8 Factors that Control Closing Percentages (2 of 2)

Welcome to another episode of the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. Today, we're going to be listening to Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer break down part 2 of the 8 factors that control closing percentages. This is how you can choose the levers, adjust, and make sure that your close rates are hitting exactly where you want them, plus how to make sure your leads and prospects buy from you confidently. Now, if you missed episode number 1, make sure to go and listen back. This is definitely a two-parter. Now let's jump in and learn how we can increase your closing rates.

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Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy. Before I actually give my little mini list here of ways to accomplish this, I think I want to move over to number 5 because actually the list applies to both 4 and 5. Number 5 on our list is the prospect's belief or disbelief in their ability to use the product or service. The first one is Number 4 was the belief or disbelief that the prospect has about your assertions. But then number 5 is now maybe they believe your assertions, but they don't believe in themselves, in their own ability to use the product or service successfully. I mean, this has a huge impact in results. So, Dan, why don't you explain exactly what this is and the differentiation between number 5 and number 4. Then I'll give my little sort of mini list for that.

I think number 5 is one of the least understood things about selling. A lot of emphasis is put on number 4. A lot of emphasis— sort of people instinctively understand that their claims about their product or their service may not be accepted as true and so they attempt to to prove them, physical demonstration. So if you watch an infomercial for a kitchen gadget, you know, we demonstrate the gadget and we show that it cuts tomatoes 78 different ways and it makes cute little shapes out of them and we demo all that. You use testimonials, you use scientific data, you quote the Wall Street Journal. On and on and on to try and substantiate what is being said about your product or service. But what marketers really do not understand about people is that they can accept all of that and still not buy because of their own self-image, their own past experience, their own beliefs about themselves. For example, in selling the kind of product you and I sell. So if we are selling something designed to help somebody improve their business, they may buy that it works generally. It works in their type of business. Other people in their type of business are getting great results with it. But if they know that they bought 67 other systems before this and they are all stacked out in the warehouse with the shrink wrap still on them and you ignore that, having convinced them that all the features and benefits of your course are real, won't get you to a sale because that guy knows in his heart that he won't use it and you didn't convince him otherwise. In selling diets, you may get somebody to believe that it works and that it works for other people and it works for people just like them and it works for people of their gender, ethnicity, age, occupation, in their town, but if they failed 47 other times on 47 other diets. People tend to disqualify themselves. They will find reasons why even though it works and works for other people, it won't work for them. Going back to the kitchen gadget show, a guy I worked with in the infomercial business for a number of years, his name is Stan Jacobs. Stan is a specialist in doing demonstration shows for things like kitchen gadgets and he is brilliant at it. Stan said it is one thing to have a great professional demonstrator demo the thing, but the best thing is when you have a live audience. And you pick people out of the audience and bring them up to the kitchen counter and have them demo it and show them how to use it and lo and behold, they are able to use it. Now that is still not as good as being one-on-one as you said at the beginning of the call and being in the home and actually getting Mary to use it. We were in the skincare business for a number of years with salons.. And I and 3 partners and we sold a $600 facelift in a jar type of product and a skincare system that you took home. And we sort of invented— we stumbled into it by accident but then perfected it. Rather than having the expert cosmetician do all the application to the customer in the chair, and then have this customer thinking, "Yeah, I look great. Look how good I look in the mirror, but I'll never be able to do that for myself. I'm all thumbs," etc., etc. We never let the stylist touch them. The stylist talked them through doing everything themselves so that in the course of the demonstration they became convinced that in fact tomorrow in front of the mirror at home in the bathroom they were going to be able to get the same results. I think this is something a lot of sellers, a lot of marketers just do not understand, that the final obstacle to the close is not belief in the seller, the product, the service, its features or benefits, but it is the buyer's own disbelief in themselves.

I agree with you. It's probably the number one thing on our list. That either they— people don't— they ignore it or they never even think about it. And it oftentimes does require more— it's more difficult to achieve. As far as sort of my short list of ways to achieve this— the belief or disbelief of your assertions and/or also their abilities to do it themselves, I mean, obviously use some testimonials. Will move you there. Any recognition that you've received, awards you've won will help. Your personal story which is very, very significant as far as if your story is relevant in order to set up either the fact that what you're saying is true and also if you can relate to the buyer or the buyer can relate to you with your own personal story, that helps a lot. And another way is certainly just with case studies. And so that's sort of my short list of ways to sort of move in that direction. And I also will mention, just like, you know, you kind of mentioned about the speaker, Mr. Dolan, where he delivered this big box of testimonial letters. The other thing that— factors that help here a lot is the quantity of proof that you put in front of people. So just like Mr. Dolan had his huge box of proof,. And the other thing is the quality of the proof. So like, just like Mr. Dollar had on top the letters that were kind of like relevant to the type of organization he wanted to speak in front of, that was more of a quality proof. So those two factors are important as well. But so 4 and 5 are linked together. Let's move on to number 6. And number 6 obviously needs to be on our list, which is the structure of the offer. So now number 6 is not necessarily about the offer, but it's really about the structure of the offer. And I see this as being in many ways— most people are doing a very poor job with this. You have to position an offer in front of people that number 1 is very easy to understand and also is easy to take action, easy to buy. And I see people making this mistake a lot. I see them making this mistake a lot in face-to-face selling. I see a lot of speakers who speak from the stage that make this mistake. Even at our own events, people come to the back of the room with the order form in hand in order to buy what it is the speaker is selling but can't even understand what am I buying, how do I buy this, which option should I take, which is kind of— we added this year Semi-tongue-in-cheek, but you wouldn't believe how many people have sent in examples of this column that I now write, which is called the Sales Prevention Department. A lot of this is really part of that, is that if you don't make the structure of the offer easy for people to take action and easy to understand, it really does become part of this whole sales prevention department. Dan, I think what I'd like you to do on this on this one before we move forward. I don't want to spend too much more time on this one, but I would like you to tell your story about your client, the Gold by the Inch client, and your infomercial, which I believe it was— maybe still has the record for being the longest run infomercial of all time. I think one of the reasons why that was such a successful infomercial, which is because you really made it very easy for people to understand the offer and take action.

Can you use that as an example? Yeah, the show holds the record as the longest running pure lead generation infomercial, to be fair. I think Carlton Sheets' show holds the record for the longest running show, period. But we were on the air for 8 years very successfully, very profitably. And the Go By the Inch show, it also probably holds a record for being the cheapest produced infomercial of its time.

I'm sure that's a record that won't be broken.

And by the way, it looked Yeah, no, I doubt that it will be broken. Having spent money on video production, you will probably find it. The first version of the show was shot and produced for $8,200. We had to go back and redo the show because TNN wouldn't air it just because of the lighting quality. So we redid the show and spent about $28,000, which is still ridiculously cheap, just to get the lights better. Duplicated everything else exactly the same way. But the show's magic, I think, is that you, as you say, you instantly and easily understood what this thing was, how it worked, what you were being asked to do. This was a business opportunity. There were many ways to sell the product, but predominantly people of spools of this different designs of gold chain. They were going to set it up on a card table at a swap meet and people were going to walk up and get a bracelet or an anklet cut to their precise measurement and put together for them on the spot. Hence, they were paying by the inch, not by the piece. So if you got a fat leg, it cost you more than if you got a thin leg. You saw in the show people sitting at a swap meet with the thing on the table, people walking up, asking them what that was, getting a simple answer, picking the design of the chain, the chain being pulled off, sniffed, and the fastener put in, and them handing the guy money. They got it. They understood it. Back to the earlier point, they could even see themselves doing it. We weren't asking anybody to do something. That a fairly talented chimpanzee couldn't do. So there was instant understanding. The offer itself was easy because, of course, it was free. It was a free lead generation offer. Then the subsequent offers were very easy to respond to and you were really picking between only 3 choices. There is a great book, it's a little old now, it's a few years old, but I did reference it in Marketing to The Affluent. It's by Barry Schwartz and it's called The Paradox of Choice. And with a lot of examples of scientific research, Barry basically makes the point that in many cases we've reached the place where consumers have so many choices that they are paralyzed, that they can't choose. And they actually now have a less beneficial environment than when they had fewer choices. And so it's important for us to make it easy for them to choose because if it's complicated, if it's difficult, it naturally lends itself to the "I need to think this over, I need to sleep on it, I need to talk it over with somebody" reaction which of course derails a close. So Go By The Inch, unlike many business opportunity or money-making offers, really got over the ease of understanding and the belief that I could do it hurdle at the same time.

I don't know if you saw in the news this morning, Dan, but I was watching the Today Show. The morning before that I was watching Morning Joe and they showed a story where there was this chimpanzee. It made me think of it because you mentioned that chimpanzees could do it. The story where a chimpanzee in China got away from the zoo and the zookeeper was trying to shoot him with a sedative gun and the chimpanzee actually pulled the gun away from the zookeeper. So many times a chimpanzee might be the more talented of the two.

It's a real shame he didn't pull the gun away and shoot the zookeeper.

Gosh, there would be a story.

Right.

It made all the national news this morning. It was pretty cool. Number 7, and I'm going to do number 7 and I'm going to let Dan, I'll let you do number 8 and then we're going to open it up for Q&A. But number 7 on our list is reversal of risk. Eliminating it completely. And we teach this a whole lot. If you can find a way to take away all the risk from an offer and also make them believe it as we talked about in number 4 and number 5 on our list, which is, you know, the fact that they believe what you say and they also believe that they can do it. Well, you've taken away pretty much the biggest hurdles of the sale. So you really want to think of ways that you can always take away risk from people. I need to point out that there is oftentimes— there is a differentiation in this case between B2B and B2C. One of my independent business advisors and a member of my information— my info marketing group for many years, a gentleman named Tom Widbar, he dealt with large companies that would teach them how to do better control of their inventory and he was often dealing with people And so he was in a B2B environment. And he was often dealing with not the owner of the company but the guy who was in charge of sort of the inventory control of that company or the inventory of the company. And so now that risk reversal was a little different thinking and in many cases more difficult thinking because of the fact that now if this management guy was buying his product or service Now the risk was that he couldn't look bad to the owner of the company. That's a more difficult risk reversal to be dealing with, whereas in the B2C, which is most of us actually are dealing with more either B2C or directly with the owner of a company. So now that risk reversal is a lot easier to accomplish because of the fact that the only person that person has to answer to is themselves. And so now they feel like if they make a bad buying decision, then even if they can— if they get their money back, nobody else is going to know about their bad buying decision as opposed to somebody in the B2B market that somebody will know about their bad buying decision. So taking away all risk, looking at how can I eliminate all risk from somebody makes a very significant difference in the closing percentage. I teach this a lot in the information marketing when I talk at the A to Z Day and I go through the blueprint of the A to Z Day. Clearly one of those in there is risk reversal.

Now, number 8— Can I make one quick point about that? Please.

Go ahead.

If you tie 7 to number 1, it's important because a lot of people are— marketers are very reluctant to do really great risk elimination or even risk reversal. Offers. Risk elimination is simply making it go away. Risk reversal is actually making it go away plus punishing and penalizing the seller beyond the refund. Many marketers are very reluctant to do it. They are scared of it. In private consulting, almost everybody I've ever got to do it has been scared of it. One way not to be scared of it is to be selling to really good good qualified prospects in the first place. The better the client that you are selling to, the less likely they are to abuse or take advantage of guarantees, warranties, risk reversal offers and so forth. The poorer the quality of the prospect, the more likely they are to abuse it and so I mean both in B2C and in B2B, I mean, we had the point you make. Years ago I had a client that sold theft control training to the supermarket and convenience store industry. And, of course, we had to be— in many cases we were dealing with an executive, not an owner of a chain whose job is at stake when he makes mistakes. But the upside really isn't there. So you or I make a decision, there's financial upside and financial downside. And we're not going to fire ourselves. But in this case, there's great reluctance to take risk because the guy doesn't get the benefit of the upside, but he sure does get clobbered on the downside. And there was one chain that he was just having— just finding impossible to penetrate. And we did have a guarantee on the training that at the end of the 2 days, if the client wasn't happy, they did have a payment. But we finally cracked this one. By giving this executive a 3-year wage guarantee. So we put in writing, "If this goes south on you and you get fired, we'll pay your salary for 3 years." You wouldn't dare do it if you weren't dealing with a high-quality company, a high-quality individual you had some confidence in, and of course confidence in what it is you were selling.. But it's a great example of risk reversal.

Well, number 8 is unasked questions and objections answered. Just setting this up before I have you, Dan, talk about it, you were like the first great copywriter that I studied. But since that time, I think I've studied all the guys that are out there always looking for the little hinge. From each of those in order to perfect my own copywriting. I will tell you that whereas every great copywriter that's out there has their own little fingerprint that they put in their copy that they're all terrific at, this one I think, Dan, you are the best at of anybody I've ever seen. It's consistent in all your copy whenever I see it, which is the fact that you sort of you sort of bring up the unasked questions, the questions that people are thinking to themselves but not necessarily expressing, and then you are answering these. So talk about that a little bit. I mean, you're sort of a master of it and the process that you go through in that.

Well, I'm a big believer in not ignoring any elephant in the room and in fact painting it purple and pointing it out to everybody. A lot of salespeople and therefore a lot of copywriters prefer to just keep their fingers crossed and hope nobody brings it up or thinks about it. I think that's a mistake. I think customers are more sophisticated than that and I think they are more skeptical and scared than that. I always have done it in face-to-face selling. As well and actually to start there. I think in face-to-face, of course, as you said at the beginning of the call, you have the advantage of feedback. So a lot of salespeople err in only responding to the objections and questions raised by the prospect when they're in a face-to-face environment. But there are a lot of reasons people don't ask things that are actually on their minds that are bothering them. In some cases, they are too polite to do it. In some cases, they are embarrassed by asking that particular question or raising that objection. In some cases, they are afraid of asking a stupid question and being thought dumb. In some cases, they don't want to be thought of as cheap or a cheapskate. The list goes on and on and on and on and on. So I never made the assumption that merely responding to those that were raised was a satisfactory way to get to a complete and easy close. Then in group selling where, as you say, you get some body language feedback but generally speaking you don't get feedback from the audience.— then I think it is even more important to raise every single reason why people don't buy. Then as a copywriter, I moved that over to ads and sales letters. The process is I try and figure out and think of every possible reason that somebody would have in their head, every doubt, every skepticism, every fear, every anxiety, every reason for not buying and go ahead and lay those out on the table and answer them. There are lots of copy devices. I mean, you do it in frequently asked questions. You do it in telling stories. You have testimonials. Bring them up and answer them. So the mechanics are varied, but the principle is to leave no unasked question unanswered. Again, I think a lot of people selling are either fearful of it or at least negligent of it, thinking if Bob doesn't mention it, God knows I don't need to mention it. But just because Bob doesn't mention it doesn't mean that it's not rolling around in Bob's brain.

What about if it is not rolling around in Bob's brain but you still bring it up? Don't you also think that that gets you a lot more believability?

I think you're absolutely right. I think it can build trust and a lot of this gets to really how you view your business. So if you view your business as slam bam, thank you ma'am, get the money, get out of town before the posse forms and never see them again, then that's one thing. But if you view your business as,— you know, it's like we say most people think about getting a customer to make a sale, but we think about making a sale to get a customer. So if you view this as creating a relationship that is going to have far greater value over time than it has in the initial transaction, then you not only have to be concerned with closing the sale, you have to be concerned with how the person feels about how you closed the sale, how they feel about you pre-, during, and post-sale, and how that relationship is going to go forward from there. So now this is about creating a trust relationship, not just barely enough trust to get the sale closed. A lot by putting all cards on the table, by making them aware of issues and flaws that might not have occurred to them at least at the moment. You preempt a lot of buyer's remorse and problems related to it that occur after you're gone and you no longer have a direct opportunity to respond. Respond to them.

So I just think it's a much smarter strategy. Yeah, so, you know, I asked everybody today to make sure they write these down and I wanted to sort of go over them with everybody because, you know, I don't want to rush through this and get right to questions. I have sort of a little bonus for everybody as far as next call as far as extended question time. I want to make sure people get this because these 8 factors are critical. We use those ourselves, Dan and I, in everything that we do. It's whether we are writing long-form sales letters, making a presentation to speak from the stage, speaking to somebody face-to-face, online, offline. All 8 of these are used all the time. So number 1 is the quality of the selection of the prospects and make sure you got that written down. Number 2 is how relevant and appropriate what you are selling is to that prospect you have chosen. Number 3 is pre-sales positioning. Number 4 is the belief or disbelief that the prospect has about your assertions.— so whether they believe in what you're saying as far as your assertions itself. Number 6 is the prospect's belief or disbelief in their own ability to use the product. So again, number 5 is a little different than number 4. So number 4 is whether they believe what you say to be true. Number 5 is whether they can do it, and that's significant. Number 6 is the structure of the offer itself. How you structure this offer and make sure that it's easy to understand and easy to take action. Number 7 is reversal of risk. So take away risk. And truthfully, I have never seen— people come up to me and I know, Dan, they come up to you and they say, gee, I can't guarantee what I sell or I can't take away the risk. And in short discussion with them, I can usually ask them 2 or 3 questions which we can get to a point where they're— I don't care what it is that you're selling, you can figure out a way to take away risk. And many people who are actually offering guarantees and/or risk reversal are being rather wimpy about it. And the stronger you can make this, the better that will help you with your sales. As a matter of fact, Gary Halbert Howard used to say that if you're not getting at least 20% refunds, you're not selling hard enough. So which unfortunately I've never hit that plateau, 20%. So I must not be selling hard enough. But the— but, you know, you really need to make this as strong as you can possibly make it as far as your risk reversal in order to take away any doubt. And then the next thing is, you know, Number 8 is the Dan Kennedy raising up all the questions, sort of using the, I guess, the Robert Collier principle of entering the conversations, going through the prospect's mind, raising all the questions of why somebody might not buy, their disbelief, the questions that they would have about the product or service that you are offering. And doubt that they might have about it, raising those and then answering those objections in your presentation, whether it's one-on-one or through mass media. So you're much better off doing that than not doing it and allowing people to come to their own conclusion on those answers without you being able to properly present that answer in the way that you you want to present it. It's a very, very, very important list. I would tell you that everybody should be looking at this and every time you write something or structure some kind of presentation, you should go back and relook at the list and say, am I covering all my bases?

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