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

For example, maybe the prospect thinks you’re reasonably trustworthy, but they just don’t like you very much. Maybe you broke rapport with them as a result of something you said during your sales presentation—or perhaps it happened even earlier than that, at the moment the prospect first laid eyes on you. Maybe there was something about the way you looked, or the way you shook their hand, or how much eye contact you made, that turned the prospect off and, hence, stopped you from falling into a deep state of rapport with them.

Or maybe it was the way you asked questions when you were trying to gather intelligence, to identify their needs and values and to see if they were financially qualified. Perhaps you came off as the “Grand Inquisitor” type—asking questions with the sort of laser-guided focus that makes people feel like you care more about maximizing your commission than resolving their pain.

Whatever the case, my point is that, in the same way that you have varying degrees of certainty for how the prospect feels about your product, there are also varying degrees of certainty for how the prospect feels about you.

In consequence, if you want your prospect to say yes when you ask for the order, then you’re going to need to have them as close to a 10 as possible for both of those things: you and your product.

Now let me ask you this:

Let’s say that you’re able to get your prospect to a level very close to a 10 for both things. Will they buy from you then, yes or no?

Hopefully, you’ve caught on by now, and you’ve figured out that the answer will be the same as last time, which was maybe—as in: maybe they will, and maybe they won’t.

You see, like last time, I left out one very crucial point from the scenario—namely: What if your prospect doesn’t trust the company you work for?

For example, let’s say your prospect read something very negative about your company, something that led them to believe that the company might not stand behind the product you’re offering or that they would get poor customer service if any problems arose. What are the chances of them buying from you under that circumstance?

They’re slim and nil; and slim, as they say, left town.

It’s really quite simple: if your prospect doesn’t trust the company you work for, then there’s absolutely no way they are going to buy from you—so long as you continue to work there, or until you can convince them otherwise.

And, again, I don’t care how certain they are about the first two Tens. They will simply not buy from you if they think the company you work for will ultimately try to screw them.

So that’s what makes up the third of the Three Tens.

THE THREE TENS

1 The product, idea, or concept

2 You, trust and connect with you

3 The prospect must trust and connect with the company

In fact, this is why it’s so much easier to sell to existing customers than to new ones, even if you don’t have a personal relationship with them. The fact that they have an existing relationship with your company means that the third Ten has already been established, leaving you with only the first and the second Tens to address.

Now, if you work for a Fortune 500 company with an impeccable reputation, then the chances are extremely high that your prospect will walk into the sale already at a very high level of certainty for the third Ten. That’s plainly obvious, right?

However, what’s not quite as obvious is that in addition to having the third Ten established, there’s also an extremely high likelihood that your prospect will walk into the sale feeling a very high level of certainty for the first and second Tens as well!

In other words, before you even open your mouth, the prospect is also going to be inclined to trust you (because reputable companies choose their employees carefully and take the time to train them) and the product you’re offering (because reputable companies have too much to lose selling low-quality products).

Conversely, if you’re working for a company that has a questionable reputation, then your prospects are going to enter the sales encounter at far lower levels of certainty; in fact, depending on how bad that reputation is, you can find yourself fighting a serious uphill battle with your prospects, as many of them will be entering the sales encounter with a certainty level below 3.

Lastly, if you’re working for a small company whose reputation is neither good nor bad, but simply unknown, that will have little impact on where your prospect enters the encounter on the certainty scale, other than the usual skepticism that’s created by dealing with a company that you’ve never heard of before.