Christian Polk breaks down a sales call where a prospect says they've been burned before. He shows how the seller over-talked instead of using silence, and how nervous gestures like face-fidgeting undermine authority. The fix: ask probing questions, pause to let them justify themselves, and reframe past failures as learning lessons.
Chapters
—really give that kind of support that they said they would. Yeah.
And, you know, it's a huge shame that people like that kind of taint the market and put a bad taste in your mouth and stop you from potentially taking opportunities that could completely change the trajectory of your life and your business. Why don't you just never invest in a coaching program? Why don't you just completely do it on your own? That way you're guaranteed to never be burned, right?
So he's pushing him away, which subconsciously makes a prospect want to actually come closer to you. And when you get them and you push them away, they have to justify— he has shown up to the call. Why has he shown up to the call? We need to get them to to justify their position, because most people do not talk and think through a lot of the beliefs that they have. So he's getting him to actually think through it. Why are we even on this call today?
Uh, that's a good question.
Well, now here's where he messed up. He put in there the power of the pause, and then he asked a question. The prospect did not answer the fucking question. When somebody says, that's a good question, you either continue to stay silent until they answer it, or you say, yeah, it is a good question. What's your answer? Get them to actually answer the question again. We need to get him to actually justify his belief. The issue is right here, you kind of fall over yourself and you want to fill that void in terms of the silence. You come across a bit more nervous and you don't actually allow them to complete their thought pattern, which he's taken a step in your direction. This is not going to be good.
I'm assuming because you're open, right? You had a bad experience before, but you know, you're not, you're not letting that, you know, just completely dictate the rest of your life, right? Like if you've had a bad girlfriend before, you know, it doesn't mean you're going to stay single for the rest of your life, right? Maybe you, you learn some lessons from your first bad relationship and you take those lessons with you into your next relationship to make sure that it goes the way you want it to go.
Now this is a solid reframe. I would more ask rather than telling, but still solid reframe, which I think, I think is necessary.
I think every successful business owner all time has had a bad business relationship.
Right? Would you agree? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But you're not— you're not going to let that stop you from taking future opportunities, are you?
No. Overall, this isn't terrible. It's a little bit too much like talking at rather than asking and then not allowing the silence to do its work. Something you have to be really careful of. And it could just be because he's on camera, but there's a lot of grabbing. There's a lot of self-soothing. And when you do this naturally, what this is going to convey is that you're nervous. And the most comfortable person in the conversation is the most confident person in the conversation. The confident person has the most authority. People want to follow people who are confident with authority. So if you're self-fidgeting and you're self-soothing, you're grabbing your face, you're grabbing your ear, different things along those lines, you're just gonna come across as nervous. And this will subconsciously tell the prospect that they shouldn't follow you. So you have to be careful if you ever do that.
