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THE TEN RULES OF STRAIGHT LINE PROSPECTING

WHEN YOU’RE PROPERLY ENGAGING IN the process of Straight Line prospecting, you’re doing each of the following four things:

1 You’re sifting through the prospects in your sales funnel by asking them a series of strategically prepared questions.

2 You’re using these questions to not only gather intelligence but also to separate the buyers in heat and buyers in power from the lookie-loos and the mistakes.

3 You’re continuing to gather intelligence from the buyers in heat and buyers in power, while eliminating the lookie-loos and mistakes from your sales funnel as quickly as possible.

4 You’re transitioning the buyers in heat and the buyers in power to the next step in the syntax, so they can continue their journey down the Straight Line.

Insofar as the ten rules of prospecting are concerned, they are meant to provide you with everything you’ll need to create a practical blueprint for gathering intelligence in your industry.

Now, as you go through each rule, you should keep relating it back to your own situation—making whatever changes are needed to your current method of prospecting. To that end, if you have a prospecting script or a list of intelligence-gathering questions, then you should have those in front of you before we begin.

So, grab those now, and let’s get started.

Rule 1: You are a sifter, not an alchemist.

Imagine yourself as one of those old-fashioned gold prospectors, who kneels at the edge of a stream with your trusty tin pan, sifting through thousands of gallons of water, as you patiently wait for that one nugget of gold to drop into your pan.

It’s a sight that we’ve all seen countless times, both in the movies and on TV: an old miner, with his scraggly beard, playing the waiting game by the edge of a stream. He’ll wait there as long as he has to, knowing full well that sooner or later a nugget of gold will present itself.

However, what he’s not waiting for is for the water itself to turn into gold. That’s a job for an alchemist, not a prospector.

You see my point?

Water is water and gold is gold; they’re different elements that don’t magically convert into one another, any more than lookie-loos and mistakes convert into buyers in heat or buyers in power.

That’s why a salesperson has to become an expert sifter, not an alchemist. There’s simply no two ways about it.

Rule 2: Always ask for permission to ask questions.

As easy as this distinction is to execute, virtually all untrained salespeople ignore it, simply because they’re unaware of how negatively it will impact their ability to get into rapport.

Plain and simple, unless you ask for permission to ask questions, you run an extremely high risk of being perceived as the Grand Inquisitor–type, instead of a trusted advisor, and the Grand Inquisitor–type does not “care about you,” nor are they “just like you,” which are the two driving forces behind getting into rapport.

However, the good news here is that all you have to do to avoid this outcome is remember always to ask for permission to ask questions. It’s as simple as that.

Below are a few sample language patterns that get straight to the point and have been proven to work:

“John, just a couple of quick questions, so I don’t waste your time.”

“John, let me just ask you a couple of quick questions, so I can best serve you.”

“John, let me ask you just a couple of quick questions, so I can see exactly what your needs are.”

Any one of the above examples will set you up for a nonconfrontational intelligence-gathering session that promotes the building of rapport.

In addition, I want you to notice how I use the word “so” in the second half of each of the three examples. In this context, we refer to the word “so” as a justifier, because it justifies your need to ask the prospect questions, as opposed to doing it out of curiosity or nosiness.

In essence, in order to do your job correctly, there are certain things that you need to know in your capacity as an expert. By using a justifier, you can get that point across to your prospect loud and clear, and it paves the way for an even more productive intelligence-gathering session.

Rule 3: You must always use a script.

I’m only going to touch on this rule briefly, as the entire next chapter is dedicated to the creation of scripts and how they roll up into one cohesive presentation.

One of the key reasons why you want to always use a script for prospecting is that each industry has its own unique set of questions that need to be asked in a certain order.

If you try to wing it—as opposed to having all your questions mapped out in advance, in precisely the right order—then the chances of you remembering all the questions, or asking them all in the right order, is slim to none, and each mistake you make will have a negative impact on your ability to gather intelligence.

Another major benefit of using a prospecting script is that since you already know what words you’re going to say, your conscious mind is freed up to focus on applying the right tonality to your words, as well as on what your prospect is communicating back to you.

Are there any clues in their facial expression, or their tone of voice, or their general body language?

Again, I’m going to be digging into this in much greater detail in the following chapter, so let’s move on.

Rule 4: Go from less invasive questions to more invasive questions.

By asking non-invasive questions first, you give yourself the opportunity to start building rapport by actively listening to your prospect’s answers. It’s almost like peeling back the layers of an onion. Each non-invasive question that your prospect answers creates an even tighter state of rapport, which paves the way for you to ask successively more invasive questions.

Let me quickly show you how the wrong approach looks, using a stockbroker gathering intelligence from a wealthy prospect as an example.

After a brief introduction, during which the broker took control of the sale by establishing himself as an expert, he transitioned to the intelligence-gathering phase by asking for permission to ask questions, using the reasonable man tonality, to which the prospect replied, “Sure, go ahead,” which is how you can expect virtually every prospect to respond—provided that you’ve established yourself as an expert and asked for permission to ask questions using the correct tonality.

And now comes the broker’s first question, which is:

“So, tell me, John: how much money are you liquid for right now—including both your personal bank accounts and your different brokerage accounts around Wall Street? Oh, by the way, please include any mutual funds you have as well, as long as you can liquidate them within seven days.”

“Excuse me?” snaps the prospect, in a tone of incredulity. “I don’t even know you. Why on earth would I answer that?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” says the broker, in an apologetic tone. “Let me start with something else. What was your annual income last year, including any capital gains?”

No response.

“Just a ballpark,” the broker adds, trying to prod the prospect into answering. “You can round—”

Click!

“Hello?” says the broker to an empty telephone line. “Are you still there, John? Hello . . . hello?”

And, just like that, the sale is over before it even started.

With a huff and a puff, the prospect smashed the phone down in the broker’s ear, and had every justification to do it.

After all, the broker had simply not earned the right to ask him those types of invasive questions yet. Not only did he lack the required level of trust and rapport, but he also lacked the benefit of having an intangible aspect of human communication on his side—namely, the mitigating effect of desensitization.

By way of definition, psychologists describe desensitization as a diminished emotional response to an adverse stimuli after repeated exposure to it. In laymen’s terms, it simply means that we have a tendency to quickly get used to things.

For example, something that you would normally find wholly offensive—like being asked an invasive question by someone who you hardly know—will barely cause you to raise an eyebrow after just a few minutes of desensitization; and that’s especially true when it comes to someone gathering intelligence from you, as a result of the lubricating effect that comes from suddenly finding yourself in rapport with the person asking the questions.

Again, I can’t overestimate how crucial this distinction is to ensuring a successful outcome to an intelligence-gathering session.

Ignore it at your own peril.

Rule 5: Ask each question using the right tonality.

In Chapter 11, which details how to make a sales presentation, I will provide you with a list of big-picture questions that have been proven to work in any industry, along with their accompanying tonalities.

For now, what you need to understand is that each prospecting question will have its own “best” tonality, which maximizes the chance of your prospect giving you the most forthright answer, while also ensuring that you maintain rapport with them in the process. Conversely, if you apply the wrong tonality to your question, then your prospect will answer it in a perfunctory manner at best; and while you might not completely break rapport, you will certainly bring the level down a few notches.

Here’s a quick example.

Let’s say you’re a life insurance salesman, and you’re at the home of a prospect trying to close him on a whole life policy. Given that life insurance is a fear-based sale, it’s especially crucial that your intelligence-gathering effort not only uncovers his primary pain point but also amplifies it, as this will be the key to closing the sale.

To that end, here’s an example of an invasive question you might ask, to begin the process of ferreting out the source of his pain:

“So, John, all things considered, what’s your biggest fear right now with not having a life insurance policy in place? What’s really keeping you up at night?”

Now, imagine if you attached a callous, almost aggressive tone to those words, as if you were chastising him for being so foolish and irresponsible for not having adequate life insurance coverage in place.

It would be like you were saying to him, “So what’s your greatest fear, John? Tell me! Tell me! Come on! Let’s go! Tell me!”

Now, of course, you didn’t actually say those extra words—Tell me! Tell me! Come on! Let’s go! Tell me!—but that’s precisely what he heard as a result of tonality’s ability to add extra words onto our communications. And what he also heard was his own inner monologue saying, “This guy is a total asshole! He doesn’t care about me; he doesn’t feel my pain; and he’s not sympathetic to my plight.”

Alternatively, if you had used the “I care” tonality, along with “I feel your pain,” then the extra words your prospect would have heard would have said, “Wow, this guy really cares about me; he really genuinely wants to know.”

So, again, if you attach the wrong tonality to your question, it will cause you to break rapport with your prospect while also eating away at your credibility as an expert. Conversely, if you attach the right tonality to your question, it will cause an increase in the level of rapport while also reinforcing your position as an expert.

Remember, this applies to every question you ask during the intelligence-gathering phase. There are no “free” questions.

Rule 6: Use the correct body language as the prospect responds.

This too relates back to what I covered in the previous chapter, when I went through the body language principle of active listening—as well as distinction 4 of this chapter, where your ability to actively listen as your client answers your questions will serve as the linchpin strategy for building rapport as you move through the intelligence-gathering process, with your goal being to hit a high note as you prepare to transition into the main body of your sales presentation.

In consequence, you need to be absolutely vigilant about following all the active listening rules that I laid out for you in Chapter 8—starting on page 132. Below is an abbreviated list of the active listening techniques that you’ll most frequently use during the intelligence-gathering phase:

1 Nodding your head while your prospect is speaking. This shows that you understand what they are saying and that you’re on the same page as them.

2 Narrowing your eyes and compressing your lips, while nodding your head slowly, when your prospect is disclosing an issue that’s very important to them.

3 Narrowing your eyes even more while compressing your lips more intensely, if the above topic deals with one of the prospect’s pain points. In addition, you’ll continue to nod your head slowly while letting out the appropriate oohs and aahs to show that you actually feel your prospect’s pain.

4 Leaning forward when you ask an emotionally charged question, and then continuing to lean forward while your prospect answers (while also using the active listening techniques I laid out above in number 3).

5 Leaning back when you ask a question that’s grounded in logic, and continue to lean back and nod your head in understanding and scratch your chin thoughtfully while your prospect answers.

While the above list assumes that the sales encounter takes place in person, for many of you that will not always be the case. So when the encounter takes place over the phone, your active listening will be distilled down to the various oohs and aahs and ahas and yups that you let out as your prospect responds to your questions. This will let the prospect know that you’re still on the same page as them, and that you get what they are saying.

Rule 7: Always follow a logical path.

The human brain is extraordinarily adept at analyzing a series of questions and determining whether or not they’re being asked in a logical order. If they’re not, then it will serve as a major red flag that the person who’s asking them is not an expert in their field.

For example, imagine being on the receiving end of the following series of intelligence-gathering questions, asked in exactly this order:

1 What part of town do you live in?

2 Are you married or single?

3 What kind of work do you do?

4 How long have you been living here?

5 Do you have any children?

6 What do you like most about your neighborhood?

7 Are you self-employed or do you work for someone else?

Frankly speaking, if you’d been asked these questions in an actual sales setting, by the time you reached question number four, your internal monologue would have been raging away, a mile a minute, saying things like: “What the hell is wrong with this guy? He seemed like an expert at first, but he obviously has no idea what he’s talking about. Let’s get this nonsense over as quickly as possible and find a real expert, not an impostor like this guy.”

By the way, if you think I’m exaggerating, I’m not.

The good news, though, is that this entire issue is easily avoided. All you need to do is take the time to engage in a little strategic preparation—which, in this particular case, means making a complete list of your prospecting questions, and then keep arranging them in different orders until you hit on the one that stands out as the most logical. (Trust me when I say that the right order will be plainly obvious to you. This will be easy pickin’s, now that I’ve raised your level of awareness.)

In fact, let’s do a quick practice run with this right now, using the list of seven questions beginning on the previous page. If you recall, I purposely arranged them so they’d be out of logical sequence. What I want you to do now is take out a pen and paper (or you can use your smartphone or computer) and make a list of all seven questions in their most logical sequence.

Once you’ve done that, you can find the correct order below.

1 What part of town do you live in?

2 How long have you been living there?

3 What do you like most about your neighborhood?

4 Are you married or single?

5 Do you have any children?

6 What kind of work do you do?

7 Are you self-employed or do you work for someone else?

Notice how these questions make perfect sense in this order.

In fact, not only does each question pave the way for the ones that come after it, but also each of your prospect’s responses will begin to paint a picture of a certain aspect of their life that you can fill in with more and more detail by asking follow-up questions based on their responses.

Just make sure that when you ask your follow-up questions you exhaust each line of questioning before you move on to the next one. And don’t ping-pong back and forth between your prepared questions and your follow-up questions, as it will break the logical flow.

Remember, at this point in the sale, it’s extremely rare that any one mistake will be damaging enough to cause a one-punch knockout; rather, it will be like death from a thousand cuts.

In other words, each one of your mistakes or incongruencies—whether it’s asking a question out of the logical sequence, attaching the wrong tonality to it, getting overly invasive before you’ve earned the right to, or forgetting to actively listen to your prospect’s responses—will slowly but surely eat away at the rapport you’ve worked so hard to create while also undermining your position as an expert, until you reach the point where one more mistake is enough to act as the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Rule 8: Make mental notes; don’t resolve their pain.

When you’re qualifying a prospect, all you should be doing is asking questions and making mental notes based on their responses. You do not want to try to resolve their pain at this point. In fact, if anything, you want to amplify that pain.

Remember, pain serves as a warning signal that there’s something wrong in their life—something that they need to take action to fix—so if you take them out of pain before you make your presentation, then you’re actually doing them a huge disservice.

In other words, when a prospect reveals their pain to you, you don’t want to jump the gun and say, “Oh great! There’s no need to worry now! My product is going to take away all your pain, so there’s no longer any reason to feel bad anymore. Just sit back and relax while I explain everything to you.”

If you do that, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot in a massive way. You see, by applying a temporary balm to their pain, you’re transforming your prospect from being a buyer in heat to being a buyer in power, which is the exact opposite of what you want to be doing.

Instead, you want to amplify their pain by asking them a series of follow-up questions that actually future pace it—forcing them to experience the reality of being in even greater pain at some point down the road if they don’t take action now to resolve it.

This will ensure that your prospect not only understands the ramifications of not taking action to resolve their pain, but also feels those ramifications in their gut.

Rule 9: Always end with a powerful transition.

The purpose of a transition is to move those prospects who are going to continue their journey down the Straight Line to the next step in the sales process, which is when you make your Straight Line sales presentation.

In addition, this is also where you’re going to eliminate the lookie-loos and the mistakes, as well as any buyers in heat and buyers in power who aren’t quite right for your product.

You see, the simple fact is that not every buyer in power and buyer in heat should be taken farther down the Straight Line. For example, if your product is not a good fit for them, then you have a moral obligation to tell them that—to explain that you can’t help them, and that they really shouldn’t be buying.

You should say something along the lines of:

“Well, John, based on everything you just told me, this program isn’t a particularly good fit for you. I’m really sorry about that, but I don’t want to sell you something that you’re not going to be thrilled with.” And if you happen to know of another company that can help them, then you should direct them there. Of course, you’re not morally obligated to do this, but it’s definitely the right thing to do.

Remember, today’s unqualified prospect can be tomorrow’s perfectly qualified prospect, and the amount of goodwill you establish by sending them somewhere else is incalculable. In fact, I’ve had situations where I did just that, and before I could even leave the table, the prospect started calling their friends to try to drum up business for me; and I’ve also had situations where a year later I got a call out of the blue from someone I did that for, and now that person was ready to buy.

Now let’s talk about the other side of the equation—where after gathering all the necessary intelligence, you’re 100 percent certain that your product can resolve your prospect’s pain and improve the quality of their life.

In that case, you would use a simple transition like this:

“Well, John, based on everything you just said to me, this program is definitely a perfect fit for you. Let me tell you why . . .” Or you could substitute the word “product” for “program”—or use the actual name of either one.

In that case, it would sound like this:

“Well, John, based on everything you just said to me, the 64-inch Samsung is definitely the perfect fit for you. Let me tell you why . . .” And from there, you’ll go directly into the main body of your sales presentation.

Rule 10: Stay on the Straight Line; don’t go spiraling off to Pluto.

In 2009, I was hired by a London-based seminar provider to do a private sales training for the company’s twenty young salesmen, who were struggling so badly that they could barely close a door.

When I was maybe halfway through the first day of training, I passed by one of the salesmen’s desks and heard him going off on some crazy tangent about duck hunting in the marshes of southern England.

As it turned out, the subject of duck hunting had been raised by his prospect in response to a standard intelligence-gathering question that the salesman had asked him a few minutes earlier, a standard question that had absolutely nothing to do with shooting a bunch of innocent ducks. (The question he’d asked was: “What kind of work are you currently doing?”)

And, to be clear, the prospect didn’t start his response by talking about duck hunting; rather, he answered the question that he was asked—telling the salesman that he was mid-level manager at a clothing manufacturer in Kent—but then rather than leaving it at that, the prospect decided to spiral off to Pluto by segueing into a long, drawn-out story about how the duck hunting in the Kent marshes was the best in all of England.

In truth, these sorts of compound answers, where the prospect starts by answering your question and then finishes by spiraling off to Pluto, are very common during the intelligence-gathering phase and are in no way problematic.

What is problematic, however, is the disingenuous way in which the salesman handled it.

“Oh my god!” he exclaimed, as if he were completely bowled over. “What a coincidence this is! I love duck hunting too! What are the odds—I mean—for you and me to both love duck hunting? I can’t even begin to tell you how much . . .” And on and on the salesman went, going back and forth with his prospect for fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes!—spewing out a bunch of nonsense about the exhilaration one gets from taking potshots at a bunch of innocent ducks who can’t shoot back.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not against duck hunting any more than I’m for it, although I would like to think that if you’re going to take the life of an unsuspecting duck, you’d at least have the common courtesy to then baste the little guy in orange sauce and make him into a gourmet meal. Either way, what’s far more important is that you understand just how misguided this salesman’s strategy was. Let me explain what I mean.

A moment after the salesman slammed his phone down in defeat, he turned to me and muttered, “Damn it! I was so close. I can’t believe I let that one slip away.”

“No, you weren’t close,” I replied flatly. “You never had a shot. You were too busy talking about duck hunting. I assume you made all that shit up, right? I mean, you don’t exactly strike me as the duck hunting type. Where are you from, India?”

“Sri Lanka,” he replied meekly, looking down at the floor to avoid making eye contact.

“Sri Lanka. Not exactly the world’s duck hunting capital, now is it?” I said with a chuckle. “Anyway, why did you lie to the guy like that? What did you think you were going to accomplish?”

“I was trying to build rapport,” he said defensively, “like you said this morning.”

“Wow, lesson learned!” I said to myself. “That’s the last time I stress how important something is without also explaining how to actually do it.”

“Fair enough,” I said to the salesman. “This one’s on me. But, for the record, what you just did is the exact opposite of what I meant.”

Ten minutes later, I had the entire sales force back in the training room, and I was standing before my trusty whiteboard, filling in the blanks from my morning training session.

“Let me tell you a little something about rapport,” I said confidently. “It is by far the single most misunderstood word in the English language. In fact, what most people think constitutes rapport is actually repulsive—meaning, it repels people instead of attracting them, which is the exact opposite of what you’re trying to accomplish with rapport in the first place.

“Now, after listening to a bunch of your sales pitches this morning, it’s obvious that you guys think that if you pretend to like whatever your prospect likes, you’ll end up getting into rapport with him.” I paused for a moment to let my words hang in the air. Then I plowed on.

“Bullshit!” I sputtered. “There’s no rapport there! People are far more skeptical than they used to be, and they’re constantly on the lookout for that sort of bullshit. And make no mistake, if your prospect has even the slightest inkling that you’re trying to pull something like that, then any chance you had of closing the sale completely evaporates. Make sense to everyone?”

All twenty salesmen nodded their heads in unison.

“Excellent. Now, in addition to that, what you’re also doing is sending a subliminal message to your prospect that you’re not really an expert. You see, experts are far too busy to waste time talking about things that aren’t germane to the prospect’s outcome. Their services are in demand, and an expert’s time is his most valuable commodity.

“Also, experts are qualifying a prospect; they ask their questions in a very specific way—one that’s both logical and intuitive—and they don’t go off on tangents. That’s what a novice does; they tend to be all over the place, and they’re constantly going off to Pluto.

“Now, again, genuine rapport is based on two things.

“First, that you care—meaning, that you’re not just looking to make a commission; you want to help your prospect fill his needs and resolve his pain. Basically, you have his best interest at heart, as opposed to your own.

“And, second, that you’re just like him—meaning that human beings want to associate with people who are just like them, versus the exact opposite of them. Let me give you a quick example.

“You wouldn’t go check out a country club to see if you want to join, and then come home to your wife and say, ‘Guess what, honey? I went to this really cool country club today! There wasn’t a single soul there who was anything like me. They all had different politics, different religions, different interests; all in all, I didn’t have a single thing in common with any of them! So I joined.’

“Now, if you did that, your wife would look at you like you were out of your mind. However, your decision would have made perfect sense to her if you’d said, ‘I went to this really cool club today. The people there were just like us. They all shared our politics, our religious beliefs, our family values, and almost all of them play tennis. So I joined!’

“The bottom line is this: We don’t associate with other people based on our differences; we associate based on our commonalities.

“However, that being said, this is precisely where you guys are all making the classic mistake. You see, the way you think that you’re supposed to accomplish this is by playing the pretend game—like, if he loves fishing, then you love fishing; and if he loves duck hunting, then you love duck hunting; and if he loves going on safaris, then you love going on safaris, and on and on.

“Now, I’ll get into the ethical ramifications of this later, insofar as how totally unacceptable it is for you guys to be lying through your teeth like that, but for now, let me repeat what I just said to you guys about the efficacy of doing this—specifically, that it’s a complete bunch of bullshit! There’s no rapport there; that’s actually repulsive to people.

“In fact, I’ll give you a real world example, using something I heard one of you guys rambling about this morning . . .” And with that, I spent the next minutes giving the group a comical account of the duck hunting fiasco I’d been subjected to that morning, in order to keep the mood light.

When I got to the point in the story where the prospect had just spiraled off to Pluto, I began mercilessly poking fun at the salesman for his decision to join his prospect there—spending over fifteen minutes orbiting that barren rock as the two of them went back and forth about the frickin’ wonders of duck hunting!

Then, changing to a more serious tone, I added, “But still, in his defense, it wasn’t like he could just cut his prospect off in mid-sentence when he started spewing out all that duck hunting nonsense. And, by the way, guys, I’m just using his call as an example; the same thing applies to all of you.

“When your prospect starts to spiral off to Pluto, you’re not going to say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa! Now, listen, pal, I’m an expert in my field, and, as an expert, I don’t have time to listen to your worthless drivel about the price of tea in China. So I want you to stop rambling about this nonsense and answer my questions directly, so we stay on the Straight Line.’

“If you do that, it’s not going to go over very well with your prospect, now will it! In fact, in that scenario, you’ll end up destroying whatever rapport you’ve built up, and you might as well end the conversation there.

“Instead, what you want to do in that situation is actually let your prospect spiral off to Pluto while you really step up your active listening, so he knows that you understand exactly what he’s talking about and that you find it exciting and interesting. Of course, you’re not going to actually say those words; but your tonality and body language will be more than enough to carry the day.

“Then, after he’s finally done orbiting Pluto, all you need to say is something along the lines of ‘Wow, that’s totally cool. It sounds really interesting. I can see why you feel that way. Now as far as your goal for learning how to trade currencies goes . . .’ And then you lead him back to the Straight Line and pick up right where you left off by asking him the next question on your list. That’s how you maintain control of the sale and build massive rapport at the same time. Make sense, everyone? Raise you hands and say ‘yes’ if it does.”

The entire sales force raised their hands on cue and let out a collective “Yes.”

“Okay, great,” I continued. “The key here is that you always remember that rapport is not a constant; it goes up and down throughout the sale, depending on the following two things:

“One, how your prospect thinks and feels about the last point you made; and two, his belief as to whether or not you are on the same page with him, in regards to that point.

“To that end, if he feels positively about the last thing you said, then the level of rapport increases; and if he feels negatively about it, then the level of rapport decreases. Likewise, if he believes that you are on the same page with him, then the level of rapport increases; and if he believes that you are not on the same page with him, then the level of rapport decreases.

“Now, guys, the reason that this is so absolutely crucial is because you can’t close a sale while you’re out of rapport with your prospect; it’s that simple.

“So, if at any moment you sense that you’re falling out of rapport with your prospect, then you need to stop, regroup, and make a conscious effort to get back into rapport, using the active listening protocol I laid out for you, along with two specific tonalities I went through this morning—’I care (I really want to know)’ and ‘I feel your pain.’

“In essence, guys, building rapport is an ongoing process. It’s not like you get into rapport with someone and you can say to yourself: ‘Okay, check! Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I can start acting like an asshole again!’ That’s not going to go over very well.

“The simple fact is that you need to be actively building rapport throughout the entire sale, 100 percent of the time, without ever letting your guard down. Any questions?”

“Are you going to talk about scripts?” asked one of the salesmen.

“Indeed I am,” I replied. “Right now.”