How to Double Your Closing Rate in Seven Days

It doesn't take years to get good at sales. You can actually double your closing rate in the next seven days.

Now, let me show you how, because it's going to be depending on this one thing I'm about to show you. It's dependent on understanding the stages of the sale. We call this the five stages of the sale. Okay, so understanding the five stages, why is that so critical for you? Because if you don't understand where you're taking the prospect, you're pretty much winging it. And, and when you wing anything, how good are you going to be? Not very good, especially in selling. Okay, so the first stage of the sales conversation. Now this could be if you sell to consumers, or it could be if you sell to businesses. It doesn't really matter. The first stage. We call this the connection stage. Okay, so this is the connection stage. All right? Now in the connection stage, we want to ask what are called obviously connection questions. Just like it sounds. Okay, now there are three reasons why you want to master connection questions and asking the right ones for your industry. Okay. Number one, these questions take the focus.

Off you.

Just going to abbreviate that and put it on the prospect. Okay, now why is that important for you? Most salespeople talk too much. When you talk too much, the prospects guard goes where it goes up. Because prospects are used to what? Salespeople that talk all the time about their thing. I want to take that focus immediately off you. The salesperson, you want to take that off you and immediately put on them. Number two is I want to disarm. How do I disarm the prospect.

To get their guard down? Now, why is it critical for you to master how to get the prospect's guard down? I think you already know this because how many times do you start a sales conversation? Let's say if you cold call and in the first 10 or 15 seconds they say, oh, not interested, or we already have somebody for that. That's because we haven't learned how to get their guard down. And I'll show you how to do that in a second. Now let's say that you're in a conversation and it's going well, and three to four minutes in, the prospect abruptly stops you after you ask a question. And like, hey, enough with the question. Just tell me how much is going to cost and I'll tell you if I'm interested and then you're on the spot. That's because we haven't learned how to get their guard down. There's something we did there that Triggered sales resistance. Okay, we don't want sales resistance. Sales resistance is your enemy. If you want to really do well in sales, that is enemy number one. How do we get rid of sales resistance from the prospect? Because that causes them not to buy. Okay. And then the third thing that we're doing in the connection phase ways here is we are taking the prospect from price.

Or cost based thinking.

To where, where do you want them to be? Results.

Based thinking. Now, what's one of the first things that comes to your mind when a salesperson first starts talking to you? You start thinking, what, how much is this going to cost? Right. Everybody does. How do I take them from price or cost based thinking to results based thinking. Now, if I understand the psychology behind what I'm doing here in this part of the conversation. So you can do this stage right here, like in as little as like two minutes. Like it's pretty easy. You can take the focus off, you instantly put them on the prospect. You can disarm the prospect to let their guard down by mastering tonality. In other trainings, I'll show you that. And you can also reframe them with your first question from price or cost based thing into results based thinking. So this stage is important because now why is it so important? Because if you don't master how to disarm the prospect and their guard stays up, what can happen the rest of the sale? Well, you already know, right? You ask questions and you notice a lot of your prospects unless they're laid down, give you vague, generalized surface level answers. Sometimes one word answers, right? That's because we haven't learned yet how to disarm them to get them to let their guard down. Okay, so this is the first stage of the sales process. If I don't understand the first stage, all the other stages hard to get. Are you, are you starting to get this now? Let's go to the second stage. The second stage, this is called the engagement stage. Okay. In the engagement stage, the first part of that stage is we have to ask what are called situation questions. Write this down. This is really important for you right now. Now there's two reasons why we have to ask situation questions. The first reason is we have to understand so you, the salesperson, have to understand the prospect's real situation. Now why is that so important to you? Because most salespeople never find this out. Most salespeople ask a few questions and the prospect gives them some vague answers. And the salesperson never really understands fully what the real sit situation is. Because do we all realize it's kind of like the. The tip of the iceberg, like the Titanic. If you just take what the prospect tells you and you think that, hey, I understand their whole situation, what they're usually telling you at the very beginning, because how much trust or credibility do you have in the first couple minutes? Not very much. Right? So what they're saying at the very beginning is usually just the surface of what's really going on. Now, why is that critical for you to understand? Because if you don't find out the real situation, how are you ever going to build a gap to where they want to be if you don't really know where they're even at? You're guessing. You never want to guess in sales. That's rule number one. The second reason why I'm asking them is I have to get the prospect to understand their real situation. So not only do you have to understand the real situation, but more importantly than even you is getting the prospect to understand the risk situation. Because when you first start talking to a prospect, do they really understand fully their problems, their situation, what's really going on? Unlikely. They might know that they have a problem. They might know a little bit about their situation, but they don't necessarily know how bad it really is. They don't really necessarily understand the consequences of what happens if they don't do anything about it, because they don't do what you do. You see these type of situations and problems all the time. They don't. They're just seeing theirs. And what I always say is the biggest problem in life, the problems that you don't know you have. Because if you don't know what your problems are, how do you ever change? How do you ever fix them? So this part of the engagement stage, situation questions, is finding out what's really going on. All right, I'm going to show you the next part of this. This is really important. So in the second part of that stage, besides situation questions, we're also going to ask what are called, write this down. Problem.

Awareness questions. Now, there's three reasons why we have to master this, okay? And you want to pay attention, because this part, if we don't master this part, there's probably more than likely you're. You're not going to make very many sales. Okay? So problem partners questions. This is where we build the gap. Okay? So you might have heard me say this term. Now it seems like everybody's borrowing this term for me. How do we build the gap from where they are to where they want to Be it doesn't necessarily mean the prospect is just going to open up to you about all their problems. If you ask predictable questions like, hey, can you tell me some of your challenges? Or can you tell me what keeps you awake at night? Or what are some problems that you have? Now, why do those questions not work that well? Well, you already know, because they're predictable. And the prospect knows where those type of questions lead, don't they? So the first reason why we ask problem awareness questions is we want to help them find problems they didn't know they have. They didn't even know they had. That is a term we call I'll get a different mark here. That's called problem finding. A lot of you heard of like, hey, you got to be a great problem finder. Problem finder, problem finding. A lot of you have read books that says, hey, you got to be a great problem solver. Totally agree with that. However, if the prospect does not buy, how are you a problem solver? Problem solving happens after they buy. So if I want to sell more, I have to find more problems. I have to be a problem finder. Why do I want to find more than one problem? I'll tell you why. Okay, I'll give you an example of this. Okay, so there's a big precious metals company that we train out in Southern California, and a lot of their salespeople had this problem. The prospects would, like, answer some ad on TV and they would call in and they would get transferred to a salesperson and they would say, hey, what caused you to call in today? Blah, blah, blah. They're like, well, I'm looking at, you know, protecting myself against inflation by investing in gold and silver. And they're like, great, you came to the right place. Let me show you how we do that. And then as they were filling out the paperwork or whatever and supposed to get it done overnight to send it in the next day, they noticed a ton of their people that said they were in, they were going to buy, just never bought. The problem is with just finding one problem and it doesn't matter. The industry is, let's say if you sold precious metals for this example, and you're worried about inflation, and then that night you turn on the news, let's say you're on Fox News or something, okay, with the current administration, and they talk about how inflation's going down, how things are getting better, all that stuff, Suddenly the prospect starts to think, oh, maybe I don't need to buy gold and silver because inflation's going down. I'm going to cancel the order and you lost the deal. However, what if I helped them find out that not only were there other. Not only did they want to protect against inflation, but they also wanted to diversify their portfolio. Instead of just in the stock market, they needed to put some of it into gold and silver. What if I asked more questions to them and helped them find out that, you know, hey, maybe I need to diversify in gold as well? Because a lot of wealthy people are doing that right now. So even if they saw that new saying that said in inflation goes down or is going down, right? They're like, well, maybe I don't need it for that, but I need it for this reason, this reason, this reason, and they still buy. That is what problem finding and why problem finding is so important if you want to get in the top 1% in your industry. Okay. I also need to help them find out this is really important. The root cause. Most salespeople have never been trained how to do root cause of the problems. What is causing the problems. Now why is that critical for you to help them understand that? Now you can't just tell them that because if you tell them like this is the reason why it's happening, that you're biased, right? They know you're trying to sell something that's going to go in one ear, out the other. My questions allow them to tell themselves that. So if I help them find out the root cause of what's causing the problem, then they start to internalize it. They start to think like, oh, I understand why the problem's happening, I need to do something. And they start to emotionally attach to wanting to change said problem or problems. That's why that's that critical. And then the third thing, which we find that most salespeople never learn how to do, okay, because they're just not trained how to do this, is we have to help them feel what the problems. Or it could be spelling this wrong. Problems could be emotional needs. Let's say if you sell like a $50,000 Birkin purse doesn't necessarily solve a problem because if you want to just haul around things in a purse, you could go buy a 21, 20$1 at Target, right? But it solves the emotional need. Higher status. Maybe they want to look a certain way to friends and family, right? They have emotional needs. That's an example of that. So this part is important here because it helps them feel what the problems are doing to them personally. Okay? Even if you sell to Fortune 500 CEOs which my second career I primarily sold to Fortune 1000 executives, Fortune 500 CEO and our CEOs human. Yes. They have a logical side of the brain and emotional side of the brain. So if we're having a hard time getting them to open up and to feel how the problems or consequences, what those consequences are doing to them personally, that just means we haven't learned how to get them to open up and want to tell us what the problems are doing them personally. This stage right here, if you can just master this stage right here, you can double sales within a week. Like you can double sales by just learning what I'm talking about there and relaying questions. So instead of predictable question like can you tell me some problems that you're having or some challenges you're having, let's say if I, I don't know, I'm just going to make, I'm going to make up a generic one here. So. So help me understand. You're already with XYZ company. What's. What's caused you to feel like you might want to look at someone else? See, that's kind of generic. I could use that for a lot of different issues. I wouldn't use that if I'm cold calling because I'm the one that reached out. I wouldn't use that for door to door because I'm the one who reached out. But if it's an inbound or outbound lead, I would language that first problem or his question that way. Or let's say if I sold life insurance. Okay, well help me understand. You've already got this $50,000 work policy. What's. What's caused you to feel like that might not be enough for sending the kids when you, when you pass. Well, it's good but it's not going to cover this. And they start telling you but more probably telling who themselves why they want to change. Okay, this part is important. Now let's go to this third part here. I'm going to show you this. These are called solution awareness questions. A mistake a lot of salespeople make is maybe they help them find one or two problem and then they try to close them and then they notice the prospect still doesn't buy. Why does that happen to you? Because you it's more like 50% of the sales helping them find problems. I want to show you something that I almost forgot. The two biggest emotional drivers that causes a human being to want to change that means buy from you are these pain.

Of their current situation or their past history. And then Fear of future pain. Okay? Pain and the fear of future pain drives human beings to change way faster than pleasure. And I'll tell you why a lot of people have this mixed up I see in marketing and sales, okay, because they say, oh, it's pain drives change. And then moving towards what you want. Pleasure. Pleasure is a distant third. Let's say if you sell fitness or weight loss or anything like that, and the prospect says, well, yeah, I want to get in shape because I want to look good this summer on the beach. I want to look good in my bikini on the beach. Well, you would say, well, they're drive towards pleasure. I would say, no. What's their fear? Their fear is they're not going to look very good on the beach. They're just not telling you that. That's their fear. For them to say, I want a good in bikini means they have a fear of what, being judged in the bikini, not looking good in the bikini. That's their fear of future pain. Okay, you're starting to get this now. You're smart. I like this. Okay? So with solution, awareness, questions, okay? The main reason why I want to ask them is because this is where I've got. This is called future pacing. Some of you might have heard of this. Future pacing. So not only do I have to help them find problems they didn't realize they had, I got to help them feel that pain and have that fear that that pain could get worse. Or even if they don't have pain now, that there could be pain in the future if they don't do something now. Fear, future pain. I've got to get them to see and feel. Notice. I said feel. It's very important here what their future looks like.

Once the problems or emotional needs are solved. Okay? That's called future pacing. I have to get them to see and feel, visually see and feel what the future looks like once the newfound problems or emotional needs are solved. Let's say if I'm a psychologist and I'm selling marriage therapy or something like that, I've got to get them to see and feel what the future looks like with their spouse once they solve all these, you know, lack of intimacy problems or, you know, lack of connection problems or whatever. If I'm. Let's say if I'm selling like CRMs, I've got to get them to see and feel what the future looks like when they're more organized now because they have the right CRM and their salespeople are making more sales. I gotta get to see and feel that, okay, so whatever you sell, you gotta get them to see and feel that visually. We want to stay away from surface level words like, you know, what are you looking for in a solution that's just surface level? Okay. So many more things I could show you there. Okay, we're going to move on to the third part of stage two. Let's go over here. We have to get them to focus on the consequences. These are called consequence questions. Okay? So we have to get them to focus on the consequences of what happens if they don't do anything, if they don't buy, if the problem doesn't get solved. Okay. So there's a couple reasons why I want to ask these questions, and you want to write these down. This is, like, vital for you. Okay? Because how many of you feel that the sales conversation or conversations went well, but they just don't feel any urgency to buy? How many of you felt that there's a reason? That is because you haven't mastered how to ask what are called consequence questions. You haven't mastered this stage of the sale yet. Okay. And consequence questions sometimes can just be one consequence question. First of all, I need to get them to.

Feel.

What the consequences are. Spelling this wrong.

Consequences are if nothing changes. Like, if you're selling anything to a business to help them grow, you have to get them to see what. And feel what the consequences are if. If they don't grow. So what happens if. If this stays the same and you guys are never able to scale to $5 million a month? Like, what's going to happen at that point? Consequence question. Okay, have you thought about what would happen if this actually gets worse? That's a generic consequence question. Okay. What happens if you don't do anything about this? You keep getting these leads that your salespeople can't get a hold of, and now your boss knows that your numbers are down the next three months. Like, what could happen to your job at that point? Consequence questions. Now, that's not something you're going to ask at the beginning of a conversation because you don't have much trust and credibility. This is like 3/4 of the way in after you've built that gap. So after you've gotten to see what the future looks like, once the newfound problems are solved, I'm going to rip that away and get them to defend themselves.

On why they need to change.

Now, if you could master getting the prospect to defend themselves on why they have to change, would you say that would build a lot of urgency? Yes, because they're Basically telling you, defending themselves, why they have to do this, why they have to change. Now, that builds massive urgency. Now I have to use the right tonality. I have to know what questions to ask for the industry for that. But I'm showing you this, okay? This is really important as far as overview. And then I'm also going to use them to question their way of thinking.

On why they haven't done anything about changing. Now, you don't do this defensively. So what's, what's prevented you from doing this in the past, though? Okay, so I'm finding out they're going internal, like what's held them back from solving this problem in the past, okay. On why they haven't done anything. So it's all how you ask that. This right here is a very important stage if you want to build.

Urgency in the sale. Most salespeople have never mastered this stage of the sale. Okay? Never. I want you to master that because it's going to help you sell a lot more. Now let's go to the next stage. This is important here. All right, now we're going to get into stage three. Okay, so stage two is the longest stage. That's the engagement stage. You're asking situation questions, problem awareness to build the gap situations to find out the real situation. Remember, problem awareness questions about the gap, solution awareness questions, get them to see what the future feels like once problems are solved, and then consequence questions to get them defend themselves on why they feel like they have to change now. So stage three, okay, this stage we call the transition stage. Okay, so the transition stage. All right. Now this stage is pretty quick actually. Out of the five stages, the quickest one. So there's one of two things you have to understand. If you sell to consumers and you're in a one conversation close, meaning that maybe you sell door to door, you sell whatever it is, life insurance, and it's a one call close or one conversation close, whatever. You're then going to transition easily into your presentation. Okay? You're just transitioning. It's just basically whatever the next step is.

In your sales process. Okay? Now that doesn't mean if you sell to consumers that you could, let's say if you sold like luxury pools that are $500,000, it's probably not going to be a one conversation close. The next step you might transition into, you know, going over the proposal is the second step. Okay. The third step could be going into the design room with the company to pick out the design. So we. You're just transitioning into the next step of the process, of the sales process. Okay? Now if you sell to companies and this, I'm not giving you straight jacket interpretation. There are some companies like if you sold B2B, there are some companies, if you sell like to a very, very small company that it might be one conversation close, okay? Or if you sell at the enterprise level and let's say you have a nine or 12 month sales cycle, okay, I'm just transitioning into, let's say if I sold SaaS, that would be transition into booking the next step demo. So after I have that discovery conversation, as some would call it, I then have to transition into whatever the next step is. Most salespeople miss this part here. Most salespeople are like, okay, well does that sound good? Okay? And the prospect's like, well I'll get, I'll get back to you next week. Okay, well let's talk next week about it. And then magically what. The prospect obviously is not going to call you back there unless there is a next step. Unless you're transitioning to the next step. Unless you're selling in a one conversation close. Like I said, every industry is different. So if you sell in one conversation, you're just closing it there. If you're in a industry where, like I said, maybe you sell, you know, cybersecurity to bank of America or something like that, that's not going to be one conversation close, right? So that might take a nine month sales cycle or whatever. I'm just transitioning to whatever that next step is. Next step demo could be next step meeting with the department head who's another decision maker. It could be a next step. You go over the proposal, okay? That's all going to depend on your industry. But the point is, is that you have to have something booked on the calendar otherwise there's really no sale. Okay? So if you're in a, in a, in a type of industry where it's not a one conversation close, you have to like, let me repeat this, it is the death of salespeople if you do not have a next step booked on your calendar and their calendar, a next step appointment, otherwise it's pretty much over. If you ever buy into their story that I'll call you back next week, more than likely they're not going to call you back. And you already know this, okay? That is stage three. Now stage four, I'm going to come over here. Stage four, this is pretty simple here. Stage four is just really the presentation. Okay? Now we don't have time on this on this training here to go over, like, how to structure the presentation. We do that in, you know, in different courses that clients come into. But the stage four is, like, you're just presenting now. You're going over how what you do helps them solve all these problems you found. And this is where you typically bring up the funding or funds that they need to solve the problem so they can get XYZ result. That is stage four. And then finally, we come to good old stage five. This is a lot of fun. I'm gonna do more of these for you guys this way. This is stage five. Okay? Stage five. Very, very important. This is where you close the deal. Okay? We call this the commitment stage.

Also known as closing. Okay? Now, a lot of salespeople have been sold this lie that when, you know, I always get off stage, I'll be at an event, I'll get off stage after doing a training. And one of the first questions people ask me is like, hey, Jeremy, I need to get better at closing. Like, what are some closing questions? I can get better so I can close more deals. And I'm like, let me ask you. Does the prospect decide to buy when you ask a closing question? Is that when they decide to buy? Do they decide to buy when you say, do you want the red one or the blue one? The option close or why don't you give it a try? Is that when they decide to buy? No, if they say, I want the red one, that means they what? They had already decided to buy before you asked them that question, and they decided to buy because you built enough pain, you built enough gap from where they are to where they want to be that they already made that decision by the time you asked your closing question. Okay? So the point is, I'm trying to. I'm going to get with you. Is that closing? Like, I used to say, closing was like 5% and all reality is like 1 to 2% of the sale. Because the close is in the discovery part of that conversation, okay? The. The close is disarming the prospect where they let their guard down. The close is, you know, learning how to help them find problems they didn't realize they have. Or they start to feel that pain, that emotional pain. They start to internalize what the pain's doing to them, and they start to internalize the consequences of what happens if they don't do anything. It's also when getting them to see and feel what the future looks like once the newfound problems are solved. Like, that's when they start closing themselves. That's where the close is. So basically, commitment stage, I'm asking like maybe two to three questions at the end. I mean, here's a generic one I can give you. Like, do you feel like this could be the answer for you? Yeah, I do. Or yeah, but let's say the yeah, I do. Hold on. Why do you feel like it is? That's a probing question. So the first one is a commitment question. Do you feel like this could be the answer? That's a commitment question. So in commitment stage, there's two reasons why I'm doing that. I'm getting them to commit.

To take the next step.

And purchase.

Your solution. Okay, so this is the next logical step is you're committing to take the next step and purchase what you're offering. Okay, now the second reason why we ask commitment question. These are called micro commitments. Now this is really important. I didn't know if I was going to bring this up. Okay, so micro commitments are smaller steps.

All these markers, smaller steps that lead.

To the larger step of them buying. Okay, Such as? Like, let's say if you sold SaaS, which is one of the top five industries you train, it's just booking the next step demo. That is actually a micro commitment. So every time they have a micro commitment, every time they do that next step, that little thing, that micro commitment leads them to what? The ultimate, the ultimate commitment of them buying what you're offering. Are you starting to get this next step meeting with the department at next step, you know, going through some details you emailed them before the appointment. And every time they do those things, they are committing, those are smaller steps, micro commitments that lead to that, that bigger step of purchasing. Okay, now you're probably wondering at this point, Jeremy, how do I use this? Because here's what we did. What I just showed you is what is called any pq. Okay? Now you might have heard of this. Any PQ is a sales methodology I developed from my background in university studying behavioral science to become a psychologist. Okay, so neuro stands for the brain. Okay, so neuro stands for the brain, how it works in conjunction with somebody's nervous system. Kind of important if I want to master how to get the guard down. Remember we talked about that in stage one, okay? E stands for emotion. How do I master the emotional connection where that prospect feels like you understand them, their needs or desires, their wants, even their fears, without buying into their story. That's emotional connection. Okay? The P stands for persuasion. How do I get the prospect to actually persuade themselves that's self Persuasion. According to the data, the highest form persuasion is getting somebody to persuade themselves, not you trying to persuade them. Okay, very low in the totem pole. And then Q stands for questioning. So how do you learn how to reframe the questions you're asking now to interrupt the prospect's patterns? Okay. To get them to open up emotionally. That is any pq. Now, at this point you're probably asking yourself, how do I take everything that Jeremy just showed me here in this basic YouTube video and how do I apply it to what I sell? Okay, how do I sell more using this? And that's smart of you to think. Okay, so I'm going to give you our number. Text me right now and just ask me a question. 480-637-2944. Just text us either myself or one of our sales trainers. We'll respond back to you. Hope that help. And look your next step. Go ahead and click on the subscribe button so you can learn how to sell more. This is an overview of how to structure your sales conversations. Take it, use it. Commit to mastery. I can assure you when you commit to mastery and you're not like all those sales people out there that are wingers that keep winging it, or dabblers who dabble in this or know it allers who think they know everything and you commit to mastery and you actually get a plan, step by step plan taught by someone who's actually mastered it themselves, you're going to go really far in sales and I know that's why you follow me. So hope that helped you today.