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

“Now, after listening to a bunch of your sales pitches this morning, it’s obvious that you guys think that if you pretend to like whatever your prospect likes, you’ll end up getting into rapport with him.” I paused for a moment to let my words hang in the air. Then I plowed on.

“Bullshit!” I sputtered. “There’s no rapport there! People are far more skeptical than they used to be, and they’re constantly on the lookout for that sort of bullshit. And make no mistake, if your prospect has even the slightest inkling that you’re trying to pull something like that, then any chance you had of closing the sale completely evaporates. Make sense to everyone?”

All twenty salesmen nodded their heads in unison.

“Excellent. Now, in addition to that, what you’re also doing is sending a subliminal message to your prospect that you’re not really an expert. You see, experts are far too busy to waste time talking about things that aren’t germane to the prospect’s outcome. Their services are in demand, and an expert’s time is his most valuable commodity.

“Also, experts are qualifying a prospect; they ask their questions in a very specific way—one that’s both logical and intuitive—and they don’t go off on tangents. That’s what a novice does; they tend to be all over the place, and they’re constantly going off to Pluto.

“Now, again, genuine rapport is based on two things.

“First, that you care—meaning, that you’re not just looking to make a commission; you want to help your prospect fill his needs and resolve his pain. Basically, you have his best interest at heart, as opposed to your own.

“And, second, that you’re just like him—meaning that human beings want to associate with people who are just like them, versus the exact opposite of them. Let me give you a quick example.

“You wouldn’t go check out a country club to see if you want to join, and then come home to your wife and say, ‘Guess what, honey? I went to this really cool country club today! There wasn’t a single soul there who was anything like me. They all had different politics, different religions, different interests; all in all, I didn’t have a single thing in common with any of them! So I joined.’

“Now, if you did that, your wife would look at you like you were out of your mind. However, your decision would have made perfect sense to her if you’d said, ‘I went to this really cool club today. The people there were just like us. They all shared our politics, our religious beliefs, our family values, and almost all of them play tennis. So I joined!’

“The bottom line is this: We don’t associate with other people based on our differences; we associate based on our commonalities.

“However, that being said, this is precisely where you guys are all making the classic mistake. You see, the way you think that you’re supposed to accomplish this is by playing the pretend game—like, if he loves fishing, then you love fishing; and if he loves duck hunting, then you love duck hunting; and if he loves going on safaris, then you love going on safaris, and on and on.

“Now, I’ll get into the ethical ramifications of this later, insofar as how totally unacceptable it is for you guys to be lying through your teeth like that, but for now, let me repeat what I just said to you guys about the efficacy of doing this—specifically, that it’s a complete bunch of bullshit! There’s no rapport there; that’s actually repulsive to people.

“In fact, I’ll give you a real world example, using something I heard one of you guys rambling about this morning . . .” And with that, I spent the next minutes giving the group a comical account of the duck hunting fiasco I’d been subjected to that morning, in order to keep the mood light.

When I got to the point in the story where the prospect had just spiraled off to Pluto, I began mercilessly poking fun at the salesman for his decision to join his prospect there—spending over fifteen minutes orbiting that barren rock as the two of them went back and forth about the frickin’ wonders of duck hunting!

Then, changing to a more serious tone, I added, “But still, in his defense, it wasn’t like he could just cut his prospect off in mid-sentence when he started spewing out all that duck hunting nonsense. And, by the way, guys, I’m just using his call as an example; the same thing applies to all of you.

“When your prospect starts to spiral off to Pluto, you’re not going to say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa! Now, listen, pal, I’m an expert in my field, and, as an expert, I don’t have time to listen to your worthless drivel about the price of tea in China. So I want you to stop rambling about this nonsense and answer my questions directly, so we stay on the Straight Line.’

“If you do that, it’s not going to go over very well with your prospect, now will it! In fact, in that scenario, you’ll end up destroying whatever rapport you’ve built up, and you might as well end the conversation there.