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So diehard i have a confession to make when i first got into sales and selling i had to make cold calls at the end of my work day and set five appointments before i could go home to people that had just moved into the neighborhood and wanted to hear about a business opportunity.
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And every single day, I sat and made cold calls until I finally learned how to do it.
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One of the keys of cold calling is having the right script, having the right frame of mind, and making a connection by asking a question.
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And that is what Michael Padone does.
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And if you go to salesbuzz.com, B-U-Z-Z, slash sell or die, you ll get a download
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that s worth its weight in gold or actually worth its weight in sales.
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And I recommend that you do it right now, salesbuzz.com slash sell or die.
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Welcome to the Sell or Die podcast.
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I m your host, Jeffrey Gittimer.
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And I m your host, Jen Gittimer.
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Well, in this podcast, we re gonna help you attract more qualified, unbelievable, ready-to-buy clients.
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We re gonna help you build loyal relationships.
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And the one thing you re hoping for, close more deals.
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Let s get into it.
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It s time to sell or die.
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Welcome back, Die Hard.
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In this episode, we re going to be talking about how to close more sales.
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So if you re not closing enough deals or you want to be closing more deals, we re going to give you the secret to make that happen.
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Jeffrey, do you think closing sales is one of the number one things that sales trainers and sales programs are teaching?
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Yes, I do.
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But it s also the number one reason that salespeople get frustrated and lose sales.
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I get this question all the time.
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When s the best time to close the sale?
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That s all that everyone wants to know.
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44 minutes into your pitch.
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Just kidding.
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Right.
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And then then they look for buying signals.
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Then they have a standard close that sounds so phony that our dogs wouldn t buy it.
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And I think that there s an ability here for a salesperson to come to a different understanding about what happens at the end of a presentation, what happens at the end of a sales pitch or the end of your boring slides that no one wants to see to begin with.
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And how do you differentiate yourself from all the other salespeople that are doing the same damn thing?
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Didn t you once like walk by someone, a stranger giving a sales pitch?
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Yeah.
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Oh, that s sorry.
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I m in Houston, Texas, at a big hotel.
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I m not going to say the name of it, but it rhymes with Milton.
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And I m just coming back from the Roger Clemens Houston Texans game.
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Roger Clemens, famous pitcher, got busted for steroids and then tried to blame his wife.
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One of the dumbest things on the history of the planet.
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But they were paying him so much money that I boiled it down to it s four thousand dollars a pitch.
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Wouldn t it be cool if they went out and paid him?
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Ball one is four thousand, Roger.
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But anyway, I m walking back into the hotel from the stadium, and I see these two guys in the lobby.
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And one is obviously a salesperson, and one is obviously a customer.
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Because the sales guy has his slide thing going, and he s talking his ear off.
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But I realized that the customer is looking around the room.
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So I stopped, and I said, so what are you guys doing?
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And I looked at the salesman.
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He goes, well, we re talking about, I said, well, this guy s paying no attention to you.
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Just so you understand that.
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I looked at the other guy said, Are you interested in buying or not?
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He goes, Well, yeah, I am.
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So I looked at the sales guy and said, Dude, stop pitching.
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Start closing.
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It s over.
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And I walked away.
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And you could see these people were like, Oh, what just happened here?
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But salespeople do not know when to stop.
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You know, please don t buy yet.
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I m not done my presentation.
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I have to get through all the slides.
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Idiots.
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So I m
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I m going to challenge every diehard, you included diehard, to stop your sales pitch now.
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The customer already knows what you re going to do.
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Send it a day or two in advance.
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Say, here s my boring slide presentation.
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When I get there, I m going to talk about you.
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Oh, that will have never happened before.
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Unless they met with you.
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Well, true.
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Well, there s other things that I would do.
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But yes, in today s world, you can do cooler stuff than that.
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But I think that as a salesperson, Jen, you have to look at what are the odds of you making that sale when there s two or three other competitors there?
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And this guy s trying to be convinced that you re the right one.
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And like an idiot, you re trying to tell him that you re the best one rather than prove that you re the best one.
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So I think that this is why closing feels so uncomfortable or so awkward.
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It s the way I ve taken a lot of sales courses and the way that most sales trainers, not such good ones,
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Teach closing is you go through this process.
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You re going through, you re going through, you re going through, you re going through.
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Probe.
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Ask questions.
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Overcome objections.
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Sorry.
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Build rapport.
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Ask questions.
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Yeah.
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Deliver your information.
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Overcome objections.
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And now close.
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And it is so freaking awkward because like imagine you and I are at the farmer s market.
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Right.
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And I m like, Jeffrey, how do you like the strawberries, honey?
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And then I like,
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transition and you re talking about it and you re like, no, I don t want to spend however much money in strawberries, which would never happen because you love strawberries.
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So, but let s just say you have like some price objection, right?
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And now I think I ve overcome that objection.
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I m going for the hard sell on the hard close.
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It s like an awkward transition.
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It s so freaking awkward.
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And that s an easy example because you and I are married.
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And if I want strawberries, probably just going to get the strawberries.
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Let s be real here.
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But it happens in the cars.
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It happens in every kind of sale.
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Washing machine, refrigerator, shoes, cars.
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Software.
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Horrible.
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And you go through your information and then it s like you turn on this closing switch.
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All of a sudden, it s the time in your process that you ve been told, now you need to close.
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And
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What I ve learned from you and what you talk about in your books and your courses and all your materials is that that s actually the exact wrong time to close.
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So tell us, what is that like?
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I have always started my conversations with the biggest CEOs with one question.
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You want to buy now or you want to hear the pitch?
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The guy s like startled.
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He said, well, we re probably going to do something, Jeffrey.
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I said, great, let s go eat lunch.
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Why should I pitch somebody that s already bought?
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That s number one.
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So you don t even know.
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It s like you go to a restaurant and the waiter comes over and says, let me tell you all the specials.
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Like, dude, I don t want to know the specials.
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I already know what I want.
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Now you want to know the specials.
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In fact, you ll ask for the specials.
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But if the waiter was smart or the waitress was smart or the service person was smart, they would say, do you guys know what you want or would you like me to go over the specials?
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They never say, do you know what you want?
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They always say, let me go over the specials.
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Like, I don t want to hear the specials.
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I don t like specials.
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I want to hear the specials.
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I don t like it always just like mayonnaise or something on it.
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And I don t know what I wear, like Alfredo sauce.
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I don t like that.
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So I m looking at this from the perspective of I m the customer.
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You re the customer.
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Give me what I want.
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So what you re saying is it s not about the clothes.
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Right.
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It s about the open.
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It s about the start of the conversation, the start of the presentation, and actually what happens before that happens.
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So I just talked about sending your slides in advance.
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That s a pre-sale approach.
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It s pretty cool.
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The customer will be blown away by it.
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Here s my boring slides.
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I m coming there tomorrow, prepared to talk about you.
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I ve got a couple of ideas, and all I ask is if you like them, you run with them.
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Fair enough?
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Actually, yeah, that is fair enough.
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Okay, let s break that down.
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What you re doing with that statement and what you re doing from the very beginning is A, you re presupposing that they re gonna buy.
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And with that presupposition that they re gonna buy, you re talking to them as if they re going to become a buyer because the other people in their position, you re assuming the sale, right?
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I m talking to them with a pound of confidence.
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Yeah.
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And there s no bullshit.
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It s like, I m really looking forward to seeing you tomorrow because I ve heard a lot about you and your company and dude, shut the hell up with your insincerities.
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Just, you know, I m coming with ideas.
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I m ready.
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And the only question is, are you ready?
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And when you say ideas, let s elaborate, that s ideas to help you win, profit, make more money.
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Ideas about them, that the other person perceives as valuable, not added value, it s pre-sale value.
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And I can give you a ton of examples, but if I m going to a lumber yard, I want to talk to the person about how they market what they have.
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I want to talk to them about what the five customers really want.
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Do they want a drill or a hole?
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So why are you selling them a drill?
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Do they want a wall or do they want some plywood?
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Do they want shingles or a roof?
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So I m looking at it from the perspective of outcome while this typical sales trainer is trying to push his product because our product is blue and everybody wants blue and our shingles are shiny and their shingles aren t shiny and ours are square and theirs are not square.
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I find it so interesting that more salespeople don t start their close in the open.
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with the opening because it s not rocket science.
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It s not like a secret that you re there to sell them something.
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It s not rocket science, but if you open it right, it s rocket fuel.
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And that s what you have to look at from the perspective of that customer.
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They want to take off.
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They want to go to the moon.
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But what I m saying is if you re on a discovery call with someone or you re meeting with someone face to face, it s not a secret that you re a salesperson and you re trying to sell them something like it s not like at the end, it s like surprise.
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And let me refine that old world thinking.
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Yeah.
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Salespeople used to go on discovery calls, which are a total waste of the customer s time.
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If you want to ask the customer something, ask them something about what s going to help their productivity, not what their company s done and what their goals are for this year.
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Just go to their website.
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It ll tell you everything.
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Talk to some of their suppliers.
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They ll tell you everything.
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Talk to some of their vendors.
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They ll tell you everything.
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Talk to a couple of their customers.
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They ll tell you everything.
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Then go in that sales call.
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I m not here to make a sale.
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I m just here to gather information.
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Oh, no problem.
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Then get the fuck out of here because you re wasting my time.
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You want to gather information?
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Go to Google.
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You want to gather information?
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Go to my website.
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You want to gather information?
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Hang out in the parking lot and talk to people when they come into the building in the morning.
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That s all the information.
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I m busy.
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I think information gathering is a bullshit thing of the past that is not only archaic, it s rude.
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So in the online sales world with coaches and service-based entrepreneurs, discovery calls are really common because you re finding out about another entrepreneur who s raised their hand to speak to you through that discovery call.
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There would be no way for you to know about them prior without them raising their hand.
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But I understand what you re saying.
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LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok.
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You can find out everything about anybody in nine seconds.
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Yes.
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But you may not know their specific goals as it relates to how you can help them.
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No problem.
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I apologize for interrupting.
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That s no problem.
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But you can talk about them and then say, you know, in my research, I didn t see what your specific goal was.
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And I was wondering if you d share that with me.
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Totally.
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So you sound like you know what you re talking about, and then you ask the question.
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But if you just ask the question, it sounds like you re probing.
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I don t want to be probed.
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No offense.
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Well, no one wants to be probed.
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But that s what they teach.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So let s talk about more ways in which you open with your clothes.
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Like, what does that look like in practicality?
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Well, if we re talking about the how right now, the specific how, I typically ask a question that involves them emotionally.
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Like, where did you grow up?
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Which is much different than where are you from?
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Where did you grow up?
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Evokes emotion.
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Where are you from?
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Might evoke disdain.
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Because where did you grow up?
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I get back to your house.
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I get back to your family.
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Where did you grow up?
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I get to Cleveland.
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And no offense to Cleveland, it s kind of a nice place, but maybe people didn t want to be in Cleveland.
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Maybe they wanted to
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be in the South where it was warmer.
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But the bottom line is, I m trying to engage somebody emotionally, and that starts the process.
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It s the same in cold calling.
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If you re going to cold call somebody, Mr. Jones, I m calling people at random today.
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Where did you grow up?
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If they don t click, you re engaged.
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If they don t click, you re engaged.
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It s better than, hi, I m Bob Smith, and I m from the electric company, and we try to save our customers money.
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Thanks, but I pay my bill.
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Never call me again.
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Click.
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Jeffrey, are there more strategies for how to use your open to close in the 21.5 day sales challenge?
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Oh yeah.
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And the strategies revolve around getting past the gatekeeper.
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That s a big one.
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The strategies revolve around someone who refuses to meet with you.
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You can t get to a decision-making person.
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You have to climb up a ladder someplace.
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The 21.5 Unbreakable Laws of Selling is a classic for dealing with every aspect of the sales process, including the open and the close.
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So diehard, if you want your free sales challenge.
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Oh, there s a free thing.
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Yeah.
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It s 22 days.
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I just recorded.
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Let me tell you what I just recorded these things.
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I know what they are.
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They are liquid gold.
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Well, actually they re audible gold and video too.
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So you can see the videos.
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So when you go to get them or.com slash sales challenge, sales is plural sales challenge, get them or.com slash sales challenge.
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Is that gittimer.com slash sales challenge?
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He has a little bit of a tongue twister for me to say.
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When you go there, you can actually have the opportunity to take the 22 day.
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It s 21.5 a day.
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How much is it?
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It s free.
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Yeah, it s free.
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Now, do we try to upsell you?
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Of course we do.
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What do you think?
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We re in the business.
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He s wearing an enjoy capitalism shirt.
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Yeah.
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He wants you to enjoy capitalism as does he, right?
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I m telling you, these short lessons, five, seven minutes each, will change the way you think about sales and change the way you act about sales.
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Let me take it all the way back to its root.
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I want to talk about Michael Padone for just a second.
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Is that okay?
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I have a friend for 20 years.
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He has an amazing story that s been in one of our podcasts, which is absolutely phenomenal.
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He was on the last episode.
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Oh, cool.
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And very vulnerable human being, but boy, is he a great sales instructor.
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And he will teach you how to make a cold call, even for people that don t like making cold calls, because he has a strategy that makes it easy.
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And I think if you go to salesbuzz.com slash sell or die, you can get his free download and it will begin to enlighten you about how strong of a salesperson Michael Padone is.
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Not just this, I mean, he s done this.
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He did it because he lived it.
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And now he s transforming it into a program, a sales program, and he s trained thousands of people who might have quit if it wasn t for him.
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So, okay, let s go back to closing.
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I know that when I was doing Cutco demos, I was selling knives in people s houses, right?
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And I was one of their top salespeople in my time.
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If you don t say so yourself.
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And I would show up with my bag of knives and all the things to show them.
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And it was no surprise that I was going to try and sell them knives.
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Just like when you diehard go in to talk to your potential customers.
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It s not like, hey, I m just trying to get to know you.
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It s no surprise that you re trying to make a sale and that s your job, that s your livelihood.
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And that by making that sale,
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you re actually going to be helping them have some impact that would be beneficial to them, have some outcome that would be beneficial to them.
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but an engagement as well.
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Right, for sure.
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Like a relationship or all that, right?
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And so I never felt like there was this big transition moment from pitch to- Selling to closing.
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Yeah, because I was closing the whole time.
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That s how I looked at it.
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And when you begin to look at it like that, and Jeffrey says I have a one path track in my mind to the sale that I m like on it until it happens.
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Part of that is because the entire time I am thinking about what s going to get you one step closer to that sale.
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And so how is the next question you ask going to move you closer?
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Whether that next question is a relationship building question, whether that next question is a strategic question so that they start to see what they re not seeing and they can see it from a new perspective, whether that next question is
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actually asking when they re ready to get started.
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But when you go on assuming the sale and assuming that they re going to buy, then your brain needs to work like it s getting through a maze and that sometimes you re going to hit these walls in the maze and you re going to just find another path.
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You don t just stop and say, well, I can t find the end.
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I don t know how to get there.
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There is always a way out of the maze.
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And so if you can think of it like that, then you can think anytime you hit a wall and you feel like it s not going where you want to go, just take a deep breath and reroute it.
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Try a different route.
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And when you do that, you will get more sales more of the time.
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So I m going to throw something at you that the salesperson doesn t pre-plan.
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I m going to show you the humorous route of selling a knife.
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You walk in, you establish rapport or whatever, you take out all your samples, and they know you re about to pitch and say, oh, wait, before I begin, could you hold this for me?
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And you give them a box of Band-Aids and Neosporin and say, I asked my customers to hold on this just in case.
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It usually never happens, but
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You never know.
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And I want you to be prepared.
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But I can tell you that the faster you buy, the less chance I have of cutting myself.
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But let s start with you.
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Do you guys have any tomatoes?
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And they re looking at you like you re not.
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But I want that customer to participate.
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I want them to be involved in the sale.
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So I have a cutting board if I m selling knives.
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And I brought my own tomato from home, if you don t mind.
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But I need you to hold the knife and cut.
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So you want to know what s so funny?
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Before I would go on these sales calls, I would find out a fruit or vegetable that they love and I would bring that item.
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They told me they loved pineapple.
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I still to this day, by the way, don t know how to cut pineapple.
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And I asked Jeffrey to cut it every single time where I buy it pre-cut from the supermarket.
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I think there s only been one time I bought a whole pineapple and I was like,
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What do I do?
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Adulting.
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Anyway, I would bring their food of choice, they wouldn t know that s what I m doing, and have them use my knife and use their knife.
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So the comparison, I wanted to show them, right?
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Yeah, bring me your best knife.
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I would have them pull out their best from their source.
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Of course, of course.
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It s funny, when I was selling t-shirt consulting, I would walk in in unassuming clothing, overalls and a t-shirt, overalls and a t-shirt.
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And I asked for the owner and I d get the owner every time.
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And I would say, Hey, show me the best shirt you ve ever printed.
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That s how I started the conversation.
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Everybody in the t-shirt business knows exactly what s the best t-shirt they have ever printed.
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And that s how that sales pitch began.
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I want them to show me their best, what they re proud of, what they re absolutely unbelievably, they can t wait to wear it.
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So the challenge for you, Diehard, is what are you doing?
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What question are you asking to open the sale so that you gain their emotional and intellectual engagement?
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And maybe their humor engagement by holding this little can of Band-Aids.
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I usually don t need them, but just in case you never know, would you
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I would have those band-aids every single time, because I m a sales guy.
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If I was selling cactus, what shirt would I have on?
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Watch out for the pricks.
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It s standard.
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You have to have something that makes the other person smile.
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If you don t buy cactus, Mr. Jones, you ll probably want a few of these shirts for your friends.
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I d be selling shirts.
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I want to make a sale.
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When I walk out of that house, they walk out of my office, I want them to have something of mine that they paid me for.
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I don t care if it s 20 bucks.
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And so do you.
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If you go to any kind of a trade show, they always have little things that you can either have for nothing or have for cheap.
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They call them tchotchkes.
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Here s a pen.
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Here s a post-it note pad.
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Here s a coffee mug.
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Here s something.
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I just Googled, because I know you ve written about this before, and I was really curious what would come up.
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I just Googled Giddimer.
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It s not about the clothes.
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It s about the open.
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And look at this.
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I just found this LinkedIn article that you wrote.
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I don t know when you wrote it.
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Look at how relevant this stuff still is, right?
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Start with 2015, okay?
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So here, let s share with the diehards who are listening on the podcast, the 4.5 self-evaluations and idea generators that
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will put their inability to close in proper perspective, according to this Gitimer article.
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Start with questions that make the prospect consider new information.
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Boom.
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Look at the way you present your product or service.
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Boom.
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Ask questions that make the prospect look good.
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Boom.
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Ask for the order in a way that s assumptive rather than cornering.
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And 4.5, keep in mind, when your prospect is not talking, he or she is formulating impressions and opinions of you and what you sell.
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That s pretty interesting.
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Whoever wrote this is freaking brilliant.
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Yeah, that Jeffrey Gittimer guy.
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Oh my gosh.
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I ll tell you, honestly and truly, Diehard, sometimes I read my stuff and I go, wow, that s pretty good.
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Oh man, I love it.
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We re redoing the Little Red Book of Selling right now, and I m not changing anything, but I read what I wrote in 2002, 20 years ago, and it is still immaculately current, just unbelievably.
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And keep in mind that the Little Red Book, while it is the best-selling sales book of all time, is missing two words, social media, two other words, smartphone,
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None of those things existed.
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Yeah, and it has that word facsimile.
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But we re not changing anything.
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No, we re not.
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We re keeping it in for the integrity of the book to make it a classic.
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I mean, if you read Napoleon Hill s book, it came out in 1937.
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And the version that sells the best is the original version, unedited text.
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And I can tell you this like as a female, because he mainly refers to males.
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It doesn t bother me.
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Like in my head, he says he and I just read she or he and she.
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Right.
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It doesn t like you can t get hung up on that type of stuff because when you get hung up on that type of stuff, you miss the whole point.
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You miss the whole message.
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Yeah, I addressed that in the very beginning of the book, like I m a male, so I read in the mail.
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And if you don t like it, get over it.
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And it s as nice a way as I could possibly put it.
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Yeah, the world has changed, but the Red Book is not changing.
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I m not going to modify it in a way that insults the reader who wants the original version.
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Yeah.
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And
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One of the reasons this book has become the all-time sales classic is because it doesn t teach how to sell.
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It teaches why people buy, which is a billion times more powerful than how to sell.
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So you have two responsibilities at the end of this.
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You need to make certain that you get the 21.5 or the 22 no-cost sales lessons.
0
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It s a challenge.
0
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Do it 22 straight days.
0
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It ll be available.
0
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As soon as you take the first one, you ll get an email the next day for the second one.
0
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And it s all about, from the 21.5 Unbreakable Laws of Sales, you go to- Gittimer.com slash sales challenge.
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Oh, okay.
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Cool.
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And if you want to go right for the close, just go to Gittimer.me and it ll show you what the upsell is.
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Oh my goodness.
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Until next time, I m Jen Gittimer.
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And I m Jeffrey Gittimer, and I m challenging you.
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It s all about the open, because if you don t do it right, you will never get to the close.
0
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Thanks for listening to the show.
0
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Don t forget to like, share.
0
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Yeah, share with both your friends.
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And subscribe to the podcast.
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And remember, we have a free 22-day sales challenge.
0
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Just go to gittimer.com slash sales challenge to start you on your way.