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

Then, to help you navigate the map—and to ensure that your snap decisions, instant judgments, and first impressions remain consistent with the beliefs in your map—your unconscious mind also creates “patterns of behavior,” allowing you to instantly respond to situations that have been previously “mapped out,” in a way that’s fluid and elegant, consistent with your beliefs about yourself and the world, and that requires no conscious thought whatsoever.

In essence, this three-step process of generalization, map-making, and the creation of patterns is what allows you to move through an unfamiliar environment without having to treat everything you see as if it were the first time you’ve seen it.

For example, when you walk up to a strange door, you don’t have to pause and examine each one of its features and wonder if it’s safe to turn the little round knob that’s sticking out on one side. Despite never having seen this particular door before, your unconscious mind has been through this scenario countless times, so it springs into action the instant the door comes into your field of vision—working at near light speed to match this particular door to the spot on your map marked “Doors” and the various strategies for safely entering and exiting them, in non-combat situations and where no new construction is taking place.

Now, obviously I’m taking a bit of poetic license here, but my point is spot-on: rather than having to stop at every new door or every fresh crack in the sidewalk or countless other occurrences, so your conscious mind can logic things out, your unconscious mind takes immediate action and saves your conscious mind the trouble.

In fact, from your conscious mind’s perspective, these snap judgments and instant decisions are based on gut feelings, and it will act in accordance with them until they’re proven wrong.

This happens frequently in sales, and when it does happen, it’s almost always the result of something foolish or off-base that the salesman said. In other words, while your prospect’s first impression of you was a result of your unconscious communication, it can be completely destroyed by a few choice words; and that makes perfect sense, considering that words are the building blocks for airtight logical cases, which then serve as the basis for our conscious decisions.

However, when it comes to airtight emotional cases, we rely far more heavily on unconscious communication, in the form of tonality and body language, than on the words others say.

When the sales encounter is over the phone, we’ll use our ten core tonalities to move our prospect emotionally, while the words they’re attached to will move the prospect logically; and when the encounter is in person, we’ll also use body language to move our prospect emotionally, while our words will continue to move them logically.

So, at the end of the day, whether it’s in person or over the phone, the strategies you employ and the outcomes you desire will always be the same: you’ll use words to influence your prospect’s conscious mind, and tonality and body language to influence their unconscious mind. And the outcome of the former will be an airtight logical case, and the outcome of the latter will be airtight emotional case. All you need to know is precisely what words to say and when to say them, and what unconscious communication to apply and when to apply it. It’s as simple and straightforward as that.

Insofar as what words you’re going to use to accomplish this task, I’m going to be handing them to you on a silver platter in Chapter 11, in the form of a foolproof scriptwriting formula that you can apply to any business or industry with massive success.

However, as foolproof as this formula is, your success is still going to be contingent on your ability to trigger a key emotional state within yourself as you’re about to enter the sales encounter, and then maintain that state to the very end.

We refer to this process as state management, and it’s one of the most important elements in achieving success.

In the following chapter, I’m going to take you for a trip down memory lane—back to the early days of Stratton, to show you the true power of state management when it comes to sales, and then provide you with a paint-by-number strategy for managing your own state that is not only wildly effective but also extremely easy to use.

5

STATE MANAGEMENT

BEFORE THINGS AT STRATTON HAD spiraled out of control, the boardroom had been a truly remarkable place. It was an egalitarian society in the purest sense of the phrase, a meritocracy where you were judged solely on your performance, not by the weight of your diploma or your family connections. Once you entered the boardroom, it no longer mattered who you were, where you came from, or what mistakes you’d made in the past. All of that could be left behind.