Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling: Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success

In fact, since the day we’d made the switch, the brokers had been complaining about the increased number of objections and how difficult they were to overcome. And while there was some degree of truth to it, it wasn’t nearly as difficult as they were making it out to be, not even close. There’re thousands of objections? Give me a break!

For a moment, I considered taking immediate action against the rabble-rousing Strattonite who’d mentioned the V-word, but I decided against it.

It was time to call these guys out on their bullshit, once and for all. “Fair enough,” I said, with a hint of sarcasm. “Since you guys are so sure about these thousands of objections, I want to list every single one of them right now.” And, with that, I turned to the whiteboard and grabbed a black Magic Marker off the ledge of the stand and raised it to the center of the board. “Go ahead!” I continued. “Start calling them all out, and then I’ll rattle off all the answers for you, one by one, so you can see how easy this is. Come on, let’s go!”

The Strattonites began to shift uncomfortably in their seats. They looked utterly dumbfounded, like a family of deer caught in the headlights, but not nearly as cute.

“Come on,” I pressed. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“ ‘I want to think about it!’ ” one finally yelled.

“Good,” I replied, and I wrote the objection on the whiteboard. “He wants to think about it. That’s a great start. Keep going.”

“He wants you to call back!” shouted another.

“Okay,” I replied, writing that one down too. “Wants a call back. What else?”

“ ‘Send me some information!’ ”

“Okay, that’s a good one,” I remarked, jotting it down as well. “Keep going. I’ll make it easy and we’ll shoot for a thousand. There’s only 997 to go.” I flashed them a sarcastic grin. “It’s totally doable.”

“ ‘It’s a bad time of year!’ ” someone yelled.

“Good,” I shot back. “Keep going.”

“ ‘I need to speak to my wife!’ ” yelled another.

“Or his business partner!” shouted yet another.

“Excellent,” I said calmly, writing both objections down. “We’re making serious progress here. There are only 994 to go. Keep going.”

“ ‘I’m not liquid right now!’ ” yelled a broker.

“Ah, now, that’s good a one!” I said quickly, scribbling it down on the board. “Although, you have to admit that you’re not getting that one quite as much since we started calling rich people. Anyway, let’s keep going. There are only 993 to go.”

“ ‘I only deal with my local broker!’ ” one of them yelled.

“ ‘I never heard of your firm before!’ ” shouted another.

“ ‘I’ve been burnt before!’ ”

“ ‘I don’t like the market right now!’ ”

“ ‘I’m too busy!’ ”

“ ‘I don’t trust you!’ ”

“ ‘I don’t make quick decisions!’ ”

And on and on they went—calling out objection after objection, as I wrote each one down, in progressively worse handwriting. By the time they were done, I’d covered the entire surface of the board with every objection they could possibly think of . . . which, at the end of the day, turned out to be only fourteen.

That’s right. There were only fourteen objections, and half of them were variations of two: First, that it was a bad time of year, as in it’s tax time, summertime, back-to-school time, Christmastime, Miller time, Groundhog Day. And second, that they needed to speak to someone else, as in their spouse, their lawyer, their business partner, their accountant, their local broker, their local soothsayer, their local Tooth Fairy.

What a bunch of crap! I thought.

For the last four weeks, the Strattonites had been going on and on about how impossible it was to deal with these “thousands of objections,” to the point where, in my darkest hour, they had almost convinced me that they were right—that there were simply too many objections for the average salesperson to handle and that the success that Danny and I were having was another example of the difference between natural born closers and everyone else. Yet it had all been a bunch of crap!

All at once, I felt my face growing hot.

In retrospect, even before I had invented the Straight Line System, I always knew that there wasn’t any real difference between one objection and another. But, somehow, seeing them all scribbled out on the whiteboard this way highlighted just how interchangeable they all really were. In fact, it was in that very moment that it truly hit me that, at the end of the day, they were all basically the same—that the common objections were nothing more than smoke screens for what was really holding a prospect back, which was a lack of certainty.