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

2Gather the necessary intelligence from the buyers in heat and the buyers in power, and then continue moving them down the Straight Line towards the close.

3Begin the process of turning the buyers in power into buyers in heat by amplifying their pain.

Now, insofar as number 3 is concerned, there’s a lot more to this concept than it makes sense to discuss now, so let me circle back to it when we get to the next chapter, which covers the ten core distinctions of Straight Line prospecting.

In fact, let’s dive into that chapter right now.

It’s time to take you from the theory of Straight Line prospecting to the real world application of it.

The next chapter will show you precisely how you get there.

10

THE TEN RULES OF STRAIGHT LINE PROSPECTING

WHEN YOU’RE PROPERLY ENGAGING IN the process of Straight Line prospecting, you’re doing each of the following four things:

1You’re sifting through the prospects in your sales funnel by asking them a series of strategically prepared questions.

2You’re using these questions to not only gather intelligence but also to separate the buyers in heat and buyers in power from the lookie-loos and the mistakes.

3You’re continuing to gather intelligence from the buyers in heat and buyers in power, while eliminating the lookie-loos and mistakes from your sales funnel as quickly as possible.

4You’re transitioning the buyers in heat and the buyers in power to the next step in the syntax, so they can continue their journey down the Straight Line.

Insofar as the ten rules of prospecting are concerned, they are meant to provide you with everything you’ll need to create a practical blueprint for gathering intelligence in your industry.

Now, as you go through each rule, you should keep relating it back to your own situation—making whatever changes are needed to your current method of prospecting. To that end, if you have a prospecting script or a list of intelligence-gathering questions, then you should have those in front of you before we begin.

So, grab those now, and let’s get started.

Rule #1: You are a sifter, not an alchemist.

Imagine yourself as one of those old-fashioned gold prospectors, who kneels at the edge of a stream with your trusty tin pan, sifting through thousands of gallons of water, as you patiently wait for that one nugget of gold to drop into your pan.

It’s a sight that we’ve all seen countless times, both in the movies and on TV: an old miner, with his scraggly beard, playing the waiting game by the edge of a stream. He’ll wait there as long as he has to, knowing full well that sooner or later a nugget of gold will present itself.

However, what he’s not waiting for is for the water itself to turn into gold. That’s a job for an alchemist, not a prospector.

You see my point?

Water is water and gold is gold; they’re different elements that don’t magically convert into one another, any more than lookie-loos and mistakes convert into buyers in heat or buyers in power.

That’s why a salesperson has to become an expert sifter, not an alchemist. There’s simply no two ways about it.

Rule #2: Always ask for permission to ask questions.

As easy as this distinction is to execute, virtually all untrained salespeople ignore it, simply because they’re unaware of how negatively it will impact their ability to get into rapport.

Plain and simple, unless you ask for permission to ask questions, you run an extremely high risk of being perceived as the Grand Inquisitor–type, instead of a trusted advisor, and the Grand Inquisitor–type does not “care about you,” nor are they “just like you,” which are the two driving forces behind getting into rapport.

However, the good news here is that all you have to do to avoid this outcome is remember always to ask for permission to ask questions. It’s as simple as that.

Below are a few sample language patterns that get straight to the point and have been proven to work:

 “John, just a couple of quick questions, so I don’t waste your time.”