Your First Question Is Losing the Sale (Stop Saying This)

You can win or lose a sale at. Hello. Most salespeople believe that you actually win or lose a deal when you try to close and either say yes or no. I'm going to make a suggestion that it actually starts from the very beginning of that conversation. I'm going to show you why I mean what I mean here.

Okay? So most salespeople have been taught to ask questions that most salespeople ask. We call those watch right here. Predictable.

Questions. Okay, now, what do I mean by predictable questions? Think about questions that salespeople that tried to sell you anything typically ask you. What would be some common ones? Hey, how's it going today? That would be one. Right? So that's a very predictable question. How's it going? Or how's your day going today? How many times do you walk into Best Buy or you walk in anywhere and a salesperson first comes up to you? What's the first worth? Hey, how's it going? How's your day? Now, as a consumer, do you genuinely believe that that person gives a damn about how your day's going? No, you don't. You just either ignore it, you brush it aside, or your brain says, oh, he or she's just trying to get me to like them so they can sell me their thing. And instantly the guard goes up. And when that guard goes up, that's sales resistance. And unfortunately, you have to compete against that sales resistance to get the guard down. The rest of the conversation, I'm going to show you how to get the guard down from the first words out of your mouth so you don't have to compete against that wall resistance. It makes selling way easier. You sell way more, and your prospect's way happier. It's really good. What are some other predictable questions? How's the weather? So especially if you sell virtually and you're selling to prospects, or you could be selling to prospects over the phone, your con leads all over the world, or whatever, they go, how's the weather over there? Okay. Would that be a predictable question that that prospect is probably to every salesperson that's ever tried to sell them, ask. Yes, we want to stay away from that because how are salespeople viewed in society in general? High status or low status? Low status. Right now we're changing that. We want to be viewed as high status because if nothing is sold, there's no such thing as an economy. So you're pretty damn important. That's why I started this company, because you are important. Things need to be sold. People need to be helped. Okay, we don't want to ask those critical questions or questions like if you're on virtually or you over the phone as well, like, where do you live? Okay. Now, it doesn't mean you can't ask these questions as you get into the conversation. And you build trust and credibility after you build a gap, but right out of the go, like knocking on somebody's door. If you sell door to door, like, hey, are you the homeowner here? Great. Nice to. Nice to meet you. How are you doing today? What's this about? Instantly, because they know you're not genuinely interested in how their day is going. Even if you are, I'd be highly skeptical that you were generally interested in every single prospect's day that you've ever talked to. Let's be real. We all know that. Okay? So I want to stay away. There's other predictable questions, but I want to stay away from predictable questions because that causes what we call sales resistance. Okay, Sales resistance is not your friend if you want to sell a lot. Now, if you're a spelling bee champ, Excuse my writing. I'm just writing fast here. So I apologize to you if you're. Jeremy, you didn't spell that right. Sales resistance is not your friend. Disarming the prospect is your friend. So how do I, right here, disarm.

The prospect.

To let their guard down?

Okay, now, why is it important for you to get their guard down? Because do human beings buy on logic or emotion? Well, 100% emotion. Brain studies prove that there's no debate in behavioral science. You buy 100% on emotion, you just justify it with logic later. So if the guard goes up when you ask them questions, even if they're the best questions in the world, what type of answers do you typically get back? Vague, generalized surface level answers because there was something you said or how you said it, how you asked it, which we're going to talk about a second that triggered that prospect. Now the guard's up. Sales resistance. So I need to learn how to disarm them where the guard comes down. And how do I keep them disarmed the entire time? What I mean, like, psychology wise, is you're learning how to calm their nervous system. That's what I mean by disarming the prospect. Okay. I went to school to become a psychologist. I specialize in neuropsychology. Boring stuff. But it's the study of the brain and how it works in conjunction with the nervous system that gave me an advantage among other salespeople. They just didn't understand how this Stuff worked. Now I struggled in this in the very beginning because I didn't have it down. Took me a while to obviously get this down and you know, some would say had a very successful sales car. At least grandma tells me that now. Other reasons why you trigger sales resistance right in the very beginning. That's why I always say you can win or lose a sale. Hello? Because how many times like say if you sell door to door, you knocked on the door and you do like your little 32nd thing, they're like not interested or no, we're good, or we're enough. Or you cold call, maybe you're cold calling a company, okay? If that's what you saw, if you're in B2B sales, okay? And after like 10 seconds, like is this a sales call? Or how did you get my number? Or we're not interested. We already have somebody for that. See, that is a triggered reaction based off what you're saying or how you're saying it. So that's what we're going to talk about next. So how you're saying it is just actually it's more important how you're.

Saying it. Okay, now what do I mean by that? That represents, let's get this mark over here. That represents your tonality. Okay? Now if you're like most salespeople, you've probably read a lot of sales books that say that 93% of your communication is your nonverbal. Now what is non verbal? That means your tonality, your voice, like how you say things, how you ask questions, and your body language. 7% is the words. Now that's an old study. Okay? Most experts now believe with new studies it's actually about 70% is your non verbal. So 70% is the actual tonality, how you say it. And your body language, 30% is your word. So words do matter, questions do matter, but it's how I ask them that matters the most. What are some patterns that most prospects would be used to from most salespeople? How they sound? Okay, most sales people, when they first talk to the prospect, they come across sounding what? Way too excited. Now I don't mean be boring. There is a middle ground you don't want to come across. Wait, hey. Hey, John, I'm so happy that you're here today. That's obnoxious. It reminds people of like the old slicked backed used car salesperson. And no offense to my used car salespeople, we love you. We train a ton of dealerships that crush it. But you want to settle that excitement back Like I said, you're not going to be. You're not going to be up here, but you don't want to be way down here where you're boring. Okay? There's a middle ground. I'll show you what that means in a second. The second way most salespeople come across in their tone when they first start talking to a prospect. And that could be inbound leads who book on the calendar that maybe you meet virtually or maybe you meet him at their home or maybe you meet them in office. If you sell to companies, that could be you calling on the phone. Okay. That could be you knocking on the door. It doesn't really matter. We can come across that way anyways. The second way most salespeople come across that you want to avoid is you come across timid or nervous.

Would I be? Right. Okay. Oh, yeah. John, I'm so sorry to bother you. Like, when can I call back? That's a timid and nervous tone that represents what. That you don't know, really talking about. You're not an expert because. Would an expert come across as timid and nervous? No. Would an expert also come across way too excited, like a, you know. No. No pun intended. A used car salesperson from 30 years ago? They wouldn't. Right. An expert doesn't talk like that. They don't need to talk like that. The third way that most salespeople come across that triggers sales resistance is they come across monotone. Okay? Monotone like a what? Like a telemarketer. How many of you have ever answered a phone call from a telemarketer? What do they sound like? Hey, Judy, It's James Miller with XYZ Company. The reason why I was calling you was. And it sounds like they're reading a script. They're monotone. They talk in one voice, like. And that triggers what? Sales resistance. Because salespeople or prospects are used to what their. Our brains pick up patterns. And if we sound like all these other salespeople they always talk to that they've had negative experiences with, for the most part, they're probably going to have their guard up. Okay? So we want to come across a lot differently. So with our tone, there's different ways. So what is the right tone? Okay, now, why is tonality so important?

Write this down. Your tone is how the prospect interprets your intention behind everything you say and ask. That's how interpret the meaning behind what you're asking. The meaning behind your questions. Because when. I'll give you an example of this. Okay, let's Say that you're going across the street and you hear somebody scream, like yelling, like just you. They just yell. What instantly do you do? You're like this. You, you instantly move, right? That's fight or flight response. You're instantly reacting. That's your survival part of your brain. You don't even know what was said. You just heard the sound. The tone sounded bad, like something bad was happening. Okay? Now instantly your body does this because your brain is reacting survival part of your brain. And then very quickly, the words start going up to. Scientists have different names for this. Let's call it the midbrain area. Your words co that the words of that person who scream go into your midbrain area that starts to interpret what the words mean. And by the time it gets to your neocortex, which is your problem solving part of your brain that says, oh yeah, that lady. It's not a big deal. That lady was just yelling at her kid to be safe. Cross. Crossing the street. I'm okay. But first, your body, your nervous system reacted to what? The tonality, not the words. The words came second. That's why tone how you say something. Because I'll ask you this. Have you ever wondered why salespeople selling the same thing to the same prospects, same type of prospects using the same script, using the same price points. How do those salespeople get completely different results? It's how they say things. It's how they ask questions. The tonality, okay. So important. All right, if anybody tells you tonality is not important, that just means they have no, they just never sold at a high level. They just don't have the experience. You can go to acting school and the best acting trainers will tell you tonality, body language, like keeps people engaged or has them turn off the show if it's not there. Ask them how many advanced, advanced tonality courses have they taken? Probably none. The experts all agree your tone, body language, non verbal tonality, body language. That represents 70% of you making that deal. It's kind of important. So there's five types of tone that you definitely want to master. I'll write down a few of these here. The first one is more of a curious tone. Okay, now you don't want to come across like fake. You know, when you're learning something new, it takes a while. You have to really rehearse it. It's like you're like a young actor or actress. You go out to Hollywood and your first auditions kind of sound, kind of rehearse, kind of fake. So you have to really practice these tones. You have to really be trained by somebody who's mastered it themselves. Right? Because if it comes across like you're like, it's a technique, it seems kind of weird, right? Number two. So curious tone is. And let's go back to curious tone is more used to, like, find out information. Oh, walk me through. What do. What do you have now for X, Y, Z? That's just a curious tone. I'm curious. I sound curious. Remember, the tone is how they interpret your intention behind everything you say and ask. So if you come across curious, they interpret that. You are curious about that. That's why they're more than likely to open up. Okay, now the other context. I might need to use a confused tone. Now, it's funny because when clients come into our training program, sometimes they ask me like, well, Jeremy, what do you mean by confused tone? Like, I got to be sure about what I sell a hundred percent. I don't mean you're confused like you're 106 and you have dementia. Confused like, oh, I don't know how it works. Confused in certain contexts. So let's say if a prospect says, oh, man, this problem has caused us so much frustration. Hold on. How do you mean by frustration? See, I'm confused. I don't understand. I'm asking for clarity. See, that's what I would use, a confused tone. Okay. When I'm asking for clarity, like, I don't quite understand something. Now, even if you do understand 100%, I want them to open up emotionally and tell me more about that. Hold on. When you say XYZ problem, how long has that been going on? See, I say I'm confused. A little bit concerned there as well. Okay. And that causes the prospect's brain to like, oh, he didn't understand what I meant by that. I need to explain that better. And that's when they start to open up. Okay. But if I didn't use a confused tone in that context, unless they were lay down, unlikely they would ever open up to that. That one little thing right there. Confused tone in that context can make you a ton of sales that you might not be aware you're losing right now. Okay. There's other examples I could give you. Number three, challenging tone. Okay? Now, you can't use a challenging tone at the beginning of a conversation. That doesn't make any sense. Okay. You can't challenge somebody because how much trust or credibility do you have in the first couple of minutes of a conversation? Not very much. But let's Say I get three fourths of the way in. I build a gap from where they are to where they want to be that causes them to emotionally attach because they feel pain, okay? And they feel like, hey, this could keep going, or it could get worse, or it could happen in the future. Maybe they don't have pain now, but it could happen in the future. So they start to feel that pain. There's more trust there. There's more emotional bonding. And so I can challenge them more because there's more trust there. I could say, what happens if you don't do anything about this and this actually gets worse? See, it's a little bit of a challenging tone in the very beginning. See how I do that? A lot more to that. This is so fun. Number four, this is a big one. A concern tone, a tone that shows empathy. Now, not everything you say or question should sound concerned, but you want the prospect in certain circumstances to feel like you are generally concerned for them because you should be. Let's say if you sold life insurance, for example, okay? And I might ask a question like, so let's say that, you know, you pass away years before you thought you would because, I mean, you're smart. We none of us know our day and hour. It's just with death, there's no if. It's just when. How many months would Cindy be able to pay for the mortgage, the cars, and the expenses without your income? See, the shift sounded concerned. I'm concerned for this consequence happening now. When the prospect feels like you're concerned for this, the consequences, you're concerned. If they don't do anything, you're showing empathy to them. Do you feel like that lowers your trust or builds trust? Compared to, like, well, how many months are you. Is she going to be able to pay things without your income? Man, now you're defensive. Now the prospect's guard goes up. Okay? So tonality matters a lot if you want to get to the top in sales. People who say tonality doesn't matter never got to the top yet. They just haven't got to the top. They don't have the experience. They've never taken advanced tonality because they just don't know about it. Like, if you always down something, you always criticize something that you don't have any background in that you. You don't have any understanding of, that you don't have any knowledge of. People are always going to criticize that until they learn it. Okay? And number five, this is a really important one. A playful tone. Playful. Let me write that here, so you guys can see it. Playful tone. Okay, so I'll give an example. So instead of saying like, how's it going today? Or something, you could come in and you could say like if, if you're a person's like, man, Jeremy, like we, we get clients, our advanced inner circle program. They're like, man, I don't know. I've been saying, how's it going today? For 12 years. I. It's weird. If I don't say it to start a conversation. I was like, okay, if you really have to say it. Because once again, we all know the prospects don't genuinely believe that you really give a damn about how their day's going. Let's be real. I can relanguage it because I want to break the pattern. Okay, that's called. Write this down. That's called a pattern.

Interrupt.

Pattern erupt. Okay, so I can say, let's say if I got on zoom. All right, let's see. I think you booked. It looks like you just reading what you. You, you put here in this application. Looks like you booked on the calendar today about, I guess, hey, crazy idea, maybe losing some weight so you get healthier. Right? Let's say if I sold a fitness package or I'm some type of fitness trainer, I'm just throwing out a random example. So I'm getting them into results based thinking. And then they're like, yeah, yeah, right. And then the conversation starts going. And then let's say they ask you how you're doing. Well, how are you doing over there? Let's say they ask you that first. What would most salespeople say? Oh, I'm doing good, just working away, just drinking coffee. Oh, you know, that doesn't really, it doesn't really help you to say that, but it doesn't really hurt you to say that either. That's more middle ground. Instead, I want to interrupt the pattern. I'm going to use in that example, more of a playful tone. And I'll tell you why that's important for you in a second. So they say, how you doing today, Jeremy? Oh, you know, just hanging out, being boring. What about you? What have you been up to today? Oh, I'm sure you're not boring now. I'm not using a playful tone. There to be the class clown. I'm using that skillfully. Do you know why? Because when the prospect laughs, that releases what's called dopamine in the brain. Dopamine calms the nervous system. That's disarming the prospect. So I'm using a playful tone there when they go like, oh, sure, Jeremy, I'm sure you're not boring. Okay? To lower their guard, to let their guard down. Or they could say, how you doing today, Jeremy? I just. There's different things I could tell you, a hundred different things. We teach all this in our inner circle mastery courses for clients. I could say, like, oh, you know, just trying to stay out of trouble. What about you? You've been getting trouble over there? Oh, no, I've been good. See, it's the same thing. But I'm using a playful tone because what if I said this? How you doing today, Jeremy? Oh, yeah, just being boring today. How about you? Whoa, that is boring. Sounds kind of weird. Oh, just trying to stay out of trouble. Are you getting any trouble over there? Weird. See, that doesn't. Makes no sense. Okay, so I have to use a playful tone there for them to open up. You starting to get this? Okay, this is just lots of fun stuff. Okay? So remember, we want to focus on. We want to stay away from predictable questions that everybody ask, okay? We want to work on mastering our tonality, not being a dabbler or a winger in tonality. We want to master this because your tone, that's how they interpret your intention behind everything you say and ask. Okay? Always remember this. And I learned this the hard way when I got my first sales job. So I'm taking you back. What? This is. I'm taking you back, like 24 years. I got my first sales job going into my senior year in college. I was studying to become a psychologist. This was out in the state of Utah, Utah Valley University, and had to get my first job. I was about to get married, had a kid on the way, my beautiful daughter Cammie, and had no choice. You had to get a job. And since I didn't have a degree or anything, what's the option? Sales. So I got this job selling home security systems. And I still remember the manager today, they told us in the meeting, hey, you gotta knock on 100 doors. You're going to talk to 30 people because 70 of them aren't going to be home or they don't come or whatever. So you're going to talk to 30 people, and your goal is to sell one of those 30? Well, in my mind, I'm like, well, why do I want to sell one out of 30? I could help all 30 of those people. That doesn't make any sense. Why do I want to sell one out of 30? Like, they could have a break in. They have problems, right? I need to solve these problems. They need to prevent stuff from happening to them. Nobody knows if they're going to have a break in until it happens. Okay? It's like an insurance policy. So anyways, we go out there, start knocking on the doors. Well, I'm just following the script. They gave us all that kind of stuff. I didn't know all this, obviously, stuff I know now, okay? And you know, the first couple weeks I'm like, wow, lots of doors slamming in my face, not hardly making any sales. But what would most sales people do when they get hung up on or the prospect says no or they, if you sell door to door, they slam the door in the face. Who do they blame? Do they blame themselves or the prospects? Most blame the prospects, right? And most salespeople say like, oh, you know, if you sold, oh, this neighborhood's bad, okay? Or you sell her things like, oh, all my prospects are broke or the leads are duds, okay? We never blame our lack of what skill level. Okay? I didn't do that just because I'm studying human psychology, human behavior in university at that time, specializing in neuropsychology. Studied the brain, how it works with the nervous system, like I mentioned, and I start reverse engineering. Like, oh, I didn't, I didn't blame the process. I'm like, oh, what did I like after they sand the door? Like, oh, what did I say? Or what did I ask? Or how did I ask that that triggered that reaction in their nervous system. So I'm reverse engineering all this, okay? Now it took me two or three months to kind of figure it out. And obviously after that I got way better every month, every year, all that stuff. Like you should, if you're, if you're mastering sales and persuasion, which I know that's probably why you're here and that's smart of you to be here, okay? But the point is, is never blame the prospects. Reverse engineer it. Like, oh, what am I saying? What am I asking? How did I cause that objection? It's not like the prospect like woke up that morning and said, you know what? When that salesperson calls me at 3:35 or when that salesperson comes over the house, or you know, when I meet that Salesperson Virtually at 4 to talk about XYZ, I think I'm going to go into fight or flight mode two minutes in and say, enough with the questions. Just tell me how much it's going to cost. I'll tell you if I'm interested. Is that a planned objection or was there something you said or maybe how you said it, tonality that triggered that reaction in their nervous system to go into fight or flight mode? I think you're starting to get this now. Okay, now you probably have some questions about. You're probably asking yourself like, hey, how. Because this, this is pretty basic what I showed you here, but you're probably asking questions like, hey, how do I use this for what I sell? How do I tie this into my industry? And that's smart of you to think to get to the highest level. So you've got questions, just text me. I'm going to give you Our number here, 480-637-2944.

Just text us your questions and myself or one of our sales trainers will get back to you as soon as we can. Hope that helped you today. And you want to start mastering sales, first thing you got to do, you got to have a step by step plan. Taught by who? Somebody who's probably mastered the thing itself if you want to be really good. So first step is you can hit the subscribe button, you can follow me here and you can ask us questions and you can always reach out to us if you wanted to get into advanced training courses that we offer for your industry. I hope that helped you today. Take care of.