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THE ART AND SCIENCE OF MAKING WORLD-CLASS SALES PRESENTATIONS

WHILE REVEALING THE SECRET TO charisma might seem an odd way to begin a chapter on sales presentations, if you give me the benefit of the doubt for the next few pages, you’ll quickly see that it’s not.

Let me explain why.

Firstly, when we speak of charisma, as it relates to sales, we’re talking about that special charm or appeal that certain salespeople seem to possess that allows them to effortlessly slide into rapport with their prospects. It’s an attractive force that’s almost magnetic in nature, and its impact can be felt in a matter of seconds.

A perfect example of this would be President Bill Clinton, who back in his heyday was not only one of the greatest salesmen in political history but also a Jedi master in the art of charisma. Whether you loved him or hated him, to see him on the campaign trail was like attending a master class in charisma’s practical application.

Moving from town to town, he would shake hands with over a thousand voters a day, having only an instant to connect with each of them; yet, somehow, when it was finally your turn—and he locked eyes with you and offered you that sympathetic smile and a few choice words—you got an overwhelming sense that not only did he care about you but that he also understood you and felt your pain.

At the end of the day, it’s these three distinctions—he cares about me, he understands me, and he feels my pain—that serve as the very foundation on which all rapport is built, and they come naturally to those who possess massive charisma.

In fact, the power of charisma is so vital to a salesperson’s success that it’s almost impossible to find even a single top producer who doesn’t possess it in massive quantities. Working like motor oil in a car engine, it lubricates each step of the sales process while setting the stage for a healthy collaboration based on trust and respect and esprit de corps.

But what about all the people who don’t possess an abundance of charisma? What are they supposed to do? Are they screwed, as the phrase goes—meaning, charisma is an inborn personality trait that each of us possesses at a fixed level—or is charisma a learnable skill that can be mastered through practice?

Thankfully, the answer is the latter.

In fact, not only is charisma an entirely learnable skill but it also possesses that highly coveted Good Enough Factor—meaning, all you have to do is become reasonably proficient and you’ll start seeing the benefits straightaway.

Now, insofar as just how you go about doing that, I’ve tested a number of different strategies over the years, and I’ve found that the quickest way to teach this to someone is to break charisma down into its three core components and teach them one at a time.

So, let’s do that right now, starting with charisma’s first component, which is the effective use of tonality—meaning, that you sound so good when you speak that you keep people hanging on your every word as opposed to them tuning out, or dividing their attention among other people in the room.

The second component of charisma is the targeted use of body language—meaning, you’re being hypervigilant about applying all ten body language principles, with a heavy emphasis on active listening, to communicate an extraordinary level of attentiveness and empathy.

And charisma’s third component—which is typically the toughest one of all, for most people—is not saying stupid shit.

In fact, I’ve seen the same scenario unfold a thousand times:

A salesperson is saying intelligent things for the first four or five minutes of the encounter and is in complete control of the sale. Then, things start to drag on a bit, and the salesperson begins running out of intelligent things to say and suddenly—bam!—the stupid shit starts flowing out of their mouth like it just bubbled up from out of the Brooklyn sewer system.

Even worse, once it starts flowing, it keeps getting stupider and stupider with each passing moment, until it reaches a point of such undeniable stupidity that an alarm goes off inside the prospect’s mind, flashing—“NOVICE ALERT! NOVICE ALERT!”—at which point any chance of closing the sale is gone.

After all, if there’s one thing all your prospects will have in common it’s that they all know what experts should look like and sound like, and they also know what they don’t look and sound like.

Experts (mostly) say smart shit; they (occasionally) say bullshit, and, at times, they even shoot the shit, but the one thing they don’t say is stupid shit. That esteemed honor is reserved for novices, or, more accurately, for those who sound like novices.

You see, in the world of sales, there’s a massive difference between being an expert and sounding like one, and, for better or worse, it’s the latter that gets you paid. To that end, one of the true beauties of the Straight Line System is that it allows any salesperson, whether they’re a stone-cold rookie or a world-class expert, to deliver a flawless sales presentation on a consistent basis, no matter how long the encounter drags on; and the way the system accomplishes that can be summed up in one word: scripts.

That’s right—scripts.

But not just any scripts; I’m talking about Straight Line scripts—or, more accurately, a series of Straight Line scripts that work together as a cohesive unit and run the entire length of the sales presentation.

So, what is a Straight Line script?

In short, a Straight Line script is the well-thought-out essence of the perfect sale. In other words, imagine taking the ten best sales presentations that you’ve ever made for a particular product and going through each one of them line by line, with an eye on choosing the best passages from each and then combining them into one, ultra-perfect presentation that will become your template for all sales encounters going forward. That’s what I mean by a Straight Line script.

It’s basically all of your best sales lines, arranged in exactly the right order—starting with those all-important first four seconds and continuing on straight through to the end, at which point your prospect will either buy, or you will end the sales encounter in a respectful way.

In other words, if the prospect chooses not to buy, then you’re not going to berate them or put undue pressure on them or slam the phone down in their ear or walk around muttering curses under your breath. Instead, you’re going to end the call in an amicable, respectful way by saying something along the lines of: “Thanks for your time, Mr. Smith. Have a nice day.”

Now, in terms of the literally countless benefits created by a well-written Straight Line script, I could spend two or three chapters writing about that alone; let’s go through the most important benefits first, with a focus on how they work in conjunction with the rest of the Straight Line System to get you to the point where you can close anyone who’s closable.

1 I know this is an obvious one, but I had to include the crucial benefit of the sale being able to drag on for as long as necessary, without there being the slightest risk that a salesperson will start saying stupid shit.

2 You can figure out what tonalities you’re going to apply beforehand, which ensures that not only will you sound totally awesome but you’ll be able to take control of your prospect’s inner monologue and stop it from narrating against you.

3 You can now be sure that, no matter how nervous you are or how much of a novice you might be, when you open your mouth to speak, the best possible words are going to come out every single time.

4 Since your conscious mind no longer has to worry about coming up with the proper words to say, you can now focus the bulk of your attention on how your prospect is reacting to what you say. This will significantly enhance your ability to gauge where your prospect currently is on the certainty scale, as well as alert you to any slip in rapport—as a result of something that you said to your prospect that they disagreed with, or that rubbed them the wrong way.

5 It allows you to build the perfect airtight logical case for each of the Three Tens, while ensuring that you follow every Straight Line presentation rule, which, collectively, have been proven to maximize prospect engagement and increase your closing rate (I’ll be going through those shortly).

6 It allows a company’s management to systemize its sales force by ensuring that the salespeople are saying exactly the same thing to their prospects, regardless of what region they’re in and whether they’re selling inside the office or out in the field. This type of uniformity is absolutely crucial when it comes to growing and expanding a company’s sales force, and it’s the responsibility of the company’s sales manager to enforce this.

7 It reduces regulatory problems by preventing a salesperson from exaggerating or making outright false statements. You see, more often than not, a salesperson doesn’t purposely lie to a prospect or try to deceive them; the salesperson simply runs out of intelligent things to say, at which point they start saying stupid shit. The problem is that there are actually two varieties of stupid shit: the first variety consists of stupid shit that’s truthful and accurate, and the second variety consists of stupid shit that is not truthful or accurate, which is to say it’s against the laws of God and man, the latter of which can be extremely unforgiving, if you’re in a regulated industry.

Again, these are just a few of the many, many benefits that are automatically enjoyed by any salesperson who uses a Straight Line script that follows the eight basic rules for constructing them.

But, still, in spite of that, and in spite of the countless challenges that consistently pop up when any salesperson, other than a natural-born closer, enters a sales encounter without having the benefit of knowing what they are going to say before they have to say it, there is still an inordinately large number of salespeople who have a major negative anchor toward the use of scripts.

Ranging in severity from a mild bout of nausea to a full-blown case of anaphylactic shock, their negative responses are based on three concerns: first, they think that using a script will make them sound wooden and inauthentic (or scripted, as the phrase goes); second, they think that their prospects will figure out that they’re reading from a script and consider it disingenuous or the telltale sign of a novice; and third, they think that using a script is unethical or it lacks integrity, because of the contrived nature of a script.

On the surface, some of those arguments do seem to make a bit of sense. I mean, if someone were to hand me a script that was written in a way that would make me sound wooden or inauthentic, then I’d be the first one to toss it in the garbage or, better yet, light the thing on fire and then stomp on it a few times for good measure.

In fact, I did that very thing, eight years ago, in the offices of a London-based financial services firm that had hired me to teach their sales force the Straight Line System. At the time, they employed twenty salesmen whose performance was so dismal that the CEO referred to them as the Bad News Bears of the financial services industry.

At the heart of the problem was a horrific telemarketing script that had been written by the company’s sales manager, a thirty-something dilettante whose own sales ability seemed to begin and end with the line of bullshit he’d been able sell the CEO regarding his ability to manage a sales force.

In any event, the script was about three times the size of a standard piece of letter paper, and virtually every inch of it was covered in writing. The words had been chunked into short paragraphs, about thirty of them in all, and the paragraphs were arranged in a series of concentric circles that were connected by arrows of varying lengths and thicknesses.

Within ten seconds, I was 100 percent certain this particular script was the biggest piece of shit I’d ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes on. (And that’s saying a lot when you consider how awful the average non–Straight Line script is.)

Anyway, right before we broke for lunch, I called the entire sales force into the training room, including the sales manager, and without any warning or lead-in, I held up the offending item and said, in a tone laced with venom:

“You see this script? This is the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever read through in my entire life! In fact, it’s so bad that it’s been sucking the life out of you guys, like a killer zombie.” I shrugged my shoulders. “That’s why it needs to be permanently destroyed, with no chance of resurrection. Anyone here know how to permanently kill a zombie?”

“With fire,” declared a salesman. “You gotta burn it!”

“Exactly,” I replied. “That’s why I brought this.” And I reached into a shopping bag that was sitting on the floor beside me and pulled out a handheld blowtorch that was normally used for firing up a cigar, and I held it up for public inspection.

“There will be no resurrection!” I sputtered, and without saying another word, I held the blowtorch to the edge of the script and pressed the ignition button and set the script ablaze.

With great pride, I declared, “A script needs to be a perfect straight line, not a circular piece of smeg—”

I was cut off in mid-sentence by the sight of the flame being unnaturally squelched out. Apparently, the paper had been treated with some kind of fire-resistant coating. “Can you believe this shit?” I muttered. “This script is so cold that it won’t even catch fire!” With that, I threw the script on the floor and began jumping up and down on it, as the entire room clapped and cheered in approval—or, should I say, the entire room sans the sales manager.

Sensing his impending doom, he had slipped out of the training session while I was trying to torch his script, and he was never seen or heard from again. But nobody cared—least of all the company’s CEO, who watched in awe as his sales soared by more than 700 percent the following month. It was a truly shocking result, he remarked in a handwritten thank-you note I received from him shortly thereafter. In addition to the note, there was also a hefty bonus check inside the envelope, with a yellow Post-it attached to it. It said:

J,

You deserve every penny of this! Just make sure Ol’ Mel gets his cut, too!

GS

The “Ol’ Mel” he was referring to was none other than Mel Gibson, of Braveheart fame; and the specific context he was referring to was a metaphor I had used to explain the relationship between an expertly written Straight Line script and mastering the art of reading that script without sounding like you were reading it.

“Now, I assume you guys have all seen the movie Braveheart,” I said to his sales force. “Well, you know that scene where the ragtag Scottish army is standing there dressed in their torn-up kilts, holding their pitchforks and axes, and across the field is the massive army of English redcoats, who are standing in perfect formation with their archers and heavy horses and the infantry, who are all holding longswords, and it’s obvious that the Scots are about to get their asses kicked. You guys all know the scene I’m talking about, right?”

They all nodded their heads.

“Great. And then Mel Gibson comes riding up on his horse, with his face all painted blue, and he breaks into that famous speech, where he says, ‘Sons of Scotland, you stand here today in the face of three hundred years of oppression and tyranny and blah-blah-blah’ . . . and he goes on and on, with all this incredibly motivating stuff—talking about how their entire lives have come down to this one moment, and how they have only one shot at freedom; and, just like that, they go charging full steam ahead at the English army and they wipe them out in a matter of minutes.

“It’s an incredible scene,” I said confidently. “But let me ask you one important question: You think Ol’ Mel winged it?

“In other words, do you think Mel, as the director, said, ‘Okay, what we’re going to do here is line up a couple of thousand extras in that open field over there, and then I’m gonna set up all the cameras in just the right places, and wait for the sun to be at just the right angle, and then right when I give them the cue to flee, I just ride out there on my horse and motivate the hell out of them and convince them to stay, so they can kick some serious redcoat ass!’

“Now, if any director were to actually do that, just imagine what would come out of Mel Gibson’s mouth when he galloped onto the field, especially if he had a couple of drinks in him!

“But, of course, no director would ever do something so reckless. With only one shot for a character to say exactly the right thing, they ensure their success by hiring an expert screenwriter to come up with the perfect lines for the character to say, and then they hire a world-class actor (Mel didn’t have to look far when casting himself), who will not only memorize his lines but also use perfect tonality and body language to bring the scene to life.”

So, what’s the moral of the story?

Well, there’s actually more than one, but the point I was trying to drive home was that if you’re part of that group of salespeople who think that, by their very nature, scripts are going to cause you to sound wooden or inauthentic—making it extremely difficult to get into rapport with your prospects and move them emotionally—then you need to consider one very simple fact, which is:

Since the time that you were old enough to talk, every single movie or TV show that made you laugh or cry or scream or shout, or that got you so deeply invested in the characters that you ended up binge-watching the entire series in a single weekend; every last one of them was scripted.

In fact, even the reality shows you watch—which use the authenticity that supposedly comes from being an unscripted show as a powerful tool to drive viewership—are all scripted!

You see, it didn’t take long for the producers of these shows to realize that when they didn’t hand the reality stars a script of some kind, and they let them wing it instead, the end product was so awful and tedious that the show became unwatchable.

So if you want to hang on to the false belief that using a script is going to make you sound wooden and inauthentic, because sounding wooden and inauthentic is an inherent characteristic of using a script, then you need to ignore the fact that you’ve spent about half of your life being made to laugh and cry and scream and shout as a result of—yes, you got it: scripts!

The key to success here is actually twofold: first, you need to become proficient in the art of reading from a script without sounding like you’re reading from a script; and second, you need to become proficient in the art of writing a script that will allow you to sound perfectly natural when you read it.

In Straight Line parlance, we refer to this process as strategic preparation. It’s an attitude that borders on overpreparation. In short, the philosophy of strategic preparation is based on anticipating everything that might possibly come up in a sale and having the best possible response to it prepared in advance.

In fact, that’s what the rest of this chapter is all about: the construction and delivery of a Straight Line script.

So let’s start by going through the eight things that set Straight Line scripts apart from everything else out there. In essence, these are the key features that must be in place in order for your script to be effective.

First, your script must not be front-loaded.

Front-loading is when you disclose all your major benefits right up front, which leaves you with nothing powerful to say to change your prospect’s mind when they hit you with the first objection.

This is one of the biggest mistakes salespeople make: they think they have to mention every single benefit when they make their initial sales presentation. In consequence, they end up with a script that’s a mile long, and the prospect is zoned out before they’re even halfway through. The key to writing a great script is to frame, not front-load.

It’s like framing out a new house: you have to do it in stages. First you put up the actual frame, then the drywall, then the paint. It’s the same thing with a sale. You can’t expect to close so soon. There are going to be objections, so be prepared for a prolonged battle. You have to get your foundation in place first.

In essence, human beings are not built in a way where we go from zero to 100 mph in one shot. There have to be these little stopping-off points, where we can take a deep breath and consolidate our thoughts. In other words, the way you raise someone’s level of certainty is bit by bit; you can’t do it all at once.

Second, focus on the benefits, not the features.

While there’s no denying that this is Sales 101, for some inexplicable reason, the average salesperson tends to gravitate towards focusing on a product’s features, not its benefits.

Now, to be clear, I’m not saying that you should never mention a product’s features; if you didn’t, you would sound totally ridiculous, as you’d just be talking about benefit after benefit after benefit, without providing your prospect with any context for what actually created the benefit. The point is that you want to briefly mention a feature, and then expand on the benefit, showing the prospect why it matters to them personally.

Remember, people are not so concerned about every feature that a product might have. They want to know if it will make their life easier, or resolve their pain, or allow them to have more time to spend with their family.

Third, your script must have stopping-off points.

If you make a powerful statement, and then another powerful statement, and then yet another powerful statement, by the time you’ve made the third powerful statement, they’ve all started to blend in with one another, and they lose their power. This is why a well-written script has an abundance of stopping-off points, where the prospect will interact with you and affirm that you’re still on the same page.

In other words, after you make a powerful statement, you want to lock it down by asking the prospect a simple yes-or-no question, such as: “You follow me so far?” or “Make sense?” or “Are you with me?” By doing this, not only do you keep the prospect engaged in the conversation but you also get them into the habit of saying yes, which creates consistency.

In addition, these little stopping-off points serve as periodic rapport checks. For example, if you say to your prospect “Make sense so far?” and they reply “Yes,” then you’re in rapport; however, if they reply, “No,” then you’re out of rapport, and you can’t move forward in the script until you’ve gotten to the bottom of things. If you do, then your prospect will be thinking: “This guy couldn’t care less about what I’m saying; he’s just looking to make a commission.”

So, instead of moving forward, you’re going to loop back and give your prospect a little more information that relates to that topic, and then ask them again if things make sense so far. Once they say yes—which they almost always will in this case—you can then safely move forward.

Fourth, write in the spoken word, not grammatically correct English.

You want to be speaking in a casual manner, using layman’s terms, not in formal English or using overly technical lingo.

In other words, when you read the script, the writing itself should sound totally natural, with the prose written in a manner as if you were speaking to a friend and trying to connect with them emotionally, not just logically.

Now, on the flip side, remember that you still have to sound like an expert. So there’s a balance to be struck. It’s not all like: “Hey, buh, buh, buh. We are like, these, them, dos and don’ts”—like a Brooklyn guy who’s not educated, right? You still want to sound educated, like an expert. But don’t try to talk above your prospect by using too many technical buzz phrases; that’s about as surefire of a way I know to get someone to tune out.

Rather, you want to use colloquialisms whenever possible, and use contractions to keep your prose sounding natural and snappy. But you can never forget that your commitment to sounding natural is always in the context of being perceived as an expert.

Fifth, your script must flow perfectly.

When I write a new script, I always go through at least four or five drafts before I lock in a final version. This gives me a chance to test the script out—first by reading it out loud to myself, to identify any obvious glitches in the rhythm or flow of the various language patterns. For example, are there any tongue-twisters in the prose or sentences that are out of balance, in terms of the number of syllables or beats they contain? Are there any awkward transitions that need to be smoothed out?

I will then rewrite the script, fixing the glitches I found, and then repeat the process again, until I’m absolutely certain that every single word flows like silk.

By doing that, I ensure that even a rookie salesperson can use the script and sound totally awesome. To that end, one of the key elements that I always make it a point to focus on very closely is balance, in terms of the number of syllables and the number of beats in each sentence.

You see, if a sentence is out of balance, the human ear will immediately sense that something doesn’t sound right, and after just a few repetitions, it will tune out.

Sixth, your scripts must be honest and ethical.

When you’re writing your script, you should ask yourself, with every single sentence: “Is everything I’m saying 100 percent accurate? Am I coming from a place of integrity? Am I coming from a place of ethics?

“Or am I starting to exaggerate the facts? Am I misleading people? Am I making any material omissions of fact?”

I’m the first one to admit that I wrote some scripts back in the early days that I’m not particularly proud of. It’s not that they were full of lies, but there were some serious omissions of fact, which ended up painting a very skewed picture of things.

So, please, for your own sake, I want you to make sure that your scripts are not only 100 percent accurate but also come from a place of ethics and integrity—meaning, you need to have a zero tolerance policy in place when it comes to things like lying and exaggerating and misleading and omitting, or anything else that wouldn’t pass the so-called smell test.

In addition, for those of you who are in management, or if you’re an owner of the company, always remember that if you hand your sales force a script that’s riddled with lies and exaggerations, they will most certainly know it—and the consequences will be disastrous.

For starters, passing out an unethical script is tantamount to giving your sales force corporate approval to go out and rape and pillage the village. You see, as your salespeople are out there banging away on the phone or knocking on doors in the field, they’re lying and exaggerating or omitting key facts every time they make a sales presentation, and it will quickly seep into your entire corporate culture and poison it.

In fact, before long, your sales force will spiral completely out of control—making up bolder and bolder lies and wilder and wilder exaggerations with each passing day, as they become more and more desensitized to their own lack of ethics, which started with you!

The bottom line is that you can’t be half-pregnant when it comes to ethics, so any notion you have that you can hand out a deceitful script and not have it ultimately destroy your entire corporate culture is foolish. Your scripts need to be accurate, compliant, and reflective of your corporate culture, which is one of ethics and integrity.

And they also need to be sexy as all hell!

Remember, these things are not mutually exclusive: your script can be sexy and compelling and still 100 percent ethical.

To sum it up, your script should be the truth well told.

Seventh, remember the overarching equation of energy in, benefits out.

The moment before a prospect makes a buying decision, they run a lightning-fast equation through their mind that weighs the difference between the total amount of energy they’ll have to expend, in order to go through the closing process and receive your product, against the total value of all the amazing benefits you’ve promised them, both immediately and in the future.

To that end, if the value of the expected benefits exceeds the total projected energy expenditure, then the prospect’s brain will issue an all clear sign and they can then decide whether or not they want to buy. Conversely, if the value of the expected benefits is less than the projected energy expenditure, then a red flag goes up, eliminating any chance of the prospect buying until you’ve satisfied the equation.

The name of this equation is energy in, benefits out, and it comes into play each time you ask for the order—including when you respond to buy signals during the back half of the sale.

This principle doesn’t even register with the prospect’s conscious mind until a microsecond after you’ve asked for the order, at which point it springs into action—instructing their inner monologue to pose a simple, yet very pointed question, namely: At the end of the day, is it really worth it?

In other words, from a sober, logical perspective, is the sum total of all the benefits I expect to receive greater than the sum total of all the energy I’ll have to expend in order to receive them?

Now, what you need to understand here is that although a positive outcome to this equation doesn’t necessarily mean that your prospect will buy, a negative outcome to this equation means that they definitely won’t buy. This is not forever, but until you get another chance to ask for the order again, at which point you’ll adhere to a set of simple yet extremely effective principles that will ensure you end up on the right side of this equation.

Let me quickly lay these principles out for you, using our trusted subjects Bill Peterson and John Smith as examples.

So let’s say Bill Peterson just finished making a kick-ass sales presentation to John Smith, during which he explained to him his product’s myriad benefits and why they’re a perfect solution to the challenges Mr. Smith is facing, to which Mr. Smith completely agreed—giving Bill all the right signals throughout the entire sales presentation.

So, all Bill has to do now is lay out a closing scenario, explaining the various steps that Mr. Smith needs to take to get the ball rolling, and then ask him for the order.

To that end, Bill says to Mr. Smith:

“Now, John, here’s what I need you to do: first, I need you to give me your full name, your social security number, your address, your driver’s license number, and then I want you to go to the post office, get a special first-class stamp, then take your license to a copy machine, make a copy of it, then run it over to the notary and get it notarized, and then run to the bank to get a certified check . . .” And then only after Mr. Smith has jumped through a dozen hoops and a ring of fire can he get all the amazing benefits that Bill Peterson promised him that his product would deliver.

Obviously, I’m exaggerating a bit here, but not by all that much. Most companies really miss the boat on this one—using closing scenarios that require the prospect to expend so much energy that they’ve made it close to impossible for them to end up on the right side of this equation.

By the way, never forget that money is basically nothing more than stored energy. In essence, you expend energy by engaging in some type of work, for which you receive money in return. Now, of course, some of that money ends up being used for basic living expenses—food, shelter, clothing, medical expenses, general bill paying—and the rest of it you deposit in the bank, where it represents stored energy that can be unleashed in any way you wish, at a moment’s notice.

In consequence, when you ask someone to take action and send you their hard-earned money, you’re asking them to expend their stored energy, so you want to be sure to offset that energy expenditure by highlighting all the valuable benefits that they’re going to receive in return.

In essence, you want to crystallize the fact that once they say yes they’re going to receive a massive number of valuable benefits, and the amount of energy they’ll have to expend will be considerably lower.

By the way, one company that does this just about as well as a company can possibly do it is Amazon. With their one-click buying option, they’ve made it so ridiculously easy for a customer to receive a product’s benefits that you start to feel that it’s simply too much of a hassle to buy from anyone else.

Even more telling, what Amazon has found is that if their customers are forced to click even one more time, to go to a different landing page, they will lose a major percentage of their buyers; and if a customer has to click a third time, their conversion rate drops through the floor. That’s how important this equation is to people making a positive buying decision.

Let’s go back to the example of Bill Peterson and John Smith—except, this time, let’s change the language pattern to reflect a very different type of closing scenario:

“Now, John, getting started here is very, very simple. It’s just a question of your name, some basic information, and then we handle everything else for you over on this end. And when you combine that with [benefit 1] and [benefit 2] and [benefit 3], then, believe me, John, the only problem you’re going to have is that you didn’t buy more. Sound fair enough?”

That’s a very low energy in, massive benefits out close, and it can be easily adapted to any industry.

However, one thing I need to point out is that sometimes you’re going to find yourself in a situation where the process or the product you’re selling is actually not all that simple to get started. An example might be in banking or mortgages, where there are hoops to jump through and a lot of paperwork.

So, while you can’t say something is simple when it’s actually very complicated, you can still make it clear to your prospect that you will do everything in your power to make the process as simple as possible for them.

Now, before we move on, let’s quickly go through the process of how to handle buy signals when they arise in the back half of the sale. In other words, as your prospect starts to become more and more certain about the Three Tens, they will start sending you signals that they are interested in buying, in the form of leading questions about the closing process.

For example, the prospect might say, “How much did you say it would run me?” or “How long will it take until I receive the product?” or “How long until I start to see results?” Those are just a few examples of the more common buy signals.

Let’s say you’ve already asked for the order for the first time and you’re in the middle of running a looping pattern, and your prospect suddenly asks, “What was the price on that again?” To which you reply, “Oh, it’s only three thousand dollars,” and you say no more.

Alas, you just committed sales hara-kiri.

Why?

Simply put, you’ve just created a scenario where there’s $3,000 worth of energy going in and zero benefits coming out, not because those benefits don’t exist—in point of fact, they do—but because you simply forgot to remind the prospect of them at the same time you asked them to tap into their energy reserves.

In other words, the fact that you laid out the benefits three or four minutes ago when you asked for the order for the first time has no bearing on the energy in, benefits out equation a few minutes later, when your prospect gave you a buy signal.

Put another way, human beings have extremely short memories when it comes to the balancing effect of benefits. In consequence, you need to restate those benefits again, albeit more quickly and succinctly, but you still need to state them every time you bring up the expenditure of energy.

To that end, the proper way to have responded to the buy signal “What was the price on that again?” is as follows:

“It’s a cash outlay of only three thousand dollars, and let me quickly tell you exactly what you’re going to get for that: you’re going to get [benefit 1] and [benefit 2] and [benefit 3], and again, like I said before, getting started is very, very simple, so believe me, if you do even half as well as the rest of my clients in this program, then the only problem you’ll have is that I didn’t call you six months ago and get you started then. Sound fair enough?”

And that’s how you close.

I used the word “cash outlay” as a reframer, instead of cost; I used the word “only” as a minimizer, in relation to the $3,000; I then quickly reminded the prospect of three major benefits, to balance out the $3,000 energy expenditure; and then I reiterated the simplicity of getting started and transitioned into a soft close—using my tri-tonal pattern of absolute certainty, collapsing into utter sincerity, and then moving into the reasonable man tone, as I said my last three words: “Sound fair enough?”

Then I shut up.

And eighth, a Straight Line script is part of a series of scripts.

In fact, there might be as many as five or six different scripts that take you through from the open to the close. For example, you’ll have a script that starts with those all-important first four seconds, and then includes your qualifying questions and your transition. Second, you’ll have a script that starts with the main body of your presentation and ends with you asking for the order for the first time. Third, you’ll have a series of rebuttal scripts that include the well-thought-out answers you’ve prepared to the various common objections you’re going to hear. And fourth, you’ll have a series of looping scripts that will include the various language patterns that will allow you to loop back into the sale, in order to move your prospect to higher and higher levels of certainty.

This leads us to an extremely important aspect of the sales process that’s going to have a major impact on how you construct and deliver each of the above scripts, in terms of their length, their breadth, and how much time you have to spend repeating yourself in order to refresh your prospect’s recollection.

What I’m referring to here is the issue of the type of call system you’re using—meaning, how many times do you plan on speaking to your prospect before you ask them the first time for the order? Once? Twice? Three times? Four times?

Whichever the case, the logic behind using a sales system with two or more calls is that each prior call, whether it’s in person or over the phone, serves as a springboard for entering the next call in a tighter state of rapport and with greater insight into the prospect’s needs and pain points, as a result of the intelligence you gathered on the previous calls. And it’s given the prospect a chance to review whatever documents or links you’ve sent, or to do his or her own research in order to increase their level of certainty about each of the Three Tens.

To that end, there isn’t much you can do on three calls that you couldn’t have done on two; so whenever I consult for a company that’s using a three-call system, I always make them at least test a two-call system, in conjunction, of course, with teaching them the rest of the Straight Line System, which is what I was hired to do in the first place. And, in the end, rare indeed are the tests that don’t prove the benefits of using the two-call system, if for no other reason than how difficult it is to get in touch with same prospects three times within the confines of the outer limits of your sales cycle.

In other words, every product or service will have its own predetermined sales cycle that has a set number of days between calls. At a certain point, when a prospect has exceeded the outer limit for the number of days between calls, the lead goes into a dead pile, which eventually gets redistributed to someone else in the sales force after the appropriate amount of time—usually three to six months, or maybe even a year; any longer than that and the close rate drop becomes negligible.

This circumvents the self-defeating behavior of chasing after the same prospect again and again, which is par for the course for a non–Straight Line salesperson, even after it would be painfully obvious to any other human being that the prospect is ducking their call when it pops up on the prospect’s caller ID.

The same goes for a four-call system, although they’re so counterintuitive (even to a poorly trained sales manager) that whenever I do run into one, there’s usually a valid reason why the sale has been dragged out. Most of the time, it has to do with the reality of having to deal with multiple decision-makers, which causes a salesperson to have to work their way up the ladder—closing one decision-maker at a time, until eventually getting the final decision-maker to sign off on the deal.

The other common reason is a particular product requiring that the buyer commit a significant amount of their own resources—either time, money, manpower, or all three—to integrate the new product into their current business; so, before they sign on the dotted line, there’s a significant amount of forethought and strategic planning required.

For example, in a four-call-system, a successful outcome for the third call might be your prospect agreeing to sign a letter of intent and, in the cases where it’s necessary, a nondisclosure agreement, so the prospect and their team can take a closer look at the inner workings of your product—a process formally known as “due diligence”—to make sure that it’s everything you’ve cracked it up to be.

In addition, this is also the point in the sale where lawyers from both sides tend to get involved—going back and forth as they review each other’s changes, as they take what started off as a simple, straightforward agreement and complicate it to the point of madness while racking up massive legal fees in the process.

Now, to be clear, while most lawyers are reasonably honest, there are still a lot of chronic over-billers out there, so be careful—especially if your commission is tied to the overall profitability of the deal! If that’s the case, then you definitely want to make sure that someone competent goes through every invoice with a fine-tooth comb and negotiates out anything that looks even slightly suspicious (because this is definitely one of those cases where if there’s smoke, there’s fire!).

Anyway, moving along, once your prospect’s team has given the thumbs-up from their due diligence, and the lawyers have extracted the appropriate amount of flesh from everyone’s bones, then you have the chance to truly close the deal, which usually entails the signing of a definitive agreement, or contract, and the exchange of a predetermined amount of money.

The most important thing to remember throughout this entire process is that until a definitive agreement gets signed and money changes hands, the deal is not closed, which means you need to keep in touch with the prospect and do whatever you can to keep the Three Tens at the highest level possible. This includes sending your prospect testimonials from other satisfied clients; articles from trade journals, newspapers, and magazines that reinforce the idea that the prospect made the right decision; and occasional emails and regular schmooze calls to make sure that you stay in tight rapport as the process drags on.

I cannot overestimate how dramatically this will reduce the number of deals that end up falling out of bed during the waiting period. And while it usually takes anywhere from four to six weeks to complete the process, it can drag on for up to three months, if those special types of lawyers are involved and the prospect isn’t under any time pressure to close the deal.

Nonetheless, as long as you continue to keep your prospect’s level of certainty as high as possible, then things should end up okay, and you’ll close the majority of deals that make it this far and get your commission, which had better be substantial, considering how long the deal took and all the trouble you had to go through to get it to actually close.

Just how substantial is impossible to say without knowing all the details, but suffice to say that if your commission is not in the thousands of dollars for a deal that took six months to close, then you better be getting a hefty base salary to make up for it.

But, again, there are simply too many variables in play—the country you live in, what’s considered normal in the industry, your opportunity for advancement within the company you work for, how much enjoyment you get out of what you’re doing—for me to give you an answer on compensation that’s anything more than an educated guess.

More importantly, though, you need to make sure that during the waiting period all your communications to your “almost” new client come from a position of strength—meaning that, as far as you’re concerned, the deal is already closed and the communication you’re sending is from the perspective of building a long-term relationship and doing more business in the future. Otherwise, you’ll come off as being desperate, and it will end up having the reverse effect.

But other than those two examples, anything more than a three-call system will be the result of a flawed sales process being administered by an equally flawed sales manager, who’s sitting idly by and watching a team of what are always inexperienced salespeople banging their heads against the wall, trying to get through to the same person four times before they get around to asking for the order. After all, if there was anyone experienced on the sales force, they would first suggest, and then ultimately demand, that they be allowed to collapse the number of calls to three or less; and just so you’re aware, that demand is almost always accompanied by a sales force–wide revolt led by the experienced salesperson, who is preying on the cloud of desperation that hangs over an underperforming sales force like sarin gas, poisoning their hearts and minds and breaking their collective spirit.

In light of that, whether you’re the owner, the sales manager, or just a salesperson in the sales force, you need to pay extremely close attention to the number of calls in your sales cycle, with an eye toward collapsing it to as few calls as possible. The way to safely and effectively do this is to eliminate one call from the cycle at a time, until you’ve reached the point where a decrease in your percentage-closing rate isn’t offset by a greater number of total closed deals (due to the large increase in the number of sales calls made to close deals, as opposed to setting up the next call).

The Power of Language Patterns

As I explained in Chapter 2, the Straight Line is basically a visual representation of the perfect sale—where everything you say and everything you do and every case you make as to why your prospect should buy from you is met with an unequivocal yes from the prospect, right up to the moment where you ask them for the order and they agree to close.

In addition, every word that escapes your lips has been specifically designed to feed into one overarching goal, which is to increase your prospect’s level of certainty for each of the Three Tens to the highest level possible, a 10 on the certainty scale.

Now, in terms of the order in which you go about creating certainty, you’re always going to follow the same protocol, which is:

The product first

You, the salesperson second

And the company that stands behind the product third

In terms of the split between logic and emotion, you’re always going to build airtight logical cases first and airtight emotional cases second.

Why?

Quite simply, by making the airtight logical case first, you satisfy your prospect’s bullshit detector, which then frees them up to be moved emotionally.

The way you’re going to accomplish this is through a series of expertly constructed Straight Line scripts—ensuring that you know exactly what to say before you have to say it; and embedded in these scripts are going to be language patterns, which are bite-sized chunks of expertly crafted information, each of which has a specific goal in mind.

For example, there are patterns designed to create logical certainty and there are patterns designed to create emotional certainty; there are patterns designed to create certainty for each of the Three Tens, and there is a pattern to lower someone’s action threshold and one to add on pain.

In short, there is a pattern for everything.

In the front half of the sale, your language patterns serve as anchors for each step of the syntax, and they’re an important aspect of ensuring a successful outcome. In the back half of the sale, your language patterns serve as the very foundation for the entire looping process, and everything you say will revolve around them.

In your opening pattern, you’re simply introducing yourself, your company, and explaining the reason for your call, while using tonality and body language to establish yourself as an expert, so you can take control of the conversation and begin moving your prospect down the straight line, from the open to the close. Here are the basic rules for creating a powerful introduction. We’ll assume an outbound phone call:

Be enthusiastic right from the start.

Always speak in the familiar. For example, you wouldn’t say, “Hi, is Mr. Jones there?” You would say, “Hi, is John there?”

Introduce yourself and your company in the first couple of sentences, and then restate the name of your company a second time within the first couple of sentences.

Use power words, like “dramatically,” “explosive,” “fastest growing,” “most well respected.” Power words go a very long way to capturing someone’s attention and establishing yourself as an expert.

Use your justifiers (I went through these in Chapter 10).

Ask for permission to begin the qualification process.

Your next pattern is going to allow you to smoothly transition into the intelligence-gathering phase, and it will include asking your prospect for permission to ask questions, as well as all the questions you intend on asking your prospect, laid out in exactly the right order, with notations attached that indicate which tonality will be applied in order to ensure that you get the most comprehensive response. And, of course, at the same time, you’ll make it a point to be actively listening to each of your prospect’s responses, to ensure that you are building massive rapport on both a conscious and unconscious level.

Here are some sample big picture questions that can be used in virtually any industry:

What do you like or dislike about your current supplier?

Typically, a prospect will have a current source or be using a similar product already, and you aren’t the first person to try to sell them a new product of this nature. This is a very powerful question.

What is your biggest headache with your business?

You have to be very careful with your tonality here, as this is your first direct attempt at identifying your prospect’s pain. For example, if you flippantly say, “So, John, what’s your biggest headache with this? Come on, tell me!” it says that you don’t give a shit. The proper tonality here should convey sincerity, concern, and a desire to help resolve John’s pain; and when he starts talking about it, you want to amplify that pain by asking the following questions:

“How long has this been going on?” “Do you see this getting better or worse?” “How do you see yourself in two years?” “How has it affected your health or your family?”

In essence, you want to make sure that you make your prospect talk about their pain. These types of questions will have a powerful impact on opening the prospect’s mind to receiving information, which they will now measure against their pain.

What would be your ideal program if you could design it?

Now, this question works extremely well in some industries and doesn’t apply to others. The key here is to use a logic-based tonality, as if you were a scientist talking, versus a tonality of empathy.

Of all the factors that we have just spoken about, what is the most important to you?

You definitely want to find out your prospect’s highest need, as this is the one that you’ll typically have to fill to push the prospect over the top.

Have I asked about everything that’s important to you?

Your customer will think more of you, not less of you, if you ask this, so long as you have done a professional job up to that point. You could also say, “Is there anything that I have missed? Is there any way that I can tailor this solution for you?”

This takes us to the end of your introduction—where you’ll transition into the main body of your sales presentation—so let’s do a quick recap of the various language patterns:

1 When you introduce yourself, remember to speak in the familiar and to always sound upbeat and enthusiastic.

2 The next pattern is going to be to get their response of “I’m okay.” “If you recall, we met last Thursday night at the Marriott,” or “If you recall, you sent in a postcard a few weeks back,” or “We’ve been reaching out to people in your area . . .” In short, you are trying to link up this call with the time you first met your prospect, or when they took an action, like filling out a postcard or clicking on a website.

3 This next pattern is extremely important and is the reason for the call, your justifier. In essence, your justifier creates a valid reason to be calling today, and it will dramatically increase your compliance rate.

4 From here you get into the qualifying portion of your script, and you start by asking for permission to ask questions. This is another example of using a justifier, this time with the word “so.” “Just a couple of quick questions so I don’t waste your time.” This gives a reason why you need to ask the prospect questions, and that reason is so you don’t waste their time. You always want to ask for permission to qualify.

5 The last part of your open is always a transition. “Based on everything you said to me, this is a perfect fit for you.” This should be an anchor for you; you should know it by heart.

When it comes to the main body of your presentation, I can’t give you exact language patterns, as they vary too greatly from industry to industry. However, that being said, when I’m hired by a company to do a sales training, I make each salesperson create three or four language patterns for each of the Three Tens, and then I pool them all together and pick the best of the patterns to create one master script.

If possible, I strongly recommend that you do that yourself—recruiting other salespeople in your office to go through this exercise with you as a group.

To that end, let me give you a head start by providing you with a handful of powerful tips and guidelines for creating language patterns for the body and the close.

1 The moment you finish the above transition, your first words in the main body should be the exact name of your product, process, program, or service you’re offering. Here’s an example of this that I wrote for the movie The Wolf of Wall Street:

“Name of the company . . . Aerotyne International. It’s a cutting-edge, high-tech firm out of the Midwest, awaiting imminent patent approval on a next generation of radar detectors that have both huge military and civilian applications.”

2 The next language pattern should be no more than one or two paragraphs and be focused on a benefit that directly fills the clients need. (Only mention that feature.) If possible, try to use comparisons and metaphors to illustrate your point, as they are far more effective than facts and figures alone. In addition, if you can ethically link the above pattern to a trustworthy person or institution, like a Warren Buffett or J. P. Morgan, then do it. (Also, check to see if your company knows of any high-profile people who have used your product and liked it.) The bottom line is that anytime you can leverage the credibility of a respected person or institution, you should try to bring it into your presentation.

3 After you’re done with the pattern, you should say, “You follow me so far?” or “Make sense?” You can only move forward after the prospect says yes; otherwise you’ll break rapport and enter the death zone. But once they agree with you—boom!—you’ve completed one full language pattern.

4 Now, repeat steps two and three one more time—and then one more time again, but no more than that, or you’ll run the risk of overwhelming the client. Always remember, you’re framing, not front-loading!

5 As you’re transitioning into your close, you should try to create some type of urgency—meaning, why the customer needs to buy now. If you’re in an industry where there’s not a lot of inherent urgency, then try to at least use tonal scarcity to imply urgency. But don’t create false urgency; that’s not okay.

6 Moving from the main body to the close, we start with a transitional pattern that explains how simple it is to get the buying process started. (This is your energy in, benefits out equation.)

7 Then you directly ask for the order, with no beating around the bush. The reason I’m highlighting this is that after spending the last ten years training sales forces all around the world, I’ve found that the vast majority of salespeople don’t ask for the order very much. Either they dance around it, or they leave it open-ended, as if they’re hoping the prospect will just come right out and say they want to buy it. In point of fact, most studies peg the optimum number of times that a salesperson should ask for the order as somewhere between five and seven times.

Personally, however, I strongly disagree, and I think that number has more to do with poorly trained salespeople going through the closing process in a wildly inefficient way. Three or four times should be more than enough when you’re using the Straight Line System. Remember, this is not about pressuring people into making bad decisions; this is about using the Straight Line System to create massive certainty in the mind of your prospect, on both a logical and emotional level, and then asking for the order in a low-pressure, graceful way.

Here’s a typical language pattern for a close:

“Give me one shot, and believe me, if I’m even half-right, the only problem you’ll have is that I didn’t call you six months ago and get you started then. Sound fair enough?”

So, there you have it: the basic framework for constructing world-class scripts that set you up to close a massive number of deals.

Once you’ve gone through the script-building process and you’ve finalized your draft, there are only two things left to do:

Training and drilling.

I can’t even begin to tell you how massive the payoff will be if you take the time to read your script out loud, and keep practicing and practicing until you get to a level of unconscious competence where you literally know your script by heart.

Now, I don’t expect you to get this perfect the first time out, but what I will tell you is that script writing has a very strong Good Enough Factor, which means that even if you’re just okay at writing scripts, it will still dramatically increase your closing rate.

To that end, one question I always get asked is, “When should I use my script?” And my answer to that is, “ALWAYS!”

You should always use a script, whether you’re selling in person or on the phone. How do you use a script in person? you’re wondering.

Very simple—you have it memorized.

Like I said, I want to know my scripts so well that I move past the point of the actual words. Remember, 10 percent of human communication is words; the other 90 percent is tonality and body language. By memorizing my script, I free up my conscious mind to focus on the 90 percent.

So I urge you to keep reading your scripts back to yourself, to make sure all the language patterns and transitions are absolutely seamless. It takes a bit of time, but I promise you that it’s well worth it.