In this segment of a sales coaching video, Christian Polk engages a prospect (Speaker A) who resists committing to an investment today, preferring to postpone. Polk challenges the prospect by highlighting that the decision directly impacts the prospect’s own life, not just the salesperson’s. He identifies the prospect’s fear and indecision, framing the emotional state as a pivotal choice: either let the fear constrict action, leading to continued stagnation, or shape the fear into decisive, massive action that changes the prospect’s destiny. Throughout the dialogue, Polk uses probing questions, visualizes the negative outcomes of inaction over the next two years, and reinforces the prospect’s sense of ownership and agency, ultimately guiding the prospect toward choosing to “shape” the feeling and commit to change.
Chapters
I have no reason to buy today, so why don't you just stop pushing me to do this? I know it's your job, but push this to next week.
Yeah, well, you say it's my job, man. Like, whether you buy today, whether you buy next week, whether you never buy, I'm wearing the same shoes, I'm gonna drive the same car. Whose life actually changes if we're able to get this business up and going and actually open up a profitable facility?
Mine. Mine, of course.
You sound kind of angry about it.
It's pretty obvious what you're implying.
Well, it's not so obvious. We're having to have the conversation, right? So it's like, again, like, this going to change my life, but like ultimately I'm here for you just because of what you told me. I feel like I need to help you out because if it comes down to if we do come up to a decision and we know we need to move forward, doesn't matter whatever the decision is, if we tell ourselves it's okay to not move forward, to push off that decision, like what type of results are we going to get?
Nothing's changing, but I'm just thinking about stuff.
I'm just— Yeah. And it's like, I'm not going to take that away from you. Like, it's a big decision and it's supposed to be a big decision. If you're over there like cool as a cucumber, right? Like, and you didn't have some type of reaction, I'd have to check check your pulse because we're doing something we've never done before. So this feeling you're feeling right now, like, it's not that, hey, I have this now and then next week I'm not going to have it. Like, time is not going to change this feeling. If anything, sometimes times make it like— it makes it worse because when we're like going up to make the decision, we elongate that process. It really creates more and more nerves. So the really only thing we get to do is decide how we actually use this feeling, because the first is like we can allow it to constrict us and we can allow it to not actually make a decision and we just stay with what we're doing down. That's what most people do. Well, the second option is we can take this feeling, understand it's not going to go away and shape it into taking massive action. So now we actually put some skin in the game, and this has to work because we make it work. Which would you rather do, allow it to constrict you or shape it?
I see your point, you're right.
Um, I'm not making a point, I'm asking, like, which would you rather do, allow it to constrict you or shape it?
Shape it.
Okay, why though?
Well, I mean, you're right, there's a level of fear to it, but, um, I guess it won't really go away after a few days.
So why do you want to actually shape it then?
Yeah, obviously, what else am I gonna do? Sit around and just not do anything about it. I want to— I am the master of my own destiny. I'm not gonna let you control it.
It's like, and I appreciate you, you owning that, because the thing is, we can sit around and do nothing, and most people do. So I have to ask, what if we allow that to continue? Because we haven't done anything for the past 2 years. What if it continues another 2 years and we don't do anything about this? Like, what actually happens then?
Nothing good. People are not Yeah, that's a good change.
Okay. Do you want to allow that to happen? Because ultimately it comes down to it being a choice and it's a choice we can make or not make.
I want to change. Yeah.
Okay. So if we want to change, next steps are pretty simple, man. We would go ahead, we take care of the investment and then get you set up. Does that work? Yeah.
