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Let's face it. The world of selling is different than what it was even just a few years ago. As a result, we need to adapt. We need to change to what's happening in today's world, and that means ultimately having approaches that are going to separate us from the competition, that are going to help us provide more value in the eyes of our prospects, ultimately with the aim of closing deals. So in this video, I'm going to show you 13 sales techniques that you must know today in order to close the deal. Check it out. (ethereal music) Number One- Be a peer. This is something that I've been seeing a lot of lately. There's a lot of salespeople treating prospects like they are just royalty, like they're this magical being that needs to be put on a pedestal. That is the ultimate way to ensure that your prospect will have very little respect for you. Just think of in a dating situation. If you're on a date with someone and they immediately put you on a pedestal, immediately, you're like, "Ugh, what's going on? Like, why are they treating me differently?" The reason that we respect people is because they treat us like a peer. Now, it doesn't mean that we're going to be overly casual or that we're going to call them, "Dude," or a guy. But instead, it's just about treating someone like they're a peer, like they are a normal person, and that this is a peer-to-peer relationship. Even if they're a Fortune 500 CEO, it doesn't matter. You must treat them just like a peer if you want them to engage with your ideas and ultimately show and feel respect towards you. Number Two- Tonality matters. Now, I see this a lot, where we really push people to follow scripts, to use approaches that are planned out. That's what systematic selling's all about. But, what I see a lot of is that some people are just reading a script, and other people are using tonality to follow the same script, but in a way that feels authentic. And it's a huge difference. Just imagine that the prospect asks you a question, and so the script would tell you to answer the question with something along the lines of, "George, I really appreciate your asking me that question. You must be asking for a reason." So one salesperson says, "George, I really appreciate your asking me that question. You must be asking for a reason." No tonality, no distinction, and it comes off almost as abrasive, as evasive because of the tonality. But then, just imagine that the other salesperson, who's a great salesperson, who's using tonality says something like, "George, that's a great question. I really appreciate your asking me that. You must be asking for a reason." The tonality is what makes the line work. We've got to use tonality. Just listen to the way that I'm even talking in this video. I'm not just saying, "You must use tonality," right? I'm using actual tonality, right? My pace is changing. The way the voice fluctuates, all of that stuff makes it feel like you're saying something that's actually useful and important and it makes it feel authentic. Number Three- Soften then clarify. This is one of my favorite sales techniques of all time, and we want to use this as often as possible. When a prospect tells you something that either doesn't really make sense, is vague, or let's say they ask you a question, or they ask you for something that doesn't really fit with where you want to go in the conversation, what you want to do is you want to soften and then clarify. Soften basically means you want to give them a little compliment. And then we want to clarify or, in some cases, redirect. So soften might sound something like, "You know what, George? That's a great question." Or, "That's a great point." And then clarify would be, "You must be asking for a reason." Or, "What prompts you to ask that question?" And so when you put it together, it might sound something like, "You know what, George? That's a really good question. What prompts you to ask it?" And now, we're softening, and then we're clarifying, and it allows us to have so much more control of the interaction. And the softener is really the key. Again, using the tonality, holding it all together. That's really the key to effectively taking the conversation wherever you want it to go. Number Four- Drop the pitch. I cannot say this enough, but we still see time and time again salespeople that are just coming in, guns blazing with this pre-planned pitch, like it's the most persuasive thing that the prospect has ever seen. But, the reality is is that all of your competitors are going into your prospective buyers and they're doing the same silly pitch. We've got to drop the pitch. We've got to instead focus on the challenges that our prospects are facing. We've got to focus on understanding them, not pitching our product or service. I mean, you can literally train a dancing monkey to do a pitch. You could train an actor to do a pitch. But, what you can't train anyone or anything to do is to engage people in a conversation around what it is they're looking to accomplish and to just ultimately determine if there's a fit. Number Five- Calm and steady. Now, in traditional sales, it's all about enthusiasm, and excitement, and passion! It's about going in and wowing your prospect with all of your excitement for your product or your service, and that is super old-school junk. I mean, that literally goes back to what's referred to as the NCR Primer, which was invented around the 1880s, the late 1880s, where you'd be really excited and passionate about your product or service. That is so old-school that they literally didn't even have electricity commonly at the time that that strategy was invented. Instead, we want to just be calm and steady when we're talking to our prospects. We want to engage in a human-to-human conversation, period. We don't have to be really excited. We don't have to be animated. We just want to be calm and steady. That's one of the sales techniques that absolutely works and stands out in today's marketplace because I hear salespeople who aren't even trying to be enthusiastic. I can tell as soon as they're talking to a prospect though, because they go into their sales voice and they say, "Hey, George, so great to hear from you!" Slow it down. Calm, steady, just be a human being. Number Six- Less rapport, more value. One thing that the pandemic has really shown to me is that salespeople are spending way too much time on rapport building in their conversations. And the reason for that is because, of course, during the pandemic, people were mostly having conversations by Zoom, or by phone, or mostly virtually. And when we are not face-to-face, physically face-to-face, rapport building, it just becomes so obvious how forced it is, right? Because it's like we get on a Zoom with someone, we've got 30 minutes, and the first five minutes are dedicated to just talking about sports or talking about their kids and all this stuff. And it's like, we only have so much time. And your prospects, particularly because it's virtual, they don't want to do all this rapport building stuff. And what we find, and the data shows, is that your prospects don't want to do the rapport building stuff at all, really. Maybe quickly, but instead of all this time spent on rapport building instead focus on value. Just jump right into the conversation and focus on them, on what they actually care about, the value that they are looking to see, that's going to lead them to buy much more than the fact that you both relate because you have kids or you like the same sports team. That stuff is just old-school stuff that isn't helping the sale. Number Seven- Opening play. So opening play is our term for engaging the prospect in a conversation. And so having an opening play, which is basically the first 25 seconds of how you're actually engaging any prospect in a conversation, is really important. And I think the key to an opening play is that you're going to very briefly explain what you do, just really quickly, like one short sentence. So not like a whole monologue with everything that you do, but just one sentence that basically explains who you are and essentially what you help your clients accomplish, and then you want to use that bird's-eye view to demonstrate that you understand the key challenges that prospects in their world typically are facing. And then you're going to use those challenges to engage them in a conversation. That's really all the opening play is, but having a rehearsed and tightened up opening play is going to be key. Now, I have a million videos that focus just on the opening play and how to engage in the conversation, but we've got to have that tightened up. It's got to be dialed in. So that way, ultimately, when you prospect doesn't know who you are, doesn't know what you do, you've got... In 30, 25, 30 seconds, you've got a way to explain what you do and then engage them right back into the conversation. Number Eight- Disqualify. Now, we've all heard the term that we've got to qualify our prospects, or that we have to persuade, or that we have to convince our prospects. I say throw all of that out. And instead of all of that, we actually want to have a mindset that's focused on disqualifying prospects. The data shows us that less than 50% of the people that we come across are ultimately going to be a fit for what we do for a number of reasons. And so what we want to do is accelerate the speed at which we either disqualify someone and move on or ultimately qualify them and have a deeper conversation where we would share some potential solutions. That's where disqualification really changes the game because so many salespeople are just spending so much time with prospects that are never going to be a fit. They're never going to buy. They're following up, they're chasing, they're hunting all this stuff to people that just were never going to buy. And they could have determined in the first 10 minutes that they weren't a fit. But, instead, because they didn't disqualify, now they're stuck in this process that just drags on and on and on, and ultimately not closing the sale. Number Nine- Case studies. There is no better way to explain what you do than through the use of story. Now, this is a really important distinction because most salespeople and business owners describe to their prospects what they do through explanation. And let's face it. Explanation is like the textbook of selling. When you were in elementary school and you read something from a textbook, you were like, "Ah, this is so horrible. It's so boring." And you didn't remember most of it. A case study is like a story. We remember stories. We don't remember explanations. And so, we want to use case studies when a prospect doesn't understand something or we want to articulate something that we intend to do with them. You're so much better off using a case study of an example of how you did it with someone else. And get specific. Talk about the challenges that the prospect was facing before, a little bit on what you did, and, of course, on what some of the outcomes were. That's going to be so much more effective as a tool, as a sales technique, to really explaining what you do than through just basic explanation, which is boring, unengaging, and ultimately not very useful. Number Ten- Get feedback. So when you're actually in a situation where you're starting to present, you're starting to demonstrate what you do, one of the keys is that we don't want it to be a monologue. We don't want it to be this long, meandering, one-way conversation, which it typically is. Most salespeople just do all of the talking during their presentation phase of the sale. What we want to do is constantly be getting feedback from the prospect to make sure that it's a fit, to make sure that they're on track. Do you see what I'm saying there? That's getting feedback. We want to be constantly asking our prospect if we're on track, how we're doing, does this make sense? Can you see what I'm saying with that particular piece? Could you see how that might fit into your world? Does that all sound okay? By doing that in little places using tonality, you are going to get your prospect to either nod, "Yeah. That makes a lot of sense." Or they might say, "No, actually, that doesn't make sense." In which case, wouldn't you rather know that so that way you can redirect? That's what feedback's all about. It's turning your presentation into a two-way conversation as opposed to this long, boring, one-way monologue? Number Eleven- Ask for questions. Again, let's look at the traditional presentation coming from the traditional salesperson. It's usually this long presentation that goes on way past the allotted time. And there's actually, oftentimes, not enough time for questions, which is, by the way, the most important part because questions are what the prospect actually cares about. They're indicators of what actually matters. So what we want to do is take that traditional model, flip it on its head. And so in fact, our presentations are really, really short. And then we're going to ask for questions and let the prospects' questions drive the rest of the conversation. So with a question just like, "So now that I've shared with you the high level, what questions do you have for me about our solution?" And now, what you're going to do is you're going to prompt the prospect to ask questions that they most care about and then you can direct the conversation in the way that you want it to go. But what you have to say is never as important than what the prospect wants to know. So we want to ask for questions, literally ask the prospect for questions during the presentation. So that way, we can ultimately answer what matters the most and solve the issues that most matter to the prospect. Number Twelve- Be N.S.O. N.S.O. stands for next step obsessed. We must be next step obsessed constantly. When I'm talking to a prospect, all I care about is that, assuming that they're a fit, is that at the end of the conversation is that we are scheduling a next step. I will never let a prospect off the phone without scheduling a next step. I mean, if they don't want to schedule a next step, that's a different issue, which, by the way, we'd want to know. But, we never want to put ourselves in a situation where we present our offering and then it's something like, "Okay, well, how about I call you sometime next week to check back in or send you an email to check back in?" That means we've immediately lost control of the sale. We are always scheduling next steps in the current step that we're in and we're putting it in the calendar. We're sending out a calendar invite. They are responding and accepting that calendar invite. That's how we hold sales together by being next step obsessed, as opposed to putting ourselves in a situation where we just have to follow up, and hunt them down, and chase them, and do all this stuff that just puts us in a position of weakness. Next step obsessed. Now, what the data shows us is that when most average and bottom-performing salespeople get objections, the rate of their speech actually increases, and they go on these long meandering monologues to respond to a particular objection. What top performers do is that they slow down the interaction when they're getting objections. They want to relish in this moment and just slow things down. When we're picking the pace up, it's actually an indicator that we're uncomfortable, that we're nervous. So when a prospect gives you an objection, like, "You know what? This actually seems really expensive." Or, "This is too expensive." Average salesperson goes, "Oh, well, we could do this or we could do that." And the pace literally picks up and they're immediately responding. The top performer, on the other hand, slows the interaction down and says something like, "I really appreciate your sharing that. Help me to understand what prompted you to mention that." Slow the interaction down. Get the prospect to actually explain why they think that. "Why is this important? If it's important at all, what matters?" We want to dig into that conversation, get really comfortable there. That's how we make sure that we hold the sale together even through objections, which... Objections are not a bad thing, necessarily. We want the prospect to share with us what they're concerned about, so that way we can get to the bottom of it, but it has to be slowed down, not sped up. So there are 13 sales techniques you must know today to close the deal. And if you enjoyed this video, then I have a free training on the step-by-step formula to closing more deals. Just click right here to get registered instantly. Seriously, just click right here to get registered. This is an in-depth training that will help you close more sales at higher prices, all while generating more appointments. Also, if you've got some value, please like this video below on YouTube and be sure to subscribe to my channel by clicking my face right about here to get a new video just like this one each week.