Ryan Dohrn outlines a three-step sales call structure: open with an emotional success story, arrive with ready-made ideas and pricing to tweak on the spot, and close with a 1-to-10 rating question to gauge interest. This repeatable framework prevents ghosting and misreading prospect signals.
What's going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach, and we're talking sales strategy. This week we're going to be talking about the flow of your sales calls, the rhythm of your sales calls with your customers. Now I'm super fortunate to have the opportunity to coach 70, 80-some-odd salespeople a month, teams that are big, teams that are small, teams that are in between. And what I notice is those sales teams, those salespeople that are exceedingly successful, they've got great flow, they've got great rhythm. So think about it. If you happen to be on a rowing team or you happen to be even paddling in a canoe with just one other person, if you're in rhythm, you tend to go further, faster. On a rowing team, if you're all rowing at different paces, you're not going to go forward fast. As a matter of fact, maintaining a straight line is going to be pretty hard. Now, one of the things that you need to fight against, one of the things you need to work against, well, every customer's different, every conversation's different. Okay, stop. These are the excuses that you tell yourself that stop you from being ultimately successful. Pretty much every sales call needs to flow in a way and have a rhythm that makes sense. If you go in there thinking every sales call is different, I can't hardly prepare for it. Every call is going to be different. Every client's different. Every advertiser is different. You're going to get stymied and your success will always be less. All right, so let me share with you kind of the way the formatting works for me. It's very straightforward and it's very, very simple. There's 3 main steps. The first is I always, always, always start out with success stories. The top of every sales call, the top of every email that I send is always talking about the customers that I love, the customers we've been able to help. And if you've got case studies and success stories, make them emotional now, not all fact and stat driven. That's where I want to start. First thing out of the gate, prime that conversation for success by talking about how you've helped other businesses, people, companies be successful. The second thing is, as you've heard me talk about before, I never go to a meeting just to gather information. To leave the meeting to create a proposal. You are a leader. You are a guide. You are an advisor. Nobody knows your business better than you. So very rarely do I need to leave a meeting to create a proposal to go back to a person. Now, I might need to tweak on what I bring, but I'm always going to bring ideas ready to go. It is my differentiating factor. I even go so far as to say, I've come with some ideas for you. I've come with some pricing for you. Love to ask you some questions to see if I— what I brought is in alignment. But it's a differentiating factor. If you work with me, I'm ready to go. I know what you need to do to be successful. Now, I may not know all your nuances. I might not know exactly what your goals and desires are, but I refuse to show up with nothing. See, I don't mind a fight about this online, and maybe we can down in the comments below or whatever it is. These folks that say you should show up with nothing, show up just to ask questions. I think we're better than that, and I think buyers demand so much more than that. So success stories, I always show up with ideas, and the third thing is I'm always doing a 1 to 10 close. And the reason I'm doing a 1 to 10 close, well, let me tell you what it sounds like. It kind of sounds like this. It would be, Bonnie, great conversation today. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me. On a scale of 1 to 10, like 1, you're absolutely not interested, and 10, you're ready to give me your credit card today, kind of where are you at? Now, she might say, I'm a 5. So then what I would do is guide her, say, so you're a 5, you're kind of on the fence, you're kind of 50/50. What could I do? What could I say? What will we need to do to get you to be more like a 6 or a 7? Let's say that she says, well, Ryan, I'll be honest with you, I'm kind of a 3. In my mind, sale over. I gotta save this. So I would simply say, okay, Bonnie, what would I need to do? What would I need to say to kind of get you to be more of a 5? What could I do? Now maybe there's nothing you can do, but if you don't ask a 1 to 10 question, if you don't test the waters, you could say, what would stop you from buying from us today? You could do that, but then it uses the word stop, and that's why I don't like that advice that people give. On a very regular basis online, by the way. What would stop you from doing a decision with us today? Why would— what do you mean stop? Why do you want to stop the conversation? Flat out, it's just bad advice, and you know who you are that's giving that advice. Quit giving it. When you think about it, friends, the 1 to 10 close is super, super easy. It allows us to gauge the water, test the waters, and see where somebody's at. See, a lot of times the reason, friends, that you get ghosted— I don't— doesn't happen a lot to me, but a lot of you get ghosted is because you don't do a litmus test. You don't do a 1 to 10 close. You don't test the waters to see how that person feels. So you're basing— you're leaving the meeting to create a proposal or whatever. You're leaving the meeting and you're like, man, I thought that went well. But you don't know if it went well because polite people that you meet with are usually not going to be honest with you. The politest people out there are not going to say, you know what, Ryan, I'm a 1. Not interested. Instead, they'll say, you know, Ryan, it was a good meeting. Thank you so much. You know, put a proposal together, give us some ideas, and, you know, we'll run it up the flagpole and kind of see, you know, what, what happens with it. They're about to ghost you because you didn't, you didn't know where they are. Were they cold? Were they hot? Were they warm? Kind of where were they at? So the 3 main things I want you to consider doing: load that conversation with success stories, prime that pump for success. The second is stop this whole idea of, I can't create a proposal until I know what the customer needs. Come on, you know your, you know your industry, you know your pricing, you know what others have done to be successful. Come with something, and if it's not right, throw it out, tweak on it, but don't come with nothing. You're better than that. And the third thing is 1 to 10. Test the waters, because a lot of times you're getting ghosted because they were cold You thought they were warm or they were hot and they actually weren't. Friends, great rhythm, great flow equals great strategy. If you want to get further faster, have a good strategy for each and every sales call. Friends, we could talk about this for 2 hours. I could come to your office and we could spend all day on doing nothing but creating the 10 steps or the roadmap that you should follow. By the way, love to do that if you'd like to have me in. But those 3 main components should help change your sales flow and help you close more deals. Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it. And they're not. We're not crazy. I mean, well, maybe we're a little crazy, but we're not crazy, friends. This is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. Hey, head over to ryandohrn.com. Listen to the podcast, watch the videos. Love to come and motivate your sales team. Love to come in and speak at your national sales conference. Reach out to me. The website is RyanDohrn.com. We'll see you next week.
