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

You see, over those next few hours, I literally invented the Straight Line System as I was teaching it to the Strattonites. The system effortlessly poured out of me, with each breakthrough paving the way for yet another breakthrough. I felt as if I were almost channeling the information from some place else, a place of infinite knowledge and infinite wisdom, a place where the answers to all of my questions, no matter how complex, were ready and waiting, and there for the taking. So I took all that I could, with relish.

By midnight, I had laid out the framework for the entire system, and had created the first Straight Line Syntax. Consisting of eight distinct steps, the syntax served as a simple road map for taking a prospect down the straight line. It showed the Strattonites what to do first, what to do second, what to do third . . . all the way down to the eighth and final step, where the prospect either said yes, and opened an account with you, or he stuck to whatever objection he’d been using as his smoke screen, and you ended the call, respectfully, and moved on to the next prospect.

About a month later, I added on two additional steps, as deeper layers of the system continued to pour out of me; then, many years later, I increased the number to fourteen, when I created the 2.0 version of the Straight Line System and began teaching it around the world. Amazingly, though, the core of the syntax remains almost identical to what came out of me that first Tuesday evening, which makes perfect sense when you consider what happened the next morning, when the Strattonites hit the phones armed with the Straight Line System for the very first time. In fact, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.

From literally the moment they started dialing, the entire office went on an account-opening spree of such biblical proportions that, within 90 days, every last one of them had become a million-dollar producer.

But that was only the beginning.

As word of our success began to spread, brokers began showing up at my door unannounced.

By the end of 1989, there were more than 200 Strattonites working in one massive boardroom at Stratton’s new corporate headquarters in Lake Success, Long Island.

Twice a day, every day, I would stand before a rapidly expanding army of obscenely young Strattonites and pound them with a combination of Straight Line skills training and daily motivation. In essence, by radically enhancing their mind-sets and skill-sets, I was able to persuade each new Strattonite to leave the insults of the past behind and check their emotional baggage at the door; to accept the fact that the moment they stepped into the boardroom everything in the past fell off.

Day after day, I told them that their past did not equal their future, unless they choose to live there. I told them that if they fully embraced the Straight Line System and simply picked up the phone and said the words I taught them, they could become as powerful as the most powerful CEO in America.

And 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!”

I told them to act as if their success was a foregone conclusion—that it was time to accept the fact that they had true greatness inside them, greatness that had always been there, dying to come out, but it had been buried under countless layers of insults and bullshit that society had dumped on them, in an effort to keep them down and make them settle for a life of mediocrity and averagism.

And while all those thoughts were still fresh in their mind, I would set up my transition, focusing on the dire importance of skills training by getting brutally honest with them. I would say, “Maybe some of the stuff that people said about you was actually true. Maybe your parents and your teachers and your ex-boss, and ex-girlfriend—maybe they were all right about you. Maybe you’re not that special?

“Maybe you were born just an average guy: not all that smart, not very well-spoken, not overly motivated; and you slept through grade school, you cheated your way through high school, you didn’t go to college. So maybe you’ve had the desire to achieve greatness, but you truly weren’t capable of it. You lacked the skills you needed to go out into the world and kick some ass!

“Now, be honest here, how many of you guys feel like that sometimes? Not always, but sometimes, like when you’re lying in bed at night, alone with your thoughts, and the fears and the negativity come out and start whispering in your ear, eating away at your self-confidence and self-worth? Raise your hand if you feel like that sometimes.”

Like clockwork, every hand in the room would go flying up.