INBOUND 2016: Jared Fuller "Gateway Drugs: How the '6 Gateways of Sales' Converts

Do we have any passionate salespeople in the audience? You guys in sales? I want to hear applause, though. You guys in sales? You passionate salespeople in the audience? All right, quick question before we get started. How many people have ever heard of the six gateways of sales? Is this something you've heard of before? Probably not. So you're probably here because you want to know what the hell are the six gateways of sales? So here's what we're going to be covering today. Understanding why they matter and then just kind of going through each gateway. We're going to explain these to you. And just FYI, afterwards, I'll be outside. We're not going to do any Q and A today, but I'll be taking questions outside of the room after the presentation. So how do we understand what these six gateways are? Does anybody know or think they know what the real purpose of a salesperson is? Any thoughts? What's the real purpose of a salesperson? Make people buy, bring in revenue? No, it's to bitch and moan, right? Marketers bring leads, and then everyone goes, but they're not good. Blah, blah, blah. There are all these excuses, kind of a joke, but really it's to be an informant. And there's a big problem with sales right now. And that's because it's a learned trade, right? How many people went to school for sales? Is this what you told your mom you were going to be when you grew up? I'm going to be a salesperson. I'm going to be in sales. Mom, no. There's way too many of us with too many ideas. In fact, there's almost 15 million of us in the United States alone. So the purpose of the gateways, the six gateways, make this a little bit more simple, easier, for better or for worse. There's no quality control on people or process in sales, right? It's all things that we're learning. We might read a book, right? We might attend a talk like this, but there's no quality control. For instance, no one did this, right? No one went to Harvard University and got their bachelor's in sales. James mcdeen degree in business development. Magna cum laude and crushing quota. Yeah, right, right. That doesn't happen. So I'm gonna tell you what the six gateways are not. They're not deceptive. These aren't tricks designed to, you know, convince someone to buy. They're not sales tactics. They're gonna help you close the deal, and they don't do the hard work for you. There are Six reasons people won't buy, but they'll never tell you. That's what the six gateways are in understanding where people are in their buyer's journey. This is how you are going to utilize the six gateways to understand where a deal, a customer, an opportunity is potentially stuck. There are also the six stages of selling in their proper order. For instance, if you get a new prospect on the line, you should generally start with Gateway 1 and work all the way to Gateway 6. You have to traverse each gateway success in order and of course, it's where they're actually stuck. So let's jump into the first gateway. Vision and alignment. We thought the first gateway of sales was vision. So when it comes to the first gateway and establishing or reinforcing your vision, this oftentimes is what's on your website. It's very simple. It's clear. For instance, at PandaDoc, we call ourselves the future of documents. If you get on the line and you start talking about all the features of PandaDoc, or you start talking about all the features of your product, you're not doing a very good job creating alignment. Sharing a vision is actually pretty important. Why do you guys exist? Do you have a vision that's worth selling alone? You also want to create intentional misalignment. For instance, do you have an enemy? What are you trying to displace? And the real goal is to eliminate prospects from your pipeline as quickly as possible. For instance, if someone's very happy with the way they're currently doing things and they don't believe in a better way, it's going to be hard to sell them on the features of your product if you're not generally aligned on vision. So features versus value. You can kind of think of this as why versus what and how. I'll give you two very concrete examples. Let's think of one. Anyone know who this is? Tipchat done by Atlassian public company. Think it's really successful products. It was an innovative new group chat for teams, right? These are features, right? This is not vision. That's what hipchat sold. But I already have Skype. I have gchat. Like, why the hell do I need another chat tool? This doesn't make any sense. Really hard to start a sales conversation when you're like, yeah, I'm gonna pitch you this new innovative group chat for teams. Group chat, really? But how many people know who this is, right? We pretty much all use Slack now. It's consuming the world, right? Slack had a vision and they did a very Good job articulating that. They wanted to change the way the teams communicate. Right. Do you fundamentally believe that the way that we currently communicate is broken? Yeah. Internal collaboration is kind of a bitch. It's really hard. We send tons of emails. Things get lost through the crack. And what they said was, you know, information is valuable. Right. Easy collaboration should be something that you care about. These aren't typical sales lines, right? These are things that are bigger, right? Bigger, broader. And they had a very clean cut enemy. Right. The email was like the devil. Right. Internal email, the worst possible thing you could do for internal collaboration. So you do have to define your enemy and you have to do it up front. Dividing and conquering and creating intentional misalignment is how you really start to cull your pipeline quickly. It's how you decide and determine whether or not someone actually believes in what you do. So you don't waste the rest of the time trying to sell them a bunch of features that they could care less about. Because that's what happens. You start to give a bunch of features and they're not really lined up what you do. They could actually be in the enemy's camp and you're trying to sell them a solution. Right. Not gonna happen. There's also something that's really interesting about this. You have the principle of least attraction. Whenever you seem desperate for the deal, do you think that person really wants to buy from you? No. But when you're very clear and you can communicate that, for instance, this is what we believe in and these are the types of people we help and we really care about this, and if it's something that you don't share as well, that's fine. Then we're not the right fit for you. That gives them an easy out. Always give your customers an easy out. And what's funny, whenever you aren't trying to be desperate, that principle of least attraction actually might bring people back into your camp in the first place. So why is it so crucial, a shared belief in a better way? It helps paint the status quo as unacceptable. Right? Because I'm assuming what you're selling is something different than the way that people are currently utilizing a product or a service. Right? When you start selling with vision and you're creating alignment, you are actually doing the building the foundation of your sales house, so to speak. You have to make the way that they're currently doing things, see, seem very unacceptable. And notice we're not talking about a product yet. This is all just vision. And if you can't create a Vision alone, that's worth selling. The problem is actually with you, right? It's not. Or it's maybe it's worth your product. Maybe you have a really terrible product, in which case you should reconsider what you're selling or you should think about rebranding. You should think about something bigger. You have to be able to sell something. I'll give you an example. We believe at PandaDoc that there should be an entirely new way of creating documents, because it's very broken, very broken process. Go to Microsoft Word, create a new copy, Download as a PDF, upload as a DocuSign, send it out, client requests a change, go back, find that file. Very boring, broken process. And lastly, if you don't value Gateway one, I actually think you don't value your time as a salesperson. If you're not willing to communicate around a bigger vision to create alignment again, you're going to end up getting stuck here where that person might give you false objections later on that are actually rooted, where they don't agree with what your broader vision is. So at best, your customers aren't going to stay. At worst, they're not going to buy from you. So are you stuck in the first gateway? You can ask yourself some simple questions. Did you start with why? Why does your product exist? Why are you passionate about it? Is there a mutual level of excitement around a better way, a better way of doing something? And do you share common enemies? Right. We really hate the PDF. You guys agree that that's a really bad thing on the line? So let's talk about the second gateway, now moving from vision to validation and trust. The biggest problem in sales is that no one really trusts us. Right? What percentage do you think of people consider salespeople Trustworthy? Any numbers? 10? 5? 3%? 3%. And you know what's funny? So remember that other slide where I said there's 15 million people, people in the US that are salespeople? Interesting. Like roughly 3% of the population, right? The only people that trust salespeople are salespeople. Yikes. Yeah, we suck at gaining trust. Why isn't this talked about in sales? Your job is to actually gain trust. But everything that you learn and read and go through sales coaching, it's not really focused around trust. So the reason we call Gateway 2 validation and trust is you have to use validation to gain that trust. You have your company, of course, so you're going to have case studies, you're going to have testimonials. Maybe you have some really good growth happening I always tell people how many new customers we're signing up a day. Right. It gives some validation to what you do. And typically people are consuming this, you know, more at the top of the funnel, but you have to talk your prospect through it. But more importantly, and what's not analyzed is you. Why are you trustworthy? Do you have case studies of clients that you have helped that match the buyer and the company Persona? How have you been helpful to other people? Can you actually make a recommendation? Can you be indisputable? For instance, here's how I help a client like you in the medical staffing industry that's hyper specific. What the hell do you know about my business? Actually, I know quite a bit. I converted 1500 documents, transform the way that they were hiring and staffing their organization. So I have a pretty good understanding of how you guys are trying to go through that similar transformation. All of a sudden I'm a lot more trustworthy as a salesperson. And I also think too, if there's any marketers in the house, you actually need to do a better job of making your salespeople famous. Right. So whenever you're, you have that big win, you know, converting 1500 templates and revamping this entire process. We're talking to 800 people and the way they send documents daily, their job sucked. They push paper. Literally a really terrible job. Right. We should highlight this. You should get that on the website and not just have how this company. Right. Adopted your solution. But how did that rep help? How did they make a good recommendation? There's also a tip I have. So I always include the latest blog post or LinkedIn or speaking session or whatever I'm doing in my email signature line that I'm an authority. I sell a sales enablement product. So I talk a lot about sales enablement. I always include that in my email signature line. Your latest piece of content. One of the ways to gain a little bit more trust in the sales cycle. But ultimately the goal here when you're building trust is to be the doctor, not the rep. So you have to create a shift in mindset from selling to solving and from closing to validating. The four ways that doctors gain trust is pretty simple. The first step is passion. Doctors are typically very passionate about helping at least primary care. You go see a specialist, it might be different, but your primary care doctor should actually have a ton of passion about you and making you healthy. You want your prospect to trust you. You have to be passionate about what you're selling. I hear way too many And I coach way too many sales conversations where I know for a fact that that rep is just trying to get off the line. Boring. Don't be boring, be passionate. If you're not passionate, get the hell out of sales. You have to be passionate. Second way facts. Doctors are pretty indisputable. They help people just like you get through exactly what you were going through. Indisputable. As a sales rep, you can do the same thing. You can use these to your advantage. For instance, a doctor's gonna, you're gonna walk into their office and they're gonna have, you know, all these peer reviewed journals about the latest drug that they're going to recommend and you're going to trust them because this is backed up by statistics and data. Doctors also do a really good job with discovery, right? They ask lots of questions to make sure that they understand what you're going through. So for instance, if the doctor asks you, hey, Jared, you have any back pain, you tell the truth, right? You say, yeah, actually I do. I'm having a ton of back pain right now. Okay, interesting. I we're in here evaluating why your liver is screwed up right now or why your kidney's screwed up and you're having a lot of back pain. Let's try to figure out why this is happening. And doctors, of course have authority. They can actually speak to this because they have the quarter million dollars in debt, the plaque that they have on the wall saying that they have their md. It's a little bit more difficult for a sales rep to do this because, well, there's no certification for sales that people actually trust or believe in. But you can become an authority on what you sell, right? So this is writing content, this is becoming a bit of a marketer yourself. But why is it so crucial? I think it's so crucial because it's a blind trap. So many reps that we've coached and kind of changed the way that they think about sales to go through the gateways is, you know that for a fact, that person on the other side of the line just didn't trust them. But you don't know, right? You ever had a sales conversation where you were talking to your prospect and they said, you know, Joe, the reason I'm not buying from you is just I don't trust you. No one's ever going to tell you that. But it happens. I promise you it happens. And it happens in way more deals than you think it does. It's essential, yet rarely a focus of sales reps. That's why I think it's a second gateway. Deals get stuck here. You progress on. We need to start thinking about trust a lot more strategically and critically and it has to be continually reinforced. Right. So say for instance you're talking with. You think who would be your champion? And later on you finally get the decision makers on the line. Guess what? Ground zero. Just because you articulated then you've built some level of rapport with your champion. That means nothing, absolutely nothing for these new decision makers that are on the line. You have to start over again. Are you stuck in the second gateway? So you can ask yourself a couple questions like have you shared any content that highlights your personal ability to help clients? Right. If you have, great. Are your clients wins referenceable? Can you make an introduction? Can you introduce someone to a client you've helped? Very similar. One of our best performing sales reps, I can't tell you how many times he makes introductions to previous clients. Oh, you guys are in Ireland. Yeah, I have a couple clients I've helped out in Ireland. I've helped out. Right. That's how he gains trust. I'm happy to make the introductions. You can take a look at their website if you want a personal email introduction. I'll make it for you. And do you believe yourself? Right. Do you feel that you're trustworthy? Do you feel like you've gained trust with this person? Ask yourself that question at the end of the call. Do you how you feel about it? Now we're at Gateway 3. This is where most people typically start to sell, by the way. So this is like, okay, now we're where I'm normally at. I want to find out the pain that the client's having and then I want to pitch them the value of my product. But I think this is the easiest mistake that salespeople make is when they get to Gateway 3 is they show up and throw up. Right? You get someone on the line and then all of a sudden you just start feature pitching. Our product does this and our solution does this and we're going to help you with this. Slow down. That doesn't actually matter because that's not the goal. There's actually three things that you want to do in this gateway. You want to discover, understand and communicate. Those words are intentional, right? You have to discover, understand and communicate three types of pain. It's pain that the client is currently experiencing around your product or solution. Right. So for ours it's related to revenue. Right. Revenue targets, perhaps close rate. We want to understand if there's any pain points around a clientele's close rate, then there's pain from not solving, from not fixing these things. No one ever talks about this. What happens if you don't fix this problem? Well, we put our doctor hat on for a second. You have that bad kidney problem or a bad liver problem or whatever, and things keep digressing. Or let's say you have heart problem, you keep on pounding cheeseburgers, and you keep on pounding pizza, you might die. Right? So what is the pain from not solving? Are people gonna lose their jobs? Right? And pain actually even just as important, that your solution does not solve. Right? You want to be able to communicate and be honest with your clients about where you can be helpful and also where you can't. So the idea here is that, like a doctor, you kind of want to become the consultant. You want to be able to make recommendations. Anyone heard of this company? It's an interesting company. They're partially owned by Microsoft. And you know what they do? They literally just make software recommendations and implementations for, like, Fortune 500 companies, and they charge a ton of money for it. And if you talk to someone in Avanade, you would be like, I have no idea what you guys sell, because they don't actually sell any products. They sell other people's things. They sell process redesign. They sell some really esoteric shit, but people pay them a lot of money for it. Wells Fargo, right? Because suggestions are easy, right? I suggest you do this way. Who cares? It's worthless. But recommendations are hard, right? Because here's the difference between Avanade and you as a salesperson. Avanade understands Wells Fargo's business model better than Wells Fargo. They are experts on helping companies improve their business productivity through technology. And every person you talk to there is actually really good at it. Lo and behold, because they make recommendations. They tell people how they need to change their organization to achieve the results that they wanted to. Recommendations are the pathway. Do you stop selling by showing up and throwing up in helping them change someone's business process to achieve the results that they wanted in the first place? We also talked about the things that your product or solution does not solve. So what's the most powerful word in sales? No. Right. Can you guys help out with this? Do you do this? I hear so many yes men and yes women that just say, yes, we can do that. Especially if you're in the consulting world or you're in the agency world. I don't know how many people I've talked to at Inbound this year that I'd Ask them about their agency. Like, oh, you have an agency. What do you guys do? Oh, we do everything. Really? That's interesting. I'm not buying from you. You guys do sales enablement services? Yeah, totally. No, you don't. You do not actually help your clients drive more revenue by changing their sales process beginning to end. Yes, you might have installed HubSpot CRM, but I promise you, you have not done this. You show me you start using. No, no, we don't do that. But I'd love to learn more about what you're trying to accomplish. That's where you can get a little bit more honest and start to gain that trust. Right? What you don't solve is just as important as what you do. There's a Twitter moment. So are you stuck in the third gateway? You can ask yourself these three questions. Does my customer understand the pain from not solving their issue? Right. Is the patient going to die, for instance? If you did it the right way, you might tie yourself to some goals for the next quarter. I do this very frequently. What are you guys, revenue targets for quarter four? Forgive me for asking. I just. I want to be as helpful as I can be. Well, we're trying to do 450,000 in quarter four. What are you guys on pace for? Probably about 400,000. Why are you. Why is your target 450,000 then? Well, my CEO got the mandate from the board, and if we don't hit this, it looks like one of our divisions might be shut down. Ooh, that sounds really bad, right? People are gonna lose their jobs. Yeah, it could be really bad if we miss target this quarter. I just figured out something that's extremely valuable. Right. If they don't fix their. If they don't increase their closing percentage on their deals, it doesn't matter how much more pipeline they put in this quarter, they're not gonna be able to close it until next. What we really need to focus on right now is improving your closing percentage order to get you to 450. Would you guys agree? And they. Yes, definitely. Great. So if you don't solve this issue, people are going to lose their jobs. And you can be very explicit about it. That's life or death in business. And does my customer believe the salute? The value of my solution will help them exceed or reach their goals. Right. So if you're. You're traversing Gateway 3 successfully, you're discovering pain, and you're corresponding that to the direct value. And notice, we're not talking about individual products or services or solutions. It's very simple, right? It's goals. The value is not what your product does, the value is what your product helps your customers do, right? It helps them achieve their goals. And if you're not selling towards goals, that's where you need to change your sales process. Gateway 4 decision maker how many people have successfully felt like they've gotten all the way through on a deal only to find out, yeah, I need to loop in my colleague, my cfo, my coo, and you're like, well, you're the CEO, right? Or you're the VP of sales. You're responsible for revenue. Deals get stuck here all the time. And it's a pretty pernicious little gateway because oftentimes we have decision makers versus champions, right? Internal champions are great, but you have to sell the decision makers constantly coaching reps on this. Where for instance, got off a call yesterday with a rep who ended the conversation with, alright, Steve, we'll square back up separately. Steve is the champion. And we'll update you guys on the progress where there was three executives on the line. So we have this tendency to run to our champions, right? And then leave the decision makers over here. So we'll work and communicate with our champions and then we send updates to the decision makers. You have to sell to the decision makers. Stop acting like champions are your friend. They're not. I have a neutral perspective on champions. They don't help you, they don't hurt you. Problem is, the champions lie a lot, a ton, like to you, every day. Because their only goal is to make themselves look good, right? They're not directly responsible for the target, for the goal. They're an employee. So if they need to save their face and make you look bad, they will do it in a heartbeat. They could care less about you. A champion can help you gather information, of course, but they're really just a gatekeeper. If your champion won't make an introduction to the decision maker, they're not a champion, right? The only thing I think I could say that's valuable about a champion is the conversations that they have when you're not around, right? Otherwise you don't need them in your deal. Make the relationship with the decision maker and you might go, that's. That might be difficult. Here's some ways that you can do it. To make sure you're always talking to the right person, ask how their goals are set. So if you're selling a particular product as it relates to marketing and generating marketing qualified leads or whatever, how are those targets set? Who in the organization Sets them. If they're not the person setting them, they're not the decision maker. Champions try to hit goals, right? While decision makers are the ones that set them. Find out who is setting the goals and you're typically going to find the decision maker. This is a very simple question to ask. Who else needs to be looped into to evaluate PandaDoc? Well, we probably need to loop in this person. This person. They'll typically give you that. What you should do though, is ask a question as dumb as well. Who has purchasing authority at your company? You guys have heard that before. Big in Silicon Valley. Emphasizing, like bant, like authority. Do you have authority? Screw you. I have authority. Of course I have authority. I will lie to you in the face even if I don't have authority. Yeah, heck, you have authority. I make all the decisions about our marketing stack and I'm in sales. Of course I do. And of course you want to understand this as soon as possible, as early as possible in the sales cycle. The longer you wait to identify the decision maker, the less you value your time. Because guess what? You have to go through these four gateways. The first three gateways all over again. The second that you get back to that decision maker, right. You have to do it again and again. Do it early on. So are you stuck in the fourth gateway? Does this person set the goals? Are they directly responsible for the success of a purchase? Or do they need to loop in other colleagues? Very simple. Ask yourself this question. And if you manage and coach reps, these are the questions that you can start to use to ask your reps and figure out where they're actually stuck. Because remember, that's the goal of the gateways is to understand where a deal is stuck in very clear and simple terms. Sales is not that complicated. And you can ask questions like, what gateway are we stuck in? I think we're really stuck here. Great. Gateway 5. Price. Let me ask you guys a question. Is price an objection in about 50% of your deals? Like, honest question. Raise your hand if you think price is an objection about 50% of your deal. Like honestly, just an objection. Objection in general, no. Over half the room. Raise your hand. You're wrong. You are so wrong. Price is a false gateway past the fourth gateway. Price is never a legitimate objection ever. I promise you. And you'll start to do this. They're stuck in a previous gateway. So this is why I say bant is bull. Right? We try to prioritize budget. The legacy process of emphasizing budget over the previous gateways is just Complete bullshit. It uses budget against the customer to justify price. Right. Do you have sales budget? Well, of course you have budget. It centers a sales conversation around something that is actually never a legitimate objection. Because if you're trying to hit revenue targets, if you're trying to hit marketing targets, there is no price you will not pay to hit your goals if you can clearly hit them. You never want to center a purchase around budget, around price, because you're not building value and you're not tying your product, your solution, to the goals of the company. I think price is actually the most commonly diagnosed objection. Happens all the time. And why does that happen? It happens because people are hedging their bets on you. They don't trust you, they don't trust your solution. So what do they do? If you sell an annual product, what's the first thing they're going to ask for? Go monthly. Right. Or they're going to ask for a really big discount, or they're going to ask to go quarterly. It's because they're stuck in a previous gateway. Now, you might still be able to close a deal, but think of it that way. Give them what they want. Say, okay, we can come down to your price. If I come down to that price, will you sign right now? I bet they won't. They'll have to go back and go, well, I need to talk to some other people on my team and they'll want to take some more time. But what's actually happening is these people are stuck in a previous gateway. Think about it. They actually don't believe in your better way. You're talking to the wrong person. They're on the. They're in the other camp. Right. They're in that. We use Skype and you're trying to sell me hip chat camp. I don't care. We use Skype. It works just fine for us. They don't actually trust you or the, or your company and they can't actually correspond the pain and to the value that your product brings, nor can they actually communicate and understand the problem from not adopting your solution or you're just not talking with the decision maker. This is it. It's simple. It's not that difficult. It actually brings a big load off. Right, okay, I understand. If I'm getting price objections, I need to walk them back through. But no matter the case, if you're getting objections on price, you're going to lose now or you're going to lose later. The good news is that price is an indicator. If you think you're stuck here. You just need to go back. But some of you are asking. I know. I can see it. Can price ever be an objection unto itself? No, it can't. It's always if you've successfully traversed the prior four gateways, price is never a legitimate objection. Again, people are just using it to hedge their bets. So a couple questions to ask. Are you stuck in the fifth? Nope. You're just not. You're not stuck in the fifth gateway. Does not happen. You're stuck in a previous gateway. If I ever hear a rep tell me that they're stuck in the fifth gateway, they're lying to themselves because their customer is lying to them. And that's the whole purpose of these gateways, is to understand where your customers are stuck. Do you have to do some really funny thing? No, Never. You're never stuck there. You have to actually go to the sixth gateway to understand why they're stuck here. Time. Time is another false gateway. Why is it a false gateway but you guys get a bunch of that? Well, I just need some more time or we're not ready this quarter. Right. People kick the can down the road. It definitely kills your deal. Right. But it's not a legitimate objection. It's not where your deal is actually stuck. So when's the right time to enter Gateway 6? Well, if you think you've successfully traversed the previous five gateways, the time is always right now. What I mean by that, if you believe you've successfully traversed the previous gateways, you go for the close right now. You ask that customer. Well, hey, Susan, it sounds like we've covered everything that we needed to. We're really confident about this solution helping you hit your goals. So let's get. Let's move forward. I'm going to shoot you over a proposal and we can get started today. A little bit awkward, but you have to ask for that right now. So how is that time to buy only ever? Now? Ask yourself this question. If I ask my prospect to sign right now, will they. The answer is no. They're stuck in a previous gateway. If you can't confidently close it this minute, that's where you have to go back. Here's what you're gonna how to know when to close. You're gonna want to do the walk to the close. You're going to recap your progress through the previous gateways. It's pretty straightforward. You're going to Go through Gateway 1 through 4 5, confirm price, and you're going to ask them to sign and you're going to Ask them to do it while on the phone or in person, and it's awkward. But you're not going to do the following. You're not going to send them something and expect them to sign it. So I'm going to send you this and you'll sign it. Okay, cool. Well, I'll talk to you next week. No, you're gonna keep them on the line and you're gonna stay there. All right, well, let's get started. I'm shooting this to you right now. I know we just did a demonstration. So I know you're in front of your computer. Shoot it over to your email. Let's get it signed. And you know the funny thing? If they say, well, no, I just need a little bit more time, you say, well, help me understand why you can actually uncover the real reasons why they're not gonna sign your proposal. Because here's what would have happened otherwise. You would have sent them something, they wouldn't have signed it, and they wouldn't have told you the reasons. Right. Because you just assume they're going to do it offline. If you get a no, then you're going to walk it out. You're going to walk to the close again. You're going to walk the opportunity through the gateways again and again until you understand. And I've done this, and it's really awkward. Seven times in one phone call before I figured out that someone else actually needed to be involved. And they were too embarrassed to admit that they didn't have purchasing authority. Basically. Right. This is a COO that needed financial approval from the cfo. Seven times we walked through the gateways before he finally said, jared, I'm sorry, I have to bring in this other person. I know we've been working together for a month and a half, but I really have to bring in my cfo. I can't sign this. Great. And that only happened because I asked him to buy right now. And I kept on asking him to buy until he told me why he couldn't. That's why the time to buy is only right now. You also want to listen for indicators of hesitation. So whenever you're walking them through the closing, you're talking about, you know, well, Robert, it sounds like if we don't get you to 450,000, you know, for next quarter, a lot of people are going to lose their job. Well, you know, I might have over exaggerated on that a little bit. Oh, okay. I apologize. Let's dive in deeper there. So this is not a hard revenue target. Well, it's actually not that. It's more that a couple of our divisions are getting cut back due to some new shipping routes. You start to understand what's actually happening with their business. Listen for those indicators of hesitation. Well, I'm not sure. I don't know. I need to talk with, right. If they're not buying now, figure out where they're actually stuck. So why is Gateway 6 so crucial? Why is this such an important thing? Because I think a misdiagnosis of price or time is actually the most common reason that deals die. Right? If you don't understand why your customer is not buying, how can you? You're just gonna call them up and be like, hey, are you ready to buy? Are you ready to buy? Without ever getting right past the real reasons where they're stuck. They are false gateways because they are excuses. They're actually an act of misdirection for some reason. Like we have it programmed in our brains whenever someone, you know, we walk into a clothing store, like a Macy's or something, and someone walks up to us, hey, do you need any help? The answer is no, we don't need any help. We're just looking, right? Whenever we're ready to buy something and someone says, okay, are you ready to buy now? You're always going to respond with like, I need to consider price or I just need a little bit more time, but you're lying. You do it and you do it to people that are selling to you. It's just kind of pre programmed in us. It's an act of misdirection. It's to push people away from the real reason that we're not moving forward. So if you believe you're actually stuck in six Gateway, you're wrong. Your deal is actually dead and you're actually just betting on luck. If they're not buying right now, right, you haven't traversed the sixth gateway. They may or may not sign your proposal and you'll have no idea why. Think about it. Those deals are just a complete waste of time. You misdiagnosed and your patient's dead. It's sitting there on the operating table. You didn't get what you were expecting. You need to treat your deals like your patients. Don't kill them. Don't think that they're stuck in price or time, because they're not. They're stuck in a previous gateway. And if you start to treat your deal cycle in a much more simple fashion, where you're successfully traversing people through these six gateways, you're going to have a much happier sales team. You'll be happier yourselves, and you'll be able to actually understand the real reasons why people aren't buying from you. We're going to recap. The six gateways of sales are just simple. You don't have to make sales harder than it needs to be. There's this is such an easy way to restructure your sales process to understand where deals are stuck. They're effective. They apply every single time. There is not a single deal where you could not apply. The six gateways of sales. That's the whole purpose of this, to make sales a little bit easier. So with the six gateways of sales, I actually think this is the best way that you guys can convert prospects into addicts. So thank you very much. Inbound. It's been a great time. It.