Master the art of sales with Allan Langer, the renowned author of 'The 7 Secrets to Selling More by Selling Less.' In this episode, Allan, who boasts nearly thirty years of experience, introduces Jeff and the audience to insights that will revolutionize their approach to sales. Join us as he delves deep into the intricacies of prospect behaviors, decoding their intentions through subtle hand gestures and foot positions. Discover the power of discussing price at the right moment and crafting irresistible proposals. If you're looking for genuine, actionable advice to amplify your sales game, this episode is for you.
Thanks for listening!
Master the art of sales with Allan Langer, the renowned author of 'The 7 Secrets to Selling More by Selling Less.' In this episode, Allan, who boasts nearly thirty years of experience, introduces Jeff and the audience to insights that will revolutionize their approach to sales. Join us as he delves deep into the intricacies of prospect behaviors, decoding their intentions through subtle hand gestures and foot positions. Discover the power of discussing price at the right moment and crafting irresistible proposals. If you're looking for genuine, actionable advice to amplify your sales game, this episode is for you.
Thanks for listening!
Hey, everybody and
Jeff Winters:welcome back, everybody to the growth show today we've got a really exciting and interesting growth guest. Alan Langer. Alan is the author of the seven secrets of selling more by selling less. He's a best seller he's been on. He's been a guest everywhere. Let me tell you guys, this is an expert. Okay. This is an expert in sales, who was about to give you really tactical advice on what your prospects are doing with their hands, how it affects their intentions, when and how to talk about price this guy, really no sales and it's not generic. It's truly, it's truly information and nuggets that I didn't know. And I bet you all don't know. Tune in Alan, welcome to the show. Hey, Jeff,
Unknown:thanks for having me. This is exciting. I love it.
Jeff Winters:I do want to know the seven secrets to selling more by selling less. Can you give us an overview?
Unknown:Yeah, so here, I'll give you an overview by asking you a question. Nice. Like, do you like meeting with a salesperson?
Jeff Winters:I like meeting with a salesperson. Do
Unknown:you ever like do you know you have to buy something? And do you look forward to the experience of meeting with that salesperson?
Jeff Winters:I know I'm supposed to say no. And I want to play along? I do. But I will say like, oh, you know now now I just I want to meet with salespeople. I'd love to learn about what else is going on. Up there customers are doing I'm cutting edge. But generally speaking, do I look forward to a sales experience
Unknown:now? Yeah. And and I see what you're getting? Because a lot of people in our world, you know, we're interviewing or we're professionals talking to the professionals will say yeah, I like to meet with salespeople, not because I enjoy the spirit experience, but I want to see what they're doing. Yeah, in the world in general. Everybody hates meeting with salespeople. You know, you need to buy Furniture and Mattress, you don't want to go into the mattress store. You don't want to go into the furniture store. When someone walks up to you and says, you know, you go into a you go into a department store and they say how can I help you? Or can I help you say, just looking? Right, the knee jerk reaction. So the reason I wrote the book was because everybody hates meeting with salespeople. But it's a necessary evil because we all have to do things. So how do you become the salesperson that someone actually wants to meet with? Why is it that the entire ecosystem of society has gotten to the point where salespeople are hated? Why is there no you know, sales degrees in colleges, why these people grew up and say, hey, I want to be this, I want to be a lawyer, I want to be a doctor. No one ever says I want to be a salesperson. You never hear that. And sales is a really noble great profession, and you can make a crap ton of money in sales. So when I when I was in sales myself, and for 25 years and many of it at Andersen windows I was their number one sales rep. And I was became the number one sales rep by stop being the salespeople that everybody was expecting. So that's what that means sell more by actually selling less stop going in there and selling and lead with service and helping.
Jeff Winters:Okay, so can you can you take us back to your Anderson window days? And tell it like what I hear what you're saying. But what so what does that mean, tactically,
Unknown:tactically it means like, Alright, so let's say I'll use Andersen windows as an example. Or any type of if you own a home and you needed to do something in your home, you had a meet with a contractor or a plumber or roofer whatever, you don't really look forward to that experience. Most people don't. The reason why they don't is they're expecting the typical, either the typical salesperson or the typical contractor. And then they come in and they start following the corporate sales, you know, script. This is what I have to do this is these are the questions I have to ask. And they really lead with, I am here to sell you this product. And the same thing was at what at Anderson or any other company I'm not picking on Anderson, any corporate training has to follow a system. The problem is the system is designed to simply make profit for the company. It's not designed to help the customer. So when I changed from that, so I did two things. Instead of walking up to the door and saying I hope I sell this customer, I need to make the sale hit my bonus. I just said you know what, I'm going to help this customer today, whether that means making a sale or not. I'm not going to worry about selling. I'm just here to help them. So that was mindset number one. Number two, I would go in and instead of saying hey, this is what we're going to do, and I start on my spiel, I would shut up and say, Hey, Jeff, Mr. Mrs. Jeff, just so you know, I'm not here to give you a dog and pony sales show today. I'm here to figure out what you know how I can help you. So tell me why I'm here. And then I would just shut up. And right away. They were like, Oh, the last guy that was here spent three hours you know doing the sales demo and this entire thing this guy just said 15 seconds, and he's letting us talk now. And you let them kind of lead the appointment. And I went from closing 25% which is everyone else closing to closing almost 70%
Jeff Winters:anything and Alright, so tip number one. Yeah, no I get. Tip number one though is be in a helpful, a helpful mindset and open with some sort of question or questions
Unknown:where you open buy, buy, buy, because they have their they have their walls up right away, right completely got their walls up, they got their guard ready, they're ready to fight you. They're ready to like, Okay, I'm ready for this, this confrontation. And you you come in and say, you know, it's like you're waiting for the bear to come out of the cave, and a little kitten walks out. And it's just like the same thing, oh, this is not what I was expecting. This is pleasant. And then they it's amazing. You just see the walls completely crumble in front of them, there were their sense of relief within the first five minutes is palpable. And then you would just go from there. And then I would just use, you know, the other areas of psychology and sales that work. And that many salespeople aren't trained like body language, like using social proof, like how to present and prepare the customer for the price. These things are, are things that tap into how the human brain works, and what makes people feel comfortable. And once you do that, and then you're also the salesperson that's not following the norm. It's easier to sell.
Jeff Winters:I love it. So and Allen's a real sales expert gang, I just play one on this podcast so that but but for the sake of this interview for your entertainment, which we always endeavor to provide, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna push him a little I'm gonna push him because he's the expert. But I do I can't hear I mean, for my money, it's my goal, always in the beginning of a sales call is to and throughout, no sales resistance. Like I'm just I am like, I don't want you to feel that I'm selling you in any way are going to push you or whatever. Like I'm, I'm here to have the conversation and see if there's a fit, right. I mean, that's the sales resistance I wanted. You talked about some of the psychological principles that you think salespeople don't use as often as they could. You mentioned a couple. Can you talk about those?
Unknown:Yeah, there's one one I actually do quite a bit of training on this is pay attention to nonverbal signals and body language. There's really no when you when you look at body language, either on YouTube or you buy books, it's it's kind of in general, it's like this is what this means if they're doing this, but there's really nothing about this is what it means during a sales conversation. Like if you're having a sales conversation, and you ask someone a question, and they scratch their nose when they answer it. Well, to me, that's a tell that I need to explore very quickly, within the context of the conversation when within the context of what their body is saying. So, for example, if someone scratches their nose, that either could mean that they're having an itchy nose because they have an allergy or cold. Or it could mean that they're fibbing about something.
Jeff Winters:There, that's a lie. If I touch my nose on line, there is a
Unknown:it's a, it depends on the context. The reason why is because when we lie, this is why lie detectors are fairly accurate. The capillaries in our nose expand. When we tell a lie, we get anxious and the capillaries expand, which means our nose itches. And we go like this. So if someone says so I started so for example, Jeff has that price, do you Oh, it's not dead? That's all I did. Yeah, not a bad price.
Jeff Winters:I'm never gonna touch my nose. Like, this is real stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the this is why you come here, you touch your nose, you're lying. That's not
Unknown:exactly 100%. Nothing. I think it is that but I believe you. Yeah. But you got to look at the context of the conversation. Like if you're sniffling this whole time, then I'm not going to really think you're lying at you. But I would have to do a little more exploration. Another one. And this See, see what happens with salespeople this this is this is the biggest thing about nonverbal. Sales people don't pay attention to it. So they start talking, they want to get all their information out. They want to tell them how great you are, how great their product is, how great the company is. And you give me a signal like you don't care about it. Well, you don't like what I just said. And what does the salesperson do? It registers subconsciously, they don't they ignore it. And when you ignore that, when you ignore this very simple micro expression, you're not going to make the sale if you miss it. So a great example is a pursed lip. If someone purses their lip, just like the lying liar. No, they don't allow ah interest. I said to you, you know, if I start talking about let's say I was selling you a window and I started talking about the energy efficiency of the glass and the weatherstrip thing and I see you go like this. That's it half a second. And I keep going. That means that that's telling me that you don't care about that stuff. So what the salesperson needs to do is shut up and label it just like Chris Voss said in his book, never split the difference. label it. If you I love the expression that the TSA came at came up with years ago, if you see something, say something, body language, if you see something don't keep going, I would stop and say, let me just pause there for a minute. Jeff, are you really interested in in the in the glass? And then you would actually be Oh, good. He's paying attention me? No, I'm really not. I don't really give a shit about the glass. But I, I saw that you did this very quick microexpression that showed some discomfort. And I labeled it and I addressed it rather than just keep going. So good. Yeah, that's where salespeople make the mistake is they just keep going because they think everybody needs to know everything about their product. And you you could only care about, I just want the window to go up and down. That's it? How much is it that you know, some people just care about that, and the engineers will care about the glass?
Jeff Winters:You know, I also think and I want to hear more micro expressions, because that's interesting. But I also think that salespeople as much as they want to get through their presentation or what have you. They don't feel they can they don't feel they have the permission to stop and go, Wait a minute. Maybe I'm misreading the room here. But I'm, I'm sort of sensing that maybe you're not that in into what we're talking about are the glasses and interesting to you. Am I Am I miss reading? Because I don't want to keep going. I don't think salespeople think they have the permission to do that.
Unknown:Yeah. And that's a mistake. Because if if if I was being sold, right, yeah. And I didn't like what I heard you as the as the customer, or the prospect, for the most part nine times out of 10. You want to be courteous. So you're not going to interrupt the salesperson, you're not going to be a jerk and say, hey, you know what, Jeff had stopped talking about that. You're not gonna say, you're gonna sit there and take it. But now I'm thinking about, Oh, I got my meeting at three o'clock, because you're talking about something I'm not interested in. Oh, crap, I gotta pick my daughter up and you're completely not paying attention at all. And this is not going to be a sale and it turns into, okay, great. Send me some information. I'll get back to you. That's what, that's what that is.
Jeff Winters:That's your nose. You're lying purse lips, you hate it. What are some other ones?
Unknown:Well, there's some bad 80% of facial expressions are negative, we do much more negative stuff than we do positive in the world in general. If someone scratches their ear, yeah, that usually means again, you have to take it into context, context is a big thing, that they don't like what they just
Jeff Winters:heard, really. So they actually scratched yours bad. Or
Unknown:if they say something while they're scratching their ear, they're actually telling you something that they don't really like what they're saying, or it could be a fib, gold, keep going to mourn one. Here's another one that comes down to pacifying behavior. So when we were babies, and we were growing up, if we had normal parents, when we cried or when we did something, they picked us up, they pacified us. As we get older, that started to stop so we pacify ourselves. You see people's twirling their, their hair, biting their nails, as are all pacifying behaviors. One of them in a sales conversation is rubbing the back of your neck.
Jeff Winters:I always do that. Tell me it's not bad. Tell me it's not bad.
Unknown:It usually means you're uncomfortable or anxious. Yeah, well, it's something that you didn't really like you, I would see that. Like, if I didn't prepare the customer well enough for the price. And I said here, this is 35,000 for the windows and they'll go
Jeff Winters:you can't see this at home. That is the exactly what happens all the time. By the way, I'm gonna start doing that even when I am comfortable. And just run right to the neck. It's
Unknown:just okay to make yourself feel better. And therefore you're you're actually feeling anxious. So that's, that would be a tell to me saying, Okay, I messed something up here. And I would label it and say, let me let me pause there for a minute, Jeff, whatever. What do you feel like right now? And people kind of subconsciously really appreciate it because they realize all right, he's he's getting me right now. He knows that I'm nervous about the price.
Jeff Winters:Yeah. All right. One more. This is too good. This is too good. This is the whole podcast. I love it.
Unknown:I'm gonna give you the biggest I'm gonna give you the biggest misnomer and body language. You ready? Thank you. The body is broken when you do body language training. And when you're when you're watching someone, and looking at three different sections of the body, you're looking at the face. Yeah, arms, hands and torso. So the middle part, and then the feet and the legs. Out of those three. What do you think is the most accurate to read? Oh, feet. Very good. Most people say the face Shut up.
Jeff Winters:Is it the feet? I just
Unknown:You just guessed because we figured it wasn't that
Jeff Winters:right. I'm spending so much time not touching my nose, ears or neck. I am basically only doing that.
Unknown:Here's the reason the face is what you're going to see the most and obviously, you're going to get a lot of information from the face. But people especially criminal criminals, and people who are good at deception will manipulate their face and try to make you think that they're thinking something else. And you can manipulate your face easy because it's right next to the brain. It's right right there. The feet of the face. Are this from the brain, and therefore you never think about what your feet are doing. And the feet will always tell the truth about what you're thinking or what you're feeling. So there are certain things to watch for like foot direction, cross legs, movement, things like that, if you can see the feet in a sitting situation or in a standing situation, it'll be a very big tell on how the conversation is going. Alright, so
Jeff Winters:who will would defeat tell me what to look for with defeat?
Unknown:Okay, so I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, one of my favorite studies that we've ever done. So foot direction is a big one. So if you ever speaking to someone, and you're standing right there standing up their feet, if they're interested, and they're engaged, their feet should be facing you. If they're not, if they're not interested, or you're boring them, their feet will be Believe it or not facing the exit of the room.
Jeff Winters:Or five minutes away from you. i I'm shocked. Yes, this is I'm going to a wedding tonight, I'm going to intentionally bore people and see where their feet are facing.
Unknown:Yeah, here's the study I just referenced. So I forget who did the study. But they did a study, they went to like nine or 10 different custom areas and international airports. And they would watch they would the they would watch people's feet. And anyone that went up to the officer and said, I have nothing to do officer would say, Do you have something to declare the people who said no, and their feet were facing the officer? Were telling the truth almost 100% of the time. Wow. People who said no, I have nothing to declare but their feet were actually facing toward the exit not at the officer. were lying about 90% of the time. So when they said no, I have nothing to declare but their feet were facing away. They were lying. They did have something to declare.
Jeff Winters:This is totally useless information for zoom calls, but very useful for social situations.
Unknown:Yes, yes,
Jeff Winters:I can remember. Yeah, Zoom
Unknown:calls are easy. Where you know, you're going to you watch in the eyes, and you're watching the hands if you can, here's it, here's a tip on Zoom, try to keep your hands in the camera. Yeah, what you're, you're you subconsciously are more trustworthy, because people don't think you're doing something else like checking your phone with your hands, put your hands in. So that's why I've been my I've had my hands mostly up or my arms crossed. That's another thing I'll tell you this real quick. arms crossed, everyone thinks is a negative thing. arms crossed is completely within the context of the conversation like right now I'm very comfortable this way doesn't mean I'm mad at you or closing you off. I'm just comfortable. arms crossed could mean you're cold. It's scientifically proven women are colder than men are they feel colder than the men. So they'll close their arms more, more, based on the rest of my body. If I give you a face, now my arms across and it needs complete something completely different. Because my eyebrows are down. So those are things you look for in sales, the whole point here is just shut up and pay attention. And then when you see something that could be some sort of tell, label it just stop. And I like to say, hey, you have let me just pause here for a minute. How are things so far? How does this sound so far? And Not?
Jeff Winters:Not? Hey, I saw you scratch your nose and I listened. And I know you're a liar. You're lying to me. Your zoom camera at your feet. I want to see which way they're pointing. They're pointing right at you right now. No, not you. I'm just saying don't do that. Like we gotta we want to be helpful. And we want to be instructive. We don't want you to go overboard. Oh, it's great. Great sound great stuff. You've mentioned something a couple of times, and I want to double click on it. Pricing, preparing the buyer for pricing, what do you mean,
Unknown:you are nailing the top two things I talked about all the time, body language and now pricing. So as a salesperson, when we go through training, we hear the term price conditioning I've ever heard that term price conditioning, I have not. Okay. So it's it's more common in the in home sales world. But basically what it means is the customer needs to kind of expect the price and you have to do it in a certain way, or the way they train it is really wrong because it's basically they train it by bashing the competition. And they say, Oh, well, our competitors charge this for our window. That's the wrong way to do it. Because right away, now you're looked at negatively, because you're bashing the competition. So I train those two segments are the two components of how to the art of pricing, I call it one is price preparation. One is price presentation. So preparing someone for the price is getting to the point where they're comfortable when you give the price of there's no sticker shock. So how often do we try to sell something? And at the end people, you know, you think you're ready to go you've you've built all this value, and then you show the price of $20,000. And they go whoa, right? That's a lot more than I expected. That means you didn't prepare them for the price enough. So there's price preparation and there's ways to do that. How you do it. Okay, so one of the biggest ways to do it is called anchoring. I'll give you a little tip here. So Let's say I'm selling you a roof, right? I'm a roofer and I'm selling you a roof. And I, I'm a professional. So I go up to the house and I look at that house and I know that roof is going to be $25,000. Now, here's the typical way a salesperson is trained. You go into that house, and you spend an hour building, building the value to the$25,000. Roof. Great shingles, great company, unbelievable. Installers, five star reviews, look at us, we've won all these awards, boom, boom, boom, an hour's worth of all of this crap. What is the customer doing this whole time? Well, how
Jeff Winters:much does it cost?
Unknown:How much does this cost? Now, here's the problem. The customer and the spouse, usually, if it's an in home situation, has a number in their head already. And it's always going to be lower than what it is. So the customer is thinking before you even walk in the door that the roofs gonna be 10 grand, you spend an hour building value. Yeah, 25,000, you're just building value to$10,000, you're building value to their number, not your own. Interesting. So instead of doing that you don't build value. First, you prepare them for the number first, and you anchor a number in their brain in a conversational way. So what I used to do was, I walk in your house, and we you know, our little pleasantries, that blah, blah, blah, well, you know, why am I here? You say, Oh, you know, I need a brand new roof. It's 30 years old. You know what, Jeff, before we get into anything, I just want to see where your heads are at, or, you know, what research? Do you think a roof like this is going to cost more than $30,000 or less than 30,000? And then you would answer What you say doesn't matter, you most people would say, Well, I hope it's less. And then I would say, You know what, you're going to be picking everything. So it's going to be up to you and then you move on. What did I just do? I anchored $30,000 in your brain very conversationally, I didn't say what do you think the roof is going to cost? I came up with the number myself. Most people will say oh, I hope it's less because I came up with a higher number than I know it's going to come in. Yeah. Then I can I there's other ways you can do third party information show other different numbers, but you're anchoring these higher numbers. Now the 10,000 in their head is gone. Right? Then when I get to the end, and I do a really good presentation. They're gonna look at that price and go Yeah, that's exactly what I thought it was gonna be.
Jeff Winters:Ladies and gentlemen, this man is a genius. Genius. Most of the time I do these interviews I say such and such as this is an expert. So alright, so tell me what's wrong with up front. I'm bought into this out I love this now, says I, this is a everybody problem. I mean, you gotta get certain salespeople over the hump of saying price in general. Oh, yeah, there's great data on my sales. Yeah, it's silly. But in the beginning, if of the call and just say, hey, you know, I'm really excited. Most people want to just know the price early and often. So they know what they're looking at. So I just want to share, like, unbalanced. And we're going to talk through exactly what it is. But on balance, these things usually run around 50 grand. So I just want to share that before we get into it. So you can have that in your head.
Unknown:Yeah, data. That's okay. Yeah. That's that's not bad. I mean, at least you're bringing it up. And they're expecting it, that the danger with that is they can say, You know what, that's way out of my price range. I don't want to hear the rest of your conversation.
Jeff Winters:Right, right. But better to Mitt not to put words in your mouth, you're the expert on the other guy. Better to mention it upfront, even if it's done in artfully than to not mention it upfront at all.
Unknown:100%. Because if you don't mention at all, there's going to be sticker shock. And worse, they're going to be thinking about the price and not paying attention to you. Because they're going to be they're going to be preoccupied subconsciously in their brain about what this is going to cost. Really good. So if you can do it in a conversational way, and not just say, just say, you know, this is going to be 50 grand. Yeah, that could shut down the conversation right away. But do you think that's why I like to ask a question, do you think something like this is going to cost more than 30,000 or less than 30,000? So that see, now they don't know, it's a range? And they're gonna say, Well, I hope it's, well, I'm thinking it's going to be around 30, then you're in good shape, because you already gave them a higher price. So if you're up if you're if your average ticket is 50,000, and it's for let's say you're a SAS salesman, and you do so you say hey, do you think software like this, I don't know if you've done any research, you think software like this is going to be more than $65,000 a year or less? Well, I've seen other ones that are less, okay, well, this is going to be then the other big thing is, this is going to be up to you. You're going to design it and then we're going to come to your price. It's not the salesman's price, it's the customer's price. When they build their own price then they own it more
Jeff Winters:interesting. All right. Gosh, really good stuff gold, though. I feel like I got it. I don't want to get myself a big pat on the back and rub my nose in my neck but I feel like I got to the gold quick there. Now you don't have to say just nod your head. Nod your head toucher.
Unknown:I'm nodding my head. Yes.
Jeff Winters:I want to do some rapid fire Sales questions and get your opinion ready. Go ahead. discounting.
Unknown:I don't like to discount unless it's upfront, however, I mean, I'm going to answer that in two ways. If you are a service provider, you do coaching and stuff, never discount your own worth. I don't like discounting, I like adding value. So if you have a $10,000 program, and someone says, Really, it just is too much money, I'll tell you what, I'll add in an extra coaching session for the 10,000. So you add value rather than taking away. However, in a consumer situation, yeah, buying something from a company and you're it's it's a homeowner, whatever. They like certain discounts. It's just they're kind of expected. So that's, it's not a bad thing, you come up with your price. Oh, by the way, we have a $250 coupon here, I'll just throw that on.
Jeff Winters:Got it. And we can just kind of keep this b2b. That's most of our probably all of our listeners, right? slide deck, no slide deck.
Unknown:Oh, definitely a slide deck, but very, very graphic oriented, and very few words, you want to put something up, and then talk about it, you don't want your if you're over zoom, you don't want your customer staring at the slide deck trying to figure it out for the slide. While you're talking. That's a huge mistake I see people make they put up the slide that has 14 bullet points on it. And they're trying to they're reading it back to the customer or you don't want to do that. You want to put something up, make a point and then talk about the point.
Jeff Winters:When it comes to pricing options, or one price.
Unknown:Oh no. Three options all the time. One at a time. Why three options, because the brain loves three. Brain absolutely loves three. And here's here's what happens psychologically, if you say, Jeff, here's the price is $14,500. That is now a yes or no decision. Yeah. Okay. If I say Jeff, package one is 12, seven, five, package two is 14,005. And the gold package is 22,000. Whatever it is, your mindset goes from yes or no, I'm going to work with Jeff to what package am I choosing to work with Jeff. So it goes from I want to pick a package. And when they pick a package, that means they want to work with you, rather than saying yes or no. And then there's a way to I it's actually the biggest thing when I do my pricing trends, that training is that's the presentation side, you'll always present your price in packages of three. And you'll see this online all the time on websites and SAS, you know, company, they always have the three packages. Problem is about 80% of them get them wrong, because they always point people to the middle package, they have the pricing wrong, they have it on the wrong side of the page. They got the concept, right, but they're they don't have the, the execution is all wrong. You point to the highest package. Most people point point get the customer point into the middle pack. Right? Right. But you you would argue point to the highest pack, get them to the highest package. Because here's why. Psychologically, I'm looking at three prices. And I'm like, you know, good, better best. I hate those times. Let's say it's good, better, best or no? Gold, Silver, Bronze. All right, you know what? I'll choose the silver, I'll be average, I can't really afford the gold. So I'm just going to I'm going to choose the middle one. I don't want my customers thinking their average. I want my customers saying whoa, look at that gold package. I got a great deal on I love working with this company because I got their best package for that price. That's that's the excitement I want my customers to have not like I chose him build their middle package.
Jeff Winters:Upfront contract. With me they have upfront con at the end of this conversation, you're going to fall into one of three buckets. Bucket one, bucket two, bucket three, I don't care which one but let's just agree that we're going to come to that decision at the end of this call. No,
Unknown:you mean you're gonna make a decision yes or no whether to work with me? No,
Jeff Winters:you're gonna make a decision. One of those could be we're going to have a next step. One of those could be just like the idea that the customer is going to kind of bucket themselves at the end of a call into one of three predetermined options.
Unknown:If you put it that way, it's very salesy. If you put it in that type of that type of jargon, you know, I would, at the beginning of a call, especially a zoom, call or come up with an agenda. And I would say at the end of the agenda, we're gonna talk about next steps. Now you're gonna be you're gonna fall into one of three buckets. That sounds so cheesy to me. If I heard someone say that I'm like, Oh, really? Here we go. Here goes sales presentation, one on one. Go ahead. I'm ready. And I'm already got you already got you, you know, kicked out the door halfway out the door. You got me in the salesperson book. Yeah, exactly. All right.
Jeff Winters:Any fun tactics from a closing perspective that you like?
Unknown:I love this question. So I actually have on my business card sheet. I'll hold it up, right? Yeah. Yes, it says, You don't need a closing technique. If your main intention is to help the customer. I always say that closing should be a natural culmination of the end of the conversation. You don't have to come up with a technique. When you get someone comfortable enough, during a conversation, you paid attention to their body language, you prepare them for the price. You show them the price, right? And they're like, Yeah, that's exactly what I thought about you then simply ask for the sale. So when would you like to get started? When would you like to get on the calendar? It's as simple as that. If you start doing these trial closes, or you know, when you look up closing techniques, I did this for my book, I have three pages of all these silly names for closing techniques. There's like 85 of them in my book. And they're all very silly, because they're all They're all tactics. They're all like, how can I get this? How can I coerce this person? To say yes, when really when you do everything right from the beginning, and you make it very, a great experience for the customer? To close? The Yes, is just the continuation of the conversation.
Jeff Winters:But you're assumptive like what you did there, you know, you would categorize as an assumptive, close when you have an
Unknown:assumptive. Close, right. But that's not a technique. That's just basically, I guess, it is a technique, but you're basically saying, you know, here it is, it looks like everything, you know, looks like from everything that I've seen and heard this looks great. When do you want to get started?
Jeff Winters:So that is how you coach salespeople to end their calls, using that sort of assumptive? Hey, when would you want to get started? Yeah,
Unknown:it's always it's always going to be an assumptive type of clothes. And, you know, you'll hear things like okay, yeah, you gotta get a bunch of yeses throughout the throughout the conversation. I agree with that a little bit. But again, some some salespeople take it to the point where it's fake. It like sounds like a script. And I actually just saw a study last week that said, See, as the years are going by people are hating salespeople more, and coming up with ways to avoid talking to them or coming up with ways to protect themselves from them. And this study said, when people sense that they are part of a script, or the salesperson is using some sort of tactic or a script, which is usually quite easy to hear, they literally will shut down and not listen to the rest of the conversation. Interestingly, turns them off. So today more than ever, you have to sound like a human being who's simply there to help them whether they sell or not.
Jeff Winters:And action packed this this podcast by scribbling notes. You are a true expert, my friend. Thank you so much for coming on. Coming on the Grow show.
Unknown:Oh, man, it was it was great. This is this was a lot of fun. You are definitely an expert yourself. I've been on some some other podcasts where it was painful. So thank you for being a pro that you are,
Jeff Winters:you know my editors immediately thinking about cutting that don't cut it, Neil. Leave it in. Allen. Once again, can't say it enough love to having you on. Thank you so much it for people who want to get more work. Where can they find you? Just
Unknown:go to my website. It's pretty easy. It's al langer.com. So it's a L and then la ng er.com. You'll have you get every everything there you can find my book. You can find my podcast and links to quite a few of the other shows that I've been on. But definitely listen to this one first.
Jeff Winters:Definitely did Alan fluidize Thank you, my friend, everybody.
Unknown:The grow show was sponsored by abstract cloud solutions, certified Salesforce consulting services.