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

In fact, now that I thought about it, no matter what objection the prospect hit me with, I would never just answer it and ask for the order again. That would be pointless, since the objection was merely a smoke screen for uncertainty. By itself, in fact, all an answer would do (even a perfect one) is force a prospect to shift to a new objection, because the root problem still hadn’t been addressed.

In consequence, after I answered an objection, I would then loop back to the beginning of the sale and make a follow-up presentation that picked up where my initial presentation had left off—with a goal of increasing the prospect’s state of certainty for all three Tens. And, once again, as with the rest of my strategies, I would execute each one of my loops in precisely the same exact way, every single time.

It was at that very moment when it suddenly hit me—the idea that every sale was the same. In fact, all at once, that very concept came bubbling up into my brain, followed a millisecond later by an elegantly simple image that I could use to explain it.

The image, as it turned out, was a perfectly straight line.

But that was just the beginning.

Something had clicked inside my brain, and a window of clarity had swung open, giving me unfettered access to a seemingly infinite reservoir of what can best be described as pure sales wisdom. I’m talking about radically advanced stuff here—ideas and concepts and tactics and strategies were flashing through my mind at an incredible rate. In my mind’s eye, I could see my own sales strategy being pulled apart, into its elemental pieces, and then put back together, in exactly the right order, along a perfectly straight line. My heart literally skipped a beat. It happened so fast that it seemed almost instantaneous, but it hit me with the force of an atomic bomb.

Until that very moment, I simply hadn’t known why I had been able to far outsell every other salesperson, at every single company I had ever worked for. But now I knew.

My own sales strategy, which had been mostly unconscious until then, had suddenly become conscious. I could see each distinct chunk of my strategy, as if it had the defined edges of a jigsaw piece, and each individual piece seemed to be screaming out its purpose at me. But there was more—much, much more.

When I shifted my focus to any particular piece, I suddenly had access to every root experience and every memory that justified the piece’s purpose and location; and by focusing a bit deeper, a torrent of words came gushing into my consciousness, providing the perfect explanation for the piece and how it related to the others.

For example, if I looked at the point on the line marked “sales presentation,” then I immediately knew that there were three things that had to be addressed before the prospect would say yes; and then, if I focused a bit harder, the word “certainty” popped into my mind, followed, a millisecond later, by each of the Three Tens, which seemed to be floating above the line and tethered to scenes going back all the way to my childhood, of random sales situations I had been in on either side, as salesperson or prospect, and a vivid memory of why I had said no or yes to the salespeople, or the prospects had said no or yes to me.

All of those things, each compressed into a millisecond, had flashed through my brain while I stood before the whiteboard, staring at the objections. From end to end, the entire experience was maybe one or two seconds, but when I turned to face the Strattonites I was an entirely different person.

As I scanned their faces, the strengths and weaknesses of each came popping into my brain in a singular rush of thoughts, as did a perfect way to train each of them to perfection. In short, I would teach them to sell exactly the way I did—by taking immediate control of the sale, and then moving the prospect from the open to the close along the shortest distance between any two points: a straight line.

With renewed confidence, I said, “Don’t you guys get it? Every sale is the same!”

All twelve Strattonites shot me confused looks.

I ignored them, with relish, and I unleashed my discovery.

“Watch,” I said forcefully. “It’s a straight line!” And I turned back to the whiteboard, and for the very first time, I drew that long, thin horizontal line across the middle of it and placed a big, thick X on either end.

“Now, this is your open”—I pointed to the X on the left end of the line—“where the sale begins, and this is your close”—I pointed to the X on the right end of the line—“where the prospect says, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,’ and he opens up the account with you.

“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. You guys follow me so far?”