of the more successful salespeople we studied think of prospecting as an integrated marketing campaign with a series of distinct steps. They’ll send a letter and follow up with a call. If they don’t get through they may next send a fax or an email. Then, they may leave a voicemail followed up by another email. Test what works for you, but remember, studies have shown that it takes at least five to seven attempts before you can get through to a prospect and engage them in a dialogue. Unfortunately, we have found that recently with all of the communication options available and with the speed of business increasing due to all of

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these new technologies, it is taking even longer to engage a prospect. So be patient, but persistent. Some salespeople we have studied insist on sending some kind of document first. As we discussed above, you may want to send your Prospect Fear and Hope List. Then, once you do get through on the phone, you have something to refer to and discuss. Also, by sending something first, you have an excuse to follow up in order to confirm the receipt of the letter or fax and use that as an icebreaker to start the conversation with the prospect.

Networking: One of the Most Effective Lead-Generation Tactics Networking should be one of the daily sales prospecting techniques used by all salespeople. This is not something that needs to be planned but rather something that is present throughout the day. Networking should be a reflex – a mindset that you are in all the time. Remember, everyone is a potential prospect or perhaps one step away from a potential prospect. Every opportunity is a good one to approach someone who can turn into a prospect or someone who can give you a lead or a referral. Be proactive, ask questions and then listen. Give your 30-Second Commercial informally and then listen to your prospect’s feedback. Whenever you are in a conversation, never try to dominate. Everyone wants to be the center of attention. In prospecting, your potential client is the star. Let them shine. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 161

Regardless of the situation, networking should be cordial and a little informal. Do not try too hard to make a sales pitch. Networking is all about learning about a person and discovering ways in which they can become prospects. Follow basic guidelines that are easy to remember. Greet when approached and engage in casual conversation that includes questions. Try to avoid controversial subjects. Take some time to determine if the person in front of you could be a prospect or not - and if you determine that they aren’t a good prospect, see if they can refer you to someone who is a more qualified prospect or simply move on graciously. You should be trying to network with everyone you meet. And, while quality matters more than quantity, a salesperson will probably have to meet several dozen people before finding a quality prospect. Exchange basic contact information. If the potential prospect does not ask for your business card, ask for theirs. Once you’ve got their business card, write yourself a note on the back of the card about this person, their needs and interests. Follow up with a thank you call or email within 48 hours of the meeting. Keep the note short but include a reference to the place and situation where you met and anything important that you found out about the person or their contacts. Finally, ask for any questions and mention that you will follow up with a note or call in a week’s time. Always be networking. From the moment you get up and go to work to the moment you get home.

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Taking Advantage of Referrals No matter what anyone says, sales is a numbers game. You’ll have to talk to a lot of people just to find the few who are potential prospects. This is why we suggest that you always ask for referrals in order to increase the number of potential prospects you can get in front of. When it comes to sales prospecting techniques, no technique is more powerful than asking for referrals. The very first – and sometimes, most difficult – thing to do is to ask for those referrals. Salespeople often forget or have a hard time asking a prospect or client for a referral. Never assume that asking for a referral is inappropriate. Of course, you should try to build some level of trust with a person before hitting them up for a referral. Most clients do not mind giving referrals but won’t just offer them either. So always ask. It’s one of the most underused of all of the effective sales prospecting techniques. Ask everyone for referrals, because referrals are people who are more likely to be interested in hearing what you have to say than just any old cold-calling prospect. Your clients are the most obvious people to give you referrals. If they are already benefiting from your product/service, then they most likely know people in other businesses with the same needs. Other people who can provide referrals are family members and friends. Ask them if they know anyone who will benefit from your product or service. Chances are someone knows one or two people who meet your criteria. You can’t be shy. You must be networking in every possible social situation - while going to your kids’ baseball or soccer games, at a civic group meeting or even at church. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 163

Ask your old prospects for referrals as well. If you pitch a product to someone but didn’t make a sale, contact this former prospect. Congratulate him for finally making a decision (despite the fact that they didn’t choose you). Ask for feedback and also ask for contact information of potential prospects. If this is not possible, offer to give them extra business cards so that they can pass it along to referrals. Once someone is willing to give you contact names make sure that you follow some basic rules like: 1) Give them pointers as to the types of prospects you are targeting. Most people know hundreds of other people. Don’t expect them to do the work of thinking through who would be your ideal prospects. Instead, give them some direction; ask them if they know anyone who would meet one or two requirements. 2) Make sure you write the referral name and contact information immediately in order to avoid spelling and other errors. Get as much contact information as possible (address, phone numbers, fax, emails, etc.) 3) Write a note to yourself that will explain who your referral is, who referred them to you and how can you help them. 4) Ask permission to use your client’s name when contacting the referrals. Try not to use someone’s name without permission. If you are obviously getting a “no” from someone you cold call, always ask for referrals. To do this, first you need what we call a Quick Label. Many salespeople use what we would call a Quick Label to always explain what they or their company does.

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They might say something like: “I am a graphic designer”, or “I sell mutual funds for a bank.” As we have discussed, you typically want to avoid boxing yourself in by giving yourself a Quick Label. You typically want to talk about what you do in terms of solving people’s problems or helping them avoid their fears or achieve their hopes. But it’s different with referrals. You probably don’t have time to play out your typical 30-Second Commercial or you already have and the person is not interested or not a good prospect for you for other reasons. That’s when you quickly want to get them thinking about others who might need your product or service. Start by saying: “I couldn’t help you but maybe you can help me.” Then say: “Who do you know who might be looking for a (insert your Quick Label here)?” For example: “Who do you know who might be looking for a graphic designer?” Don’t ask: “Do you know anyone who…?” That makes it too easy for someone to dismiss you with a quick “no”. You want them to quickly go through their mental Rolodex for you. By phrasing your question, “Who do you know who…?” you will lead them to do this for you.

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Getting Past The Gatekeepers To The Decision-Makers When prospecting, you’ll often run into what are known as gatekeepers: secretaries, assistants or subordinates who work for the person you are trying to get to. One of the most common questions we get from our students is: how do I get past the gatekeeper to the decision-maker? Gatekeepers are a necessary evil that all salespeople have to deal with. Many of your prospects don’t have time to take calls throughout their day and so they screen their calls through individuals like assistants and receptionists. You may have to deal with such gatekeepers a few times before you are finally granted access to your prospect. The key is to get the gatekeeper comfortable with you. You must build rapport with them quickly. You can use many of the rapport-building techniques that we present in the next step, the Empathy Step, to gain the trust of gatekeepers. If you are doing cold calling, contact the receptionist and ask her for the name of the person in charge of making decisions for your product/ service. Typically, receptionists will help if approached cordially and professionally. Make sure you are as cordial with gatekeepers as you are with your prospects. Since these employees often decide who sees their boss and who doesn’t, they will be instrumental in getting you in touch with your prospects faster, easier and smoother.

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Whenever possible call early, at the very beginning of the day. Assistants and receptionists are often at work before their bosses and even before anybody else. Unlike in the middle of their day when they have lots of interruptions, at these “off-hours” they might be able to give you a little bit more of their time and even answer questions that could expedite matters with your prospect. The same technique works at the end of the working day. Many of these employees are done or almost done with the bulk of their work close to the end of the day, but they may still be in the office finalizing paperwork. This is your time to tackle them and use their available time to your advantage. Don’t forget assistants and receptionists when preparing thank-you notes. They may be as helpful or perhaps more helpful than your prospect and deserve to be acknowledged. Your sales prospecting techniques must include sending a quick note, via email or mail and, if this isn’t possible, call and let them know that you appreciate their help. Always remember that you are building a long-term relationship with these individuals. Your actions today can give you more leads, prospects and clients down the road.

How To Follow Up Relentlessly Yet Courteously One of the most important acronyms we can teach you is: RFU. What does RFU stand for? Relentless Follow Up _____________________________________________________________________________________ 167

As we’ve said, competition is getting fiercer, and busy prospects have less and less time to meet with salespeople. That means that it’s getting harder and harder to get through to your prospects, let alone sell them something. And that means that it will take you several attempts to get through. Keep track of your attempts to reach prospects. Use a database program like Microsoft Outlook or ACT to keep notes on letters you’ve sent, voicemails you’ve left, and gatekeepers you’ve spoken with. If you are doing your job, you will be calling many prospects on any given day. It is difficult to remember what you’ve said or sent to your different prospects, so keeping records is essential. By keeping track of this information, you’ll be able to better position yourself each time you try to get back in touch with a prospect. You’ll know what you’ve said and what they’ve said to you, and so you won’t have to start from scratch each time, but will rather try to gather more information about them or move them further along in the sales process. It is important to follow up with every prospect, but some may be more important than others. Make sure you prioritize your list of follow-up calls to better manage your time spent prospecting. Be relentless when it comes to those hard-to-reach contacts. Anyone whom you haven’t had a chance to speak to deserves another call. These may not be priority calls but should be done nonetheless. You never know who could suddenly decide that they need your product and sign that big deal. There are plenty of excuses you can use to follow up – it’s just a matter of finding the right one for each contact. You can call or email a contact many times for different reasons or simply just to check in and see how they are doing.

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Final Thoughts on Prospecting The first step in the FEAR Selling System is to Find and Focus On Your Prospects’ Fears and Hopes. As we have discussed, you should be focusing more on your prospects’ needs rather on your product’s benefits. By exploring your typical prospects’ fears through the marketing research process we discussed, you will be in a better position to capture their attention when you start prospecting. We explained in detail how to position yourself and craft your 30Second Commercial, and then how to target prospects with whom you will share your Commercial. Remember, the first step is to qualify your prospects by finding people who have the fears and hopes that your product/service can address. Your main objective is to get a face-to-face meeting with your prospect so that you can explore their personal needs and begin to build rapport with them. In the next step of the FEAR Selling System, which we call the Empathy Step, we will show you how to build rapport with your prospect and thereby set the groundwork for the presentation of your product/solution.

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Empathize With Your Prospect: How To Build Trust By Making Your Prospect Feel That You Understand Their Pains, Fears and Hopes

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Perception Is Reality We all perceive reality differently. For example, certain people have fears or phobias that others don’t. To one person, riding a rollercoaster might be fun and exhilarating, yet to another, just the thought of doing a loop-theloop might cause him to vomit. To a typical person, the world might not seem like such a bad place, yet to someone who is clinically depressed, the world can be a horrible nightmare, filled with reasons to be anxious, worried, and fearful. In reality, that typical person, that clinically depressed person, you and I all live in the same world – yet each of us looks at that world through different eyes, from different points of view, based on different experiences, holding different beliefs, harboring different fears. Just as “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, so too is everything else in the world perceived to be at least somewhat different to each and every one of us, depending on our own unique perspectives. We focus our attention on these differences in perspective because we want you as a salesperson to be very conscious of them. Often, we have observed salespeople who couldn’t believe that a prospect wouldn’t buy their product. After the sale was lost, however, we at the Sales Career Training Institute interviewed the would-be buyer. Almost invariably, the reason why the sale did not take place was because the prospective buyer and the salesperson did not “see eye to eye” in the words of one of our most insightful buyer interviewees. As she explained to us, “[The salesperson] seemed to be in his own little world. He didn’t understand where I was coming from. He didn’t care about my problems and my unique situation. He was just trying to ram his _____________________________________________________________________________________ 171

product down my throat as if he knew what was best for me.” This might sound like an extreme case, but unfortunately, such sentiments are all too often expressed to us by potential buyers.

What Is Empathy? According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, empathy means “identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings and motives.” If we turn to Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition, the word empathy is defined as “a very close understanding between persons.” In order for you to sell more and to sell faster, you must empathize with your prospect. Again, as Stephen Covey suggests in his classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you must seek first to understand before trying to be understood. The second step in the FEAR Selling System, which we call the Empathy Step, is focused on techniques through which you can show your prospect that you are “on the same page”, “on the same wavelength”, “in synch” or one of the many other phrases that have come up in our research that describe a connection between the successful salesperson and their satisfied buyers. As the old Native American saying goes, “You do not really know a man until you walk a mile in his moccasins.” We will share with you techniques that will help you get into your prospect’s moccasins. Between the empathizing techniques we cover in this step and the questioning techniques we share in the following step, you will be better able to get your prospect to like you and trust you enough to buy from you.

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The Basics Of Empathy In order for you to connect with your prospects enough so that they will open up and tell you their problems, listen to your advice as though it were credible and finally buy from you, keep these three concepts in mind: 1)

People like to buy from people whom they like;

2)

People like to buy from people whom they trust; and

3)

People like and trust other people whom they perceive to be similar to themselves.

Let’s explore the validity of these concepts a bit further by introducing you to the concept of rapport.

Rapport: Empathy In Action The English word “rapport” is derived from the old French word “raport”, which means “agreement”. For our purposes, we will define rapport as a state of sympathetic agreement between you and your prospect. There are two main characteristics that you must have with your prospect if you want to build rapport with them. Again: 1) They must like you; and 2) They must trust you.

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If you think about your own dealings with other people, it is probably not very difficult to get you to agree that you would rather do business with people whom you like rather than people whom you don’t like. So for instructive purposes, let’s assume that this is true of the relationship between yourself and your prospect. If they don’t like you, they will be less likely to want to do business with you. And, if they don’t like you, you can be pretty sure that they don’t trust you. But assuming they do like you, that doesn’t mean that you are going to instantly build rapport with them so that they will buy from you. Think about it, you probably know someone whom you like but do not really trust. For example, you might have a friend who is very funny and enjoyable to spend time with, but despite the fact that you like him, you might not trust him enough to babysit your child. The second component of rapport is trust. Your prospects might like you because you are a funny guy, but they might not trust you enough to listen to your advice. Trust is about credibility. It is about being believable. Later in this section, we will show you how to make yourself more trustworthy in the eyes of your prospects through specific empathy tactics. So we have established that as salespeople, if given the choice, we would rather have our prospects like us – rather than not like us – and trust us – rather than not trust us. Simple enough. But how about the third concept we introduced above: ___________________________________________________________________________________ 174

People Tend To Like And Trust Other People Whom They Perceive To Be Similar To Themselves Think of a tribe of cavemen with very dark hair. A blondish caveman stumbles into their territory. The dark-haired cavemen have never seen someone like this before. This blondish caveman is obviously not like them, and so they do not like him from the start. And if they don’t like him, they definitely don’t trust him. Is he here to steal their women? Their land? Or maybe he is there to kill them? They don’t trust him.

When It Comes To People, Opposites Don’t Attract You might have heard the expression: “Opposites attract” and this is certainly a strict law in the realm of physics. But the exact opposite applies when it comes to love and business. With the advent of online dating, there has been an increase in the number of studies regarding compatibility among couples. And the overwhelming majority of these studies reveal that couples with similar personalities, values and beliefs are more likely to stay together than those who do not share these traits. In fact, in order to participate in many dating services, you must first fill out a personality profile so that the “matchmakers” – whether they are humans or computers – can match you up with others who share your interests and

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personality traits. The thinking goes that the matchmaking will be much more successful if they pair people up who are similar to one another in many ways.

We Prefer To Socialize With Others Like Ourselves Think about a social club or business association that you belong to. It could be a weekend softball league, a weekly book-reading club, a bowling league, a ballroom dancing school, a Rotary Club, a networking group or any business trade association. In every case, you share common interests with the other members of your group. You come together to enjoy a sport or a hobby; to discuss business interests or similar goals; or, if it is a religious group, you share common beliefs. People like to associate with others who share common traits and beliefs. People like to associate with people whom they perceive to be similar to themselves. Similarly, given a choice, most people prefer not to associate with people who are not like themselves. While some people might find that variety is the spice of life, and thus like to have variation in their friends and acquaintances, most people tend to want to “stick to their own.” As the saying goes: “Birds of a feather flock together.” If given a choice between having to spend time with a person who thinks like you, looks like you, acts like you, shares your beliefs or a person whom you might consider is opposite to you in all of these regards, which ___________________________________________________________________________________ 176

would you choose? Study after study of infants to children and from middle-aged adults to the elderly - regardless of culture, race or nationality - prove that most people would choose similarity over difference. They feel more comfortable with those who seem familiar rather than those who seem different from themselves.

Them And Us Typically, in order to form a group, you are simultaneously separating yourself from others, even though you might not think of it that way. For example, in order to maintain your social group’s identity – whether it be a Bible reading group, a New York Yankees fan club or an association of marketing executives – you must distinguish between people who are members of your group and those who are non-members. There are members of your Bible reading group and those who do not belong or do not even share your beliefs in Christianity. There are members of a specific New York Yankee fan club and those who aren’t. Some of those who aren’t members of the fan club might also be New York Yankee fans, but they might not be as interested in the baseball team as the members of the fan club are. Others who are not part of the fan club might be indifferent as to which team wins baseball games. And then there are those who might be fans of another baseball team. In all of these cases, you have members and you have non-members. In the case of an association of corporate executives, they might have annual conferences, which members can attend whereas non-members might have to pay a higher price than members - or those non-members _____________________________________________________________________________________ 177

might not even be able to attend at all. The simple point is that we are all members of certain groups and not members of other groups.

Differences Lead To Misunderstandings, Fear and War In fact, members of one group may dislike or even see themselves as bitter rivals to those in other groups. There can be such rivalry between members of different baseball fan clubs, weekend rock bands or even members of different racial, ethnic or national groups. Just think of the prevalence of racism and nationalism in our world. In the United States, there has long been a tension between African Americans and whites. However, slowly, people from these distinct races are getting used to one another, finding similarities and even marrying one another. The perception of differences is starting to fade, albeit slowly in some areas of our country. Recently, there has been a rise in xenophobia – or the fear of foreigners. Because of the recent terrorist attacks, some people admit that they are more wary of those who appear to be from the Middle East. Also, some are generally upset with those from other countries to which American jobs are being exported. In Europe, there is rivalry among the English, French, Germans and Spanish. Whereas these countries once took out their frustrations by warring amongst one another, they thankfully now mostly contain their rivalries within sports arenas - as they do when they go up against each other in football – or as Americans call them – soccer matches. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 178

But not too long ago, the Nazis tried to extinguish the Jews because they saw them as members of an inferior race. Even now, tribal groups in Africa are waging wars with one another because of ethnic differences that an outsider could barely understand. To you or me, a member of the Tutsi and Hutu tribes in Rwanda might look similar, speak similar languages and share similar beliefs. But to the Tutsis and Hutus, there is a world of difference between members of these two tribes - enough of a difference that hundreds of thousands of these tribal people have killed each other in recent years. Think about it – hundreds of thousands of people killed because they are somehow perceived as being different from one another. Okay, so we have acknowledged that: 1)

people form groups;

2)

they form groups with others who are somehow similar to themselves; and sometimes;

3)

they even fight what they perceive to be rival groups in order to ensure their own survival.

What does all this have to do with sales? Again, it has everything to do with sales. Whether or not your buyer perceives you as belonging or not belonging makes all the difference. If you can somehow show your buyer that you are like them in some significant way, then they are more likely to like and trust you and therefore, more likely to buy from you. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 179

This concept is at the heart of all human persuasion strategies, whether you as a salesperson use the most basic psychological tactics or the most advanced Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques. Remember, you want to keep impressing upon your buyer that you are like them in many ways. We are going to show you how you can show your buyers that you are similar to them.

Our Overarching Empathy Strategy: I Am Like You Our overall strategy then is to get our prospects to perceive us as similar to them. If prospects think that we are similar to them, they will: · Act more friendly with us; · Be more comfortable with us; · Be more open with us; · Be more trusting of us; · Buy more from us; and · Buy faster from us. How do you do this effectively? Well, before we dive into specific empathy tactics, let’s talk a bit about trust. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 180

The World Is A Scary Place Let’s take a look at the world we live in – and the world we sell in. To many of us, the world is a scary, dangerous place to live. If you think about it, we live in a world of fear – or at least, the media would have us think so. Just look at the newspaper headlines or the evening news. What catches your attention? As the old newspaper industry saying goes: “If it bleeds, it leads” referring to the uncomfortable truth that we humans are drawn to death and destruction. It seems like most traffic jams are caused more by the “rubberneckers” who are slowing down and trying to catch a glimpse of the car wreckage rather than the crash itself. Whether it is the media bombardment that gets our adrenaline pumping or not, there really seems to be a long list of reasons to worry: · Terrorists are hiding in dark places, waiting to strike us at any moment just as they did on September 11, 2001. · Gun-toting teenagers are planning their next deadly rampage as they did at Columbine High School in 1999. · As you read this, the next deadly strain of some virus is evolving, ready to break out and spread across the world as it did with the respiratory ailment, SARs, in 2002. · The fastest growing crime in America is identity theft. Electronic thieves are stealing other people’s personal financial information and robbing them – sometimes wiping them out completely. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 181

· Serial killers are kidnapping and torturing women in their basements. · Sharks are lurking in the gentle waves just off the shore from where your child is playing in the sand. There are many “bad guys”, but what about the “good guys” who are supposed to serve and protect us? We once could turn to our institutions for guidance and safety, but not anymore. · Pedophile priests have shaken the strong foundations of the Catholic Church. · Corporate executives are lining their pockets with our retirement funds as they did in the Enron and Worldcom cases. · Stockbrokers whom we thought we could trust with our hard-earned savings are telling us to buy a stock at the same time that they are dumping it – and laughing up their sleeves about it. · Nursing home attendants are abusing our elderly parents and grandparents. · Babysitters are violently shaking or hitting our children to get them to stop crying. · Policemen have been caught on video, seemingly taking out their frustrations by beating up minorities like Rodney King in Los Angeles; or accused of the vicious beating and gang-rape of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, with a broomstick in a New York City police station; or even killing an unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, by shooting at him forty-one times in a case of mistaken identity. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 182

· Government officials are accused of illicit sex and financial scandals in the highest offices in the land. · Martha Stewart, that bastion of all that is good and homey, has been indicted for wrongdoing related to insider-trading scandals. · Even the once-sacred institution of marriage doesn’t seem safe anymore. The divorce rate in the United States is well over 50%, but how about the ever-growing list of husbands (or ex-husbands) who are thought to have murdered their wives. We know we can’t trust “the bad guys”, but now, it seems that we can’t even trust “the good guys.” If we can’t trust these people and institutions whom we rely on to bring order and justice to our otherwise chaotic world, whom can we rely on? But more importantly – at least in our conversation here – if people can’t trust these once-trustworthy people and institutions, what do you think the feeling is towards us – towards the salespeople of the world? Our point here is to show you that if our reputation as snakeoil salesmen and crass promoters in the past, how much trust and respect do we get now?

Why Buyers Don’t Trust Salespeople Let’s backtrack for a minute and remind ourselves of the survey results that we introduced to you in the preface of this book. Following is a summary of the most prevalent reasons for not buying as reported by prospective buyers: _____________________________________________________________________________________ 183

1) I get worried when salespeople don’t take the time to get to know my specific problem. 2) I don’t feel that salespeople have my best interests in mind. 3) I’m afraid that they won’t be able to deliver what they say they can deliver. 4) My job is on the line, so I can’t trust new vendors. 5) I don’t trust salespeople that talk at me instead of with me. Again, these answers reflect buyers’ fears and lack of trust of salespeople.

The Fear-Hope Continuum When you first talk to or meet a buyer, think of yourself as that blond caveman who stumbles into the territory of the dark-haired cavemen. You are an outsider. You are interrupting someone’s workday. Stealing from them – maybe not their women or other physical possessions, but you are certainly stealing one of the most important things that people covet today. You are “stealing” the prospect’s precious time. So assume that they don’t like you and don’t trust you. It’s your job to build a bridge, to make the connection, to create rapport between you and your prospect. And you want to do this as quickly as possible or else they will perceive you as someone who is trying to steal their time. In some sense, your prospects actually fear you. Think about it. Not only might you as a salesperson be wasting – or stealing – their time, ___________________________________________________________________________________ 184

you might also be putting them in the awkward position of having to say no to you. When you first meet a prospect, think of what fears that they might have of you as a salesperson. You must take them from feeling fear, to overcoming mistrust, to getting them curious, to making them comfortable with you, to getting them somewhat attracted to hear more, to getting them intrigued with your proposition, to getting them to trust you as if you were their advisor, and then finally hopeful that you can solve their problem.

The FEAR-HOPE Continuum Fear – Mistrust – Curious – Comfortable – Attracted – Intrigued – Trust – Intrigued – Hopeful

Keep this Fear-Hope Continuum in mind as we introduce you to the specific empathy tactics. Each of these tactics will help you move your prospect along this Fear-Hope Continuum.

Specific Empathy Tactics · Finding Out and Acknowledging Your Prospects’ Pains, Fears and Hopes · Matching and Mirroring · Active Listening · Agreement and Stroking Statements _____________________________________________________________________________________ 185

· Emotional Storytelling In this section, we are going to show techniques that top salespeople use to accelerate the trust-building process. Even though we present this as the second step in the FEAR Selling System, you should be weaving these trust-building tactics throughout the entire sales process from when you first meet, talk to or correspond with your prospect through the very end of the sale and beyond.

Finding Out And Acknowledging Your Prospect’s Pains, Fears and Hopes Just by taking the time to do market research on and think through your prospects’ potential pains, fears and hopes as we discussed in the first step, you are already way ahead of the average salesperson in terms of building trust with your prospect. By taking the time to research common pains, fears and hopes, and sharing them with your prospects, you are attempting to say, “I understand you” or, as President Bill Clinton famously said, “I feel your pain.” But remember, just because you do this research and find a trend of industry problems doesn’t mean that the unique prospect sitting in front of you will identify with those general problems or fears. You must ask them about their own personal fears, which we will cover in the third step, the Ask Step. Again, don’t assume because the last ten prospects you saw had a particular problem that the person you are sitting in front of now has that same problem. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 186

Agreement And Stroking Statements People like those who acknowledge their opinions and agree with them. We are all looking for positive acknowledgement. Maybe some are looking for the pat on the head more than others, but think about it. Don’t you like it when someone compliments the way you look or one of your accomplishments or something you say. Didn’t you feel a rush of pride as a child when the teacher called on you, you gave an answer, and the teacher told you that you were right. Remember, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? We all have a need to feel loved, to feel needed, to feel respected. Sigmund Freud would relate this need to what he called the ego. For our purposes here, we will not get too esoteric. We will define ego simply as “the self, as distinct from the world and other selves” or “a sense of one’s own dignity or worth.” Earlier, we discussed the fact that humans form groups and identify themselves as members of those groups, at least in part, by distinguishing themselves from others who are not part of their group. Just as such distinctions lead to the concept of “them and us”, we each see ourselves as separate from others around us. We are individuals. I am not you, and you are not me. This seems like a fairly basic concept, yet it is at the core of all of the world’s conflicts –and one of the keys to sales. We are, each of us, individuals. Yet being human, and having the needs that Maslow describes, we seek to fulfill those needs by joining groups in order to obtain love, friendship, that feeling of being needed and respected. One could say that because of these needs, humans have an urge to connect with others – to be heard, to be understood, to share their time with others who are like themselves. We are therefore attracted to people who listen to _____________________________________________________________________________________ 187

us, understand us and share time with us – especially if we perceive them as being similar to us. Just as we have urges to connect with others, to be loved, and respected, we also have an urge to avoid the opposite. In other words, just as we are driven to protect our physical selves, we are motivated to protect our egos – our sense of self in the face of challenges by others. If we take this one step further, we can say: People like people who strengthen their egos. People dislike people who weaken their egos. And now, by referring back to our earlier statement: People buy from people whom they like. Therefore, it follows that people are more likely to buy from people who strengthen their egos rather than those who attempt to weaken their egos.

How To Use Agreement And Stroking Statements In the early stages of your first meetings with your prospect, you do not want to foist your opinions on them like most typical salespeople do. You don’t want to tell them how great you or your product are. You don’t want to flex your muscles in front of them like some aggressive ape. Instead, you want to listen to their problems. And you want to agree with them about their problems and how they think they should solve their problems. Such agreement early on will help you build rapport faster with your ___________________________________________________________________________________ 188

prospect. This is all part of pacing – getting in synch with your prospect. If you pace correctly, and get on the same page as them, they are more likely to follow your lead as you reveal your product/service as the solution to their problems later on in the process. One of the easiest ways to build rapport is to simply agree with your prospect and stroke their ego. Everyone wants to feel as if they are making an important contribution. Think about it. Were you ever in a meeting, anxiously waiting your turn to say something just to show that you could add to the conversation? Everyone wants to put their two cents in to show that they are smart, important or at least staying awake in the meeting. You are going to take advantage of this human need for participation and approval by listening to your prospect, acknowledging their point of view and agreeing with it, and maybe even praising it with what we call Agreement and Stroking Statements. Here are some examples of Agreement and Stroking Statements: “I agree…” “That’s interesting that you say that…” “Good question…” “Good observation…” “Good point…” “I’m glad you brought that up…”

As you will see later, we will show you how to answer a prospect’s _____________________________________________________________________________________ 189

questions or objections with another question, essentially by deflecting their question back to them by using what we call Boomerang Questions. Sometimes, however, such reversals can be perceived as harsh and combative by your prospects. You can use Agreement and Stroking Statements to throw your prospect off guard by softening them up before you turn their question around on them. But this is just one use of Agreement and Stroking Statements. You should try to use them throughout your conversations with prospects as much as possible without seeming too fake and flattering. How do you agree with them without sounding too fake? You might want to tell an I’ve-Heard-That-Before Story, which we will cover later. Remember, if you give them a reason, if you say, I agree with you because, you’ll sound much more credible than if you say that you agree without an explanation why.

Matching And Mirroring Now, we will share with you one of the key concepts in Neuro-Linguistic Programming through which you can more easily build rapport with your prospect. It’s referred to as Matching and Mirroring. Matching and mirroring are forms of pacing through which you build rapport with the buyer by imitating their words, tonality, body movements and postures.

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Verbal Versus Non-Verbal Communication As many of you may know, in face-to-face interaction, our body language (non-verbal communication) is much more important in conveying our message than our words (verbal communication). We have researched a wide variety of studies in this area. First, we should say that most studies focused on this issue are based on experiments that deal with the communication of feelings and attitudes – likes and dislikes. This is particularly relevant in FEAR Selling since our system is designed to persuade through emotions rather than convince through logic. Studies indicate that 58 to 72% of the impact of a message comes through body language. For our purposes, we will be conservative and use the lower part of the range with 58%. Therefore, at the very most, only 42% of the meaning of a message can be attributed to the verbal aspect of our communications.

Percentage of the Meaning of a Message Attributable to Non-Verbal Versus Verbal Aspects of Communication Non-Verbal

Body Language: 58%

Verbal

Voice Tonality: 35%

Verbal

Actual Words:

7%

Tonality includes inflection, pitch, rate and volume.

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All we are trying to say here is that as salespeople, we need to pay a significant amount of attention to what we are “saying” in a non-verbal fashion – what we are expressing through our body language. As an interesting aside, we should say that when on the phone, these percentages change. Verbal

Voice Tonality: 86%

Verbal

Actual Words: 14%

Note that even though the buyer can’t see you on the other end of a regular telephone line, your posture could affect your voice tonality. This is why many communication researchers advise us to stand up while speaking on the phone. This position opens the diaphragm and allows you to speak in a more easy and relaxed tone than you would if hunched over in a typical seated position.

Hypnotic Keys to Non-Verbal Communication When preparing sales presentations, most salespeople focus almost exclusively on the words that they are going to use and perhaps a bit on how they are going to say those words. Of course, the verbal aspects of communication are important, and many of the FEAR Selling techniques focus on verbal aspects such as how to ask key questions. However, given that the majority of the impact of our communication is conveyed through non-verbal means, we should take some time to discuss this important aspect of persuasion. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 192

If you recall, we discussed how the developers of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, conducted comprehensive studies of the techniques of Dr. Milton Erickson. Erickson is acclaimed as the world’s greatest hypnotist. He is the author of dozens of articles and several books on hypnosis, and he was the founder of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. Few know that hypnosis has been in use for thousands of years not only to influence the behavior of others but also for therapeutic purposes to heal human beings of mental illness such as phobias. Erickson mainly used his conversational hypnosis techniques to treat such mental disorders. Unfortunately, most people think of hypnosis as a hokey carnival act. When you hear the word “hypnosis”, you might picture a “hypnotist” swinging a gold watch on a chain in front of a person and gently commanding the person to do something when they wake up such as cluck like a chicken. As you will see, using basic hypnosis techniques in a sales situation can achieve much more useful outcomes. Following is a summary of Erickson’s four-step approach to persuasion through hypnosis: Step 1:

Grab and Hold the Person’s Attention

Step 2:

Gain Trust Through Empathizing and Pacing the Person

Step 3:

Increase Their Readiness to Respond Positively To Suggestions

Step 4:

Provide Clear Suggestions On Actions To Take

As you may have suspected and will see as you follow through the rest of this book, these four steps closely relate to the four steps of the FEAR Selling System, except for the fact that they are modified to reflect the _____________________________________________________________________________________ 193

selling objectives of our strategy. For now, we will focus on the pacing techniques of matching and mirroring.

Non-Verbal Mirroring One of the classic methods for hypnotizing person is to have the person look into a mirror while the hypnotist counts backwards and speaks soothingly. Essentially, when you match and mirror a person’s body movements and postures, you are showing them a hypnotic mirror image of themselves. It is important that you actually mirror your prospect. If they keep motioning with their left hand when they talk, you should be mimicking those movements with your right hand when you talk back to them. Remember, you are acting as if you are the image in a mirror that you are showing to them. If you think about it, we all do this with small children when we bend over or squat down to be on the same level as them. We seem to instinctively know that by looking at them on the same eye-to-eye level, we will make them more comfortable with us. As we discussed earlier, people are more likely to like and trust others whom they perceive to be similar to themselves. Through matching and mirroring, you are sending messages on an unconscious level that you are similar to that person. Studies have shown that such matching and mirroring can have a significant impact on one’s ability to influence another.

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Verbal Matching Not only should you be mirroring your prospect on a physical level, but you should also be matching them verbally. Pay attention to words or phrases that your prospect uses repeatedly. Use those same words or phrases when you speak to them. Also, you should try to match your prospect’s verbal tonality. Speak at the same rate that your prospect speaks. If they speak quickly, do the same. If slowly, slow down your speech to match their rate. Match the volume of their voice. If they speak loudly, try to match their volume level without sounding too artificial. If they speak softly, follow their lead and speak softly.

Active Listening Be forewarned. We are going to drill this concept into you in the next section. We are going to repeat it many times and in many different ways because it is one of the most important techniques you can use in building rapport with your prospect. The key is to listen more than you speak. In fact, the next step in the FEAR Selling System is the Ask Step, which will force you to listen more than you speak since you will be asking questions that force your prospect to respond with more than just yes or no answers. Most salespeople prefer telling rather than listening. You feel as if you are the one in control when you are talking, but actually, the opposite is true. You are giving away information as you talk, but your goal – especially early on in the FEAR Selling System – is to gather information. So you are in a better position to do that if you are in listening mode. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 195

You can’t understand where a person is coming from until you hear their perspective. Before you can lead them to your solution, you must find out what their problem is – in their own words. As Dale Carnegie says, if you want people to like you, become genuinely interested in them. Okay, so you might not be genuinely interested in your prospect or her problems, but you must at least be perceived as being genuinely interested in their problems. Think about it – how often do people really listen to you? Do your kids listen to you? Your spouse? Your friends? Or are they just sitting there patiently – waiting for you to stop blabbering so that they can speak their mind? If that’s the case, you’re not using effective persuasion techniques. Unfortunately, most people just want to hear themselves speak – or are more comfortable speaking than listening. People want to express themselves, their thoughts, their emotions – and most of us are craving some kind of attention. We want someone else to listen to us and commiserate with our situation. We want people to feel our pain. As we have pointed out elsewhere, you must constantly be learning about your prospects. And the key to learning is listening. Just listening to your prospects can have an incredible effect upon your ability to persuade them. Furthermore, the top salespeople that we’ve worked with show that they are listening by taking notes while they listen and by asking questions to prove that they are interested in what their prospects are saying. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 196

Several surveys of buyers indicate that they have more appreciation for salespeople who take notes about the conversations that they are having. Most buyers feel that they are doing salespeople a favor by taking the time to talk to them, and so they appreciate it when the salesperson shows interest enough to jot down what they have to say. Also, be aware of your body language while you are listening. Lean in slightly to show the prospect that you are interested in connecting with them. Always let your prospect finish their train of thought. Never interrupt or finish their sentences for them. Listening is so important that we suggest that you learn the following technique to show your prospect that you are listening and to gather as much information as possible from your interaction with your prospect.

Showing Empathy Through Listening In order to understand someone, you must listen to them. Again, typically, everyone around you is too preoccupied with their own situations, their own self-interest in order to listen to you. Therefore, you are at a serious advantage if you are perceived as a listener – someone who cares enough to listen to your prospect and their problems.

Listen Before You Ask The A in our FEAR Selling acronym stands for Ask Your Prospects The Right Questions At The Right Time In The Right Way. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 197

So it might seem that covering listening (under Empathize With Your Prospect) before asking questions is like putting the cart before the horse. Not so. You might go through the motions of asking the right questions at the right times, but if you are not perceived as being a listener, you will miss out on making an important impression upon your prospect. You want them to feel important, and you want them to see you as a trusted advisor. So show them that you are listening intently, hanging on their every word. As we’ve said already, Stephen Covey in his best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, labeled it best in a chapter titled: Seek first to understand and then to be understood. In the FEAR Selling System, you seek to understand by doing your market research, empathizing with your prospect and then asking the right questions. Only at the very end of the process do you insert your opinion that your product/service is an answer to your prospect’s problems. Only after understanding your prospect, do you then truly push to influence them and, in Covey’s words, be understood. So try to do much more listening than speaking – especially if the speaking that you are going to do is the presenting type of pitching that typical salespeople fall back on.

Active Listening: How To Be Perceived As A Listener Too many of the salespeople that we accompany on sales calls seem to be waiting for their prospects to get done with what they have to say only so that they can pitch the benefits of their product. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 198

Remember, as we discussed before, focus more on the prospect himself and his problem rather than on yourself and your product – at least at first. How do you do this? By being perceived as being an active listener. To maximize the effectiveness of the listening tactic, you must not only listen and try to pull out as much information as you can from your prospect, but you must also be perceived as being a good listener – someone who cares about their problem on a personal level. This is how you begin to bond and build trust with your prospect. Think about a salesperson who has called your home. Have you ever received a call at night from a phone company or maybe someone offering you a credit card? What do you notice about them? You probably noticed that they didn’t listen to you. It wasn’t part of their strategy. Their strategy was to barrel through their prepared sales script. They are trained to talk over your objections. Unfortunately, this is how the general public – and the buyers that we surveyed – describe the typical salesperson who calls upon them. They describe salespeople as fast talkers who don’t listen and don’t care about their point of view but only want to sell them something or else just move on to the next prospect. Most people do not feel any empathy with salespeople. They do not feel comfortable or connected to salespeople.

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Enter, The Trusted Advisor As we said before, most products and services are hard to differentiate from competing products and services. So how does a buyer choose which product to buy? As is often said – and our research bears out, buyers don’t buy the product, they buy the salesperson. You must break down your prospect’s natural resistance to sales pitches by not being perceived as giving one. Of course, you will be giving a sales pitch, but it will be done much more subtly than the typical sales pitch as we will show you a little further on. But first, remember, your goal is to be perceived as a trusted advisor, not a fast-talking salesperson who is only out for himself.

Active Listening: How To Do It Effectively By this point, you might be nodding your head thinking: “Yeah, yeah, I know. I have to listen more.” The question is, how do you listen better – and how can you be perceived as a better listener. The answer is in using an active listening technique. Here is the process: 1) Start by asking your prospect, “Can you tell me more about that?” (This applies to whatever they are discussing at the moment.) ___________________________________________________________________________________ 200

2) Take notes in your head or preferably on paper. 3) After your prospect makes a point – and you must use your judgment in determining when you do this – you interrupt the prospect when they come to a comfortable pause. Stop them with a motion of your hand as well as verbally. 4) Then say, “What I think I hear you saying is…” 5) Then repeat back the bullet points of what you heard them saying. Paraphrase what they said sometimes – that is, repeat back to them in words similar to but not the same as the ones they used. Other times, try to use some of the key phrases that they used. Try to mix things up a bit. Keep it conversational. Don’t follow this process like a robot or it will be uncomfortable for your prospect, and you will lose rapport with them. 6) Ask them, “Is that what you are saying?” before asking them to continue. 7) Follow this process throughout the conversation. You may feel awkward the first several times that you use this tactic, but keep using it. The awkwardness is only in your head. Don’t interject your own judgments regarding what the person is saying. Just nod your head and take in what they are saying in a neutral fashion. Focus on your prospect. Forget about solving their problem for now. In the next main section, the Ask Step, we will share with you a series of questions which will help you to focus on your prospect and their problem. Remember, your goal here is to get them to reveal their true emotions about the situation they are in. Get them emotionally involved and keep them _____________________________________________________________________________________ 201

talking about their favorite subject: themselves.

To Take Notes Or Not To Take Notes In Step 2 above under the process of Active Listening, we suggest that you might want to physically take notes. Some of the top salespeople we interviewed specifically said that they ask for permission to take notes at the beginning of a meeting. They claim prospects rarely say no. In discussing this issue with prospective buyers, we found that most buyers actually prefer when salespeople take thorough notes during their meetings since they hope not to have to cover the same issues again with the salesperson. Buyers also report that they believe that salespeople who take notes are “more professional.” In any case, your goal in taking notes, whether mentally or physically, is to show that you are listening actively. One top salesperson that we interviewed on this topic shared the following advice: “You really want to show someone that you are listening. The way I do it is to get them talking first, and then I’ll interrupt them, and say something like: ‘I’m sorry…could you wait a minute…this is important…I’d like to take notes…is that okay?’” He continues: “In this way, I call attention to what I am doing, and so I show them how important I think they are by emphasizing that I think what they are saying is important – important enough for me to take the time and energy to take notes so that I can go over what they said to me later on.” ___________________________________________________________________________________ 202

Using Stories To Influence: The Marketing of Religion It is indisputable that one of the most highly successful religions in the history of the world is Christianity. What is it about Christianity that made it so attractive as a religion throughout the ages? Let us begin by saying that our discussion here is not meant in any way to belittle Christianity or any other religion in any way by discussing its worldwide adoption in terms of how it was “marketed.” The fact of the matter is, however, that religions, just like political movements and consumer products must be promoted in order for them to be adopted widely. Our objective here is not to focus on the specifics of how Christianity was promoted to further various political agendas throughout the centuries. There are many books that document how concepts of Christianity were used by many world leaders from the Roman Emperor Constantine to the Spanish Empire, and from the Hapsburgs of Austria to Hitler in order to further political agendas. Many like Karl Marx, the father of Communism, described religion as “the drug of the masses” used by leaders to keep their people law-abiding and less likely to revolt. The kings of old ruled by divine right meaning that they justified their position as king by claiming that God gave them the right to rule over their people. However, what we will focus on here is what it is about the motivational message of Christianity that made it such a powerful tool in the hands of _____________________________________________________________________________________ 203

deft politicians.

Why Christianity Spread Like Wildfire For those of us who are unfamiliar with Christianity, let’s review the very basics that are relevant to our discussion here. Part of the reason that Christianity became so widespread was due to the fact that the stories and rules that make up the religion were written down and then, with the advent of Gutenberg’s printing press in the 15th century, easily distributed and passed down from generation to generation in book form. The beliefs of other earlier religions had been written down by hand, but typically only the wealthy or wisest of men (such as Jewish rabbis) had access to such books. Unlike previous religions that were passed along mainly orally, the written Bible widely distributed gave credibility to the Word of God. Even today studies show that people believe concepts that they read in print more readily than what they hear – even when the source of the material is highly questionable as is the case with a great amount of the information available on the Internet. This is part of the reason why we suggest you position yourself as an expert through creating intellectual property books, articles, white papers, etc. Certainly, Gutenberg’s printing press helped catapult the Bible into the best-selling book that it remains to this day, but even so, why was the message of the Bible so readily adopted by people around the world? It comes back to our central motivators – fear and hope. The Bible is divided into two Testaments – the Old and the New Testament. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 204

The Old Testament, which is also part of the Hebrew Bible depicts an angry God who lays down the laws, such as the Ten Commandments, and punishes those who do not follow his laws by sending them to a fiery hell. The fear of going to Hell certainly has influenced human behavior over the centuries. As Machiavelli advises in The Prince, it is better to be feared than loved. The brilliance of Christianity, however, is that it presents a God who is both fearful and loving. Whereas the Old Testament focuses on the fear side of the equation, the New Testament sells the hope side of the question. The New Testament introduces a second side of the Christian God who is loving, forgiving and open to accepting all who believe in Him into a heavenly afterlife. So, in effect, Christianity motivates through a dual driver strategy of fear and hope. If you don’t follow the rules, you will suffer eternally in a horrible hell. If you do follow the rules, you’ll join the angels in heaven. This “carrot and stick strategy” is very powerful. And as you are seeing, the FEAR Selling System taps into both of these motivators – both fear and hope. Now that we have uncovered the core messages of hope and fear embedded in this highly successful – in terms of marketing – religion, let us go one step further and explore how the Bible delivers this dual message.

The Power of the Parable Throughout the New Testament, Jesus Christ uses one of the most effective empathy tactics to get his message across to his followers. He used parables, which are nothing more than simple stories that illustrate a message. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 205

The word “parable” comes from ancient Greek and Latin root words that mean “to compare.” As you will see, we suggest that you write out various parables to illustrate the various selling points that you would like to make. You want your prospect to “compare” themselves with the main characters in the stories that you tell. In this fashion, you will be able to influence your prospects on an emotional level by having them empathize with the positive or negative consequences that your characters’ actions or inactions lead to. By crafting your stories or mini-case-studies, you will be able to influence your prospects’ perceptions regarding possible futures. You could paint pictures of hopeful futures in which they overcome their current problems or fears. Or, you could paint pictures of fearful futures in which they suffer the painful consequences of their problems. Top salespeople use stories to paint pictures in their prospects’ minds and to show by analogy a story character or company, that was struggling as they are now, yet has overcome their problems by finding a solution. You want your prospect to believe first that others have the same or a similar problem that they have and that others have overcome that problem – because they used your product/service, of course.

Why Stories Work What is it about stories that make them such a powerful persuasion technique. Well, people can relate to stories. They can empathize with the characters in a story. They can put themselves in the protagonist’s shoes. Think about the last time you went into a movie. If it was a good movie, you got sucked into the storyline and forgot the reality that you were sitting in a theatre surrounded by others who were also staring at images flashing on a big white screen. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 206

In some ways, we can say that the movie hypnotized you. It took you out of your own reality and let you experience a fantasy for a couple of hours. Jesus, in telling his stories to his followers, did the same. And in order to be effective in using the FEAR Selling System, you must follow Jesus’ lead. Tell stories. As we have discussed, if you try to force your agenda down a buyer’s throat by simply listing all the reasons why they should buy from you, you will most likely fail in your attempt to convince them to buy from you. What you want to do is show them that they should buy your product/ service - that they will avoid pain and experience pleasure if they buy your product/service. How do you do this? You tell stories of others like them who had similar problems, were introduced to your products/services and then achieved similar objectives – the solutions that they also are looking for.

Different Types Of Stories Begin by thinking of what your goals are in telling your stories in a sales situation. There are really only two main purposes to telling stories – pacing or leading.

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Pacing With Stories: I’ve-HeardThat-Before Stories Remember, you pace - or get into synch - with your prospect in order to build rapport with them. You acknowledge that what they are saying to you is valid. You can do this with simple Stroke and Agreement Statements or by using I’ve-Heard-That-Before Stories. I’ve-Heard-That-Before Stories are used to accomplish virtually the same objective as Stroke and Agreement Statements, but are typically more credible than simple nods and quick statements like “I agree…” In the case of pacing stories, show your agreement by using a Stroke and Agreement Statement followed by an I’ve-Heard-That-Before Story. So for example, if someone tells you about a problem that they have been having with a certain aspect of their job, you as the salesperson should agree with them and then tell a quick story that shows that you’ve experienced that or heard that someone else has that problem, too. Remember, misery loves company. The buyer will appreciate it if you show that you understand and can empathize with their situation. So you can say: “I know what you mean…I’ve heard that a lot lately. I was just with a client of ours and….” and then you tell your I’ve-Heard-ThatBefore Story. Of course, you should have the basic points of your stories already written out and memorized. And you might have to be flexible with your storytelling in order to make it relevant to the situation. As we discussed in the first step of the System, you should have mini-casestudies or stories that illustrate how you helped the clients in your ___________________________________________________________________________________ 208

Machine-Gun Client List. Note: Although we don’t suggest you lie, don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story either. Your objective is to show that you are an expert in your field and have heard about their problems before. Once you create trust by showing that you are familiar with your prospect’s problem, you are in a better position to show that you can solve that problem with a leading story.

Leading With Stories: It-CouldHappen-To-You Stories Once you get into synch with your prospect, once you move them along the Fear-Hope Continuum to trust by using the above empathy tactics, you then want to try to lead them toward hope and associating that hope with your product/service. First, you may pace your prospect by using an I’ve-Heard-That-Before Story. Latch on to one of the personal fears that they express to you and then take them in one of two different directions. Either: 1) It-Could-Happen-To-You Fearful Story: Tell a story that paints the picture of a story character/company that didn’t use your product/ service and ended up experiencing negative consequences; or 2) It-Could-Happen-To-You Hopeful Story: Tell a story that paints the picture of a story character/company that used your product/ service and ended up experiencing positive consequences. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 209

You only want to use leading stories once you are sure that you have gained enough trust with your prospect that you can lead them and they will follow and believe you. Remember, you typically do not build up trust in just one or two meetings. It typically takes some time to build the foundation of a bond before you can begin to effectively lead your prospect. So be patient but persistent with your prospects.

Final Thoughts on Empathy By using the techniques in the Empathy Step of the FEAR Selling System, you will differentiate yourself from 99% of the salespeople out there. Most salespeople are fast-talking, product pitchers. They talk instead of listen and when they do talk, they are usually praising their own products. You should take a different approach. As we discussed in depth in this section, you want to be a listener. You want to focus on your prospect and their problems, their fears and their hopes. If you follow the questioning patterns that we provide to you in the next step, the Ask Step, you will be forced to listen and focus on your prospects’ problems. So now, let’s discuss the core step in FEAR Selling System. Let’s now focus on how to…

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Ask The Right Questions At The Right Times In The Right Way: How to Allay Your Prospects’ Fears and Break Down Any Barriers That They Have That Are Stopping Them From Buying

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You might never have been to a psychiatrist, but if you have, you probably realize that the good ones know how to ask the right questions to get you to open up to them. You as a salesperson, should think of yourself as part psychiatrist and part actor. In the Empathy Step above, we showed you how to act more interested – more concerned about your prospects’ problems, pains and fears. In a sense, to show your empathy, you have to act empathetic. Now, let’s focus on you as a psychiatrist.

Why Questions Work If you simply preach as a salesperson, you’ll be perceived as every other salesperson who focuses on their product’s features – and maybe benefits. You’ll be seen as pushing your own agenda. This is exactly what you don’t want. You want to gently guide your prospect rather than push them into buying your product. Remember, people buy for their reasons, not yours. They make decisions based on their buying criteria – they don’t decide based on the features or benefits that you think should persuade them. It’s all about their agenda, not yours. Selling benefits is often a necessary strategy when you are in marketing mode – that is, when you are casting your net wide to try to generate interest. When you are one-on-one with a prospect who shows some interest, however, it is then time to switch your focus from general benefits to their personal problems, their personal fears. Too often, salespeople keep throwing out the benefits of their products without really knowing whether or not those general benefits are indeed benefits in the eyes of the prospect on the other end of the phone or sitting ___________________________________________________________________________________ 212

across the table from them. As we discussed, the first step is to get your prospect to open up by fishing for their needs, their pains and their fears with your Prospect Fear and Hope List. Then you must get them emotionally involved in their problem to the point where you can influence them. You have to get them to a point where they acknowledge the fearful consequences of facing a future without the help of your product or the hopeful consequences of a future with your product/service. Behind every problem and every need, there is an underlying fear. Behind every objection, there is a fear. Your objective is to uncover those fears. How do you do that? Questions. You must ask much more than you tell. So err on the side of asking questions.

What Questions Will Do For You There are three main benefits to asking questions: 1) questions will make you seem genuinely interested in the your prospect and their problems. As we discussed in the Empathy Step above, many people long simply to be heard and understood. By focusing on your prospect and their problems through questions, you will show that you genuinely care about hearing their problems. And you should genuinely care, because you want to find out as much information as you can about their problems – especially how they perceive their problems. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 213

2) questions will enable you to gather information which you can then use to position your product or service more effectively when you do so towards the end of the selling process. Information is power. And as we have covered elsewhere – especially in The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling section, don’t assume that you have all the information about a person’s problems. You need to ask questions at the right time about the right things in order to get the information you need to make the sale. 3) questions will make your prospect aware of the consequences of their actions or inactions. At the end of the day, you will not be able to push your prospect into the sale. This is what most people do. We have worked with countless salespeople who think that their product is the answer to their prospect’s problem, and they push and push and push to show their prospect that they have the answer. But people resist, especially when you push too hard. That’s why you must use questions not only to find out about your prospects’ problems but also to make your prospect aware of the consequences of their actions or rather inactions, that is, what could happen to them if they don’t buy your product. So let’s get started…

All Questions Aren’t Equal As the sales researcher, Neil Rackham, explains in his popular book, SPIN Selling, some types of questions are more powerful than others. Rackham describes the different types of questions, and which types are more effective than others. But we won’t go into that detail here. Again, our goal ___________________________________________________________________________________ 214

is to give you actionable tactics rather than focus on the details of research. We have simplified the process of asking questions for you. We’ll show you what to say, how to say it, when to say it, and why it works. We will cover many questions throughout this section, which you can use to get yourself out of the many tight situations that you might find yourself in as a salesperson. First, let’s make sure that you understand the difference between openended questions and closed questions.

Trigger Questions As we said, just like a psychiatrist or a detective, your job is to get your prospect to open up and tell you what is on their mind. To do this, you will ask open-ended questions – that is, questions that require them to respond with a relatively complex answer rather than a simple “yes” or “no”. Remember, you want to get them talking. Closed questions, which allow your prospect to answer you with a “yes” or a “no”, don’t get them to open up. Open-ended questions do. We will be teaching you to ask many different types of questions, but when in doubt, rely on the open-ended questions that we call Trigger Questions. Here are some examples of basic Trigger Questions: “Can you tell me more about…” “Can you be more specific?” “Can you give me an example?” _____________________________________________________________________________________ 215

These simple phrases will get your prospect to talk more in-depth about their favorite subjects – themselves and their problems. So when in doubt, fall back on Trigger Questions.

Use Orphan Phrases To Keep Your Prospect Talking A close relative of Trigger Questions are Orphan Phrases. Indeed, some Orphan Phrases also can be classified as Trigger Questions, but don’t get hung up on that technicality. Whereas Trigger Questions typically are used to start getting your prospect to open up, Orphan Phrases are used to keep your prospects spilling their guts. Keep them talking. Remember, you as the listener are in a more powerful position than your prospect when they are talking. You are gathering as much information as possible. That’s your job. You will use this information to give a killer sales presentation later – a sales presentation during which you will say exactly what they want to hear. But how do you find out exactly what they want to hear? You keep them talking. Use Orphan Phrases such as: “And…?” “And what else…?” “I’m not sure I understand.” “I’m sorry, I missed that last part.” (This works especially well when you are taking notes and you missed something that your prospect said.) ___________________________________________________________________________________ 216

“You mean…?” There are many Orphan Phrases. I’m sure you use some already without really being aware that you are using them. Think of some that you are comfortable with and use them. Why are they called Orphan Phrases? Remember the British author Charles Dickens’ famous orphan character, Oliver Twist. When he’s in the orphanage, he begs for more food and says: “I’d like some more, please?” Well that’s what you are doing with these Orphan Phrases, you’re begging for more information. You are creating a vacuum by using one of these phrases and then keeping quiet. By forcing yourself to be quiet, you will then force the prospect to fill the uncomfortable silence, and you’ll get more information. Resist the temptation to talk. Try to use as many Orphan Phrases as you can without becoming annoying to your prospect. Remember, it is a conversation. You have to contribute a bit, but make sure that they are doing the majority of the talking.

Floater Questions Another type of question that will allow you to test the waters – to test what your prospect is thinking is the Floater Question. Floater Questions enable you to ask hypothetical what-if questions that may help you to ask what might otherwise be uncomfortable questions to your prospects. Here are some examples of Floater Questions that the top salespeople we interviewed use: _____________________________________________________________________________________ 217

“I don’t know if this is appropriate to ask right now, but what would you say if we made the following offer…” You see, the person isn’t making a “real” offer, they are just floating one by their prospect to see their reaction. Another way of asking this question is by using what negotiators call Limited Authority. You pretend – or it might actually be true – that you do not have the authority to make an offer, and so you make an unofficial one. One of the salespeople we interviewed is fond of posing his most effective Floater Questions like this: “Let’s say that I can get my boss to agree to what you are looking for, do you think you would then be able to do the deal?” Here are some other ways to structure Floater Questions: “Let’s say…then what happens next…” “Let’s pretend…then would you…” “If I could get my colleagues to …., do you think you could get your colleagues to…?” “What would you say if…?” “What would you do if…?” “Would you buy today if…?” Again, what you are doing is feeling your prospect out by putting them in a hypothetical situation. They will give you at least some idea of how much they are willing to spend, or what is important in the negotiation for them, or how close to buying they are. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 218

Use Floater Questions to test the water before you try to close the deal.

Negatively Positioned Questions Positioning your Floater Questions - or any question for that matter – in the form of a negative can be an even more powerful way of evoking a real, emotional response. Why is this so? People have a tendency to want to disagree, especially with salespeople who they know have their own agenda. You can take advantage of this natural reaction to disagree by positioning questions in the negative. If you remember, one of the first questions we suggested you ask when interrupting someone with a cold call is: “Am I catching you at a bad time?” Our studies over thousands of calls reveal that a majority of people (64%) will either say “No, I have a moment” or politely tell you when you can call them back. Salespeople get a much less friendly response if they ask, “Is this a good time?” because people will tend to disagree and say, “No, it’s not a good time.” Through our own studies and many others that we have researched, we have determined that people generally tend to disagree with others. Some psychologists label this natural reaction as an ego-defense mechanism. Most people want to project an image of themselves as independent of others’ opinions, so their natural reaction is to say no, say they want to think about your questions or offers - or otherwise stall. How do you overcome such natural negativity? _____________________________________________________________________________________ 219

Fight fire with fire. Take advantage of the natural human tendency to disagree by asking your questions or even making statements in the negative. Instead of saying, “You really are going to want to hear about my product”, take a more humble stance by saying, “You might not be interested in hearing about my product or would you?” Not only will Negatively Positioned Questions help you take advantage of the natural human tendency to disagree, but they will also help you from getting boxed in when you are questioning your prospect. For example, if you say: “Do you want the car in dark blue?” The prospect might say, “No”, thus putting them in a negative state that you would rather them not be in. Of course, as we discussed in the Empathy Step above, you want to be in alignment with your prospect. You would rather have them agree with you, so you should ask: “I don’t suppose you would want the car in dark blue, would you?” If they say, “Yes, I would” then you are okay, and if they say, “No”, you are okay too because all you have to say is: “I didn’t think so” and you move on in the conversation. The most popular Negatively Positioned Question that we have found top salespeople using is actually a Negative Floater Question. It starts with: “I don’t suppose…” followed by your hypothetical offer. Other Negative Floater Questions can start with: ___________________________________________________________________________________ 220

“I’m not so sure you would agree but...?” “You probably aren’t interested but…?” “I don’t know but…?” As you will see in the final section of the FEAR Selling System, you will be using a similar test-the-water tactic by using the Thermometer Close.

How To Keep The Conversation Going After Bland Prospect Responses As anyone who has ever tried to sell anything knows, you are probably going to experience some resistance. People are either going to say “no” and try to hang up on you or walk away from you. Or they are going to make an objection as to why they are not interested in buying right now. They could give you what we call Bland Prospect Responses by say things like: “I’m just looking.” “I’m just gathering information right now but am not ready to buy yet.” “Thanks but we don’t need help with that right now.”

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You can keep the momentum going after such Bland Prospect Responses by using one of our favorite Negative Floater Question: “I don’t suppose you would be interested in…” Again, by asking a question, you have created a vacuum. The prospect is under pressure to fill that vacuum with a response. They are forced to reciprocate by answering you. They might try to brush you off again by giving you another Bland Prospect Response, but remember that your objective is to keep them talking at all cost. Get them involved, even if it’s only long enough to determine that they are not a good prospect for you. But what do you do when your prospect actually confronts you with an objection.

Prospect Objections: A Salesperson’s Greatest Enemy? Well, let’s talk about objections first. As the Japanese military strategist, Sun Tzu, said in his combat manual, The Art of War: You must know your enemy. And many salespeople believe that their greatest enemy in sales is the Prospect Objection. We will show you how to easily disarm your enemy, but let’s get to know our seeming enemy a bit first. Let’s explore a bit about what objections are all about and how they can actually help you sell more and sell faster. Because it is such an important issue for salespeople across industries, the Sales Career Training Institute has conducted many surveys and interviews ___________________________________________________________________________________ 222

with salespeople about sales objections and how to deal with them. Following is a summary of the concerns that a majority of salespeople have with regard to sales objections. Salespeople admit that they are: 1) Struggling to find the right way to answer the constant stream of objections that they hear from their prospects day in and day out. 2) Searching for ways to keep the sales process going – even if their prospect makes a strong objection as to why they don’t want to buy now. 3) Looking for sales tactics that enable them to pre-empt objections that commonly occur in their particular selling situation. 4) Confused as to why traditional sales tactics - that are designed to answer objections - seem to only create more resistance (that is, more objections) instead of helping them to answer the first objection smoothly and move on.

Obstacles To Overcoming Sales Objections In our recent surveys focused on overcoming sales objections, the Sales Career Training Institute asked sales managers their opinion as to why salespeople seem to be failing to find the real objections and then failing to overcome them if they do find them. Following are the top 4 answers that we found: 1) Salespeople lack the sales techniques necessary to uncover the real objections. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 223

2) They lack the self-confidence to ask the right questions at the right times, which could be very uncomfortable. 3) They have not prepared in advance with a credible response to objections - even though they may have heard the objection dozens of times before from other prospects. 4) They do not know the best way to weave answers to these objections into their product presentations. We will cover all of these concerns in this section and the final section, the Reveal Hope Step.

The Psychology of Sales Objections There are three basic reasons underlying any sales objection that you hear. The sales strategies and techniques that we cover throughout this section will help you to overcome sales objections, but the first step is to understand why objections occur. 1) Objections may occur because the prospect has doubts, fears or unanswered questions about your product/service - or you as a salesperson. 2) Objections may occur because the prospect is ready to buy but wants to confirm the purchase decision with another decision-maker, get a better deal or otherwise stall you in order to meet their own objectives. 3) Objections may occur simply because the prospect does not want to buy. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 224

Objections: Get Used To Them, Welcome Them, Or Better Yet, Ask For Them One of the biggest complaints of sales managers is that their salesforces take too long to close deals. With greater competition, prospects need more time to send out requests for proposals, review all of their available choices, set up meetings to qualify vendors and then finally make a decision. Waiting for prospects to call you back can be one of the most frustrating parts of the sales process. The way to avoid this is to find out more about the objections that your prospects might have about your product or service as early as possible. All too often, salespeople don’t know the most effective way to answer objections. They would rather try to avoid the hard questions as long as possible in the hopes that they can seal a deal without having to deal with those tough objections. But is this a good long-term strategy? First of all, many prospects who don’t reveal their objections to you may want to back out of the purchase later on, which, as many of you know, is usually even more frustrating than not winning the deal in the first place. Secondly, if you are using this strategy of bulldozing through the sales process quickly in order to avoid objections, it usually means that you are talking to the wrong people in the organization. If you don’t get any objections, you’re probably fooling yourself into thinking that you are actually talking to a decision-maker. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 225

Most decision-makers in organizations have gotten where they are by being careful about decisions they make. Such people cover the bases by asking lots of questions. If you are talking to someone who doesn’t ask a lot of questions and raise at least some objections, you are probably pitching a person in the buying organization who is too low to actually make a decision to buy. This is a waste of your time. We’ll show you how to ask the right questions that will help you find out who the decision-makers are and how they make their decisions later in the Ask Step. But for now, understand that you must deal with objections. Indeed, you should welcome objections.

Sales Objections, Sales Objections Everywhere According to the Sales Career Training Institute’s ongoing surveys regarding sales objections, rejection by prospects is the number one fear of salespeople across all industries. And typically, most salespeople see objections as the beginning of the end. Again, it will take some practice, but you must start thinking of objections as positive signals. Think of objections this way: 1) Objections may be an indication that the prospect is truly not interested, in which case, you save valuable time. The quicker you get to the objections - and determine that they are valid and that you cannot overcome them with your product/service, the quicker you can move on and spend your time prospecting elsewhere; or ___________________________________________________________________________________ 226

2) Objections may be simply a stalling technique used by the prospect because they are still unsure that they want to buy your product - or whether they want to buy the product from you. In this case, you should look at the objection as an opportunity to engage the prospect - and start building rapport.

Top 10 Sales Objections That You Might Hear – In One Form Or Another Interestingly, sales objections that our survey participants hear from prospects remain fairly consistent over time and across industries. Here are some of the most popular objections that you might hear: 1) “I need some time to think about it.” 2) “I’m interested, but I’ve already spent my budget.” 3) “Your competitors’ prices are much lower than yours.” 4) “I’m only interested in price.” 5) “I have to talk it over with my colleagues.” - or wife, or partner, etc. 6) “Call me in three months, and we’ll be ready to buy then.” 7) “We already have that covered by an existing vendor.” 8) “We can do that in-house and keep the cost down and maintain better control.” _____________________________________________________________________________________ 227

9) “We’ll need to get several other bids before considering your proposal.” 10) “We’re aware of your product/service, but it’s not the right fit for what we need.” The important thing to remember when you hear such sales objections is that you can overcome them by asking what we call Boomerang Questions. You may find, however, that a prospect’s objections are valid and therefore you should move on to a new prospect and not waste your time anymore. But our advice is not to take such objections at face value – at least not at first. You may have been taught when taking tests that your first answer is probably the right answer. Well, in sales, the first objection that you hear is most likely not the real objection. That is why you are going to use Boomerang Questions to find out the real objection that’s usually hiding behind the objection that your prospect tells you at first.

Asking Questions To Overcome Sales Objections After reading the Top 10 Sales Objection list above and thinking about your own experiences as a buyer, you may realize that many sales objections might be a defense mechanism used by your prospects to ease their own discomfort of having to face a salesperson. If your experience is anything like most salespeople who participate in Sales Career Training Institute studies, prospects just want to suck information out of you as easily and quickly as possible - usually by just getting you to send them your sales collaterals - and then get you out the door or off the phone so that you they can get back to their busy day. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 228

You must not fall into this trap or you’ll simply be wasting time sending out product-focused sales materials into a black hole and never hearing from these prospects again.

Before You Get To Yes, You Must Get To The Real Sales Objections Of course, your number one goal is to get the sale as quickly as possible. But in order to do that you must usually uncover and overcome your prospects’ real sales objections first. Think of objections as bombs that could explode in your face later on in the sales process. Your job as a salesperson is to qualify your prospects by finding those bombs fast and disarming them. Otherwise, you will spend lots of time thinking that you’re going to get the sale and gladly calling back your prospects or visiting with them again and again, only to discover that one of those bombs that you didn’t uncover blows up in your face at the final presentation or at some other point late in the sales process.

Ask And It Shall Be Given As you already know, you must use questions to qualify your prospects as you get to know them. You may have heard that there are no such thing as dumb questions. Well, we’re sorry to say that there are some not-so-smart questions and then there are smart questions that you could be asking. If you ask not-so-smart questions, you lose credibility, and most likely, you lose the sale as well. If you ask smart questions, you build rapport, get your prospects

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emotionally involved in the sales process, and uncover those deadly objections sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, we have found that most salespeople do not ask enough questions - and those who do ask questions, usually aren’t asking the right ones.

Boomerang Questions: The Answer To All Objections Many salespeople cringe when their prospects ask questions. But hopefully by now, you realize that you should welcome your prospects’ questions because their questions might indicate that there is at least enough curiosity, enough initial interest, and maybe some underlying pains or fears, that are motivating your prospect to find out more from you. From our research, we have found that it is how you handle these “objections,” which will strongly determine your success as a salesperson. So as to not keep you in suspense, we’ll give you the short answer on how to answer most objections that your prospects put to you. Most of the time, top salespeople answer objections or questions with what we call a Boomerang Question. Think of how a boomerang works. A boomerang is a special form of throwing stick used by the aborigines of Australia to hunt with. It is very ingenious weapon if you think about it. Unlike a regular spear or a rock, if you throw a boomerang at your prey, and you miss, your weapon doesn’t just fall uselessly to the ground. A boomerang returns to you so that you can use it again. Similarly, when your prospect asks you a question, we suggest that you ___________________________________________________________________________________ 230

mostly throw another question – a Boomerang Question - back to them. Their answer to your Boomerang Question will help you move closer to the sale because when your prospect responds to it, he or she may provide you with more information about their needs, pains, fears or hopes, and otherwise give you a clue as to why they are resisting your attempts at selling them. We’ll get into the details of how to throw Boomerang Questions most effectively later. But for now, remember that, especially in the beginning stages of your interaction with your prospect, you mostly want to answer a prospect’s questions with another question – a Boomerang Question.

It’s A Conversation, Not An Interrogation We suggest that you mostly use Boomerang Questions because we want you to err on the side of asking questions instead of making statements. Countless research studies on persuasion prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that getting a prospect involved with you through proper questioning can help you significantly in getting that prospect to do what you want them to do. But if Boomerang Questions are so powerful, why don’t we suggest that you use them all the time instead of only most of the time? Well, if you think about it, always answering a question with another question could get your prospect annoyed if not done smoothly. You could easily break rapport with your prospect by coming off as too pushy and seeming to ask too many questions. And remember, you must gain rapport, trust and permission early on– and maintain it on an ongoing basis – during this Ask Step. That’s why we emphasize the Empathy Step before moving _____________________________________________________________________________________ 231

on to the Ask Step. In order to maintain the sense that you are just having a friendly, let’s-getto-know-each-other conversation, you can’t simply keep asking questions and taking and taking information. A conversation is a two-way street. You have to give back sometimes, so you’ll have to take a stand sometimes and give up some information. By mixing Boomerang Questions in with your normal dialogue, it will seem as if you are having a natural, normal conversation rather than interrogating your prospect. Don’t worry…we’ll reveal ways to ask Boomerang Questions so that it doesn’t seem like you’re dodging your prospects’ questions all the time. More on this later, but for now, remember – most of the time you are going to answer your prospects’ questions – and statements for that matter – with another question – a Boomerang Question. The objective of the Boomerang Question – like Floater Questions, Negative Floater Questions, Orphan Phrases, and Trigger Questions, is to keep your prospect talking. The more they talk, the more likely they are to tell you the truth and reveal their true fears. We don’t want to imply that all prospects lie, but the reality is that we all lie – or at least withhold the truth – sometimes. But that’s exactly what you want to get at – the truth. So to paraphrase the Bible again, if you ask, it will be given, eventually. So keep them talking with all of these types of questions and phrases.

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Three Ways To Ask Boomerang Questions Effectively Some of you may be thinking that you would be uncomfortable not giving a direct answer to your prospects’ questions. You may not want to seem as if you are dodging their questions. That’s okay. We can safely say that nearly everyone whom we have trained with these techniques feels this uneasiness with Boomerang Questions at first. But they soon get over that discomfort once they realize how really effective Boomerang Questions are. Plus here are three delivery techniques that you should use in order to vary the way you throw your Boomerang Questions. These techniques will help you seem less abrasive in your attempt to get more information out of your prospect. 1) AGREEMENT AND STROKING STATEMENT + BOOMERANG QUESTION As we discussed in the Empathy Step, you want to agree with your prospect as much as possible. As one of our top salespeople says, “Save your big guns for your big ships. Don’t argue little points. Only take a stand when it’s really a dealbreaker – and try to put off any arguments until after you bond with them a bit.” Keep this in mind. Even if you disagree with what a prospect says, still try to use an Agreement and Stroking Statement to show that you are at least somewhat on the same wavelength as your prospect before digging deeper to find the real objection with a Boomerang Question. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 233

By using an Agreement and Stroking Statement, you will be able to avoid the tension that may result from a disagreement between yourself and your prospect. Remember, it doesn’t help you to flex your muscles and protect your own ego by arguing with your prospect. In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie has many simple yet powerful recommendations that are related to this technique. He suggests: · The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. · Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.” · Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view. · Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires. · Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

With these wise suggestions in mind, let’s quickly review some examples of Agreement and Stroking Statements: “I agree…” “That’s interesting that you say that…” “Good question…” “Good observation…” “Good point…” ___________________________________________________________________________________ 234

“I’m glad you brought that up…”

So the first technique to alleviate any resistance that you get by asking a blunt Boomerang Question is to soften it by agreeing with your prospect first and then follow up with the question. For example: Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of your competitors.” You:

“I’m glad you brought that up…we are more expensive than some of our competitors. Is that going to be an issue for you?”

In this example, you want to find out early on if they are not willing to make the investment in your product. In many cases, you can combat this argument by trying to prove that your product provides more value than your competitors, and so it warrants a higher price. But don’t launch into that defensive behavior by simply flexing your muscles and explaining why your product is better than the competition’s. Remember – never make assumptions. Always find out why someone is asking something. 2) ACTIVE LISTENING TECHNIQUE + BOOMERANG QUESTION As we discussed earlier, we want to show our prospect that they are important, and you can do this by consistently showing them that you are listening. In this second technique for softening an otherwise-harsh Boomerang Question, you repeat the prospect’s question back to them before tossing your Boomerang Question. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 235

For example: Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of your competitors.” You:

“Okay, so you are wondering why we price our products higher than our competitors. Well, first let me ask you…Is a higher price going to be an issue for you, even if we can justify higher value?”

You might even want to throw in an Agreement and Stroking Statement first. “That’s a fair question…so you are wondering why we price our products higher than our competitors. Well, first let me ask you…Is a higher price going to be an issue for you, even if we can justify higher value?” With this technique, you are showing your prospect that you are listening to them. This may seem simplistic, but our research shows that you should not underestimate this Active Listening technique of repeating the prospect’s question to them before you hit them with a Boomerang Question. 3) START THEN STOP + BOOMERANG QUESTION Of course, when someone asks you a question, your natural inclination is to try to answer them. With Boomerang Questions, we suggest that you fight this urge to answer in order to avoid putting your foot in your mouth by answering inappropriately. We are not suggesting that you dodge your prospects’ questions forever. Of course, that’s unrealistic. But we do suggest that you gather as much information about your prospects’ problems, pains, fears, buying criteria, and buying strategies before you launch into your product presentation. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 236

Sometime, it is hard to fight the urge not to answer prospect questions. Many salespeople whom we have interviewed are very anxious to get faceto-face with a prospect and tell them how great their product is. They might have spent days or weeks prospecting on the phone, and so are as excited as puppies to get out and jump all over their prospects. Let’s face it, we are all trained to answer questions from our earliest days in school. If we knew the answer, our hands would shoot up in the hopes of being called on, answering the question correctly and getting a compliment from our teachers. That’s okay. Sometimes, you will naturally launch into your response when your prospect asks a question. The third Boomerang Question delivery technique allows for this natural urge to answer questions. This will probably be the most natural of the three Boomerang Question delivery techniques for you to use. And it may be the most effective, in the sense that it meets your natural need to answer a question and makes it seem as if you are answering their question… but then you stop and throw your Boomerang. Here’s an example… Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of your competitors.” You:

“You’re right, we are more expensive. And I’ll take you through some of the reasons why we’re a better value. First of all, we………well, there are a lot of reasons, but before I do that, can you share with me why that might be an issue for you?”

Notice that you pause after starting to answer their question. This will make it seem as if you want to give them the information they requested. It will take the pressure off of you since you are “responding” at least to some degree. But again, you want to turn this potential objection around on them _____________________________________________________________________________________ 237

in order to find out information, perhaps about their budget or their current vendor or their buying criteria. We’ll get deeper into how to draw out key information later in this section, but for now, review these three techniques to deliver your Boomerang Questions. Trust us, this one technique will help you enormously.

The Negative Boomerang Question: The Most Powerful Of All Questions Before we move on, let’s show you how you can make Boomerang Questions even more powerful. Remember we discussed how Negatively Positioned Questions enable you to extract more information and avoid getting boxed in during discussions with your prospects? Well, when you combine the power of the Negatively Positioned Question with that of the Boomerang Question, you have what is perhaps the most the most powerful way to ask questions. Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of your competitors.” You:

“I’m glad you brought that up…given the seriousness of your problem though, your budget shouldn’t be too much of a problem for you, right?”

Your prospect will probably say something like: “Of course, budget is always a problem for us.” ___________________________________________________________________________________ 238

In this example, you have now opened the door to explore your prospect’s budget with them. This will help you qualify them. You might not be in the same ballpark in terms of what they think they can spend to solve their problem. You want to know as much about your prospect as soon as you can so that you can either: 1) avoid wasting your time trying to convince them to buy your expensive product when they simply don’t have the money to do so under any circumstance; or 2) move them into what we call the Values Elicitation Process to help them understand that the costs of buying your product are much less than the costs of having to deal with the consequences of their problem. But before we introduce you to the series of highly effective questions that make up the Values Elicitation Process, let’s take a step back and talk a bit more about how you should prepare for common objections that you face over and over again.

Preparing Yourself For Handling Sales Objections From the very beginning of your sales career, you should be keeping track of common sales objections that you hear from your prospects. Consider this market research as well. Just as you started the FEAR Selling System by trying to find out typical prospect pains, fears and hopes by asking your co-workers and prospects themselves, so to are you going to be collecting objections and looking for patterns so that you are better prepared to answer common ones as they come up in the future. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 239

We have found that top salespeople keep track of sales objections that they hear in order to find patterns, and then they test different sales strategies either to overcome those objections when they hear them - or even do what we call “pre-emptive strikes” when they see the objections coming. The key is preparation. Several top salespeople that we work with set aside a section of their records on each prospect to list the objections - or potential objections that might come up in future discussions. They also proactively seek out objections from lower-level employees in organizations - or in early discussions with the top decision-makers - so that they can overcome those sales objections in their sales presentations later on. Not only do you want to find out the most prevalent objections that your prospects have about your product/service, you also want to keep track of the Boomerang Questions that you find best enable you to overcome these common prospect objections. Always be testing to find the most effective Boomerang Questions and delivery techniques that work for you. When judging the effectiveness of questions, take into account: · how effective they are in terms of enabling you to extract more information from your prospects; and · how comfortable you are in asking the questions. Boomerang Questions simply won’t be effective if you are not comfortable and confident in asking them. Our research indicates that f you want to be successful in sales, you must ___________________________________________________________________________________ 240

get used to asking Boomerang Questions. But some such questions may be too uncomfortable for you to ask. Try to overcome your discomfort by getting used to asking them through constant practice with your co-workers or even your family and friends. Or, try varying the way you deliver the questions so that you are comfortable with asking them and therefore sound natural doing so.

The 8-Step Process For Preparing Against Sales Objections Here’s the basic 8-step process for overcoming objections: 1) Identify as many sales objections as possible early on. You must know what your prospects’ real objections are – their real concerns, real fears about buying from you - before you can try to overcome those objections, so try to find out what you’re up against as early as possible. Ask customers to critique your product - and even your presentation. Do the same of colleagues, your sales manager and even friends and family to get objective opinions. Ask them what makes them uncomfortable with your presentation. What makes it sound too “salesy.” 2) Keep a record of all objections. Write down the objections as well as your notes on what those who critiqued you said about your presentation. This could be difficult because your ego is at stake - but remember, you’re in this game to sell, not to protect your ego. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 241

3) Write out scripts to answer these objections. This is where Trigger and Boomerang Questions come in. You should be keeping a list of questions that you can ask the prospect to get them to open up and reveal more to you. Remember that you want to keep it conversational though. This way, you will keep your prospect comfortable by having them feel that they are in a two-way conversation rather than just having them feel as if they are on the receiving-end of a volley of questions. Remember, you want it to be as much like a friendly conversation as possible, not an interrogation. 4) Practice your responses to common objections – practice your various Boomerang Questions. Don’t stop at just writing down the answers and reviewing them once in awhile. Try to get used to comfortably responding without stumbling through your responses. For this, you need to practice with colleagues - or again with friends and family who are willing to help you grow in your sales career. 5) Develop sales collaterals that address these objections. When you write sales letters or have materials such as testimonials that address these common objections, you will gain credibility in the eyes of your prospect. They’ll feel as if you have “walked in their shoes.” You can “feel their pain” – you know their fears, and they’ll appreciate it hopefully, by giving you the business. 6) Constantly rework the scripts and your sales collaterals as you obtain more feedback. Like marketing, sales is about trying a strategy and then tweaking it to improve it on an ongoing basis. Don’t just stick with the same old responses to the objections. Try out some different ones - you might find better ways to address objections. But be careful, don’t be too much of a ___________________________________________________________________________________ 242

cowboy. Once you find something that works, stick with the essential components at least. Just tweak and test. 7) Keep all of your sales scripts and overcoming-objections scripts in a three-ring binder. This way, you’ll have them ready to review before you meet a prospect who is likely to bring up the objection. We suggest using a three-ring binder to reinforce the fact that you must be making modifications and improving and replacing these scripts as you receive more feedback from your colleagues, prospects and customers. 8) Review these scripts with your fellow salespeople. You want to gather as much feedback as possible as quickly as possible. You might have met with 20 people this week that gave you feedback, but maybe someone else in your office met with someone who brought up an objection that you’ll hear tomorrow. You’ll want to be prepared for it, so share as much as you can with one another. So now, you know that you must fight fire with fire. Stop yourself from simply answering your prospects’ questions aimlessly. Remember, you have a strategy. Information is power. And so you always want more information. How do you get more information? By asking more questions. We know we’ve drilled the concept of asking questions into you a lot by now, but our experience shows that even our most conscientious students fall back into the natural habits of wanting to present their products/ services, more than ask questions in order to find out needs, pains, fears and hopes first. Hopefully, by now, you understand that you must fight this urge to spill your guts all the time. Your goal is to get your prospect to spill their guts first, so that when you finally spill yours – when you present your product/ _____________________________________________________________________________________ 243

service as the solution they are looking for – as we will show you in the Reveal Hope Step, you will be better able to position your product/service so that your prospect will want to buy now.

Getting Your Prospects To Experience Their Fears and Long For Their Hopes We’ve already touched on Trigger Questions, Floater Questions, and Boomerang Questions – and generally how to make already-powerful questions exponentially more effective by positioning them negatively. These are incredibly effective tactics to use. You should use these tactics throughout the entire sales process, but there is a more structured series of questions that we have developed for you to use over and over. We call this series of questions the Values Elicitation Process. This process enables you to elicit – or draw out – from your prospect what they value – that is, what is important to them. Once you understand their values, you can then pitch your product/service more effectively, which we will cover in the final step of the FEAR Selling System. This series of questions is the most effective way to get someone to talk about: · what is important to them, generally; · why these issues are important to them; · the perceived seriousness of their problem; ___________________________________________________________________________________ 244

· actions they have taken (if any) to solve their problem; · the consequences of solving or not solving their problem; · their willingness to try to solve their problem; · their ability to solve their problem (whether they have the authority and budget). Basically, the Values Elicitation Process is a way for you to quickly qualify your prospect while also building their interest in hearing how you can help them solve their problems.

You Must Qualify Your Prospects What’s Important to Your Prospect and Why Is It Important As you will see, initially you will ask your prospect open-ended questions to find out what’s on their mind. You can be sure that whatever they talk about is at least of some importance to them. And you will benefit greatly from just shutting up and letting them talk to you about what their problem is generally and why it is important to them. Once you understand what your prospect values (that is, what is important to them), you will be better able to position your product/ service in such a way as to make it more attractive to them. How Serious Do They Perceive Their Problem To Be You want to qualify your prospect by finding out how serious they think their problem is. If you find that they consider their problem at least somewhat significant, then you know that you’re not wasting your time. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 245

If their problem doesn’t seem significant to them, then you might not have a good prospect on your hands. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t keep probing them. They either might not be fully aware of the seriousness of the consequences of their problem or they might not be the decision-maker whom you need to talk too. Actions They’ve Taken To Solve Their Problem What will also help you determine if they are serious about solving their problem is if they have taken some action in the past to try to solve it. This step also will help you determine if you have competition – either by another vendor or by their own staff. Someone else might already have tried – or currently is trying – to solve the problem. You want to know about such competition as early as possible. We’ll show you how to find out about competition without being blunt about it. Consequences of Solving or Not Solving Their Problem The Values Elicitation Process actually accomplishes two goals: 1) it enables you to discover what drives your prospect; and 2) it enables you to make your prospects aware of the consequences of their actions or inactions. Your objective is to get your prospect to do more than simply talk about their values and their problem. You want them to act on solving the problem by buying your solution. In order to get your prospect to act – to get them to move outside of their Comfort Zone far enough so that they realize that they must buy your product or service now, you must get them to acknowledge their current pains or experience their fear of potential pain in the future. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 246

Once you understand your prospect’s fears and hopes, you can paint a picture of how your product/service can help them overcome those fears and reach those hopes. You will do this by having them explore with you the negative consequences of not solving their problem as well as the positive benefits of solving their problem. In other words, you want them to become acutely aware of possible outcomes. You want them to talk about, and through their imagination, experience the pain of not solving their problem or the relief of solving their problem. As we’ve said elsewhere, you cannot convince someone to buy from you. You can only make your prospect aware that they should buy from you. Do not see yourself as trying to sell your prospect or you will come off too pushy. Rather, see yourself as trying to guide them towards taking some action to solve their problem – and most likely, they’ll strongly consider buying from you in order to solve that problem. Willingness to Solve Their Problem Here, you are trying to get a sense of how ready your prospect is to take action on their problem. You are further exploring the pain, fears and hopes of your prospect. It might be that they acknowledge their problem, understand the consequences of not taking action, but for some reason, they are not willing to take action now. You want to find out about their hesitancy to take action. Once you know why they are stalling, you can maneuver to try to get them to take action – or make a note to check in on the prospect in the future but move on in your prospecting so as not to waste your time.

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Ability To Solve Their Problem It’s one thing to be willing to solve the problem, but it’s another thing to be able to solve it. There are two aspects to qualifying your prospect for their ability to solve their problem – that is, their ability to buy your solution: 1) authority 2) budget Regarding authority, you want to find out who the decision-makers are. Can they make the decision on their own or do they need approval of others, perhaps a boss, an oversight board or a spouse? You want to make sure that you understand who actually signs off on the purchase or else you might be wasting your time pitching a subordinate. You also want to know what the process is for their decision-making. In this step, you are eliciting their decision-making process. You are probing for their decision criteria. What do you have to show them, tell them, prove to them before they make a purchase. Once you understand who makes the decisions and how decisions are made in your prospect’s organization, you will have a better sense of whom you should be pleasing with your presentation and the hoops you will have to jump through in order to get a buy decision. Regarding budget, you want to find out how much they are willing to spend to solve their problem. If your solution costs $1,000 and they are only willing or able to pay $500, then you are in trouble. Budget is another potential deal-breaker that you want to uncover early on in the process. Once you understand how much your prospect is willing to spend, you can ___________________________________________________________________________________ 248

start exploring with them their willingness and ability to spend a bit more in order to really solve their problem.

Now that you have a basic understand of what the Values Elicitation Process will do for you, let’s dive into specifics. Next, we’re going to tell you what questions to ask in order to extract these important pieces of information from your prospect. But, remember, you are in an information-gathering mode here. Don’t make assumptions - and ask more than you tell. The more, good-quality insights you have about their problems, pains, fears, their willingness and ability to take action, and their hopes, the better off you will be able to position your solution in the last step of the FEAR Selling System, which is called Reveal The Hope Of Your Solution. Before we get started with the specific questions, let’s be realistic. You may not be able to ask all of these questions, in this order, in one sitting, if at all. But this is what you are aiming for, because if you can get these questions answered honestly by the right people in the buying organization, then you are ready to seal the deal in the final step of the FEAR Selling System.

A Quick Review Of Where We’ve Been Before diving into the detail of this powerful process, let’s take a step back so that we can continue the process where we left off. Do you remember the process we went through to Find and Focus on your prospects fears in the first step of the FEAR Selling System? _____________________________________________________________________________________ 249

Let’s briefly review it here. You started by doing some market research to find out what others thought might be current problems. To do this research, you surveyed your colleagues at work, prospects and current customers. You gathered statements that make up your Prospect Fear and Hope List so that you could share that list with prospects in the hopes of triggering their fears. Your goal in gathering this information was to be able to get prospects to think, “Yes, that’s me – I have that problem” or “I might have that problem in the future.” This identification with the problems and fears that you dangled in front of them hopefully got them to engage you in further conversation. Your hope was to get them to think: “I have that problem, and maybe, just maybe, this person has some information that can help me solve that problem.” This is how you capture your prospect’s attention and get them interested in giving you a bit more of their time. Once you have identified one or more of their pains, fears or hopes, you then use the Values Elicitation Process.

The Values Elicitation Process Now that you know what you must do, let’s break it down and show you how to do it – with the questions from the Values Elicitation Process. Again, you are asking these questions in order to: 1) qualify your prospect, and 2) get them more interested in taking action now and buying from you. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 250

Of course, you can use variations of these questions that you are comfortable with. This is just an overview, but we will speak to each of these questions so that you understand the reasoning behind each and thus can be more effective in pacing and leading your prospect to the sale. Remember that sales conversations will probably never go as planned. Your prospect might try to take control of the conversation and lead you down another road – probably to ambush you and rob information from you that they can use for their own benefit when negotiating with competitors. The Values Elicitation Process is therefore merely a guide to the questions you want to ask. Of course, if you can, ask all of these questions – and in this order. That will work best. But don’t be frustrated if you have to jump around a bit. Just make sure that you cover the basics. To make it easy for you to review the Process, we have marked the key questions in red. The more you practice, the more you’ll understand the key questions, and how you can be most comfortable asking them.

What’s Important To You And Why 1) Maybe we can start at the beginning, can you just give me the quick overview of why you invited me in today? 2) That’s interesting…can you tell me more about that and why it is important to you? These two questions are ways to open up the conversation with the prospect. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 251

If you recall, we suggested that you get your prospect to invite you in rather than forcing yourself in. If you are the guest, it changes the power dynamic of the meeting. You’re there trying to help them solve their problem, not as a salesman trying to push your product. Again, use Orphan Phrases such as “And…?” “And what else…?” “I’m not sure I understand.” Phrases such as these will keep your prospect talking, which is exactly what you want. You are probing for their problems at this point. Try not to interrupt except to use the Active Listening techniques we taught you in the last step. In the early stages of the Process, you want your prospect to open up. You want them to be comfortable, so you want to pace them. You are going to show and tell them that you’ve seen the problem before – and that it is not uncommon. You pace your prospect by nodding your head, agreeing with them by saying “yes”, and otherwise showing them that you understand where they are coming from. Show that you are interested. Show that you are concerned. Again, think of yourself as an actor and try to act genuinely interested, genuinely concerned. Remember to match and mirror them verbally as well as their body language as we discussed in the section on Empathize With Your Prospect. Use the Active Listening technique that we discussed in that section as well. Stop them and repeat what they say back to them. Remember, paraphrase what they say but use some of the key words that they might ___________________________________________________________________________________ 252

have repeated more than once. If you can, tell an It-Could-Happen-To-You Story that shows someone else who has a problem or fear similar to the one that they are discussing. But again, if you use this technique, keep the story short. You want them to keep talking. So you might just want to say something like: “That’s interesting…I’m hearing that a lot lately.” By telling a story, or simply relaying that you’ve recently dealt with someone else who has the same problem or fears, you will not only build rapport, you will also reinforce the fact that their problems and fears are prevalent in the industry. It validates their problem. You’re basically saying to them - and might choose to actually say to them: “Yes, a lot of people seem to be having that problem nowadays.” Again, your goal here is to get them to realize that others have their problem, and so, you imply that they should be worried about it too. But you must not only make your prospect aware that their fears may come to pass, but also that if they do nothing to prevent their fears then they will suffer significant consequences as well. You want them to think about the potentially serious consequences of not taking action now. How do you do this?

How Serious Is The Problem Before asking the next set of questions, ask a Permission Question. Say something like: 3) I have some questions that I jotted down that I typically ask in order to help figure out what’s going on and to see if I can help _____________________________________________________________________________________ 253

you. Is it okay if I ask you some of the questions? By asking permission, you will feel more comfortable asking the questions. You have positioned yourself as someone who is trying to help them so they should invite you to ask the questions. 4) How long has this been a problem? 5) Why do you need to address this problem now though? With these two questions, you want to find out how long they have been struggling with this problem. If it’s a new problem, they might not be ready to take action yet because they haven’t yet experienced the negative consequences of not solving the problem. The second question enables you to start focusing in on the consequences of not solving the problem. Again, this question helps you understand their pains, fears and hopes, but also enables you to get your prospect to experience – at least in their imagination - the consequences of the problem simply by talking about it.

Actions Taken To Solve The Problem 6) What have you done so far to fix the problem? 7) How did that work for you? The answers to these questions will help you further determine how serious they are about solving the problem. If they have taken action, it means that the problem caused enough pain or fear of future pain to get them out of their Comfort Zone to take action. You want to know if this is the case. Also, you want to know if there is someone else in the picture with whom ___________________________________________________________________________________ 254

you are competing to solve the problem for them. It could be another vendor or in-house staff or they could even be trying to solve the problem themselves with no outside help. By finding out who your competitors are, you will be better able to position yourself as a better alternative. They might say nothing. But if they say that they tried something or are doing something currently, ask about it, whatever it is. If they say they are looking for vendors, ask: “Could you share with me who else you are talking to?” They might not tell you, but again it never hurts to ask. You might want to try an Orphan Phrase such as: “You are talking to people/ companies like…?” And then shut up.

Consequences of Solving or Not Solving the Problem 8) What is it costing you to live with this problem? 9) What happens if you don’t fix this problem? This is the heart of the Values Elicitation Process. This is where you are really finding out the consequences of your prospect’s inactions – and you are getting them focused on the consequences of their inactions. You are uncovering their pains, fears and hopes. You are going to use the word “problem” when talking to your prospect, but remember, that what you are trying to do is explore the fears that underlie what they are acknowledging as “problems.” Remember, problems have consequences. We don’t fear our problems, we fear the consequences of those problems. That’s what you are trying to get to: the fears about the consequences of _____________________________________________________________________________________ 255

their problems. If you understand these fears, you’ll be better able to sell to your prospects on the most powerful level possible: the emotional level. If you can, you want your prospects to work with you to calculate how much the problem is costing them. You want them to figure out a dollar amount associated with them not taking action and living with the problem. You can use this dollar amount later in comparison with the budget they are willing to spend to show them that the cost savings (benefit) of taking action outweigh the cost of buying your product. 10) What’s it going to be like if you don’t fix this problem? 11) How do you feel about that? With these two questions, you are trying to project your prospect into the future emotionally. You want them to experience the pain of not solving the problem. You are trying to get them uncomfortable. By getting them to acknowledge and experience this pain, you are trying to move them out of their Comfort Zone of inaction. You’re trying to get them more interested in taking action and buying from you in order to avoid that painful future. These questions will force your prospect to project themselves into the future and think about at least some of the problems that could occur if they fail to act now. Again, try to keep them thinking through and exploring the consequences of their inaction. If they don’t reveal to you that there are significant consequences – potential future pain – try telling an It-Could-Happen-To-You Fearful Story where there are serious consequences to not solving the current problem or avoiding the potential future problem. Here, you must paint a picture of a very painful future that someone else who has their same problem – their same fear – experienced. You must be a ___________________________________________________________________________________ 256

storyteller at this stage, telling them about the significantly painful consequences that might occur if they don’t take action to avoid that painful future now.

Willingness To Solve The Problem 12) How prepared are you to do what it takes to solve this problem? By asking this question, you are trying to get them to react to the pain and fear that you tried to dredge up with the previous questions. You want to see if the pain of having the problem is great enough for them to take action to solve it. Again, the problem might not be big enough for them to take action now, they might not perceive the problem to be big enough, or there might be other circumstances stopping them from taking action to solve this problem now. You want to find out what might be the obstacles to them taking action and buying from you.

Ability To Solve The Problem Authority 13) Who else – beside yourself – will be making the decision about how to solve this problem? This is your sly way of finding out if they are the decision-maker or not. You don’t want to insult your prospect by insinuating that they have no power to make the decision by themselves. That’s why you are asking about others – besides themselves – who need to be part of the problem_____________________________________________________________________________________ 257

solving process. Again, how they answer this question will determine how you proceed. If there are others involved in the decision-making, you must try to set up another meeting to get the others on board. 14) How do you make decisions? Is there a process? A committee? 15) What are the key things that you (or they) are looking for in order to move forward?

Here, you are probing for their decision-making process. You want to find out buying criteria. What do they need to make a decision to buy from you? Do they need references? Do they want a demo? What’s the next step? Budget 16) Would it make sense to talk about what you’re able to invest to solve the problem? This is a Permission Question. You’re asking this here because most people are uncomfortable talking about money. Many of us were taught to skirt the issue of money in conversation because it’s not polite to discuss such issues with people. But let’s face it, all salespeople have encountered prospects that have a problem, want to solve it, but don’t have the money to solve the problem. As a salesperson, this is a waste of your time. You want to find out not only if the person has a problem, but if they can solve it by buying your product/service. You want to qualify the prospect’s ability to pay for your product/service. And this question will ___________________________________________________________________________________ 258

help you gently get their permission to open up the conversation about what it costs to solve the problem. 17) Do you have a budget set aside to solve this problem? If they do have a budget set aside, ask them: 18) Would you mind sharing the budget with me? Again, money is a difficult issue for most people to discuss. This is a delicate way to get people to open up with you about money. You are asking them to share information with you. From when we are very young, we are taught that we should share with others. With this question, you are using that social conditioning to help you extract information. And hopefully, you have built enough rapport with your prospect so that they are at least somewhat comfortable with sharing their budget with you. Many of your prospects will not have “budgeted” to solve the problem, because most people don’t think that way. It is your job to get them to think that way. Remember, you’ve hopefully already gotten the prospect to calculate (even if only roughly) the cost of living with the problem. If they don’t have a number in mind that they are willing to spend, try to at least get a ballpark figure of what they think they need to spend to solve the problem. You could say: “Do you think you can spend $100, $1,000 or $5,000? I’m just trying to get a general sense of your budget.” You can then begin to share with them the cost of your product/service. You already know what it’s going to cost them to live with the problem, so it’s your job to show them that the cost of living with the problem is much greater than the cost of buying your product/service and solving the problem. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 259

You cover the budget at the very end of the process because you want your prospect to understand the consequences of their inaction – and the cost of their inaction – before tackling the cost of solving their problem. By doing this, you are able to frame the price of your solution relative to the cost of them living with the problem. This will greatly enhance your ability to get them to buy your product/ service. When people hear your price upfront, they may react negatively. If they react negatively at this point, you can at least discuss the cost that they must bear of living with the problem and thus be in a better position to influence them of the logic of buying your product/service.

Positioning Yourself As A Trusted Advisor Remember that as you interact with your prospect, your attitude is extremely important. Again, you must position yourself as their trusted advisor – not someone who is trying to just sell them something. You must position yourself as someone who is interested in them and their problem. You are not interrogating them. You want to find out the answer to these questions because you want to help them. As a matter of fact, if they ever ask you why you are asking any of these questions, your response should be something like: “I really want to help you, I just need to understand the problem before I make any suggestions. Actually, we might not even have the solution to your problem.”

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This is a real credibility-builder. Most salespeople would never admit that they couldn’t solve a prospect’s problem. So remember, your attitude throughout this process is one of a trusted advisor. Also, if you ended the first step of the FEAR Selling System correctly, you asked them to invite you in. You positioned yourself as a guest – an expert guest willing to share with them your non-confidential research, your experiences with their competition. Make sure you remind them of this. Remember, your goal is to get your prospect to share specific personal information about what is important to them, their personal pains and fears, and other information relevant to the buying decision. Your goal is to guide your prospect through this process to get them uncomfortable – and thus get them to take action – and buy your product. Again, as you use this process, think of yourself as a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists must get a patient to open up to them so that they understand the patient’s problem. Their whole strategy is to get their patient to trust them enough to tell them the sometimes extremely painful reality of what they feel. As you know, we have already covered many trust-building tactics in the second step of the FEAR Selling System, Empathize With Your Prospect. Many of these techniques are used by psychiatrists and other therapists to get their patients to open up to them. You must use them too. As we said before, you should be weaving these trust-building tactics throughout the entire sales process from when you first talk to or correspond with your prospect through the very end of the sale and beyond. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 261

Once the psychiatrist understands their patient’s pains and their fears, he or she will be able to diagnosis the patient’s condition and then hopefully go about treating the patient. Similarly, once you know the pains and fears of your prospect, you will be in a better position to present your solution to their problem – your product or service – in a manner which will drastically improve your chances that they will buy it from you. Remember, the key to all marketing is differentiation. Don’t be a typical salesperson, lecturing them on why they should be buying your product. You are rather a trusted advisor, guiding them to the realization that they could have future pain, and that they should start avoiding that future pain now by buying your product.

Understanding The Value Of The Information You Have Gathered Again, the questions in the Values Elicitation Process are a guide. Our clients typically take this generic list of questions and modify it to make them relevant – if necessary - to their specific selling situation or to phrase the questions in a way so that they are more comfortable asking them. So, we have not only given you the questions to ask in the order that they should be asked, but, most importantly, we have explained why you should ask these questions. By knowing your objective at each step, you are better able to be flexible in your approach. Now that you have taken your prospect through the Values Elicitation Process, you have: ___________________________________________________________________________________ 262

1) obtained information that you can use to qualify them; 2) obtained information that you can use to position your solution to them; 3) set the stage for you to present your solution.

Let’s discuss each of these in turn: 1) You obtained information that you can use to qualify them. At different points in the Ask Step, you hopefully found out key information about the prospect. You determined if the problem was significant to them. If it isn’t significant, you might not want to spend time pitching them further. You also found out if they are the decision-maker. If they are not the decision-maker – or if others are needed to make the buy decision, you must set up additional meetings. You found out what they thought it might cost to solve the problem. If what they are willing or can spend to solve the problem is not in line with the cost of living with the problem or the actual price of your product/service, you may want to move on and not waste more time trying to pitch to someone who can’t afford the price of your product/ service. 2) You obtained information that you can use to position your solution to them. One of the key sections of the Values Elicitation Process is when you try to get your prospect to reveal their personal pains, fears and hopes. By knowing these emotional trigger points, you can work them into your sales pitch. Show them how your product/service can help them to solve _____________________________________________________________________________________ 263

their pain, overcome their fears and achieve their hopes. We’ll expand upon this technique in the final step of the FEAR Selling System. 3) You set the stage to present your solution. Although gathering information is an important objective of the Values Elicitation Process, perhaps even more important is that you have created a framework in the mind of your prospect regarding how they should think about their problem. If you took your prospect through the Values Elicitation Process effectively, you made them realize that there are negative consequences to not taking action and that there are positive consequences of taking action to solve their problem. Our research shows that prospects who have gone through the Values Elicitation Process are nearly five times more likely to buy than those who have simply heard a pitch without experiencing the Process. Of course, the information gathered from the Process is helpful to the salesperson when they pitch their product/service, but we have found that what is even more powerful is how the Process gets prospects thinking about the consequences of their actions/inactions. Regardless of whether you follow our suggestions closely or not, there is one suggestion that we hope you will take to heart. If you’ve learned nothing else from this section, remember this: ask more questions and pitch your product/service less. Just this piece of advice will get you a long way to selling more and selling faster.

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How FEAR Selling Helps Differentiate You The main difference between the FEAR Selling System and other sales systems is that FEAR Selling forces you to conduct an extensive information-discovery process focused on your prospect and their situation before pitching your product/service. But you must tell them about your product/service eventually. In the next section of the FEAR Selling System, we will show you how to leverage: 1) the curiosity you created in the first step; 2) the trust you built in the second step; and, 3) the information you gathered during this third step in order to pitch extremely effectively and sell your product/service to your prospect.

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Reveal The Hope of Your Solution: How To Position Your Presentation So That You Play Off of Your Prospect’s Fears and Hopes

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Let’s face it. You can’t be 100% sure that your product/service will solve your prospect’s problem. So remember, what you are really selling is the hope that your product/service can solve their problem. Of course, their trust in you will be greater, and thus their hopes will be stronger if: • You got your prospects curious enough to invite you to continue the conversation with them; • You built credibility by proving that you know what you are talking about, that you are aware of the problems they might have, and therefore that you are somewhat of an authority on issues that concern them; • You asked smart questions, which proved to them that you understand their pains, fears and hopes. You generated interest so that they want to hear more about how you might be able to help them. These three key goals were the focus of the first three steps in the FEAR Selling System: • Triggering curiosity • Building credibility • Generating interest. Hopefully, you have been effective enough in these first three steps that you will not need to persuade further through a long presentation of your product/service. Hopefully, your prospect will, in effect, close themselves at this point and buy your product/service. We have found that this is indeed possible, especially when selling small-ticket, noncomplex products/services. With such products/services, it is sometimes _____________________________________________________________________________________ 267

enough to get the prospect’s attention, build some degree of trust and generate interest in your particular solution. But again, this is hopeful thinking. Most likely, especially if you are selling into a larger company, the first three steps in the System earned you a meeting with others in the buying organization. Now, it’s time for the sales presentation. As you will see, your sales presentation does not have to be modified much from the way you are currently using it. The advantage of the FEAR Selling System is that it is flexible. It enables you to embed the presentation you are already giving - or that your company suggests that you give - into the System’s framework. And as you have seen, the first three steps in the System is what differentiates you from the masses of other salespeople. You will actually take the time to find out what your prospect wants and needs before giving them a benefit-filled presentation focused on their specific situation. For the most part, our research has shown that salespeople are fairly competent in giving presentations and that there are plenty of resources books, articles, training materials - that focus on presentation tactics. So we will focus on some key presentation points that we have found to be the most important when it comes to selling more and selling faster.

Starting Over Again If they are lucky enough to get a face-to-face appointment, most novice salespeople make the mistake of just jumping into their presentations like anxious little puppies. This is a huge mistake. The key is to remember that you have taken your original contact – the person who facilitated the initial meeting – through the System, but that’s all. You have piqued their curiosity, built credibility and generated ___________________________________________________________________________________ 268

enough interest to convince that person to hear you out further – or to invite you in to talk further with his/her colleagues. In effect, you must start over again when in front of this group. You have to find and focus on their pains, fears and hopes. You have to empathize with them – build rapport and create a bond of trust. You have to ask them about how they see their problems. You must explore the particular pains and fears that they want to overcome and their personal expectations and hopes. You can’t just assume that the person who invited you in – let’s call that person your Champion – shares the same pains, fears and hopes that the others in the decision-making group do. In fact, group sales are much more difficult than one-on-one sales since you have multiple agendas that you have to meet – multiple buyer personalities to deal with – multiple sets of pains, fears and hopes to address. In this section, we will show you how to handle the final stage of the sales process. We will proceed as if you are presenting to a group, but as you will see, you can easily modify this step even if you are just continuing the conversation with your initial contact or if there is only one other person to present to. We’ll take you through a series of techniques, which will help you lead your prospects to a faster and easier close. Let’s get started…

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Again, No Assumptions Too many salespeople that we work with make a huge assumption when they are invited in. First of all, they think they are special. Remember though that it’s a buyer’s job to find the right solution to their problems. If they are doing their job correctly, they are interviewing lots of salespeople to get a sense of possible solutions. So you aren’t special. They have probably talked to many salespeople about this particular problem before they have you in, and they’ll probably have a parade of other salespeople in after you leave. So regardless of what your mother told you, you are not special. Your solution is not the only solution. So, if you are going to make any assumption at all, assume that you have lots of competition. Novice salespeople also often assume that if they are invited in that everyone in attendance has been fully briefed by their Champion – the person with whom they’ve built rapport and who knows at least a bit about their solution. But again, to play it safe, assume the opposite. Be prepared for a group of individuals who has no idea who you are or what your product does. Assume, in fact, that they are going to be restless and somewhat hostile since you are taking away valuable time from their workday. If you make these rather negative – but probably correct – assumptions, you will be better prepared to make your presentation. Let’s start with the basics of preparing for your presentations…

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Three Basic Keys To Any Presentation 1) Positive Emotional State 2) Thorough Preparation 3) Good Presentation Skills

1) Positive Emotional State You probably already know that much research has proven the link between positive emotional states and peak performance. Self-help literature starting with Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking explains that the more confident and upbeat you are in your presentation, the more confident and upbeat a response you will get from your audience. But how do you think positively? Easily said, but not easily done, especially if you’re in a sales slump or the economy is bad and companies aren’t buying or you’re just not feeling well on the day of your presentation. For a positive-thinking technique that we have found works wonders, we turn to one of the seminal self-help books of the 1960s, PsychoCybernetics, by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. Before his career as a motivational writer and speaker, Dr. Maltz had a flourishing practice as a reconstructive and cosmetic facial surgeon and also lectured internationally on his medical specialty. He decided to move from treating “outer scars” to exploring how to heal “inner scars” after observing that so many patients’ unhappiness _____________________________________________________________________________________ 271

and insecurities were not cured, as they and he had believed would occur, when he gave them the perfect new faces they desired. Dr. Maltz first wrote of this discovery in his book “New Faces, New Futures.” In this book, Dr. Maltz suggested that many people “see themselves” inaccurately, their perceptions distorted by unchallenged and often erroneous beliefs imbedded in the subconscious mind. After decades of counseling hundreds of patients, extensive research on hypnosis, and testing his evolving “success conditioning techniques” on athletes and salespeople, he published his findings, in 1960, in his book, Psycho-Cybernetics. It was an instant bestseller and made Dr. Maltz one of the most in-demand motivational speakers throughout the 1960s and the early 1970s. Dr. Maltz went on to amass a wealth of “case history” material, seminars, workshops, radio broadcasts, over a dozen books all applying Psycho-Cybernetics to different purposes, from business success to sex life improvement. He also authored many other books including: The Magic Powers of the Self-Image, Five Minutes to Happiness, Live and Be Free through Psycho-Cybernetics. Dr. Maltz’ work is vast and profound, having influenced several subsequent generations of motivational writers/speakers as is obvious in the self-help messages of Tony Robbins, Dr. Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra. For our purposes here, we will share one core technique developed by Maltz, which he called The Theatre of Your Mind.

The Theatre Of Your Mind Basically, the Theatre of Your Mind is a visualization technique. Think of it as imagination practice. As you probably know, many athletes and performers mentally rehearse their actions before an event. They think about how they want the performance to go, how they will feel ___________________________________________________________________________________ 272

throughout the process, and they see themselves succeeding either by giving a good performance or by winning in some other way. We suggest that your performance as a salesperson is not much different that that of a professional golfer or an ice skater. Just like these performers, you know what your goal is and how to get to your goal. You want to sell your product/service, and you now have a process – the FEAR Selling System – which will guide you toward that objective. So what you want to do is practice making the sale in your mind. Following is a brief description of the Theatre of Your Mind exercise. If you dedicate yourself to practicing this technique once a day for three weeks, you will be amazed at the results that you get. By doing this, you will join literally millions of others who have used Maltz’ techniques to succeed over the last four decades. Your imagination is a powerful tool that you can use to your advantage. To overcome any fears or nervousness you have about presenting, you need to get comfortable first in your imagination. Set aside 30 minutes each day in a place where you can be alone and undisturbed. Relax, close your eyes and picture yourself in your imagination. You might want to try picturing yourself sitting in a dark theatre, watching yourself in a motion picture on a big movie screen – the Theatre of Your Mind. Be specific about your motion pictures. Be detailed and vivid in creating your mental pictures. If your imagination is vivid enough, you can actually trick your mind into thinking that you are experiencing an actual event. During each 30 minute session, see yourself acting and reacting calmly, successfully, confidently. See yourself acting, feeling, being exactly as you want to be. See yourself networking with people confidently, picking up the phone and calling prospects confidently, pitching with your 30-Second Commercial convincingly, bonding with your prospects, asking questions smoothly, presenting your product/service successfully and then having your clients buy from you. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 273

The Theatre of Your Mind exercise will help you build a new confident self-image, so that when you actually get in front of people, you will have already practiced being confident in your mind, many times before. Our sales clients report that this one simple exercise does wonders in terms of building their confidence and focusing their attention so that they can take their prospects through the FEAR Selling System flawlessly. For more detail on this and other techniques, check out the recently revised version of Maltz’ classic book, which is titled The New PsychoCybernetics.

2) Thorough Preparation The second basic key to presenting is Thorough Preparation. Just as the Theatre of Your Mind exercise will give you confidence, being thoroughly prepared also will give you the confidence you need to close the sales. Again, as Stephen Covey suggests in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, begin with the end in mind. Go into each presentation knowing what you want the outcome to be. By asking yourself and writing out the answers to the following questions, you will be prepared for most bumps that you hit along the way. Knowing that you are prepared will give you the confidence to succeed. So ask yourself: a) What is my key objective? b) What is the main message I want to get across? ___________________________________________________________________________________ 274

c) What are the likely main obstacles for me reaching my objective? d) Who in the audience will likely be allied with me and who may oppose me? e) What are the key pains, fears and hopes that I have discovered from my earlier questioning that could be shared by others in this audience? f) What are the likely difficult objections that I will face from this audience? g) Who are the likely key decision-makers? Of course, as you interact with this buying group, you will refine your answers to these questions, but just as it is helpful to rehearse your presentation in your mind beforehand, so is answering these key questions. Don’t be like the lazy salespeople out there. Answer these questions, and you are much more likely to succeed in getting your prospects to buy more and buy faster.

3) Good Presentation Skills By practicing in the Theatre of Your Mind and answering the likely questions that we laid out for you above, you will be less nervous and more confident walking into your presentation. Before they were introduced to the FEAR Selling System, many inexperienced salespeople we surveyed said that they were most comfortable using “canned” presentations. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 275

By using rigid presentations that did not allow for prospect interaction, they may have been calming their nerves, but we found that they were also losing sales. As we said at the beginning, FEAR Selling is a system, but it is purposely designed as a flexible one that you can use to adapt to any selling situation. As you doubtless know if you’ve had any experience in selling, each selling situation is different. Buyers have different personalities, different needs, different budgets and different decision-making processes, and so you must be flexible if you want to succeed in sales. So having good presentation skills rather than a good sales pitch is important. You want to have basic sales and presentation skills that you can adapt to different situations rather than a fixed presentation that can lose you the sale quickly if it is off the mark. Following are some important points that may seem obvious to you, but we are always amazed at how salespeople are not aware of themselves when they present. Make sure that you are aware of how you present yourself. These techniques will help you grab your audiences’ attention, maintain their focus, bond with them, get them to open up to you, and get them to trust and like you. We’ll get to what you say to position yourself effectively later, but for now, we’ll talk about how you say what you say, how you should act, and what you should do with your body. If you recall, how you say things and your body language communicates a significant amount to your audience.

Beginning Your Presentation As the saying goes, you don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression. The first few seconds of your presentation will set your prospects’ expectations about you. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 276

Remember, you want to come off as an authority so speak with authority. Don’t be cocky, but be confident in what you say. Try to express your confidence in the tone of your voice. Start with introductions. Ask if the group can help you by letting you know who is in the room and what their responsibilities are. Ask questions once in awhile during these introductions in order to bond with each person. Don’t overdo it though. Be curious, but be natural. Be concise when you introduce yourself. You may want to use your 30Second Commercial to describe the types of problems you deal with and also to share your client list. This is another credibility-building tactic. But don’t go rambling on. Remember, you are starting from the beginning of the FEAR Selling System. You want to get them curious and build credibility by giving them some information about yourself, but you want to reverse the pressure – just as you do with Boomerang Questions. You want your audience to do most of the talking. You want to give them a bit of information, but again, you are here to find out about them. As we said earlier, don’t assume that your Champion – the person who invited you in – has briefed the audience or that the other members of the group share your Champion’s perspective about their problems, pains, fears and hopes. You have to start at the beginning again. So keep your introduction short. Try to get them to open up. But we’ll talk more about how to do this later.

Focus On Your Audience’s Reactions You may have notes about your presentation that you refer to but focus your attention on your audience. You want to make sure that you pay attention to their reactions to your points. You want to see which points

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are well received and which are not by watching their body language and listening to their responses. Emphasize and explore positively received points while glossing over and moving on from points that receive negative responses.

Eye Contact Don’t just focus on the person or people whom you think are most important in the decision-making process. Make contact with everyone in the room. Don’t stare at anyone but neither should you quickly glance at people and move on. Sustain eye contact with each person for a few seconds before moving on to the next person.

Posture If you are standing, stand up straight and move confidently. If you are sitting while presenting, sit comfortably with your back straight. Don’t be stiff. Use your hands to help you express your points, but don’t overdo it by waving your hands wildly about. As simple as it may sound, the main point to remember when it comes to presenting is to be natural. By practicing in the Theatre of Your Mind, you should be confident in your presentation, so all you have to do is act naturally, and your confidence should shine through and thus help you gain your audience’s respect from early in the presentation.

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Start At The Beginning...Again As we mentioned above, in this final step of the FEAR Selling System, you are going to be starting at the beginning again. You probably know very little if anything at all about the values, problems, fears and hopes of the individuals in front of you before you give your presentation. And so, you are not just going to launch into a presentation without finding out how best to position yourself and your product/service to this particular group. How do you find this information out? You start at the beginning again. Your goals in this step are the same as your goals before. Don’t assume that this group is curious about how you can help them. Don’t assume that they have already bonded with you only because you have bonded with the person who invited you in. Don’t assume that you know all the answers to your questions before you ask this new group and find out their perspectives. Of course, the information that you gathered in the first three steps of the FEAR Selling System will give you valuable hints as to how to position yourself and your product/service. But again, don’t assume that this information that you gathered previously is the truth. Perception is reality,and what is important now is the perception of your new audience. Remember, you are guilty until proven innocent. You are a salesperson, and so most likely, this new group (or any new person whom you meet – whether it be a business partner or a spouse or whoever has to meet you before the buy decision is made) probably is going to greet you with at least some skepticism. They don’t know you so you have to start all over in the bonding process with them. For your brief introduction, you can use your 30-Second Commercial if you are comfortable with it. Thank the audience for taking time out of their schedules to meet with you, and then say something like: “I have a general sense of your situation from earlier conversations with Janet (your Champion), but I don’t want to assume anything so perhaps _____________________________________________________________________________________ 279

you can help me. What would you like to accomplish during our time together today?” This technique allows you to reverse the dynamic of the situation. Your audience must participate in the presentation. You are not just going to let them just sit back and suck information out of you. You want to get them involved because all of our studies, and many others, show that in order to gain the compliance of your audience, you want to get them involved in your presentation early on.

Developing A Shared Agenda Just as you shouldn’t assume anything else, neither should you walk in assuming that you know what the agenda should be. You want your audience to tell you what their expectations are. Of course, many of you may feel uncomfortable asking this question since you may not be prepared to discuss the agenda points that your audience wants to focus on. But realize, if you don’t give the audience what they want, they won’t give you what you want – they won’t buy from you. So although it may seem that you are giving up control by not controlling the agenda, this is essential for building credibility and finding out their pains, fears and hopes. Think about it, by asking this question you are showing that you are confident and that you care about their needs. Also, by gently turning the tables on your prospects, you also are differentiating yourself from all the other salespeople whom they are used to dealing with who come in and just start firing away with their sales pitch. You are different. You are interested in them and their problems. You know how to listen actively and show them that you care about their problems and pains. This will also help you gain rapport quickly with your audience just as it did on a one-on-one basis when you met your initial prospect earlier in the System.

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By asking your prospects to tell you what they want to focus on you not only find out their problems, but you also get their buy-in because they are setting the agenda. Take notes as they tell you what they want to cover. Use Orphan Phrases and Boomerang Questions to keep them talking as long as possible. The more you find out upfront, the better prepared you will be in showing them that your solution is the right one for their problems. Hopefully, you will be able to get your audience to give you a list of the problems or issues that they are concerned with – problems that they are hoping you can help them with. Just as you did earlier, you want to explore these problems. Find out what the consequences of these problems are. Use the questions in the Values Elicitation Process to dig deeper. Ask: “Why is _____________ important to you? And other questions like this to find out what their buying criteria are. The points on this Shared Agenda will guide your presentation. You should weave these points into your already-prepared presentation points. This is how you customize your canned presentation so it seems like you tailored it just for them. After some time in the field, you will begin to hear the same pains, problems, and objections, and you will be better and better prepared to respond in a flexible fashion. Make sure that you address each of the points on the Shared Agenda by relating how your product/service will address their concerns and help them meet their expectations. Of course, different members of the audience will have different concerns. For example, high-level decision-makers may want to discuss broad issues and benefits, whereas lower-level employees who have to work with your product/service may ask about features that will make their jobs harder or easier.

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Story Time Again After you understand your audience’s concerns, pains, fears, and hopes, weave stories into your presentation that show that you understand their concerns, that others have had your same concerns, but that they can trust your product/service to overcome those concerns because it worked with other clients. In other words, tell It-Could-Happen-to-You Stories that put a positive spin on your product/service, showing how it helped others achieve their goals with minimal effort and at relatively low cost. Instead of focusing on bland facts and figures, tell stories because they will be remembered long after you are out of the meeting.

The Thermometer Close There are dozens of sales closes that you might have encountered in sales training seminars and sales books. There is the Prescription Close, the Ben Franklin Close, the Choice Close, the Assumptive Close, the Today Close, and many, many more. We don’t get into these closes because they are old, and therefore they are usually no longer effective. Savvy buyers know when they are being closed, and they don’t like it. So be natural and use the one close that really works – The Thermometer Close. Basically, after covering all of your audience’s agenda items and showing how your product/service provides value by addressing their concerns, pains, problems, fears and hopes, you are going to simply say: “Well, I think I’ve covered everything that we agreed on today. How do you like it?” You’re not closing them as they are used to. You are not asking for a commitment. You just want to get a sense of their reaction. Once you get this general sense, ask: “On a scale of one to ten, how does our solution meet your needs?” ___________________________________________________________________________________ 282

This is where you are using the Thermometer Close – you’re taking their temperature. If they say 10, then ask them what the next step is. Hopefully, they will close themselves and proceed with the transaction. If they need a little prodding, ask for the sale. If they say anything less than 10, ask them what it would take to get them to 10. And then address each objection as you find out about it. As you’ll see, this is a way of flushing out objections when you are face-to-face with your prospects instead of leaving the meeting thinking you have the sale or wondering what they are thinking. Get possible obstacles out on the table and address them now. Use the Thermometer Close and keep using it until you get your prospects to say that your solution is a 10.

Finalizing The Sale Once your prospects acknowledge that they like what they’ve just seen in your presentation, get them to take the appropriate next step with questions like: “Would you like me to prepare the paperwork as a next step?” or “Would you like me to put together a detailed proposal that outlines the cost of these solutions?” Whatever you do, make sure that your prospects understand the cost of your product/services. It’s best to bring up price right after presenting the client-focused benefits and value of your product/service. You don’t want to avoid talking about money at this point. If they like your solution, don’t be afraid to tell them what it costs.

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Conclusion: The Cart-Before-TheHorse Syndrome So as you can see, you still will be giving your benefit-packed presentation. However, you will be positioning it somewhat differently every time, given the problems, pains, fears and hopes specific to each audience. The biggest mistake that the FEAR Selling System solves is what we call The Cart- Before-The-Horse Syndrome. That is, the tendency that most salespeople have of wanting to pitch before they know the emotional hot buttons of their prospects. By forcing yourself to focus first on your prospect - as we discuss in each of the four steps of the FEAR Selling System, you will be in a much better position to make a more effective, persuasive presentation to your prospect. FEAR Selling helps you to position your presentation so that you have a better chance of selling more and selling faster. If you only learn one thing from this System, learn this: Don’t put the cart before the horse. Find out as much as you can about your prospect’s situation and emotional hot buttons before pitching your product/service to them. Just this slight modification to the typical sales process will do wonders for you in your sales career. Good luck and happy hunting!

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About The Author Paul Borgese is an author, speaker, consultant and the creator of two series of business books, The Business of FEAR and The 7 Deadly Sins of Business. In his marketing and sales books, Paul shows how proven systems coupled with customer-centric emotional triggers lead to significant growth in sales. Paul has more than 16 years of experience as a business advisor on a wide array of strategy, finance, business development, sales and marketing challenges for emerging-growth companies, financial institutions, not-forprofit organizations and global corporations. He helps executives and small business owners: • confront the challenges of the increasingly cluttered marketplace and the demands of the new age of marketing accountability; • develop customized sales and marketing systems that ensure significant ROI on every tactical investment in their overall marketing budgets; and • execute integrated marketing plans that leverage new online and offline techniques, including pay-per-click advertising, affiliate programs, and viral marketing. He has marketing and sales experience in a number of industries, including: financial services, advertising/marketing services, Internet, information technology, not-for-profit, corporate training, publishing and education. Paul has led consulting engagements for senior executives at: J.P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, IBM/Searchspace, Pfizer, Deutsche Bank (London), PNC Bank, KPMG, Kanoodle.com, and The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his consulting experience, he has served as a marketing director for two of the world’s largest financial professional services organizations, Financial Executives International and the Association for _____________________________________________________________________________________ 285

Financial Professionals. He also worked as a bank examiner for the Federal Reserve. Paul has lectured and written books, articles and white papers on a wide range of business topics, including: corporate strategy, sales management, marketing, entrepreneurship, information technology, risk management, business communications, banking relationships and corporate finance. He has served as a Teaching Fellow at New York University’s Stern School of Business and is the author of the bestselling book, M&A From Planning to Integration: Executing Acquisitions and Increasing Shareholder Value, which was published by McGraw-Hill. This book was recently featured on CNBC’s PowerLunch with Bill Griffeth and CNNfn’s The Money Gang. As an author, he is most famous for his series of books, which include FEAR Selling: How You Can Sell More and Sell Faster By Tapping Into Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated Emotional Needs; The 7 Deadly Sins of Marketing; and The 7 Deadly Sins of Marketing Online. For more information, please visit www.FEARMarketing.com. Paul was educated in the United States and Europe. He holds five degrees, including: an MBA in finance and marketing from New York University; a Master of Governmental Administration from the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Samuel S. Fels Scholar; a Master of Arts in English from Trinity College Cambridge University in England after being awarded the prestigious British Marshall Scholarship; a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Pennsylvania; and a Bachelor of Science in economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Paul is proficient in Spanish and was awarded a Certificate in Spanish from the University of Salamanca in Spain where he was a Cambridge Scholar. You may contact Paul at 201.533.9282 or via email at [email protected].

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BOOKS THAT MEAN BUSINESS BY THE FEAR MARKETING GROUP In addition to our consulting work, the FEAR Marketing Group also conducts a significant amount of research on sales and marketing effectiveness. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282.

FEAR Selling: How You Can Sell More And Sell Faster By Tapping Into Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated Emotional Needs Typically, before we worked with them, our clients were selling and marketing based on traditional features and benefits. If you’re still using these outdated tactics, you are in trouble. Recent studies by the Sales Career Training Institute and the Performance Marketing Institute have broken new ground when it comes to sales and marketing effectiveness strategies. Studies conducted by these not-for-profit Institutes have led to the development of the FEAR Selling System. One of the key findings of both of these Institutes is that today’s marketers are using hopelessly outdated selling strategies. Benefit selling (or what we call HOPE Selling) is only one half of the powerful Persuasion Equation.

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To get people out of their Comfort Zones and take action by buying your product/service, you must focus not only on the positive consequences of buying but also on the negative consequences of not buying your product/ service. Many of our clients sell complex products/services which require long sales cycles and therefore demand superior relationship-building sales skills. FEAR Selling shows how to overcome these challenges by finding and focusing on your prospects’ personal pains and fears as well as their hopes and dreams. By using both carrot AND stick persuasion techniques, you will easily multiply your persuasion effectiveness exponentially. So we have organized these persuasion techniques into an easy-to-use, stepby-step system that we share with our clients during our training seminars. Now, due to high demand, we have condensed the content of our 5-day FEAR Selling Boot Camp into the FEAR Selling System, which is available in book form. It covers everything you need to know to sell more and sell faster. Find out how to: cold call with confidence, position yourself effectively through your 30Second Commercial, get your prospects curious enough to invite you in to sell them more, bond quickly through proven trust-building techniques, ask the right questions at the right times to the right people, and present through powerful strategies that get your prospects to buy now.

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FEAR Selling For Financial Advisors Top financial advisors earn big bucks and so have the luxury of hiring staff and investing in sales and marketing systems that keep them winning clients with little effort. But you know if you are starting up as a financial advisor that the going can be rough at first. Recent turnover statistics show that up to 68% of new financial advisors fail within their first year. Why do they fail? Well, whether you are working for a large financial institution or if you are an independent advisor, you basically are running your own small business. You have to brand yourself, market yourself, and sell yourself. Unfortunately, many financial advisors whom we train don’t understand that they are in business for themselves. They have little formal sales training and limited marketing knowledge. They don’t know how to set up their own sales and marketing systems – but that’s exactly what they have to do if they want to survive in today’s cut-throat financial services arena. This version of FEAR Selling includes all the information from the original 5Day Boot Camp plus newly developed strategies, tactics and techniques specially designed for Financial Advisors. FEAR Selling For Financial Advisors covers everything you need to know to be a top producer. Keep a steady stream of prospects calling you. Find out how to: target wealthy investor segments, set up a highly leveragable referral system, cold call with confidence, position yourself effectively through your 30Second Commercial, get your prospects curious enough to invite you in to sell them more, bond quickly through proven trust-building techniques, ask the right questions at the right times to the right people, and tailor your offerings to your prospects so that they buy now. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 289

FEAR Marketing: Proven Systems and Emotional Triggers Guaranteed To Help You Sell More and Sell Faster We live in a new age of marketing accountability. There is no longer any excuse for marketers and small business owners to throw money away on marketing tactics without knowing their true return on investment (ROI). In fact, it’s stupid to do so. Indeed, if today’s marketers do not adopt the new marketing technologies, they will quickly find themselves squeezed out of the game - either out of a job or out of business altogether. FEAR Marketing was designed to help marketing executives and small business owners: • cut through the clutter of today’s increasingly crowded marketplace; • develop customized marketing systems that ensure significant long-term ROI on every tactical investment in your overall marketing budget; and • combine the emotional selling strategies first introduced in FEAR Selling with the marketing systems-thinking necessary to guarantee high returns on your marketing investments. Note: This second edition of FEAR Marketing does address the new online marketing technologies that many corporations and small businesses are now using to capture new clients at the lowest cost possible, but for a more comprehensive coverage of interactive, performance-based strategies, check out FEAR Marketing Online. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 290

FEAR Marketing Online: How To Leverage The New Performance-Marketing Technologies Proven To Help You Sell More and Sell Faster The first edition of FEAR Marketing introduced us to the power of combining emotional selling with proven marketing systems. But nowadays, positioning your products/services more effectively and applying offline systems-thinking to your marketing is not enough. You also must tap into the powerful new online communication technologies that are available to target and generate qualified leads at the lowest possible cost. By complementing effective high-tech prospecting tactics with high-touch face-to-face sales strategies, FEAR Marketing Online shows you how to generate qualified, low-cost leads, create prospect interest, build trust, and close deals in order to succeed in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace. With the recent success of companies such as Google, Yahoo and E-Bay, marketers are waking up to the fact that the Internet is here to stay. But recent research by the Performance Marketing Institute shows that too many marketers and business owners do not realize that these hyper-growth Internet companies are basically marketing services companies that can help you catapult your own business to success. The Internet is not a business model in and of itself like the 1999 bubble-investors hoped it was. Rather it is a highly leveragable marketing tool that you must incorporate into your integrated marketing strategies if you want to survive today. With the rise of new marketing technologies such as pay-per-click advertising, affiliate programs and viral marketing, even small businesses can compete with their multinational corporate rivals if they know the new strategies and tactics which are necessary if you want to fight and win on today’s ruthless ROI-driven marketing battlefield. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 291

FEAR Leadership: How To Lead By Tapping Into Powerful Emotions To Motivate Your Organization From Fear to Hope In FEAR Leadership, the creators of FEAR Selling and FEAR Marketing show you how to use powerful persuasion techniques to motivate people to get things done. The leadership master, Nicollo Machiavelli, wrote in his world-famous leadership manual, The Prince: “Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved.” Machiavelli was right – it is difficult to be feared and loved at the same time by your followers, yet unfortunately, to lead today, you must sometimes tempt with the carrot as well as threaten with the stick. As many of today’s corporate leaders admit, you must create enemies in the minds of your employees so as to motivate them to compete and win. You must focus on consequences and award performance accordingly. In addition to showing you how to lead, this book also will show you how not to lead. This version of FEAR Leadership also includes excerpts from the previously published book, The 7 Deadly Sins of Leadership. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282.

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The Financial Services Marketing Handbook: Tactics and Techniques That Produce Results By Evelyn Ehrlich, Ph.D. and Duke Fanelli Everyone in the financial industry can benefit from The Financial Services Marketing Handbook (Bloomberg Press, 2004), from senior corporate management to independent financial advisors. Case studies illuminate both the innovations practiced by industry leaders—companies like Merrill Lynch, American Express, and Citibank—and perhaps more tellingly, marketing initiatives that failed. These up-to-the-minute case studies are integrated into a review of the keystones of marketing strategy: segmentation, positioning, situational analysis, and tactical planning. There are chapters on each of the specific tools of the marketer—from personal selling and sponsorships to the Internet and CRM. The 21st Century has already seen a major stock market collapse, unrolling scandals involving commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds and mutual funds, and industry-shaking changes in the regulatory environment. The Financial Services Marketing Handbook gives financial marketers and sales professionals the tools they need to survive—and thrive. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282.

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M&A From Planning To Integration Mergers and acquisitions are designed to build market leadership and create long-term value - in theory, anyway. M&A from Planning to Integration provides complete guidelines for ensuring these optimistic theories become reality, and outlines a systematic plan for developing, implementing, and monitoring a successful M&A deal. Examples from companies including Cisco Systems, GE, Microsoft, and others reveal M&A strategies that have worked in the real world, illustrate the book’s concepts in action, and help you apply those concepts and strategies to your own company. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282.

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