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

But what about all the people who don’t possess an abundance of charisma? What are they supposed to do? Are they screwed, as the phrase goes—meaning, charisma is an inborn personality trait that each of us possesses at a fixed level—or is charisma a learnable skill that can be mastered through practice?

Thankfully, the answer is the latter.

In fact, not only is charisma an entirely learnable skill but it also possesses that highly coveted Good Enough Factor—meaning, all you have to do is become reasonably proficient and you’ll start seeing the benefits straightaway.

Now, insofar as just how you go about doing that, I’ve tested a number of different strategies over the years, and I’ve found that the quickest way to teach this to someone is to break charisma down into its three core components and teach them one at a time.

So, let’s do that right now, starting with charisma’s first component, which is the effective use of tonality—meaning, that you sound so good when you speak that you keep people hanging on your every word as opposed to them tuning out, or dividing their attention among other people in the room.

The second component of charisma is the targeted use of body language—meaning, you’re being hypervigilant about applying all ten body language principles, with a heavy emphasis on active listening, to communicate an extraordinary level of attentiveness and empathy.

And charisma’s third component—which is typically the toughest one of all, for most people—is not saying stupid shit.

In fact, I’ve seen the same scenario unfold a thousand times:

A salesperson is saying intelligent things for the first four or five minutes of the encounter and is in complete control of the sale. Then, things start to drag on a bit, and the salesperson begins running out of intelligent things to say and suddenly—bam!—the stupid shit starts flowing out of their mouth like it just bubbled up from out of the Brooklyn sewer system.

Even worse, once it starts flowing, it keeps getting stupider and stupider with each passing moment, until it reaches a point of such undeniable stupidity that an alarm goes off inside the prospect’s mind, flashing—“NOVICE ALERT! NOVICE ALERT!”—at which point any chance of closing the sale is gone.

After all, if there’s one thing all your prospects will have in common it’s that they all know what experts should look like and sound like, and they also know what they don’t look and sound like.

Experts (mostly) say smart shit; they (occasionally) say bullshit, and, at times, they even shoot the shit, but the one thing they don’t say is stupid shit. That esteemed honor is reserved for novices, or, more accurately, for those who sound like novices.

You see, in the world of sales, there’s a massive difference between being an expert and sounding like one, and, for better or worse, it’s the latter that gets you paid. To that end, one of the true beauties of the Straight Line System is that it allows any salesperson, whether they’re a stone-cold rookie or a world-class expert, to deliver a flawless sales presentation on a consistent basis, no matter how long the encounter drags on; and the way the system accomplishes that can be summed up in one word: scripts.

That’s right—scripts.

But not just any scripts; I’m talking about Straight Line scripts—or, more accurately, a series of Straight Line scripts that work together as a cohesive unit and run the entire length of the sales presentation.

So, what is a Straight Line script?

In short, a Straight Line script is the well-thought-out essence of the perfect sale. In other words, imagine taking the ten best sales presentations that you’ve ever made for a particular product and going through each one of them line by line, with an eye on choosing the best passages from each and then combining them into one, ultra-perfect presentation that will become your template for all sales encounters going forward. That’s what I mean by a Straight Line script.

It’s basically all of your best sales lines, arranged in exactly the right order—starting with those all-important first four seconds and continuing on straight through to the end, at which point your prospect will either buy, or you will end the sales encounter in a respectful way.

In other words, if the prospect chooses not to buy, then you’re not going to berate them or put undue pressure on them or slam the phone down in their ear or walk around muttering curses under your breath. Instead, you’re going to end the call in an amicable, respectful way by saying something along the lines of: “Thanks for your time, Mr. Smith. Have a nice day.”