Way of The Wolf

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Every sale is the same!

(This can be extended to every act of influence is the same)

the reason every sale is the same is because, despite all that individual stuff, the same three key elements still have to line up in any prospect’s mind before you have a shot at closing them.

THE THREE TENS
The product, idea, or concept
You, trust and connect with you (the salesperson)
Trust and connect with the company

The product, idea, or concept

Before there’s any chance of a prospect buying a product, they first have to be absolutely certain that the product makes sense to them, insofar as it filling their needs, eliminating any pain they might have, being a good value for the money . . . and so forth.

In essence, your prospect must be absolutely certain that they love your product.

There is a continuum of certainty with 1 being absolutely uncertain and 10 being absolute certainty.

From a practical standpoint, if your prospect is anywhere below a 5, you have basically no chance of closing them. The reason for this has to do with something called positive intent, which serves as the very foundation from which all human beings make their decisions. In other words, human beings don’t buy things that they think will make their lives worse; they buy things that they think will make their lives better. However, the operative word here is think.

You see, just because someone has positive intent doesn’t necessarily mean that the resulting decisions will end up having a positive impact on them. In fact, with many people, it often doesn’t. Their lives are punctuated by a series of self-defeating decisions. However, even these “serial bad decision-makers” believe their decisions were good when they made them. That’s the definition of positive intent.

You, trust and connect with you (the salesperson)

Plain and simple, if your prospect doesn’t trust you, then there’s absolutely no way they are going to buy from you. And, again, I don’t care how certain they are about your product; they still won’t buy from you. In fact, if they’re that intent on purchasing your product, then they simply find someone else who sells the same thing—a salesperson they trust—and they will buy it from that salesperson instead. It’s as simple as that.

do they think you’re a likable, trustworthy person, who is not only an expert in your field but also prides yourself on putting your customer’s needs first and making sure that if any problems arise you’ll be right there on the spot to resolve them? That would be a 10 on the certainty scale.

Or do they think you’re an unlikable “snake in the grass,” a stone-cold novice who’ll stick the knife in their back the moment they turn it from you, because all you care about is extracting the maximum amount of commission out of the deal and then moving on to the next target as quickly as possible?

The prospect must trust and connect with the company

if you work for a Fortune 500 company with an impeccable reputation, then the chances are extremely high that your prospect will walk into the sale already at a very high level of certainty for the third Ten. That’s plainly obvious, right?

However, what’s not quite as obvious is that in addition to having the third Ten established, there’s also an extremely high likelihood that your prospect will walk into the sale feeling a very high level of certainty for the first and second Tens as well! In other words, before you even open your mouth, the prospect is also going to be inclined to trust you (because reputable companies choose their employees carefully and take the time to train them) and the product you’re offering (because reputable companies have too much to lose selling low-quality products).

Conversely, if you’re working for a company that has a questionable reputation, then your prospects are going to enter the sales encounter at far lower levels of certainty; in fact, depending on how bad that reputation is, you can find yourself fighting a serious uphill battle with your prospects, as many of them will be entering the sales encounter with a certainty level below 3.

Lastly, if you’re working for a small company whose reputation is neither good nor bad, but simply unknown, that will have little impact on where your prospect enters the encounter on the certainty scale, other than the usual skepticism that’s created by dealing with a company that you’ve never heard of before.

Whichever the case, the most important thing to remember is that your prospect will always enter the sales encounter at some point on the certainty scale. Just where, who really knows? After all, we’re not mind readers. However, what we do know is that your prospect will definitely be somewhere on the scale, because they haven’t just arrived from outer space or crawled out from under a rock. Your prospect has been living right here, on planet Earth, which means that they will have had at least some type of experience with the type of product you’re selling and the industry you’re in.

The Two Types of Certainty
Logical Certainty
Emotional Certainty

Logical certainty is based primarily on the words you say. For instance, does the case you’ve made to the prospect add up on an intellectual level? I’m talking about the actual facts and figures, the features and benefits, and the long-term value proposition, as it relates specifically to that prospect.

On the flip side, emotional certainty is based on a gut feeling that something must be good. Once it hits us, we feel a craving inside that simply must be fulfilled, even if there’s a heavy price to pay for fulfilling it.

Unlike logical certainty, emotional certainty has to do with painting your prospect a picture of the future where they’ve bought your product and can see themselves using the product and feeling good as a result of it. We call this technique future pacing, and it serves as the very backbone of how we move someone emotionally.

When you future pace someone, you’re essentially playing out the post-buying movie in the best fashion possible—allowing that person to experience your product’s amazing benefits right now, along with the positive feelings they create. The prospect’s needs have been filled; their pain has been resolved; any itch the they had has been scratched, and they are feeling wonderful as a result of it.

You see, people don’t buy on logic; they buy on emotion, and then justify their decision with logic. The logical mind is analytical by nature, so the more information you give it the more information it wants to know.

In fact, when you’re following the principles of the Straight Line System, you will almost never hear the word no, except at the very beginning of the sale, when you’re first introducing yourself or when you’re qualifying the prospect.

an important aspect of the Straight Line System, as one of its cornerstone philosophies is that we do not make a full-blown sales presentation to someone who is not interested in buying what we’re selling. Instead, we want to weed these people out as quickly as possible, during the intelligence-gathering phase.

Remember, it’s not the job of salespeople to turn nos into yeses; it’s simply not what they do. Instead, we turn “Let me think about it” into a yes, and “Let me call you back” into a yes, and “I need to speak to my wife” into a yes, and “It’s a bad time of year” into a yes.

objections are merely smoke screens for uncertainty for one or all of the Three Tens.

more than 95 percent of the time, the common objections are merely ploys on the part of the prospect, who would rather bow out of the sale gracefully than have to look the salesperson in the eye and confront them about their lack of certainty concerning the Three Tens.

Belfort, Jordan. Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling: Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success (p. 27). Gallery Books. Kindle Edition.

The Straightline System

“The key here is that, from literally the first word out of your mouth, everything you say and everything you do is designed to keep your prospect on the straight line, and slowly nudge him forward, from the open to the close."

with every single word you say there’s one specific goal in mind, and that’s to move the prospect down the straight line towards the close; that’s it. There are no free words, no time for stupid statements, and no time to go off to Pluto and talk about the price of tea in China.

“When you’re speaking, it’s directed. It’s powerful. Your words have meaning behind them; and the meaning is to create massive certainty in the mind of your prospect as you move him down the straight line, from the open to the close.”

“So, again, that’s what’s happening when you’re directly on the straight line. You’re the one doing all the talking, and your client is listening. And when you’re off the straight line, but still inside the boundaries, right here and here”—I point to the spaces—“it’s the prospect who’s doing the talking, and you’re doing the listening.

“You see, with the Straight Line, you need to gather intelligence—and I mean massive intelligence—which goes far beyond trying to figure out whether or not a prospect is financially qualified.

“When you gather intelligence from a prospect, you’re doing all of the following things: 
“First, you’re identifying their needs—and not just their core need but also any secondary needs or ‘problems’ they might have. 
“Second, you’re identifying any core beliefs they might have that could impact the sale, such as not feeling comfortable working over the phone or with making quick decisions, and also not trusting salespeople in general. 
“Third, you want to find out about any past experiences they’ve had with similar products, both good and bad, and how they feel about the salespeople they bought them from. 
“Fourth, you want to identify their values—meaning, what things are most important to them? Are they looking for growth or income, or do they want to set themselves up for retirement, or to give their profits to a certain charity, or a religious institution? It can even be that the prospect is an action junkie and they’re in it for the thrills. 
“Fifth, you want to identify their financial standards, insofar as what level of wealth and spending ability they need to have to feel good about themselves. 
“Sixth, where their pain lies—meaning, what’s keeping them up at night? What’s that one single financial worry that sits at the very base of their skull and weighs them down, like an anchor? “You see, at the end of the day, it’s knowing your prospect’s pain and, if necessary, amplifying that pain; if they’re currently in denial, that’s going to help you close the tougher sales. 
“And seventh, you need to identify where they stand financially, in terms of how much money they have in the market right now, how liquid they are, how much money they typically invest into an idea they like, and how much they are liquid for overall.

“So, getting back to the Straight Line: “When you’re off the line, you’re looking to 
(a) continue building on the rapport that you already have, and 
(b) use that rapport to help you gather the more invasive intelligence, like how liquid the prospect currently is. “And at the same time, you’re always making sure that the encounter stays within the boundaries, as you continue the process of moving the sale down the Straight Line, towards the close. “Essentially, those are the three basic tenets of the front half of the Straight Line:

3 Tennants of The First Half
You must take immediate of control the sale. 
You must engage in massive intelligence gathering, while you simultaneously build massive rapport with your prospect. 
You must smoothly transition into a Straight Line presentation, so you can begin the process of building absolute certainty for each of the Three Tens.

it’s the back half of the sale where the real selling begins! This is when you finally get the chance to roll up your sleeves and get down to cases—meaning, to get to the bottom of what’s really holding your prospect back, which is certainly not the objection they gave you; that’s merely a smoke screen for uncertainty!

“Every word, every phrase, every question you ask, every tonality you use; every single one of them should have the same ultimate goal in mind, which is to increase the prospect’s level of certainty as much as humanly possible, so that by the time you get to the close, he’s feeling so incredibly certain that he almost has to say yes. That’s your goal.

“Every word that comes out of your mouth is feeding into one single goal, which is to increase your prospect’s level of certainty to the highest possible level, as you’re moving him down the straight line towards the close. Here—let me draw it out for you on the board."

I told them to act as if. I said, “Act as if you’re a wealthy man, rich already, and you will become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence, and you will become confident. Act as if you have all the answers and the answers will come to you!”

The simple fact is that the ability to close the deal is the single most important distinction, bar none, when it comes to achieving wealth and success, and you guys literally own that skill at the highest level.

I kept pounding the Strattonites with a twice-daily combination of skills training and motivation; and with each passing day the success stories grew crazier and crazier.

Looping is a simple yet highly effective objection-handling strategy that allows a salesperson to take each individual objection and use it as an opportunity to further increase a prospect’s level of certainty, without breaking rapport, and then seamlessly transition into a close.

In many ways, the art of looping is the so-called “secret sauce” to the Straight Line System (or at least to the back half of it)—as it allows a salesperson to increase a prospect’s level of certainty in small increments, as opposed to all at once.

In other words, each objection creates the opportunity to loop; and each loop results in a further increase to a prospect’s level of certainty; and as each loop is completed, the prospects find themselves that much farther down the line, and that much closer to the close.

THE FIVE CORE ELEMENTS OF THE STRAIGHT LINE SYSTEM 1 The prospect must love your product. 2 The prospect must trust and connect with you. 3 The prospect must trust and connect with your company. 4 Lower the action threshold. 5 Raise the pain threshold.

standard Straight Line response to an initial objection, which is: “I hear what you’re saying, Bill, but let me ask you a question: Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?” (Are you comfortable with the solution?)

With this one particular pattern, you’re going to accomplish two crucial outcomes simultaneously: first, you’re looking to increase your prospect’s level of logical certainty to as close to a 10 as possible; and second, you’re looking to begin the process of increasing your prospect’s level of emotional certainty to as close to a 10 as possible.

You’re going to say, in a sympathetic tone: “Now, that I can understand. You don’t know me, and I don’t have the luxury of a track record; so let me take a moment to reintroduce myself. “My name is [your first and last name], and I’m a [your title] at [the name of your company], and I’ve been there for [actual number] years, and I pride myself on

Lowering the Action Threshold
Offer a money-back guarantee
Offer a reverse contract period
Paint a picture that runs counter to their doubts "We pride ourselves in a great customer experience" "We want long-term relationships"
Rewrite their future scripts to have a long positive and low negative
If you have second doubts, just decline the meeting
If this works out you possibly solved your problem and set yourself up for success with us here at Confluent

Activate the pain threshold
Use fear of not solving the problem

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