Unlock The Sales Game With Ari Galper

Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

 

Sales may be a real-world problem, but most salespeople live in a world of fantasy, full of impervious myths peddled by one “sales guru” after another. Ari Galper disdains these myths and dismantles them one by one through Unlock the Game, a revolutionary sales approach that overturns the notion of selling as we know it. Ari is the world’s number one authority on trust-based selling who offers his top-notch services to clients in over 35 countries. Does sales seem like a futile exercise of chasing ghosts? Are you constantly encountering resistance right from the get-go? If you’re experiencing any of these, then you are definitely doing a thing or two wrong. Listen in as Ari joins John Livesay in this episode to discuss the most common myths and pitfalls that salespeople fall prey to and shares the best practices that will turn your sales process around.

—

Listen to the podcast here

 

Unlock The Sales Game With Ari Galper

Our guest on the show is Ari Galper, the author of Unlock The Sales Game. We talk about the importance of storytelling and he has an impressive compelling story to open the episode with. We then talk about some sales myths and why they’re no longer true if they ever were. Finally, he gives us some core principles, some actual new statements to say when we’re trying to get someone to buy something from us. Enjoy the episode.

—

Our guest is Ari Galper. He is the world’s number one authority on trust-based selling and is one of the most expensive sales growth advisors in the world. He’s the creator of Unlock The Game, a completely new revolutionary sales approach that overturns the notion of selling as we know it. With clients in over 35 countries, his global sales system has become the most successful trust-based selling systems of our time. He’s been featured in all magazines like Inc. and Forbes, including the Australian Financial Review. In a day and age where technology rules the selling world for many growth-oriented businesses, authenticity and trust have taken a back seat to the sales process. Unlock The Game puts trust back into the selling in such an elegant and natural way that the truth quickly emerges between the seller and the buyer so that the painful and arduous chasing process no longer has to happen to make a sale. Ari, welcome to the show.

Thanks, John, for having me. I appreciate it.

We were chatting a little bit before the show. I asked you about your experience not only as a trust builder and unlocking this thing that’s been in the back seat for far too long. I agree with you, but you also practice Aikido, which diffuses conflict. That might be a fun place to start. Did you start your sales experience or Aikido first?

The sales experience happened first. The story behind that and my whole philosophy is based upon the Aikido concept of defusing resistance first and trying to overcome resistance. Karate and Taekwondo are linear arts where when someone attacks you, you try and overcome the resistance and you back defend. Aikido is different. If someone comes at you, rather than trying to defend or hit back, you step aside and you diffuse the resistance. The concept is at the end, no one gets hurt. I took that philosophy and bolted it underneath my sales approach, and the rest is history.

One of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is you have this amazing story about when you were in the trenches. I know storytelling is part of your process as it is mine. I always like to have people who have been in the field as opposed to just writing a book about what they imagine it’s like. Would you tell us that story of when you thought you were going to get a yes for sure, and then one little accident caused you to have a big awakening?

About many years ago, I was a sales manager in a software company. We launched the first online website tracking statistics tools to track website behavior. It is now called Google Analytics, but it had a different name a long time ago. It costs money back then and now it’s free. Essentially, we lost the first online product and a fast-growing business. I had underneath me about eighteen salespeople and I was the manager of the group. Big leads came across my desk. I’ve got big opportunities. One lead crossed my desk. It was a big company. I recognized the name.

They had lots of websites, a big opportunity for the company. If I close this one sale, it will double the revenue of the company with one sale. That’s how big it was. As you can imagine, we’re excited. The whole team was high-fiving me. They were like, “Good luck, Ari. Get that sale.” I was trying to relax and be my normal self. I called the guy back. We had a nice conversation. He’s my contact there. He agreed to a conference call, and we did a webinar to demonstrate what we do on our tool. They finally came on a Friday at 4:00 in the afternoon. I’ll never forget it. I went into the conference room with my CEO and I closed the door behind me. We closed the blinds. No one could look inside the room. In the room, there was a long conference table. On the middle of the table was a speakerphone, the ones with the three legs on it like a spaceship, the corporate ones.

I’ve been there many times in my career. I am in the story. I love it.

I sat in the room and I hit the on the button and the dial tone came up and I dialed the number that he gave me. My contact says, “Hello.” We said, “Hello, how’s it going?” We have a bit of a chat. He says to me, “Ari, let us tell you who’s with us in the room today.” I was like, “Sure, I’d like to know that.” The next thing I hear is, “My name is Mike, I’m CEO.” I was like, “CEO of the whole company. I had no idea.” I then hear, “My name is John, I’m head of IT.” “This is even perfect.” “My name’s Julia. I’m the head of marketing.” It was amazing. Everybody on this phone call was a decision-maker.

[bctt tweet=”There is an invisible river of tension in all sales calls.” username=”John_Livesay”]

They were all there in one place. This is the perfect sales call you’d ever imagine because it’s going to happen right there or not. I was relaxed and stayed calm as much as I could. I introduced myself. We then begin the live demo over the web to show them one of the websites. We collected the data in advanced to show them what it looks like to log in and see their visitors, to flag around the stats around that. These were the early days of the internet. I was showing this to them online and I start hearing this noise in the phone call like, “This is great. I can’t believe we can see this information. This is fantastic.” They started asking me questions like, “How does it work? How do we install it?” There was almost like a love fest on the phone.

They were acting like they already had the product. They’re trying to have you talk about what’s life going to be like after it’s in.

They had all the right questions and I had all the right answers. It was fluid and I was like, “This is wonderful.” I was a student at selling at the time. I had the CDs in my car back then, and the books on my shelves. I went to the gurus’ seminars. I was studying and I answered objections. I built a rapport. I told stories. I was doing everything I was told to do. They were loving it. My boss in the corner was like, “High five, nice job.” He’s on the phone calling for the car. He wants to go to the bonus money like the wheels, the color of the car. He’s excited. Honestly, this could not have been a better call.

An hour goes by and the call comes to a close and my contact says to me, “Ari, this is great. This is what we need. We love it. Give us a call a couple of weeks, follow-up with us, and we’ll move this thing forward.” I said to myself, “Thank you, God. What an amazing ending.” I was excited. I took my hand to reach for the phone in the middle of the table to the off button. As I’m reaching for the off button, by complete accident or divine intervention, my thumb hit the mute button instead of the off button. They were right next to each other and I hit the wrong button by accident. A small click happened and they hung up the phone. That split second, a voice inside of me said, “Ari, go to the dark side, go where no one has ever gone before the sales world. Be a fly on the wall. You got nothing to lose.” In that split second, I pulled my thumb back for a moment. They started talking amongst themselves, thinking I had left the call. You probably know what happens here, but what would you imagine them said after a call like that? What’s the normal thing you would imagine them saying?

The normal thing and what we all hope when we get that feedback is, “Let’s pull the trigger. Everybody agrees. Yes. Set up the next call and sign the IPO. Send them the order form.”

It’s a no-brainer. Let me tell you what they said verbatim, word for word. I’ll never forget it. That’s why we’re here. They said, “We’re not going to go with him. Keep using him for more information and make sure we shop someplace else cheaper.” Knife in the heart twist. I was in a state of shock. I hit the off button, move to the wall, and I said to myself, “What did I do wrong?” I was competent. I was sharing concepts. I built a rapport. I answered objections. I told a story. I did everything I’m supposed to be doing in selling. I asked myself, “Why were they afraid to tell me the truth?” I realized at that moment that finally hit me that somewhere along the way, it has become socially acceptable not to hold the truth to people who sell.

We’re doing it to them.

It’s okay to say things like, “It sounds good. Send me the information. We’re definitely interested,” without having any intention of buying.

I talk about this in terms of people say, “I’m interested. Send me information.” They don’t even get as much positive feedback as you had. People start celebrating and I’m like, “You’re in the friend zone at work.” Just because someone’s interested, it doesn’t mean they’re buying. You got up to what I call the intriguing rung of the ladder which is, “Tell us more. We’re intrigued. This sounds incredible.” You’re inches away from what you think you have is irresistible to them. Until that paperwork is signed, you never know. What’s unique about this story and if you’ve been in sales at all or you’ve been in that situation and you scratch your head. Especially if you are someone who comes from truth, integrity, and you can’t imagine ever doing that to someone, you think to yourself, “How did I read the room wrong? How is my radar off in who else can I not trust that I’ve been trusting?” It can do a mind game with you.

I asked myself at that moment, “Why were they afraid to not tell me the truth?”

If they want to use you, they’re not going to tell you.

I realized at that moment that there is an invisible river of pressure that flows underneath every sales and pre-sales conversation you have with someone. If you aren’t constantly aware of that going on, you don’t remove the pressure from the sales process, you will always never build enough trust with someone. They will feel uncomfortable and vulnerable to tell you where they stand. Therein lies the core behind our whole Unlock The Sales Game mindset approach where our objective is shifted from letting go of the end goal of the sale, to instead focus 100% only on building trust with people.

This is great and you’re busting the myths. The old myth of sales training that I went through back in the day was, “Try to get them to say yes as many times as possible. By the time you ask them to buy, they’re already nodding their head and they’re used to saying yes.” You’re flipping the script on that and saying, “No, get them to say no.”

I’m saying your goal is not the sale. Your goal instead is the truth of where they stand. That mindset shift is everything. We’ll walk through examples of how to use this. That mental shift is a game-changer because that allows you to be present with people and believe me, they can tell a mile away if you think you have that next step with them in a split second. That’s where we’re going to go with this.

That’s an amazing story to open the show with. Thank you. I love the story. It’s memorable. It tugs at the heartstrings to do everything right and there’s a takeaway, which is even better. That’s what a good story does. Is there anything else you want to talk about in terms of storytelling before we move on to some other myths that you’re busting?

That is the story and the premise behind this whole shift in thinking, and that was a painful experience for me. That pain got me to the truth of why is it going on in the industry and the fact that we accepted it as normal. We’d be conditioned to not be aware of how to be able to penetrate that wall of distrust. I hope that your readers can learn from this and use some of what I’m about to share, to help them break through that wall of distrust, get the truth to become more successful and not chase ghosts. Do you know what ghosts are?

It’s like being ghosted in dating. You don’t hear back from them.

People will say, “It sounds good. I’m interested. Call me next week.” They spend 80% of the time chasing ghosts and never know the truth of where they stand. If this is a total flip, you can eliminate the chasing game, imagine their possible revenue opportunities, and your state of mind and insanity as well.

[bctt tweet=”Stop chasing ghosts.” username=”John_Livesay”]

Especially that because that’s what causes burnout. This fear of rejection is high in salespeople. One of the things I’ve heard is whoever is asking the questions, that’s who controls the conversation. Is that a myth or do you think that’s true?

There’s a layer beneath that. It’s the person that is building trust cautiously with the other person is the one who is able to create this bubble of vulnerability, while the other person feels comfortable to tell them the truth. From that point forward, you both can decide if you’re a fit together. If you’re a fit, then you either engage or you disengage. We set up the situation so you’re not locked into a yes mode. You open it up to see if it’s a fit or not. If it’s not a fit, you disengage. You walk away with your integrity and your head held high.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed watching your videos from your talks is this concept of the two most common objections we all get. It’s I don’t have enough money, this is too expensive or this isn’t the right time. You have a wonderful phrase that you teach people that I would love you to share. From there, that’s going to trigger all emotion in our audience and more questions. Whatever my objection is, you have the same answer to it. “It’s too expensive. Sorry, we don’t have enough time. This isn’t the right time for us to make a change.” You say what?

With typical traditional selling, when you get an objection, you’re supposed to overcome it. We’re taught that by all the gurus. The problem with that is if they’re giving you an objection that they believe is true and you try to overcome it with them, you break trust with them instantly. The sale is overdone right at that moment because you’re trying to overcome something that they believe is true. You lost the ability to connect with them. I have a whole body of work around trust-based languaging. Not scripts, but phrases you use that does not risk the relationship and re-engage again in real-time and natural flow. Let’s get to this example. We have training around this, but the concept is this. If someone gives you an objection coming to your direction like the Aikido thing, if someone gives you a pressure on you like, “Your price is too high,” for instance. What would be the number one response to that in sales?

“You don’t see the value of it. We have a payment plan,” whatever.

You defend yourself, “We’re the best. We have this.” You start to defend, get your shoulders up and say, “We can work with that.” We either get passive or aggressive. There are only two options. Our approach is different. We’re going to diffuse the pressure to preserve the relationship to re-engage again. It’s the same scenario. The guy says that your prices too high. In this specific situation, what we’re going to say is, “You’re absolutely right.” Here’s the operative word. “It can be perceived as high. If you haven’t had a chance to use it in your company, see the results, document it, and get the ROI. You’re absolutely right, it appears that way from the outside in. There is no doubt about that.” Now stop for a second at the role play. What did I do right there?

You made me feel right. I then feel like, “I’m not arm wrestling you anymore. You said I’m right. You gave me a reason why I should feel right.”

They’re expecting you to defend yourself or negotiate lower prices. That’s the game. That’s called the sales game. We unlock that process by going, “I’m not going to play that game with you. It’s nothing personal, but I don’t operate in that level of that plane.” It can be perceived as high as a true statement. Can it? It’s perceived because you hadn’t had a chance to use it. Obviously, it’s going to be high. It’s logical. It makes sense what they’re saying. You then re-engage with this, “Would you be open to us re-looking at the issues you want to try and solve, and make sure that those problems you want to solve have enough ROI behind it to justify solving them?”

You could use this in a lot of scenarios. You and I are both speakers and we have agents that typically negotiate for us, but that price thing comes up all the time. We’ve never paid more than X for a speaker and that’s below what your minimum is. I love that you could say, “I could see where that would be perceived as a high fee. You’ve never heard me speak. You’ve seen a video clip. Would you be open to going back to the whole purpose of what the sales meetings about in the first place?” It’s like, “We get one more salesperson to close one more sale at $50,000. That seems like that would be an ROI, but maybe not.” It’s that conversation where they’re going, “I got it.” When I called on ad agencies, their job was to get the lowest cost per $1,000. They analyze how many readers you have and you get a bonus if you get them to lower their price every year. The price goes up. We didn’t have any of this training. It was a nightmare for everybody.

 

It might be helpful if you want to go through some of the sales myths that might help uncover some of this, that people are probably going to be shocked. We’ve been conditioned over the years to believe certain things. Our construct is narrow and I want to bust some of the myths that I think will be helpful for you to understand where we’re coming from. One key myth is this concept called, sales is a numbers game.

Keep calling and calling. I hate that.

The more contacts you make, supposedly the more sales you make. We discovered in our research that it is not how many contacts you make anymore. It’s about how deep you go on each conversation, not how good you are at making more calls, having more contacts or more LinkedIn connections. It’s not about that. It’s how good you are at trust-building. If you aren’t thinking about how good you are at trust-building, you’re missing the whole point of your time and efforts. That’s number one. Number two is that the sale is lost at the end of the process. I’m sure you’ve been there before, John, where you had to deal pending and you worked hard for it.

It’s a green light and at the end, it falls through. They don’t send the contract over and you’re like, “What the heck? What happened?” We discovered in this economy now that the sale is not lost anymore at the end of the process. You lost it at the beginning of the process. I’ll prove it to you in a fun way. If someone calls you on the phone and they say to you, “My name is, I’m with, we are a.” What goes through your mind in about three seconds?

You’re a solicitor.

It’s over at hello. I’ll make the case that most of your readers are losing their sales, not at the end of the process. We’re losing it where?

At the beginning.

It’s the opposite of what they’ve been trained to think about because it’s always been about the sale. It turns out that if you don’t build enough trust at hello, it’s over there and not the end.

I was hired by a real estate company to train their real estate agents that answered phones about setting up appointments for listings and things. They were saying what we’ve all heard 100 times, “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” I said, “That’s so scripted. Nobody talks to people like that.” They go, “We want to get their names so they can use their name in the conversation to try and build trust.” I’m like, “Let me role play with somebody.” They’re like, “You haven’t been trained as an agent, are you sure?” I’m like, “It’s fine.” I said, “This is John with so-and-so real estate.” The person goes, “I have a question about a listing in a house down the street.” I’m like, “I’m sure you didn’t catch my name because I said it so fast at the beginning. My name again is John and you are?” It was little things that people don’t even begin to have a real authentic conversation.

[bctt tweet=”Sales is not a numbers game. It is a trust-building game.” username=”John_Livesay”]

There’s one more myth I’ll cover and this is a big one. The idea that rejection is a part of the sales process and game. It came from the old sales managers who said to you over the years, “If you can’t take a no, if you weren’t tough enough, if you can’t get out there and take the bullets, you aren’t made for success.” That’s the old messaging that we’re being brought up to believe. We discovered that rejection is triggered by certain things you say and do unconsciously that caused the other person to put their guard up, push back, make you chase them, and not tell you the truth.

I brought enough personal triggers in my own life. Let’s get trigger around rejection. What causes people to reject us?

Let’s talk about the principles that will roll into it then behind our Unlock The Game concept. Our core principle number one is the idea of always be diffusing pressure in the conversation. Always seeking yourself, “How can I hit the sales pressure out of this so do they feel I’m authentic and I care about them,” which is hopefully where you’re at. Let me give you an example of a live scenario using our languaging and our approach to how we handle this. Let’s say you’re on the phone with somebody for a first phone call or first lead. You’re on the phone with a potential client. Good conversation and it looks like a good opportunity for you. The chemistry is good. It all looks positive and you’re heading to the end of the call. The call comes to a close. What do we normally say to a call like that? We say, “How about we get together? How about we have the next step?” We’ve been trained to move people forward, that’s how we’ve been trained by the old gurus. What could happen if you try and move somebody forward and they aren’t ready yet? What do you break with them right there at the beginning of your process?

I feel pressured. I’m out.

Your trust is over. They won’t tell you this the whole time that it’s over. They’ll play the game with you, but you’ve broken the trust. The same scenario, but our mindset and our languaging. The call is going well. It’s your first to call with somebody, with a good opportunity. The call comes to an end, and rather than saying, “How about we schedule another call? How about we move forward?” What we say instead is, “Where do you think we should go from here?”

They’re in the driver’s seat.

What’s happening there is a power shift where they now feel they’re in control. When you say that to somebody, they’re usually in a state of shock. They can’t believe somebody in business asked them what they want to do. This is astounding for them. Do you know what starts to happen? They say to you, “I’ve got one more question.” All of a sudden what comes out is the truth. At the beginning of your process, you begin with them by you not trying to move them forward. It is counter-cultural to a traditional sale which is all about moving them to the next step.

Believe me, they know when they’re on your process and it’s over when they feel that from you. When you say that to somebody, you send the message, “I’m with you now, 100%. I’m listening.” Listening takes active concentration, not hearing, which is passive. One of the triggers of rejection is languaging. The phrases that you use to trigger an association of you being with the negative salesperson, stereotype. The other trigger is delivery. What do you notice when I said, “Where do you think we should go from here?”

A lot of pauses and a soft voice. I’m always saying that competent people are comfortable with silence and stressful people are not.

 

If you weren’t centered in your mindset, you’ll rush through it, you’ll sound scripted and unnatural. When you lower your voice and you’re relaxed and you say that to somebody, they feel almost obligated to step in, save you and bring you back up again. It’s human nature to step in to help people who aren’t walking on top of them. Part of the languaging and being centered in our mindset is about how to deliver this in the most authentic way possible to send the message that I’m not here for the next step. I’m here for your challenge right now.

You have another question that I love when people give an objection that we talked about. Would you set that one up too? I’m guessing that’s one of your principles. It’s one of the all-time favorites.

Why don’t you give me an objection you imagine?

“This isn’t the right time for us to make any changes.”

We have this magic phrase that we use whenever we get resistance like that. Things like, “We don’t have the time or we don’t have the budget.” How about, “We’re using somebody else. Thank you.” That’s a classic one. Let’s say if someone says we already have another vendor or we’re using someone. It’s common. The phrase you always say to create enough space for you to stay calm and re-engage again is you are going to say, “That’s not a problem.” “I don’t have the time.” “That’s not a problem.” “We don’t have a budget.” “That’s not a problem.” That’s the first thing you say to slow things down, to slow motion because you’ll react fast with defensiveness when someone challenges you like that. “We can’t afford it.” “Wait for a second, you can’t.” We’re conditioned to react and hit back to overcome the moment.

We get stuck in the game and we’re like, “How did I get here?” If you can stay centered and relax and use, “That’s not a problem.” When they hear that from you, they go “Really, it’s not a problem?” They get confused. They’re expecting that. They’re expecting a reaction back. When you say it to them, “That’s not a problem,” they open their mind up waiting for what’s next. There is the next step. The first step is to defuse the moment and have them recognize you’re not going to play the game with them anymore. They can back off a bit. After saying, “That’s not a problem” when they say to you, “We’re using someone else,” you can say this, “I wasn’t looking to replace who you’re currently using.” That’s the first thing you say. What does that do by saying to somebody, “I wasn’t looking to replace what you’re currently using.” What’s happening there?

That’s even more confusing because it’s like, “If it’s not a problem and you don’t want to replace the person, are you thinking I have a budget to hire two people?”

The wall of defensiveness is coming down. They’re like, “That’s good.” You’re relaxing them by diffusing the pressure with the languaging. You’d say, “I wasn’t looking to replace who you’re currently using.” You then say this, “I wanted to see if you’d be open to a different perspective on how you guys track your visitors that you may not have access to before or seen before. Would you be open to that?”

That’s it. Now, you’ve taken down that defensiveness, and 9 out of 10 people love to think of themselves as open-minded. It’s part of their job to look at all the options. Even if it’s just you and you’re running your own show, you’re like, “I’m an open-minded person. No, I’m not open to hearing any other options that are available to me in the world.”

[bctt tweet=”Sales only sucks if you focus on the end goal instead of on the truth.” username=”John_Livesay”]

The keyword there is, would you be open? The sales world is typically, would you be interested? Never again use the word interested forever after this show. That’s the sales word that sets alarms off. Instead, always use these words, “Would you be open,” because the word open doesn’t force them into a yes or no. It creates an open space. It gives them permission to tell you the truth. We get no space to engage as we’re wired to chase the next opportunity.

It’s a whole game changer. I can see why you’re in such demand. The book is called Unlock The Sales Game. You can see how Ari has shown us how to unlock each lock on someone’s head, their heart and their gut. I believe you first got to make people safe. It’s a fight or flight response. Once you diffuse that response, then you might get them to say, “Would you be open,” and then, “Yes.” It then can get into the head a little bit without all those other blocks and reaction happening.

If you remove the noise from the sales process you create a deep human connection, which is called real trust. Not fake trust. Fake trust is the whole rapport-building thing, “How are your kids doing? I love that golf on your wall there. How’s it going over there in Milwaukee?” That’s fake rapport. We’re talking about real trust. It’s when you remove the noise, you connect with them at a deep level, and they can sense that you are present in their world, not your world. I’ll give you one key phrase for everyone to know, and take an oath with me to remove this forever for the rest of your lives.

It’s open, not interested, then we’re no longer going to say the next steps.

This is a new one now. For those who have been in sales for a long time, this might hurt a bit. I’m going to ask everyone to remove this phrase forever and never use it again, it’s follow-up.

I’m following up on a call, a voicemail or an email.

What’s the only industry in the world that uses the word follow-up? It’s sales. You’re trying to be heart-centered and authentic in helping people but your languaging screams the opposite, “I’m giving you a call to follow-up on our last proposal.” They’re like, “What?” It’s over at hello. There are classic ones. Do you remember the old days? There are a few other ones like, “I’ve given you a call to check-in.” That’s a classic one. There’s one more, “I’m giving you a call to touch base.” It’s classic sales 101, the 1980s. These were all horrible words that will kill your trust right there. Let me give you the answer to all of this, which I have in our work here.

Rather than say hi or tap an email, “I’m writing to you to follow-up.” You say, “I’m giving you a call to see if you have any feedback.” Don’t ever ask questions. That’s cross-examination like a lawyer. You say, “I’m giving you a call to see if you have any feedback on our previous conversation, any feedback on our proposal or any feedback on my previous X.” You go backwards, not forwards. Follow-up and touch base is moving things to the sale. When you say feedback, you’re going in the opposite direction. You’re moving the momentum. You’re taking the pressure out. When you say to them, “I’m giving you a call to get feedback on our previous conversation.” Do you know what starts happening? They start talking. They tell you the truth. They tell you everything like, “This guy was right.” It’s like a dam opens up. They’re like, “I got some feedback for you. Here it is.” It comes rolling out their chest. It’s amazing what happens when you change your mindset and your languaging.

That has got to be one of the most insightful things I’ve ever heard from a guest, and I’ve had over 300 guests. The concept of pressure moving forward, destressing people, let’s go back and see if there’s feedback on what we’ve discussed. It causes you to rethink it without making you move forward at a pace that you’re not ready to. How can people find you to hire you as a speaker, to take your course or learn more about how to unlock the sales game so that they can get feedback and never ask people if they’re interested in anything or ask anybody for a next step?

 

Go to UnlockTheGame.com and there is a free course that they can register for. My book is there. We have a couple of interesting courses that we have in our membership program. One of the courses we finished is called the One Call Sale. How do you onboard somebody on a preset consultation phone call without closing, without pressure, without proposals, and without next steps out of one phone call? It’s a powerful course. You can check that out when you’re in there. After our free course, you can access that. This requires somebody who’s willing to challenge their own thinking and evolve into the future. If you’re stuck in your old ways, please do not approach us because we can’t help you. You got to be open-minded and challenging your current thinking.

It’s a choice. We can continue to be like what Blockbuster was and be, “This is working. Why would we change it,” or be like Netflix and go, “Maybe we should come up with something else besides mailing out an envelope with a disc in it.”

I’ll tell you a funny story. You’ll enjoy this. I was brought to a company in 2019 with a big opportunity, a big sales team and a multimillion-dollar business. I did a talk with a sales team and they enjoy what they heard. They have me come in and discuss moving forward. I told them that my fee was high on a retainer basis. I came in to the conference room myself, they had the sales and the CEO in this conference room. It’s a similar story before, but a little different. The guy says to me, “Ari, we like your program and stuff, but your fee is way too high. We’ve never paid anybody that money before as a consultant from the outside. We need from you a proposal. We need it broken down by ROI. We need to see a document that lays this so we can go to our board to justify getting that fee.”

That’s not a problem.

This is more black belt level now that I’m getting done. What I said to him was, “We don’t do proposals. We don’t know how to do proposals. We’re not in the proposal business. We’re in solve the sales problem business. That’s what we do.” He was in complete shock, John. He turned white and said, “What?” He then said to me, “For that amount of money every month, how much of your time do we get for that?” I said to him, “Not much. It’s not about time. It’s about focusing in on solving the problem. If we have to do a lot of time, that means we’re not focused.” He said, “We’re doing well already. We’re doing $8 million a year. We have sales coming in. Why should we invest in this to change?” I said, “It’s not about how much money you’re making. It’s about the 80% that you’re losing by chasing all these deals that never get closed that falls through your fingertips. All those losses justify this.” The CEO in the corner is listening to the whole thing. He gets up and he says to us, “Enough of the game’s already, just invoice us. Let’s get you paid and get it started right away.”

You have to be confident in who you are and what you do, and not be attached to the results. People can smell that a mile away, just like in dating, if you’re desperate or not. If you are that confident in what you do and you kept shifting the focus of time.

Your prospect wants to frame you. They want to put you in a frame, which gives them control to trigger like a pinball in the pinball machine. They want to be able to control everything, make you bounce and jump, and put your hopes. They want you to play the game with them. We unlocked that game in the beginning. We let them know that we don’t play those games, but we will focus on solving your problem. It’s up to you to choose what you want to do. We walk away from those who can’t accept that and that’s the end of it.

You look at how much time you saved by not chasing people who are going to ghost you anyway.

It’s called the hopium. Do you know the hopium drug? We hope we got the deal and we never get it. The hopium, “It was a great meeting. They loved it.” You go back to the office, “We’re looking good.” You then have this hopium drug in your body. You are so excited and you chase them down, and they will call you back. You just detox the whole hopium. You’re like, “Sales suck,” because you don’t focus on the truth. You focus on the end goal.

I love that it’s about how many deep relationships you have, and not how many conversations you have. That’s true in social media and everything else. What a great gift you’re giving the world, literally. Thank you for being on the show and sharing your wisdom and your insights. I appreciate you. Thanks.

Thank you, John.

 

Important Links

• Unlock The Sales Game
• https://UnlockTheGame.com/
• Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

 

Wanna Host Your Own Podcast?

Click here to see how my friends at Podetize can help

Purchase John’s new book

The Sale Is in the Tale

John Livesay, The Pitch Whisperer

Share The Show

Did you enjoy the show? I’d love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!

• Click this link
• Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork
• Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section
• Click on ‘Write a Review’

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

Join The Successful Pitch community today:

• JohnLivesay.com
• John Livesay Facebook
• John Livesay Twitter
• John Livesay LinkedIn
• John Livesay YouTube