Powerful sales training - why we need to know EXACTLY what we are saying and why

right so the first thing we need to do is identify the things that make us most uncomfortable or the things that we feel are weakest in our game and then just work on the weakest components because if you try and work on the whole thing all at once it can be a bit overwhelming just like kind of walking into a super dirty house right or if you've got 50 kilos to lose like where do i start right there's so many things to do you're 200k in debt where do i start you know what i mean

just start with the lowest hanging fruit the things that give you the most amount of bang for buck right with sales that's tonality and comfort right so the more comfortable we are with the script or a style of selling and the better we deliver the tonality the more natural the entire conversation will be and a natural conversation is like the easiest for someone to flow through and then if you do go off script you get a bit you know a little bit frazzled you can always just get it back on track because it feels natural

right so those are the first things you want to learn so how do we get those the first way that we get those one we can listen to calls right of other people doing it but we don't want to try and emulate somebody else all the time because if you're trying to emulate somebody else all the time you're just gonna then try and think the way they do when you're trying to think the way somebody else does there's like a it's like putting an extra resistor in the circuit right there's just more things that have

to happen to make the output make sense right so you've got to try and adapt everything to your own way of thinking and how would you go about saying the same thing because the way that i talk and the way that dave talks or will talks or marco talks is different me and marco did a role-playing exercise yesterday where we handled each other's objections and both of them worked just fine but they were totally different ways of doing it right and so but they're both effective so who gives a right like not married to any

particular way of doing things but the data speaks you know volumes if it works it works keep doing it right now we can always improve that and we can always work on little things like tonality you know like all that kind of stuff but you know if it works it works so don't try and emulate someone but try and kind of understand the principles of what they're trying to do had a good chat with dave this morning and i said the best way to understand the scripts that we're using is to understand the principles of

what you're trying to say and why you're trying to say it and how that drives the conversation forward right so what i have is i have a script it's all questions right because my you guys have seen my script it's all questions right and then i have those phases i have the engagement phase like the connection phase the situation awareness problem awareness all that stuff right and then i understand what each phase is trying to do from like a conceptual level and then i understand what transitions somebody through the phases so however you do sales

you have to kind of break it down into those phases because you have to know what you're trying to achieve at each point in the call and then how you transition them to the next one that does a couple of things first of all it allows you to not get lost in the weeds when somebody's going on tangents because you know how to get them back and you also know how to get them back quickly long calls will always result in a think about an objection right so and there's a bunch of reasons for that

but we we can't have a call going for 60 70 80 90 100 120 minutes if we are there they're more than likely going to result in a follow-up or a think about it and the the follow-ups aren't necessarily a bad thing sometimes it is what it is and like will in particular is very good at getting someone to go through that process having a follow-up schedule and signing them right so it works we don't want to mess with it too much but if we can get rid of the tangents and keep everyone on track

then maybe we don't get the follow-up maybe we keep the course shorter keep the emotion in that pocket that we need to keep somebody in and then that way they haven't forgotten about something they said 85 minutes ago because i don't know about you but i struggle to remember every part of a conversation that goes for two hours right so if if you struggle to remember that and that's just a normal human thing we have to try and condense that time down and understanding how to transition people through those phases effectively is the one of

the best things you can do when you're trying to understand why you're saying the things you're saying because and i went through this with david this morning he you know he was taught by trafficking funnels and all these guys who are fantastic at sales like there's no but what i said to me goes you know i'll go how would you usually do this and he goes i would usually set an agenda i would do this i'll do this and i go okay that's great and i understand why you do that but is setting an agenda

is that there to make you feel better or is it there to position the sale right and if it's there to make you feel better and make you feel like you're in control of the outcome of that call it's entirely unproductive or it's at the very best not productive right hey the reason why we're on this call today is to find out more about you and see if you're going to be a good fit for our program what does that do for this for the person on the other end of the phone it does absolutely

nothing for them it just lets them know they're in the sales process raise your hand if you like to being in the sales process nobody okay so it's like again we understand the phases so the the initial phase for me is a connection phase i want to understand why they're there and what they're looking for that's it right hey what is it that prompts you to reach out today okay and do you like have you found what you're looking for okay do you know what you're looking for okay and then i try and get like

a rough goal that's it i don't need to prod and poke i just need to know why they're there then i can go into their situation okay where are you actually at why are you there what brought you there all that kind of stuff right but at no stage do i need to kind of set an agenda because it's implicit in the conversation that's what we're here to do so for me it's just words that are coming out of my face and what i've really been working on over the last few months is economy of

word right and so it's kind of like a stand-up comedy routine you can say a joke but if you add two or three words to the punch line it loses a lot of effect the the least amount of words you can say something in the more powerful that statement becomes we did a podcast with jeremy miner last night and he had a great little uh he had a great little uh adage and it was someone who changes their mind against their will has the same opinion still right so and that's where like that whole if

on the end what was that you want there a correct quote yeah what's the correct quote it's pretty close to that it's by stephen covey so i think it's from that book uh habits of highly effective people he said a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still that's pretty close almost there yeah not bad not bad off top of my head um and what that means is that like when our sales processes go too long right we lose the emotional power of the problems that we're trying to solve then what happens

is we have to objection handle and we have to beat them right now we've changed their opinion against their will so they still have the same opinion but they've been beaten into submission so the shorter we can make our calls the more emotional power we can hide the more we can do that cost of an action piece and understand their real problems the more likely they are to have that problem or that poor idea or whatever it is unravel in their own hands and they change their own mind right which is how we get those

objectionless closes i went through a role play today with david and i was like we are i sold them into a fitness program it could have been anything but i tied up so dave you want to talk about it i'm sure you're probably planning on giving me a few objections um but it was difficult wasn't it yeah there was really no point it would just be out of congruence with the role play because everything that i was saying up to the point of actually closing was in congruence with what i wanted and so like it

just didn't make sense otherwise it wouldn't be for the activity yeah there was just no and and so as i was taking him through the phases i had key points of the conversation okay where i wanted to make him dig in on his own opinions right and so this is about defending your own position right like we've spoken about this before so as i take someone through the phases i want to understand the concepts of each phase and what i'm trying to achieve and how i'm trying to pull the cell forward right in the path

of least resistance the straightest possible line right because every tangent i lose that emotional gravitas that i've built right or i run the risk of them forgetting something so i want to understand their problem i want them to understand their problem i want them to explain why the problem is happening and then i want them to explain why that problem is affecting them and how it's affecting them physically mentally and emotionally right and then i want them to explain in detail what that is once i've gotten that problem and i we've explained all that then

we talk about okay now what happens if we do not fix that problem or what you know what i mean and then get them to explain in detail what happens if they don't fix it and we put some time frames on that and then it's like okay so now we want them to become aware that there are solutions so then i want them to tell me what solution they want then i want them to defend why that solution is what will give them the result right so okay like like i i guess before talking to

me were you were you out there kind of looking for ways to to get more sales and marketing or or lose weight yeah yeah i was okay can you explain about what you were looking for okay so now that i understand all that like i guess do you have an ideal criteria as to what you're really looking for to ensure you can make that 10k a month so you can sort of take more holidays and give your family that freedom that you're looking for yeah okay okay and so and so like why like okay you

said accountability you said this you said this like what did you mean by that i mean i need this this and this okay and why is that important to you now though okay that makes sense right so every single time i'm i want them to espouse a principle i need them to break down in detail what that means because if i just let them go over i need accountability okay well what does that mean can you be more specific can you help me understand what you're trying to like what you really need there okay and

why that in particular okay and why is that important now okay all right perfect right so now i've now i understand all that now we go through cost of inaction okay so now we've got their current situation we understand their problems we've understand what solution they feel they need and in detail why they require it right and then they've defended why they need that and why that is in particular is important to them right now then we go through a cost of an action what happens if you don't fix this problem the next 3 6

or 12 months what's going to be the outcome oh well it's not going to be good what do you mean by not good right again defend the position right creates urgency okay and so are you are you willing to settle for that no i'm not and whose choice is it to settle it's mine so is it important enough for you to start right now is it important for you to start you know losing weight or making more money so you can insert the emotional driver right is that important to you yes it is but why

is it important to you now why not just do this later make them dig in ask questions probe clarify so now i've got all those things in order right now that i've got that now i'm getting them to commit to change is it time for you to make a change yes it is why now then i'm just going through like a small series of because you said you wanted this we want this and it's a very simple process then okay well i think what we're doing might actually work for you because you know how you

said you're looking for you know be able to get more leads so you can transition those into sales you need someone to teach you how to hold accountable to actually doing your numbers and and teach you those real skills and how you can actually utilize the platforms that you have to be able to get more leads get more sales so you can make more money in your business which is going to allow you that freedom that you're looking for to spend more time with your family and loved ones um you know if you think it's

appropriate at this stage i could sort of tell you what it is we do and how we can help you solve some of those problems would that be okay yes permission to pitch okay then when i pitch everything is price term price and turn row is at the top it's statistically proven that when you say the price of when you put the price at the top of a quote okay they're more likely to take that okay everyone else does it the opposite way around which is great for us right um so if you get value

value value value price the last thing you think about is the price then you have to retrospectively try and attach value to it okay see how from an emotional standpoint it's difficult to do right whereas i want to go price term upfront pricing it's 25 000 over 12 months there's a three-month opt-out period we can go through that and for that this is what you get you get feature benefit problem it solves feature benefit problem it solves now you don't want to tell them every single feature and every single benefit of the entire program you

will confuse them okay during this process we've probably held on to one to two hopefully no more than that real serious problems that we're going to try and fix if we expose 10 serious problems they're going to get overwhelmed they're going to have to go away and think about their life choices right we get them outside of that buying pocket right we've exposed too much right if you go to a personal trainer and they say we need to work on this and this your training your nutrition your accountability you're out of balance your right knee

is your left knee's your hips your shoulders your elbows your neck's all this kind of stuff you're just like whoa whoa man like how much time is this gonna take me if you hear how much time is this gonna take me you've exposed too many problems right because they're just thinking oh man what the this is too much right and from an old school sales perspective that's what we want because then an old school sales person is going to do a compare and contrast method where you then throw things back in their face but you

said you wanted this now you said you do now you said you want to do that that doesn't match up how do you justify that inaccuracy right so you throw that in their face a more nuanced salesperson allows them to discover that that line of thinking is not productive right so once we go through the pitch we're just going to focus on the features and benefits that actually fix the problem they're looking to solve right now because that's what's going to get them to buy then from there we do a temp check does that make

sense are you with me on that does that structure does that does that seem like it could it could possibly be the answer for you again still maintaining neutrality i'm not talking about signing up for the program i'm talking about an in-principled agreement that that structure will create success and that structure mind you is exactly what they said they needed 10 minutes ago right and i've anchored those features and benefits to the emotional issue they're having right so they're not they don't care about the features and the benefits i could say will what we're going

to do for you is i'm going to teach you how to knit for 45 minutes a day every single day and at the end of that that's going to give you the mental clarity so that you can close at 90 percent and how we're going to do that is this you don't give a it doesn't matter it's irrelevant right then once we do that we get the temp check all right cool does that does that seem like it could be the answer for you yes it does interrupt y defend your statement right next thing we

go through okay does that structure does that structure that i've laid out for you that plan does that feel like it can get you from where you are now to where you want to go yes it does tell me why defend that statement obviously you do it with a more neutral tone can you can you just sort of tell me like i guess some specifics as to why you feel that way yeah well i feel like the accountability and this and this and this is exactly what i need right now okay okay like i i

guess that makes sense right again a slight skeptical tone because then they're going to dig in harder because nobody like you you want a bit of pushback here because the pushback is towards them moving forward right then from there it's hey i don't have anything else for you at this stage it's just uh all we have to do is organize your program we can do that with a credit or a debit card and then we can go ahead and get your onboarding done we can do this this this and this whatever the onboarding process is

and then from there we'll get you started so that we can help you insert goal insert emotional driver would that be appropriate how would you like to proceed from here and at the end of that call it's very difficult to say no and they don't want to i'm not saying very difficult to say no in a term of like you've tricked them because that's not the case what we've done is we've we've led them down a path where they are constantly convincing themselves of the importance of their problems the need to change them what happens

if they don't change and when somebody feels truly heard in their problems it it doesn't matter what solution you present them because they feel like they're truly heard and that when you listen to someone intently and you ask them the right questions they they know that you have their best intended heart and that you understand their problems you don't understand their problems and you're offering a solution clearly that solution will work because you've understood the problem does that make sense and yes you have to understand your script that well i don't care if you use

my script or your script or whoever's but you have to understand the concepts and the principles that you're trying to espouse within that series of you know words so that you can keep people on track get them to defend the right positions get them to unravel the wrong ones within their own hand and then get them to want to move forward in the process right so that's that's the reason why like really thinking about every word that you say is super important because like i do not want to say anything in a sales call that

i don't feel is going to pull the conversation forward in the right way once i understand the problem it should be 30 minutes you might take five ten minutes might take two minutes might take 15 minutes to really establish the right problem depending on like the i guess not the intelligence but like you know the person's ability to understand the situation that they're in right and that's our job and that's probably the hardest job of the entire process is to really understand the correct problem so but once you feel you have the correct problem it's

really a bit of a bouncing ball type scenario where you just have to hit a few things and you notice at no stage that i go into why they're doing things i don't really and and i think that understanding their why that whole assignment is anything i think it's an important concept to understand but i think that when you do things really well you don't have to actually go into it because it's self-evident within the things that they're saying the importance of what they want to do and all those reasons to why they want to

move forward but you know we have that in our back pocket in case we feel like the the question the responses we're getting are surface level we can go into that whole tactical vulnerability piece get the why out of them by showing some vulnerability ourselves and then reset the conversation on a better level in tone right so again we have those little slide of mouth things in our back pocket so that we know that if we feel like something's just not right right and one of the things you want to keep aware of that is

always listening out for that non-buyer language where someone's just way too keen it's way too easy and you want to slow it down has anyone got any questions on what i've just said i know that was a lot to consume really no so their why becomes evident in defame exactly exactly dave so like when they defend their own positions consistently and they talk about why it's important to move forward and what happens if they don't move forward it's all it's all baked into the cake right so you don't really have to specifically go down that

line if anything i started cutting that out i used to add that into the script about going into the why i cut it out it saved me eight minutes and my close rate didn't change so but it's a good thing to have if you feel like everything's a bit surface level okay so i guess from here like what are some things that you guys think you can do in order to understand i guess like the the the principles of what you're actually saying james said the use of skepticism to defend their position makes make sense

now yeah so that's good yeah it it um it makes a lot of sense to me because um like something that chris boss had said a while back with a why why why so why why it's so powerful because it makes you like you said it makes anybody defend no matter what they said what they just said and if you keep getting them to repeat that and it's almost like your fighting is used and that doesn't make sense exactly you know me and um me and marco were doing a role play yesterday and he goes

oh but what happens if someone says this like i'm already said and i go he goes how do you overcome that so i said well say it to me i just go why and he goes oh yeah that's all i said why like that you know and he's like uh yeah okay yeah nothing you know what i mean it's a really powerful question uh i asked jeremy last night what do you think the most powerful question in an entire sales call is and he said it's the cost of an action piece right he said um

so like what do you think will happen if you don't fix this xyz problem so you can get xyz over the next 3 6 or 12 months you have to listen to the podcast to do the tonality is so good like it's so perfect everything he says is just it's just straight fire to be honest it was really really good conversation and it kind of um i think you guys will listen to it we'll drop it in we're not going to release it for two weeks but we'll put i'll put the audio in the slack

um so you guys can listen to it he goes through a lot of some a lot of these principles and sort of uh explains more eloquently than what i can some of the reasons why we say what we say and and how it differs from that sort of older school model of selling um i got a question yeah go for it um how do you get better tonality that's always been my weakness i have a very neutral tone of voice i've always relied on just asking really really good questions you have to understand uh the

emotional context of what you're saying and why you're saying it so again it comes and also i think like to i mean for one of those throwaway i really feel that life experience does play a large role in how you communicate with people and the level of toenail that you can convey because the more emotional and real conversations that you have the better you get at it but like once you understand and you play around with different tonalities and role play and what i mean by that is like use pausing use stuttering right tonality isn't

always to do with the actual tone and timbre of your voice a lot of it has to do with the pausing and the negative space in between the words that you say right i create that i guess it's just when i'm like doing that jeremy i had a question like the cost of enactment i sound really fake doing that tone of voice at least we'll say it i'll tell you um well i guess like what's really going to happen if you don't do anything to begin with that at all okay so you gotta remember when

you're trying to um elicit a real response you need to talk slowly so so temple i suppose like like what is it that you think will will happen if you don't if you don't fix this tone issue over the next like three six months man i see the difference it's slow it's deliberate it's intentional there's emphasis on the words that you want to emphasis on so don't in fastest the wrong syllable right so you you want to kind of make sure that like the things you want to emphasize are like like what happens if you

like you don't and the the points that you really want to iterate you can say twice so you use that stutter right so stuttering is a great way to make it sound like what you're saying is very thought filled and then using that negative space to kind of create that tension right like if i like it like if i re if i really want to make you listen and lean forward i just i sort of just have to do that right and you're like oh what let's see what's that what's going on over there right

because like it's just it really makes it think like you're saying 10 or different 10 to 12 different things in your head and you're trying to figure out the best way to say it but speed is incredibly important so the first thing you want to focus on when you're trying to get better at tone is speed right so the speed at which you speak my normal like you should hear my normal speaking voice like my normal speaking voice is about this fast this is how talking faster dr james said thoughts i talk to everybody but

when i'm coaching or when i'm selling i talk at about this speed because i need every word to be clear because i don't want to have to repeat myself right and and just be nice and slow be very very clear the nice neutral zone and then like using those skeptical tones and upward inflections at the end of like certain words allow you to ask questions without asking a question right awesome right and there's a great i think um have you have you read never split the difference i have not no it's a really good book

it's got a lot of tonality pieces in there he's really really good there's also a chris foss master class um which is really good he's really he's like a hostage negotiator so obviously tone is incredibly important because you're having to keep people calm in extremely stressful situations and there's like there's three types you can elicit very very clear emotional responses from the way that you talk now if you do the fm dj voice you're going to allow people's brains to slow right down and it allows them to think very clearly or you can be really

really intense and it's going to actually cause you to ask someone a question like will i need you to whistle right now whistle i need you to whistle right now i need your break right now whistle right it causes people to be all flustered and stuff right and then you've got like that's a really quick way of thinking and then you've got like a real staccato like hey how are you right again that causes people's brain waves to really speed up and like and like flush them a bit so if you're trying to flush with

somebody talk that way if you want to get someone to have a very relaxed calm demeanor the slower and like just kind of more gentler that you speak the much easier it is for someone brainwaves to kick in and that affects everybody in the exact same way just to varying degrees right so he's got a great training on it's been a while since i've done it but he does like basically he gets people to he at people's heads by getting them to say okay i'm gonna i have your daughter hostage and i'm gonna kill her

in 60 seconds unless she convinces me not to and he goes i'm gonna use three different tonalities with you and you watch how they respond and when he's slow and calm and he's like hey i've got your daughter i'm gonna kill her unless you do this the person can actually come up with responses that make sense but when he does it the exact same words in a different way they are flustered and they cannot come up with a response and it just goes paracetamol quickly so understanding speed is super important and then using the negative

space effectively and using something that's really easy to incorporate like intentional stuttering i think those are probably the easiest ways that you can get that tonality piece right and then moving on from there it's really understanding what you're trying to say and and how it's supposed to come across um and then like you're just you you'll be able to gauge reactions from people and then from there kind of make mental notes to what you did right what you did wrong and then listening back to what you've done is always helpful cool i just got the

book on kendall yes sweet um it's it's really good it's actually a very enjoyable read as well it's like quite entertaining it's the best non-sales sales book i've read can i read on kindle or do i need the audiobook to hear his tonality no no you can read it i like i read it it was fine okay awesome uh anybody else anybody any takeaways they want to kind of take away from today and try and implement over the next few days yeah not overcooking the pitch what's that sorry not overcooking the pitch for some reason

you just yeah i was i think just take about two or three points and and just make the pitch more succinct than what i've been doing yeah do you know the reason why you overcook the pitch probably just a little bit of lack of mental gymnastics because i'd be making notes in like a section on my whiteboard as to how i'm gonna solve and then i'm just um just not picking the best top three saying i've got about five there and just out of habit i'm just using all five so from future i'm just gonna

just take the ones i'm gonna use yes sweet so everyone's obviously personalities are different right and so jimmy james is a very much like a c-type personality very very detail-oriented and stuff like that sometimes you just need to put the pen down and listen to the people right so like i don't take notes during a call i recommend people do i have i'm lucky i have a very good memory um so i don't need to right um but that's because i had learned disabilities as a kid and that's the only way that i've learned was

by listening right so i have a very good auditory memory so i don't i remember every conversation i had but what we need to do is just truly listen to the person and instead of worrying about how best to sell them at the end worry about what they're saying in the moment and how we can best serve them to get them to want to buy right so it's a different mentality um but yeah like i mean not everyone's gonna buy and that's okay you know what i mean we can't we can't win them all right

and sometimes it's not right for the person sometimes they have 25 years of deep-seated doubt given to them by horrific parents and it's very difficult for us in a 45-minute phone call to get over that so we have to be okay with those outcomes but really what we're trying to do is we're trying to elicit change that's all we're trying to do that's all sales is right it's assisting someone into getting out of their own way and so sometimes we just need to really listen to what the people are saying and be curious ask them

what they mean by things and then as long as we understand those phases that we're trying to take people through in our start middle and transition questions how we take them through each one then we and with the more we understand what we're doing and the principles like i know my script back to front i know every single part of it i don't need to use it anymore i understand all the principles and where they are where i'm trying to get to off the top of my head so now the script's just like in my

head right but once you understand that then you don't get lost in the weeds too much and so you can really just listen to what they're saying and you can pick up an all the small things that become big things later on because people aren't just going to naturally want to give you all the information because there's an element of vulnerability there right and so we have to allow that to progress throughout the conversation in a somewhat natural way but in a way that we're leading it and we know we're trying to go right so

and the more confident you are in what somebody's real problems are and how important it is for them to solve it and you've taken them through the right process the pitch could be no pitch at all right marco can attest he's listened to plenty of my calls where i give absolutely no deliverables at all yep none whatsoever not a single one not a hey you get this all i do is say the price and we go from there all right man it's going to cost you 25 000 how would you like to proceed yeah let's

do it all right sounds good like the coaches can sort the rest of the out so it's not like you don't have to overthink that that pitch component can be a minute be 90 seconds can be two minutes if it's 10 minutes too long right so understand their problems and then the solution will will manifest itself all right question screws down for points no really just i just don't want things for jimmy if in case you write down a lot of notes and you kind of can't really like follow what the person is saying just

use keywords because i used to do that all the time and you make me confused four color pins too work yeah just don't don't don't be clicking though that can get annoying to the other prospect but actually got a question uh in case like you know like most of the times um for the triage this one um most of them we ask like you know what attracted the book this call like are you still looking for like a way to solve that problem blah blah blah if the marketing changes okay so it's more like the

we message the lead and they get into a call what would be the first question that you ask i mean it's the same thing right so like what is it that sparked your interest into actually having this call today and they they always are like hell but you message me though all right cool you got on the call what would you like to do today i feel like oh yeah just because like you you guys messaged me i just want to check what you what you're going to provide okay that makes sense and i'm sort

of more than happy to go through all that with you man but at this stage it might be more appropriate if i could just find out a little more about you about your business what you're really trying to do to see if i can even help so like what is it that you're you know possibly looking for at the moment dude easy peasy no one can no i can get past my deflections i shall not give you price all right no solutions until the end right all right guys anything for me um sweet ass put

that coffee down coffee's for closers only