Closing Made Easy: The Triple A Framework Explained | Ep 791

I've been teaching sales for 13, 14 years now. I've taught a lot of salesmen and I realized that I was missing this one piece. I call it the AAA framework. Okay? So basically there's this gap between when someone presents an obstacle, which is anything that's not a yes after you've presented price. Okay? So if you presented price and you said you wanna buy and they say anything that's not sure, all right, that is an obstacle or technically it's an objection. They said no. What I realized is the best salespeople, and I had this as a pro tip at the beginning as just like 2 bullets and I was like, oh my God, this is a whole training. I just, I've been doing it for so long and the best salespeople do it so subconsciously. Like we question all of our beliefs except for those that we truly believe in, those we never question. And so it was like, this is such an unconscious competence for me and the best salespeople that I've never heard anyone teach it. But basically the AAA framework looks like this. If you look at a study of the salesmen who closed the most sales, do you want to know what they all have in common? It's the people who ask for the sale the most times. You might think, wait, if somebody asks for a sale a lot, that sounds like really douchey. Yes. Which means there has to have something else that allows them to ask more times. And so the objective of closing should be you asking for the sale as many times as you possibly can while maintaining rapport. Because if you lose rapport, you can't ask anyone, right? And so then the question is, how do we solve for maintaining rapport so that we can ask as many times as we want and say it as forcefully as we can, right? How can we cut through the shit? And so that is where the AAA framework comes in. Okay? So the, the 3 A's are ready for it. Acknowledge. Whatever someone says, hey, I need to think about it. Totally understand. You need to think about it, right? So you're acknowledging what they say doesn't necessarily mean you need to agree, but you acknowledge it. Now there's a couple reasons we acknowledge. First, first is when you acknowledge what someone says, you build a rapport. People love that somebody else is listening. And when you say back to them what they said, they're like, oh, this guy cares. Right? The second thing is that when you acknowledge what someone says, you can take seconds to do that. And by taking those seconds, you buy yourself time to think about what you're gonna say next. All right? So rather than having, and this is where I think you lose rapport otherwise, is if someone says, I need to think about it, and then you go right into an obstacle overcome, it sounds like a sales response. But if you say, totally understand, you think about, super reasonable. All right? So first A is acknowledge. Second A is associate. So you associate their response with buying behavior. All right? So what they thought was a step away from you, you actually say, you know, it's funny you say that. That actually makes you just like John, who I talked to earlier today, who was just like you, and he ended up buying blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so there's 3 types of associations you can make. One is you just make a generically positive association. So you just say, that's a smart question. That's a great question. Super reasonable. Blah, blah. All right? Things like that. You just say, It makes sense that you'd ask that question. Okay. That's just a generic positive. That's what I would consider the lightest version of this. The second version is you talk, you create a foil, which is basically you create a fictitious straw man or somebody who's just right next to them. That's just like them that asked that exact same question, but then bought. All right. I like to do two of these. So one is either somebody who just bought earlier today, or you remind me of Janet, who I was talking to 6 weeks ago. She had the exact same thing. And today, She just lost 30 pounds. That makes you just like our biggest success stories. All right, so you can either associate with buying or you can associate with the people who get the best results. So this works for any type of overcome. So if someone says like, hey, this is a lot of money, I say, that's amazing. And people are gonna be in shock. They're like, what do you mean it's amazing? No, no, it's amazing. It's good that it's a lot of money because it reminds me of Janet. So Janet was a, mind if I share a story with you? Yeah. Okay, cool. So Janet was somebody who's just like you, same age, same thing, has two kids. And she said it was a lot of money. Do you mind if I share with you what I told her right now? So here's the thing is that when you create a foil, you're not saying the hard truth to the prospect. You're saying the hard truth to the person next to the prospect. You're saying the hard truth to the person just like them, but not them. So then you can be brutal to this fictitious person that doesn't exist who's right next to them. And you say like, I said the same thing to Janet, but you know what, if I tell, tell you what I told her and then she ended up losing all this weight. Yes. Cool. Sure. It's actually amazing that it's a lot of money for you because it means that you're going to be more committed. The thing is, is that you've always known what it takes to lose weight. The problem is when you haven't done it right. And so the thing is, the fact that this is a lot of money, like you've bought things before, right? They've tried to lose weight. It hasn't worked. You told me about this, isn't this right? Hasn't worked. But I don't think you bought something that was enough that it would hurt for it not to work. And so that tells me that you're actually going to be committed to it. And so if you're actually committed to it, do you have any doubts that if you actually do this, you're going to hit the goal? No. All right, well then you should be more convicted than anyone. Again, I'm not telling her, I'm telling her about Janet, who's just like her in every way. The, the last way is that you can appeal to authority. If you have status, you can then say, hey, I had a similar situation. I used to believe the same thing. Do you mind if I share something with you that a mentor told me? Right? You can say that, but they have to care a little bit that you have status. Now, if you're an 18-year-old trying to sell 40-year-old business owners, not going to work. 'Cause they're like, I don't give a fuck about your beliefs. So what you can then say is you appeal to somebody else's authority, right? So you say, it's funny you say that. Alex just told me this thing this morning. Can I share it with you? Right? And so if you have a sales team and you have authority, you can train them by saying, you can appeal to me. I can be dad, right? Hey, it's funny you just say this. Alex told me this thing this morning. Mind if I share it with you? Right? So I'm just being the messenger. I'm not, and he said it not about you. He said it in general. Right? So in all of these situations, we're not insulting the prospect. We're attacking the idea that someone else said who's just like them. The point and the importance of AAA. And then the third A is then you ask, right? So then you ask, so you acknowledge what they said. Totally makes sense. I understand that you say that. I think it's really smart. Make the association. It's just like XYZ person. And then you say, do you mind if I share this story? Right? And then you go make your explanation and you make this, and then you ask for the next sale again, or you move on to the, to the that will allow many of you— I retrained my team on this AAA concept and across the board, all close rates went up. So I see that as effective teaching is like, if you just get up front and you talk a lot and then nothing happens, then I'm like, well, they didn't learn anything. Their behavior didn't change. But by simply doing this, it also allows you to avoid these pitfalls and these traps. And so there are trap questions that come up that you never want to answer. So I'm going into a side quest on sales, but let's just roll with it. A lot of people will ask questions that there is no right answer to. So let me explain how you know that there's no right answer. If you don't know what the right answer is, then it's the wrong answer. So for example, if someone says, well, how many times a week do I get to be on a call with you, right? In your community and you're on the phone, what do you say? Now, an inexperienced salesperson will just answer the question. But that allows the prospect to determine whether or not your answer is up to their standard, and then they choose to buy or not. No, no, no, no. Like a lawyer never asks questions that they don't know the answers to. The person who's asking the questions is in control of the sale. And so if they ask you a question, that means they have now taken control of the sale, which means that they're now selling you. No good. So instead, when someone says, hey, how many calls a week? You have, you say, how many were you looking for? Hot potato right back to them because you want to be like Smoke. You never want to answer questions unless you know what the answer is correct. Now if they're like, well, I would hope that I'd be able to hop on once a week. And you're like, perfect. We already got that. Got that taken care of. Now we can move on to the next thing. Ready to buy, ready to rock and roll. Ready to start on Monday. You have an ID on you, right? We move forward for the sale. And so with each of these, you always pivot that way. So it doesn't matter what the question is. You can always answer a question with a question. And sometimes it's as simple as why. It's almost always a why. So I'll give you one that used to stump my trainers. They'd be like, hey, how many certifications do your trainers have? I'd be like, well, which ones you looking for? And they'd be like, right? I'd be like, well, what I can tell you is that we have this one, this one, this one. And so we have 3 different certifications that'll cover you for this thing. What you then do is you ask for the intention behind the question. So let's say somebody wants a feature you don't have. Okay, so let's say they're like, how do I get one-on-one time with you? Right? Is, do I get one-on-one time? This is, this is very common. And by the way, anything that someone tries to object to that has to do with features is actually a preference objection. All right? So this is what this means. So I used to call them fit objections. I've now switched to preference cuz I like it better and it works with how I'm explaining this. So a preference objection basically states that I want your outcome my way. And so every objection where someone says, I don't want to buy your thing because I don't get one-on-one calls with you. I don't want to buy your thing because I don't get email support. I don't want to buy your thing because it doesn't have this PDF that I was hoping for. Right? And so basically it's them saying, I have this preconceived notion, your thing doesn't match my preconceived notion. And because of that, I will not buy. But it really means I got on the phone because I wanted this outcome, but I want it my way. And my way includes a PDF. My way includes calls with you. But if you ask for the intention behind the question, you don't have to overcome or have that specific feature. You can answer the intention. And so if someone says, hey, I want to have calls with Alex, then my team, instead of saying, of course, if they asked how many calls with Alex I get, they wouldn't say none because then the sale's over. We say, so what specifically you were looking to ask Alex? Or why did you want to ask? Or like basically what specifically or why? Both of those are kind of the smoke answers for how you go to the intention. All right. So if someone says, I want to get on, I want to get on, have calls with Alex, let's say what specifically we're going to ask Alex, or why do you want to get on calls with Alex? Okay. So if they said what specifically, then we would say something like, okay, that they say, I want to be able to have somebody who can help me with X, Y, and Z. It's like, okay, pause. If we could have someone who helped you with X, Y, and Z, or if you had X, Y, and Z that we already knew worked because it was already pre-tested, Would that solve that issue for you? Again, I didn't answer the question. I just asked if my answer that I'm about to say is the right answer. Now they say, yeah, that would answer. They're like, yes, then we've got that. You ready to get started? And so for every time you ask, you want to ask already knowing if what I'm about to say is the right answer before I tell you. Now, if we did the why frame on the other side and the person says, I say, why do you want to talk to Alex? The person says, you know, I want to have, I want to have accountability. right? Or like basically whatever they say, you can then solve the problem with the features you already have rather than solving it their way. Cause fundamentally they have not done this thing as many times as you have. And if you have a complete product, which you probably do, or hopefully have, right? You've thought through all the things that people struggle with and you've probably thought about why you structured things the way you do. And so that's also where you can do a little bit of education. It's like, it's funny that you say that. It was just like Maria earlier asked that question. And do you mind if I share with her what I share with— what I can share with you? They say yes. You say cool. So if— right. So now I've already got permission. I reframed, I blocked and tackled it. I got rapport. Now I've got all the space. You see how much space I have right now? I'm free balling, right? I'm in charge. I'm in the driver's seat. I'm driving this. Accountability. It totally makes sense that'd be a concern of yours. Can I tell you about 3 different ways we do accountability? And that's why it actually works much better than what we— what you asked for, because that's actually what we started with. So we started doing it the way that you wanted, but we didn't get the outcome you want. And so we were like, well, we want the outcome you want. And so how do we get that the best way possible? We sent out, there's 3 different ways we can provide accountability. We do number 1, number 2, number 3, and that's the highest likelihood way of getting you this outcome. Does that sound good? Great. Right? And so now we're answering questions that we already know the answers to. We've already gotten pre-vetted, and this prevents anyone from disagreeing with you in the sale. You never want to disagree with a prospect. You want them to agree with themselves. Right? Because they believe nothing you say and they believe everything they say. And so the idea is you want them to come to the conclusion. And so the only way we can get them to say it is that we keep asking questions until they say the right answer, not for you to say the right answer. Keep being amazing. Actually compete in the Games. Go fight, win, save the world. See ya.