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

But, again, there are simply too many variables in play—the country you live in, what’s considered normal in the industry, your opportunity for advancement within the company you work for, how much enjoyment you get out of what you’re doing—for me to give you an answer on compensation that’s anything more than an educated guess.

More importantly, though, you need to make sure that during the waiting period all your communications to your “almost” new client come from a position of strength—meaning that, as far as you’re concerned, the deal is already closed and the communication you’re sending is from the perspective of building a long-term relationship and doing more business in the future. Otherwise, you’ll come off as being desperate, and it will end up having the reverse effect.

But other than those two examples, anything more than a three-call system will be the result of a flawed sales process being administered by an equally flawed sales manager, who’s sitting idly by and watching a team of what are always inexperienced salespeople banging their heads against the wall, trying to get through to the same person four times before they get around to asking for the order. After all, if there was anyone experienced on the sales force, they would first suggest, and then ultimately demand, that they be allowed to collapse the number of calls to three or less; and just so you’re aware, that demand is almost always accompanied by a sales force–wide revolt led by the experienced salesperson, who is preying on the cloud of desperation that hangs over an underperforming sales force like sarin gas, poisoning their hearts and minds and breaking their collective spirit.

In light of that, whether you’re the owner, the sales manager, or just a salesperson in the sales force, you need to pay extremely close attention to the number of calls in your sales cycle, with an eye toward collapsing it to as few calls as possible. The way to safely and effectively do this is to eliminate one call from the cycle at a time, until you’ve reached the point where a decrease in your percentage-closing rate isn’t offset by a greater number of total closed deals (due to the large increase in the number of sales calls made to close deals, as opposed to setting up the next call).

The Power of Language Patterns

As I explained in Chapter 2, the Straight Line is basically a visual representation of the perfect sale—where everything you say and everything you do and every case you make as to why your prospect should buy from you is met with an unequivocal yes from the prospect, right up to the moment where you ask them for the order and they agree to close.

In addition, every word that escapes your lips has been specifically designed to feed into one overarching goal, which is to increase your prospect’s level of certainty for each of the Three Tens to the highest level possible, a 10 on the certainty scale.

Now, in terms of the order in which you go about creating certainty, you’re always going to follow the same protocol, which is:

 The product first

 You, the salesperson second

 And the company that stands behind the product third

In terms of the split between logic and emotion, you’re always going to build airtight logical cases first and airtight emotional cases second.

Why?

Quite simply, by making the airtight logical case first, you satisfy your prospect’s bullshit detector, which then frees them up to be moved emotionally.

The way you’re going to accomplish this is through a series of expertly constructed Straight Line scripts—ensuring that you know exactly what to say before you have to say it; and embedded in these scripts are going to be language patterns, which are bite-sized chunks of expertly crafted information, each of which has a specific goal in mind.

For example, there are patterns designed to create logical certainty and there are patterns designed to create emotional certainty; there are patterns designed to create certainty for each of the Three Tens, and there is a pattern to lower someone’s action threshold and one to add on pain.

In short, there is a pattern for everything.

In the front half of the sale, your language patterns serve as anchors for each step of the syntax, and they’re an important aspect of ensuring a successful outcome. In the back half of the sale, your language patterns serve as the very foundation for the entire looping process, and everything you say will revolve around them.

In your opening pattern, you’re simply introducing yourself, your company, and explaining the reason for your call, while using tonality and body language to establish yourself as an expert, so you can take control of the conversation and begin moving your prospect down the straight line, from the open to the close. Here are the basic rules for creating a powerful introduction. We’ll assume an outbound phone call: