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

Then he matched me, just like I knew he would. He became just as angry as he thought I was, and he said, “Yeah, let’s call the coach! Let’s get him thrown off the team! That kid’s a menace!” To which I said, “Yeah, let’s do that, buddy!” And, just like that, I began lowering my voice and taking on a more sympathetic tone. Then I shook my head sadly and said, “I don’t know, buddy. I wonder what causes him to act that way. You think he has some emotional problems?” And then I softened my voice even more, and added, “It really is a shame.”

And, of course, Carter started shaking his head sadly too. He said, in tones as sympathetic as mine, “Yeah, it really is, Dad. I guess I should feel bad for him. He’s probably really unhappy.”

And just like that, he calmed down.

Matching can be a way to calm anyone down, or get them excited about something, or feeling certain about something. You simply enter their world where they are, and then you pace them, you pace them . . . and then you lead them in the direction you want them to go.

Now, I didn’t invent pacing and leading. It’s been around since the very dawn of human communication. All great communicators do this. They do it naturally, without even thinking about it. But anyone can learn it, once they know the rules.

Remember, the next step in the system, which is the simultaneous gathering of intelligence and building rapport, is more about what your prospect will say to you than what you’ll say to your prospect. In fact, the best way to explain this to you is to go through a simple, yet very powerful, exercise.

The time has now come for me to sell you a pen.

9

THE ART OF PROSPECTING

“SELL ME THIS PEN!”

The first time I sprung this on a cocky young salesman, I was sitting behind my desk in my office at Stratton, and what I got in return was a very telling response.

“You see this pen?” chirped the cocky young recruit, sounding like he’d just walked off a used car lot. “This is the most amazing pen money can buy. It can write upside down, it’ll never run out of ink, it feels great in your hand.

“Here, check it out for yourself; tell me how great it feels.” And, with that, he leaned forward in his seat and extended his arm across my desktop and offered me the same disposable pen that I’d handed to him a moment earlier, to begin the test.

Playing along, I grabbed the pen and rolled it around in my fingers for a few seconds until it slid into its usual writing position.

“Pretty damn amazing, right?” he pressed.

“It feels like a pen,” I replied flatly.

“That’s exactly my point!” he exclaimed, ignoring my lukewarm response. “That’s how a great pen is supposed to feel—like it’s been a part of you for years.

“Anyway, it’s obvious that you and this pen were made for each other, so I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna take 30 percent off the regular purchase price, but”—he raised his right index finger in the air, for a moment—“only if you buy it right now. Otherwise, it has to go back up to the normal price.

“Either way, it’s a really great deal, but at 30 percent off it’s the deal of the century. Whaddaya say?”

“What do I say?” I shot back. “You mean besides the fact that you’re obviously completely full of shit?”

No response. The would-be Strattonite just sat there completely still, with a panic-stricken look on his face.

“That wasn’t a rhetorical question. You want me to ignore how completely full of shit you are, yes or no?”

He slowly opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He just sat there with his mouth hanging open.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I continued, deciding to let the kid off the hook. “So, putting that small detail aside for the time being, I will say that I’m not in the market for a pen right now.

“I don’t want one, I don’t need one, I barely ever use one; and, in truth, if I ever do decide to go out and buy a pen, it won’t be a piece of shit like this. I’d probably pick up a Mont Blanc or something.

“But how could you possibly know that?” I continued, zeroing in on the main point of the exercise. “In fact, how could you know anything about me? From the second you opened up your mouth, all you did was spew out a bunch of cheap sales talk.

“ ‘The pen is this,’ ” I chirped, mocking his used car salesman rap, “ ‘the pen is that, the pen writes upside down, it’s your long lost brother’. . . and blah, blah, fucking blah. Even if you put aside how utterly ridiculous that sounds, did it ever occur to you to maybe ask me a few questions before you attempted to ram a pen down my throat? Like, am I even in the market for a pen? Do I have a certain price range in mind? Do I prefer one type of pen to another?

“I mean, think about it for a second: how could you try to sell me something without knowing the first thing about me? It completely defies logic.”

The would-be Strattonite nodded his head sheepishly. “So, what should I have said?”

“You tell me,” I shot back.