Transcription
I have a question for a few of you. I am looking at more coverage for my family. I've got some policies. I'm looking for more coverage. I'm meeting with a lot of different companies that are in your space. Melinda, tell me why should I go with you? Why should I go with your company?
I have the best policies.
You have the best policies. Okay. Yeah. The best pricing.
The best pricing. Okay. I stand behind my customers.
You stand behind your customers. Okay. All right. Let me see it. Okay.
Dan, I want to ask you the same question. I'm looking for a policy for my family. I've already got some stuff. I'm looking at different companies that, you know, could give me the policy. Tell me, why should I go with you?
I'd like to learn more about your family.
In what way? Well, why all of a sudden are you contacting us? Um, what made you decide that you want more coverage?
Not a bad question. All right. I'm going to come over to somebody else. Sharon, you know, I'm looking at different, different companies. I need more protection. I realize I've got a problem. Tell me, why should I go with your company over someone else?
Because I represent my company.
You represent your company. Okay. I want each of you three to come up on stage with me real quick. Come on.
So you guys all have competitors. Every industry has competitors, you know that. We lose sales too from time to time. Here, let's just be real. Sometimes we lose sales to competitors. If I asked your competitors the same exact question and I said, you know, I'm looking at different companies, I've already got some coverage, tell me why should I go with you, what do you think your competition would say?
I think that they would probably say that they have better coverage than we do.
So they have the best this, they have the best that, the best quality, the the best owners, the best customer service. Okay. What about you? What would your competition say if I asked the same exact question?
Well, the only thing that they have, they don't have me.
Okay. So they might, could they possibly say that though too? I mean, they might say the same thing. They might say, "Hey, you're buying me, not the policy." What have they said? The same thing, basically? Based on the knowledge I have and what I can represent and how I can help you. Do they have knowledge? They have knowledge. Can they help? They can help. Okay. So what could be the possible problem if our prospects feel that we all sound the same? Could that be a problem for us?
Okay. All right. You guys are excused. Come on, Dan. I didn't even ask you. Down now. Hey, I'll come back to you. I've got something for you. I'll come back to you.
All right. We're going to bring a couple of you back up here at the end. We're going to keep you guys on your toes. I don't know who I'm going to bring up here in a bit. Now, Jeremy, let's talk about this. What, let's talk about the foundations. What is the definition of selling? Write this down. All selling is is change. That's it. All sales are about one thing only, and that's change. So whether your prospects want something new or they're moving away from pain, it's all about what? It's about change. It's about how good you are at getting your prospects to view in their mind that by changing their situation now. What does that mean? That means purchasing what you're offering, purchasing a policy from you, that by them doing that, that is far less risky for them than them doing nothing at all. Staying in the status quo, their problems stay the same, and nothing ever changes, which is really more risky. Now, here's your problem. Human beings don't like change. So think about that for a second. All selling is is change, yet human beings don't like change. What are we going to do now?
Why do we not like change?
Okay, makes us feel uncomfortable. It makes us feel, man, you're reading my mind over here. Makes us feel unsettled and uncomfortable, especially when it's initiated by some pushy salesperson who's ready to pitch their product or services the moment they start talking to a prospect. Anybody built of that? Oh, don't lie. No, I can see. I can see it in your eyes. I can see you getting excited. Repeatedly, human behavior shows that we value something that is consistent and something that is familiar to us over something that is new, new and foreign to us. Think the battered spouse syndrome. Doesn't make any sense. They don't like the physical abuse. They don't like the mental abuse, but they keep coming back. And why is that? Because they're afraid of change. Something new. So that's what we're going up against on every single conversation with every single prospect that you will ever talk to is they're afraid of change.
Now, I want you to write this down. We are not selling the thing. Oh, oh, for the love of Mary. We are not selling the thing. We are selling the results of what that thing does. We are not selling them an insurance policy in your industry. You are selling them the results of what that policy is going to do for them. When one spouse dies and the rest of the family is financially protected for the rest of their lives, that's what you're selling. You're selling the results of what that policy does for them. Is everybody with me?
All right. Now, here's what we're going to cover today. I want you to write this down. Three steps to becoming a recession-proof sales agent. We all know a recession is coming. Did anybody go through the 2008, 2009 debacle? Remember in the government was like, "Nothing to see here, nothing to worry about, folks." And then the next day, press conference, Armageddon. We need $1 trillion. The world's coming to an end. Now, we've got one or two choices. We can thrive when the recession hits. We can make a lot of money when the recession hits with what you're selling right now. Or you can hope and pray that your favorite politician's going to bail you out. Which one do you think is going to be better for you?
All right. So number one, we're going to become a problem finder and problem solver, not a product pusher. Product pushers don't make any money. In 2022, those days are gone. Number two, asking the right questions, but at the right time. What are the right questions? Just any old question? How do we ask the question? What's the right tone? Where is the verbal pausing? How do we learn these things? And step number three is eliminating sales resistance. How do you disarm the prospect within the first 10 to 30 seconds to one minute to the entire sales conversation where they actually open up to you, they engage with you, they trust you? They don't trust you by asking them, "Who won the game last night?" or "Boy, how's the weather over there in Dallas?" Nobody really cares. "How are you doing today?" When you get a sales call and the salesperson says, "How are you doing today?" What's the first thing that goes in your mind? That they don't care. You really think they do? You really think that they care? Do they really think that you care that you're going to listen to how their day is going for the next 15 minutes? No. It triggers sales resistance. That's a whole another subject.
All right. Now, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell you a little bit of my background for the next couple minutes because my background relates to what is necessary if you want to take your income as an agent or a sales professional to a level that most sales people only dream about. You see, I got started in sales 21 years ago. Yes, I'm that old. 21 years ago, as a broke, burned-out college student. I got my first job selling home security systems door-to-door. Anybody starting door-to-door sales? Now, straight commission. So what does that mean? They hire everybody because there's no risk. They just throw you out there, and if you sell, you sell. If you don't, you're gone. So I got hired, and the company gave us a script, and they gave us some books by the old sales gurus, and they basically drive you out in a van, and they basically, okay, you come to a stop, a not-so-safe neighborhood, because you're selling alarm systems, and they, boom, kick you out the door and they say, "Hey, go make some sales. We'll pick you up after dark." It's going to be really easy. And I thought, I was like, "Wow, I'm going to be rich. I'm going to make all this money. I can't believe it." And I remember knocking on the doors. I remember knocking on the doors, and I was so excited. I remember the last thing my sales manager said when he kicked me out of the van, he said, "Jeremy, make sure you're really excited when you knock on the door. Show them how enthusiastic you're going to be. And if you show them you believe in the product, they're going to believe in the product too." We all know that's not true, right?
So I knocked on the doors. I was really excited, and I started talking about the features and the benefits of the product and how great it was going to be and how much it was going to help them. And I started noticing I was getting all of these objections. "What they didn't tell me about that?" "We can't afford it, Jeremy." "We don't need it." "Your price is too high." "We don't have the budget for this." "I need to keep looking at other quotes." "I don't make rash decisions." "I need to think it over." "I need to talk with my spouse." "I need to talk with my cousin who lives in Advance down by the river." "Can you call me back in a week, a month, a year later?" Who in here gets those objections? Oh, good lord. I thought it was only me.
And I got to a point after about seven to eight weeks of non-stop rejection, I couldn't believe it. I had hardly made any sales. Straight commission job. If you don't make sales, what happens? You don't get paid anything. They don't care. And I remember after about seven or eight weeks, I remember standing on a curb one late Friday evening waiting for the manager to pick me up. I had made zero sales that day. It was 10, 10:30 at night. I'd worked 12 hours. My legs felt like Jell-O. You sold door to door. You walk around all day. What did your legs feel at the end? Like Jell-O, especially if you don't sell anything. And I remember the sweat just going down my chest and my back this hot, humid July night. And I remember like, "Oh my gosh, I'd made no sales. I'd made zero sales for the entire week. I'd worked 60 hours a week for free." And I remember sitting there and I'm just like, "You know, maybe, maybe, maybe selling, maybe selling just wasn't for me. Maybe I just, I wasn't born with the gift of the gab. I'm not like all the cool guys in the office that are making the sales. Maybe it's just not for me." Do anybody ever felt that way yourself? Has anybody ever looked at your bank account and noticed you have more going out of your bank account than you have going in? Well, that's where I was.
And my sales manager picked me up that night. And he popped in a Tony Robbins CD. Guys, 20 years ago, human beings listen to things called CDs. And Tony said something like this. I still remember it to this day. Hey Tony, if you're listening, I might be butchering it, but he said something like this. He said, "Most people fail for the simple reason, the simple reason they don't learn the right skills necessary to succeed. They don't learn the right skills." He goes on to say, "Everybody's taught skills, but the people who fail are the ones who were not taught the right ones." And it was suddenly like a light bulb went off on my head. It was like divine intervention from God himself that maybe, just maybe, what I was learning from the company and what I was learning from what I now call the old sales gurus, maybe they just weren't the right skills anymore. Maybe they were just outdated. They just didn't work with today's type of prospect. So I committed to myself, I'm going to have to do something, something about this. If I want to learn, if I want to sell, I've got to master more advanced skills because I know you, like me, want to provide a great lifestyle for your family as well.
Now, here was my major dilemma. You see, I was reading all these traditional selling books from the gurus, and what the company was training me, and I would go out and use some of the techniques. Maybe I'd feel really uncomfortable, but I would make some sales here and there. But I also noticed when I used a lot of their techniques, I actually got even more objections. I actually triggered more sales resistance. I actually got more doors slammed in my face, and I actually lost more sales than I made. Has anybody ever seen that happen to you as well? You trusted the guru, but it didn't quite work out right.
Now, at the same time, I was in college. Good college kid. My mom and dad told me to go to college. And my major was Behavioral Science and Human Psychology, which is what it's really the study of the brain and why a human being makes a decision to do something or not do something. Okay. Now, let's go into this. All right. Step number one. And here, actually, I want to go back to something here. I want to forget this for you.
So while I was studying Behavioral Science and Human Psychology, I was learning from my professors, some extremely talented men and women, that the most persuasive way to communicate was over here. But from the gurus, they were telling me it was over here. It was completely opposite. So I'm like, "Who do I believe? Who do I trust? What do I do?" So I'm like, "How do I take the theory of Behavioral Science, neuroscience, and the way the brain makes decisions and wrap that into my sales process?" So I started doing that. I started learning techniques and questions that work with human behavior that trigger my prospects to engage and want to open up to me, that melted away sales resistance in the first 30 seconds. And at that point, almost overnight, selling became very, very easy and very, very profitable.
Why do I tell you that? Because I want you to imagine when I started, I was dead last. There was like four or 500 reps in that company. I was like 499. Like the secretary could outsell me. I was horrible. Okay. I was about to quit. I started learning skills. Within four months, I went from last to first. Within another year, I became the number one salesperson in the entire industry of like 30,000 salespeople selling that type of product or service. Within the next 17 years, actually within three years of that, I started making multiple seven figures a year as a W2 commission salesperson in four separate industries. In my 17-year career before I retired and later started Seventh Level, did you know one of those industries was your industry? I love your industry. I wasn't insurance, but network marketing. But I love your industry.
Now, let's move into into this. Step number one. We've got to learn how to become a problem finder and problem solver. We don't want to be a product pusher. Product pushers don't make very much money. Below average income. Now, what do I mean by that? I want to start off by asking you this question. Why did you guys become an agent? Why did you start your own business? Tell me, why did you guys start your own business?
Freedom.
I love that. What else? Why did you get into business?
Uncapped income, baby.
I love it. What else?
Help.
Train others.
Train others. What else?
Okay. Love those answers. Help others, make money, you know, have more freedom, leave a legacy. And I love those answers. And typically, when I ask that question, that's pretty much what everybody says. I love it. However, if you answered that way, on whom is your answer more focused? On you and your own agenda? It was. Or was it more focused on your potential customers? It was a course focused on you. However, you're not in business for you. You're only in business for other people. So the purpose of you being in business is helping them find and solve their problems that most of them don't even know they have.
Now, have to ask you this. Do your prospects in your industry have problems? Raise your hand if your prospects have problems. I better see every damn hand raised because there's nothing. There's no product or service that's ever been made that doesn't solve a problem and or an emotional need or both, right?
Now, take a pen and a piece of paper. Oh, I'm going to make you do this. I'm going to ask some of you. You better be on your toes. And I want you to write down the top two problems that your prospects have. Write down the top two problems. I'm going to give you 27 seconds. Not a second more. 27 seconds. Top two problems that your prospects have. Write those down. They better be on your toes. I'm coming out there. Top two problems that your prospects have. Somebody tell me.
Debt.
That's a big problem. What else?
Health.
We're all going to die. That's part of life. The purpose of life.
Loss of income.
Cash flow.
Okay. Now, raise your hand if your solution solves those problems. I better see every single hand raised. Okay. So here's what you're telling me. Your prospects have problems. Your solution solves those. So if your prospects have problems and your solution solves those, why are the most of the prospects you're talking to not buying from you? What's the missing link? They have problems, you have the solution. Why are they not buying?
Can I make a suggestion to you on what the missing link could be? Well, it's not these. It's not your leads. I know you want to blame your leads. I know it's an easy fallback. It's not your mindset. I know you listen to a lot of personal development, you read some good books. It's not that you're not even motivated enough. It's not that you don't even work hard enough. Raise your hand if you work hard. So everybody works hard. So that means if everybody works hard, they should be millionaires. What's going on there?
Okay. It's what your. Well, let me, let me retreat back. Let me ask you this question. I don't care how much you're making right now. I don't care if you already make $2 million a year or if you make nothing and you're just starting. Raise your hand if you want to triple whatever number you're at right now. Raise your hand if you want to triple your sales, triple your income. Now, keep your hand raised if you're a full-time agent. You're not a full-time agent, put your hand out. You're full-time? Keep your hand raised. Keep your hand raised for everybody that has their hand raised. Keep your hand raised if you can triple the hours you're working right now. Oh, what? Oh, okay. So you're telling me that it's not really tripling your hours that could triple your income because you already work eight hours a day. You're going to work 24 hours a day? If you want to triple your sales, what do you have to do? You have to learn more advanced skills because what you're saying right now on the phones and what you're asking has gotten you to where the income you're at now. So how would it ever get you to here? It can't. You see it's what you're saying and it's what you're not asking that's triggering your prospects to run the other way. So if you change what you're saying, if we change some of the wording, if we use it where it eliminates resistance, if we neutralize some of the words that are overly assumptive, too enthusiastic, if we change some of our questions that actually trigger the prospect to want to open up to us, what becomes possible for us? You can make a lot more than you are now. I don't care what you're at right now. You can double, triple, quadruple whatever you're wanting to do.
All right. Now, let me keep going on here. How many of you have read sales books? Pretty much everybody, right? So I read 60 books a year times 22 years. So that's a little bit over, I think the math is 13 or 1400 books. Religiously done that since I went through my first sales seminar with a guy named Brian Tracy. If you guys are good friends with Brian, he taught, you know, you need to read every day. So I read five books a year, three books. I read two on audio. 60 books a year times 22 years. Do you know what every single book I have ever read about selling says? You have to be a problem solver, right? Every book you read, you got to solve problems. Jeremy, well, here's the problem. If your prospects don't buy from you, how are you going to solve the problem? Problem-solving comes after they purchase from you, not before. If you want to get more people to buy from you, you know what you have to become? You have to be much better at problem finding. Write that down. Problem-solving is after. Problem-finding is before.
Now, what does that mean? That means asking the right questions at the right time in the conversation that allows your prospect to uncover problems and challenges that they didn't even know they had. Because when you talk to a prospect, how many of them, and be honest, how many of them get like, "Oh man, I've got some really bad problems. You've got to save me today." Nobody does, right? They don't realize they really have that many problems, right? Realize this, your prospects, for the most part, when you first start talking to them, like I just said, don't even know they have a problem, right? Or maybe they know they have a problem, kind of, but they don't really know how bad the problem really is. Maybe they don't understand the consequences of what's going to happen if they don't do anything about solving the problem. Now, once you learn advanced questioning, which we can teach you, not only are you going to help them find one problem, but now you're going to learn to help them find two or three or four or five other problems they didn't even realize they had. And when you're able to do that, how do you think they're going to start to view you? They're going to view you much different than anybody else that has ever called them trying to sell them anything. They're going to start to view you as the expert, the trusted authority who's going to get them the results they want.
All right. Now, what are most sales people? Oh, I hate to say this. I feel like sometimes I just get really mean. God forgive me. Most salespeople, even though we don't believe we were taught this, are taught to become product pushers. We were taught to ask a few questions. Uh, John, uh, what are you looking for in a policy? Uh, who would the coverage be for? How much do you think you need? What's your budget for this side of thing? And then what do we do after they tell us? We go into our sales pitch, right? Oh, boy, I've got the solution for you. Talking about our features and benefits and how we have the best, and this, and we have the best that, which is like taking a bucket of mud, throwing it up against the wall, hoping and praying that something we've got, some slide we're going to have in our presentation is going to magically trigger the prospect to want to buy from us. Sound familiar? I call that hopium. It's a drug that so many of you take. You sniff the hopium drug every morning before you get on your calls, and you hope and pray that some fancy slide is going to magically cause them to be like, "Oh, this is definitely for me." That's such a hard and unpredictable way to make a living. Kids, don't do drugs. If you want to make a lot of money in this industry, hopium's not good for you, okay? All right. You know, I'm being cheeky.
All right. Step number two. Asking the right questions, but at the right time. What does that even mean, Jeremy? Now, let's go back. If I'm, I'm not really crying. I have some puncture. I have some dry cinder. My puncture plugs fell out in Europe, so I'm balling all over the place here. All right. Back in college, major in Behavioral Science. Remember, study the brain, why human beings make decisions to do something or not to do something. So check this out. According to Behavioral Science, and I would suggest that you write this down, there are three forms of communication. I want you to write this down because once you understand where you are in your sales ability, now, even if you're doing good, compared to where you could be, it will completely change everything for you. All right. So era, write this down. Era number one. The first mode of selling. I'm not going to give you the scientific term, but I'm going to, I'm going to tell you an image. When I ask you this image, I want you to tell me the first word, the first words that come to your mind. If I said, "Boy, the room selling," what's the first image that comes to your mind? Wolf on Wall Street, right? Don't you guys love this movie? Leonardo DiCaprio. "Hey, I got a great opportunity for you." We talk about the features and benefits and why they need to buy from us and why we're so much better, and you can trust me, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So according to the data, the science, not my opinion, because who cares about me, we are the least persuasive when we tell people things, when we attempt to dominate them, posture them, manipulate them, push them into doing something we want them to do. It's just like if you tell your spouse they really, really need to do something for you, and then you push, push, push, what do they typically do back? They push back. It's just human behavior 101. So why would we expect anything different when we're selling?
All right. Now, I'm going to give you a few examples of the least persuasive way to sell. I told everybody I was going to throw you some curveballs, maybe some knuckle sliders, some change-ups today. Presenting. What, Jeremy? I have to have my 60 to 90-minute slide decks, and we talk about, "Here's our corporate office." Doesn't look so pretty with the nice windows. Uh, we have the best service. Uh, we've got the best pricing. We've got the best coverage. Oh, wait. Will you meet our founders? They are a number one. And by the way, we're AAA rated with a Better Business Bureau, and we've got all these customer service words, and we got the best this, and we got the best that. Which, by the way, doesn't every single salesperson say they have the best product or service? How many sales people have ever sold you something and said, "Yeah, Mary, uh, we have the fifth best product in the market"? Nobody. Do there? Anybody ever watch Bachelor or Bachelorette? What do they say every year? "The number one most dramatic season ever." And they've said that for 22 years. Does anybody ever believe that anymore? No. So when we say things like that, or especially if we talk down our competition, do you know what goes on in the brain of your prospect? They actually trust you less. And you think they trust you more? Why do they trust you less? Because they're used to every single salesperson who's ever tried to sell them anything from a vacuum cleaner to some laundry detergent to a TV to a car to an insurance policy saying that they have the best. So you automatically move yourself over into the salesperson commoditized, trying to step the solution down my throat. That is not a place where you want to be. According to the data, it's not very persuasive. Write this down. If your presentation is more than 10% of your entire sales process. So we have to learn how to get our presentation to feedback the problems they have and where they want to go and how we can solve that. We'll do that later.
Now, here's the problem with that as well. Do you know what the average salesperson in North America, even in the industry, know the percentage they present? 50%. 50% of the time. I know you're guilty. Don't tell me you're not doing it. 50% of the time telling your story. I hate to tell you this, nobody cares about your story when you're selling one to one. Whose story do they mostly care about? They care about their story. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe it. What about giving a sales pitch? We've all been taught to give a great pitch. Who in here watches Shark Tank on CNBC? What did the, what did the entrepreneurs come out and do to the sharks when they're out there selling? They go into their pitch, right? I want you to watch the body language of Damon John, Mark Cuban, Barbara, Mr. Wonderful, Kevin. Everybody. They rotate in there. Watch. They're like, "Whoa." Because they're like, "Hey, I'm really excited about what we have. We want to, we got the best this." One ear out the other. Hash ditch the pitch. We even have shirts for our clients now that say, #DitchThePitch. You've got to ditch the pitch if you want to be great at selling.
All right. Putting sales pressure on them. There is a massive difference between learning how to get your prospects to feel internal tension, to get them in their emotional state where they feel like they need to change, rather than you externally trying to put sales pressure on them to force them to change. Massive difference in the income you'll make once you learn the difference. And the big one, assuming the sale. Oh, my God, Jeremy, you're telling me everything is wrong that I'm doing right now, especially in the first five minutes. According to the data, very low on the persuasive poll, especially in the first 5 to 6 minutes when we have no trust and no credibility. According to the data, that's why I always believe that assuming the sale has triggered this saying that sales is a numbers game. Well, it's only a numbers game because of what you're saying and or not asking that's triggering them to run the other way. Okay. All right. Let's keep moving on. I'm getting crazy now.
All right. Era number two. Consultative selling. Anybody heard of that? All right. So we're more persuasive when we attempt to have a discussion. Okay. This came out in the '80s. A lot of books. One of the most popular books was a book called SPIN Selling by a professor called Neil Rackham. He never sold anything, but just studied data sales calls and he taught that you needed to ask logical-based questions to find out the needs of the client. Well, that sounds like a good idea. Instead of, "Boy, the room selling," just forcing it down their throat. But what's the potential downfall? When we only ask logical-based questions, surface-level questions, what type of answers are our prospects going to give back to us? Surface-level answers. And do human beings make decisions on logic or emotion? 100% emotion. Brain studies prove that without a shadow of a doubt. There is no debate on that. Okay. So once again, more persuasive than telling your story, putting sales pressure on them, trying to go in and choke them until they buy. But you're still having to play the numbers game because you're bringing out very little emotion in that conversation. And that's why I always say this, and I know I'm going to offend some of you right now, I'm so sorry, but you can never sell to the prospect's needs because most of your prospects don't even know what they need when you first start talking to them. Your prospects, do you think they just magically sat there a week before you called and added up all their expenses and realized that that $150,000 policy they have now is going to cover them for the rest of their lives? Do you think they really sat there and thought about that all day long before you call them? They never do that. So if you get on the phone and you ask them, "What do you need?" and they're like, "Well, I think I need a $150,000 policy," and then you sell them that, you are doing them a major disservice. That's why you have to sell to their real problems that your questionability helps them find that they didn't even know they had. You see the difference in that? That separates you from every. So instead of selling little $100, $200,000 policies, you start selling much bigger policies that actually protect them financially forever when something does happen.
All right. Here are some questions I want you to avoid. If I ever hear you say these questions, I'm going to come through that phone or Zoom, and I'm going to find you, and I'm going to slap you around. I'm so sorry. You cannot ask these questions. They are so salesy. They've been around for like dinosaur ages of selling. Uh, so Sally, what are two problems that keep you awake at night? Oh, my gosh. Can you tell me two challenges you're having? John, uh, what are you looking for in a solution? What's your budget for this type of thing? How can you ask them what type of budget they have in the first five to seven minutes when they don't even know what problems they even have yet? That's impossible. When you help them find four, five, six, seven problems, what happens to their budget? They realize they need a much bigger budget. Okay. You see the difference in that?
All right. Now, era number three. Finally, we're getting somewhere. We are the most persuasive, according to the science, when you use what's called dialogue, when we allow others to persuade themselves. When we ask, here's the key word, what are called neuro-emotional persuasion questions? That stands for NEPQ. Now, how do we do that? That's the $10 billion question. Everybody asks me, "Jeremy, how do I get somebody to persuade themselves?" Can I just show up and say, "Hey, uh, Barry, good, and persuade yourself and initial here, sign here, and we're going to auto-draft the funds out of your account every month. You're good. Trust me." No. We have to learn specific skilled questions, when and how to ask them, to get them to open up, that get them to pull us in, rather than us trying to push and force our way in. That's called buyer remorse.
Now, let's go through this. When I'm talking about NEPQ questions, let me make sure I'm not missing anything here for you guys. Yeah. So when I'm talking about NEPQ questions, I'm not referring to questions that are designed to get your prospects to say what you want them to say. Oh, get them to say yes eight times in the conversation, and it's going to increase your chances of selling them by 76%. There's no data that says that. I mean, it sounds good, but there's no science behind that. No. There's literally no evidence that that happens. I'm not talking about surface-level questions like I just went over the questions. I'm referring to are questions that are designed to bring out your prospects' inner and external truths, their emotional state, their emotional feelings.
Now, we train a lot of people in your industry. Okay. Here are the five stages of NEPQ: from the connecting stage, to the engagement stage, to the presentation stage, stage to the commitment stage. We train tons of people in your space. Train 158 industries. I think yours is in the top 10 that we train as far as how many sales people we train. We train salespeople that literally started down here, like nothing, making nothing, about to quit, that now consistently make $30,000 every month, that now consistently make $50,000 every month in commissions, month after month, that now make $100,000 a month in commissions. Some make even more than that. Now, would anybody like to see some NEPQ questions designed specifically for your industry that we train your industry? The clock says I only have 35 seconds. I'm sorry.
Okay. All right. I know. Now, realize this. Before we talk about the first part of connecting, here's something that we all have to understand psychologically. What's going on in your prospect's mind within the first 7 to 12 seconds of every single sales call or conversation you're in? Just so you're aware, your prospects are picking up on social cues from you. They can't even help it. Subconsciously, they are picking up on your verbal and non-verbal cues based on your tonality and what you are saying and or asking that triggers their brain. Triggers their brain to react in one of two ways. We probably should know which way we want them to react. Now, if we come across like this, we come across aggressive. If we come across needy, oh, you know, you get needy when you get on those calls. If you come across attached, like, "Oh my God, I need the money, I need the sale," it triggers the brain to go into what's called fight or flight mode. Everybody's heard of fight or flight mode. But do you know why it's triggered? Well, you might want to learn. Possibly, if you're in sales, and prospects say things like this: "Oh, I know I filled out the form, but I don't think we're interested." How many of you ever get that when you call a prospect? "Oh, hey, I forgot about that." "Well, how, how much is it going to be?" "I don't have time." You ever get that one? "Oh, just tell me what, just give me a quote. Just give me a quote. I don't have time to talk. Can you email me a quote?" Anybody ever get into that? Do you know why? Because you're triggering fight or flight mode. You're triggering them to respond that way.
Now, once you learn NEPQ and you learn how to come across more neutral in the conversation, more unbiased, "I'm not quite sure we can even help yet. I don't even know anything." That's my mentality. If I come across more relaxed, more, I call it collective confidence, and I understand the right questions to ask, and especially when I come across detached, it triggers the brain to become curious enough where they actually want to engage. They want to open up to you because they feel, they don't know what it is yet, but they feel like there might be something important for them that you have to talk about.
Now, let's talk about connecting questions. This is where you learn to take the focus off you. I know you like to focus on you. You are cool. You have really cool hair. I love it. And you put the focus on them. Now, let me give you an example of this, okay? There's about four or so connecting questions. We're going to ask for your industry, for your space. This is one of them. This is not the first one. This is usually the second or third one, but it's setting a frame because how many of you in a conversation at the end, the prospect says, "What, this sounds really good, but I need some time to think about it. I need to pray about it. Uh, I need to keep looking around." How many get those objections? Okay. I want to eliminate most. It's called objection prevention. So if I sit here and I say something like this, and I want you to, I want you to hear my tonality. I haven't even got the notes here, so I'll just do it right here. I want you to hear my tonality. Yeah. So Jane, you know, it's the first part of this call. It's, it's pretty basic. It's really more for us to find out, you know, you know, what you might be eligible for, and I would say, kind of what you have in place now, um, when, when something does happen to you, compared to, you know, what you're looking for as financial protection, you know, just to make sure we can actually help. And then, you know, at the end of the call, we can cover some different options. And if you feel that it, you know, that it, that it might be what you're looking for, uh, we can discuss possible next steps. Would that help you?
Now, what did that just do? Look at what I just did there. Was that overly assumptive? No. Was that neutral? And at the end of the call, "if you feel that this might be what you're looking for, we can discuss what possible next steps." Now, what are the neutral words that we just changed? "Might be" and "possible." Now, if I did it like this, all right. Yeah. The first part of this call, it's going to be awesome. It's really more for us to find out what we can get you approved for, what you have in place, and really what you need, uh, just to make sure that we got a good deal for you. And at the end of the call, if you feel that this is what you want and you're ready to sign up for, we can talk about where we're going to go from there. Sounds completely different. But if I neutralize it, at the end of that, if I say, "Would that help you?" Do you know what your prospect says? "Nope, that would not help me to talk about possible next steps." Nobody's ever going to say that. They're like, "Yeah, that would help." So what did we just do there? We disarmed the prospect. Now, do I know we can help them? Yes. Do I need to tell them that it's what they want and what they need in the first two minutes? Well, I can if I want to trigger sales resistance. But do I want to trigger sales resistance? Do I want to compete against the wall of objections in the first five minutes? Or would I rather just have them open up and let their guard down the whole time? Are they going to open up if I get them to let their guard down? Yeah. It's much different. Oh, it's so, so easy when you neutralize this stuff.
All right. Situation questions. This is where you help them and you find out what their current situation really is. We talked about this for a second. How many of your prospects that you talk to magically just sit around and already know all their expenses, everything they need, that they need $876,000 worth of life insurance before you call them? Nobody does. They don't know what the real situation is. These questions help them and you find out what the real situation is. So let's look at this. Let's say in this example that, let me see what we did here. Hold on. We go back here. Yep. Okay. Okay. So let's say in this example, okay. So let's say in this example that you find they put the wrong slides up here. What am I going to do, guys? You put the wrong slides here. I'll improvise. Let's say in this example, you find out from a few situation questions before that they have no life insurance policies and they have zero assets. So they have nothing to pay when one of the spouses dies. So I'm going to, let's tee this up. Okay. So, so, so Dan, and let's say that Dan is a firefighter in this example. Let's say Dan makes $8,000 a month and his wife's name's Cindy, and she's a school teacher. They don't get paid very much. They should get paid way more. Let's say your teacher salary is $4,000. So a household income of $12,000 a month. And you've already found this out. All right. So you're talking to Dan and them. Okay. So Dan, walk me back here. Let's say that you pass. Hear my tonality. Let's say that you pass away, you know, God forbid, three days from now, because, you know, none of us know the exact time or hour, right? And let's say that you passed away, who would be the one that would have to pay for all the expenses? Like, who would be the one that has to pay for the mortgage? The funeral expenses? Go has to meet the funeral director to plan out the ceremony, the right coffin? Who's going to be the one that, you know, has to pay the car payments, the credit cards, put the kids through school? Like, who would be the one responsible for paying all of that?
Now, what does that question do? What goes on in Dan's mind when I asked him that question? What is he visually seeing? He's seen his spouse do what? Go meet the funeral director. She's all emotional. She's overspending. She doesn't have the money to do all this stuff. Do you see how we're getting them in what their emotional state? Okay, not their logic state. We know they're not going to make a decision in the logic state.
All right. Now, I'm only going to give you one or two examples from these. We don't have time. Problem awareness questions. These open the door to find out what the real problems are, the root cause of the problem.
How the problem's affecting it? So let's say in this example, he's like, "Well, I guess, I guess Cindy would have to pay for it." So then you're going to lean in with empathy. Let me set my chair. You're gonna lean in with them and you're gonna say this. "So, do you watch my tone? Hear me. So, do you, do you want Cindy to have to pay for all those expenses if you didn't have to?"
"No, no."
"I, I, I."
"No, not if I didn't have to."
"Now, if I said it this way: 'So, do you want Cindy to have to pay for all those expenses if you didn't have to?' Completely different reaction I'm going to get. I said the same words. 'So, do you, do you want Cindy to have to pay for all those expenses if you didn't have to?'"
"No, no, I wouldn't."
"Well, okay, but walk me back here. How many months would she be able to pay the, the house payment and all the other expenses without your income?"
"Well, I'm not really sure."
"Well, if you really thought about it, how many months?"
"Man, I don't know. Maybe four."
"Okay, so after the four months though, like, what, what happens to her and the kids at that point though?"
Now, what did that do? It starts to build what? The gap. The gap in their mind from where they are compared to where they're now seeing they really need to be without me. Now, there's more questions you're going to ask in that. That's just a little example in that stage. But without me building a gap, if there's no gap, there's no what? There's no sale. There's no pain. There's no urgency for them to change. There's that word, change. That magical word, change. All right, let's keep going.
Solution awareness questions help the prospect see what their future is going to look like once all these newfound problems that you're questioning has allowed them to see they have, that they didn't even know they had 20 minutes before they got on that call with you. All right, now let's say, "Okay, so I'll give you an example here. So let's say that we, we could find a plan where you could pay off the home completely, the cars in full, you know, the credit card debt, the student loan debt, the debt was completely gone. So Cindy could stay in the home, stay in the schools, and live off her teacher salary, knowing that was there. What would that do for you? What would that do for you guys?"
Notice how my voice changed. The empathy that comes out. "Oh, oh, that would be really good."
"Okay, but Dan, what would it do for you personally, though?"
Do you feel the empathy? Do you feel the concern? Because if I asked, "Well, what would that do for you personally, though?" See, it doesn't work. Doesn't get them into their emotional state. All right, let's keep going.
Consequence questions help the prospect see what their consequences are if they don't do anything about solving the problem. Okay, now this example, let's say they have a work insurance policy, just throwing something out. We're just changing up the ball game here. Let's say they have a $150,000 policy. But let's say they sell $350 grand on the house. They've got credit card debt, car payments, tuition that's not paid. They got all sorts of debt. That $150,000 ain't going to go very far. But we still have to see, help him see the consequence of what happens if he doesn't get more coverage.
"Okay, but what if you don't do anything about this and you just stick with the same policy, the $150 grand, but you pass away like many years before you thought? But then there's not enough money for Cindy to pay for the house and the kids' expenses. Like, what, what happens to them at that point?"
See, that's a consequence question. Because if I can get them to see and feel what the consequences are, what do that keep doing? It builds a much bigger gap. The bigger the gap, the easier it is for the SA. The s. The way less objections you have. It is a myth if your prospects gives you a ton of objections that it's better for you. You ever hear that? I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. What about all the laydown sales that reason where I got zero objections? The more objections you get, the less likely they are going to buy. Let's just be real with ourselves. Holy hell.
All right, now commitment questions. I know, I know. I get frustrated. I get frustrated. I know. Now, we don't have time to go in the presentation. We'll talk about that. Commitment questions help the prospect commit and take the next steps to purchase your solution, to get what they want.
"All right, this would be the end of the presentation. So, do you feel like this could be the, you feel like this could be the answer for you?"
"Yeah, I do."
"Well, hold on. Why do you feel like it would, though?"
"And Q probing question." Not only did he tell me why they feel it's what they're looking for, but more importantly, who are they telling themselves? Now, if they come back, "Yeah, but I don't really have the budget." "Well, money aside, why do you feel like it would, though?" Then they tell me, and they tell themselves. Then it's easier for me to help them resolve that concern. I got to fly. I'm running out of time.
All right, step number three, eliminating sales resistance. This is probably one of the most important things we have to learn if we want to come become a top 1% producing agent and make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars a year in this industry. And that's about neutralizing the hidden sales pressure that's in your conversations that you're having with your prospects. Because we have to learn how to detach ourselves from the expectations of making the sale and instead focus on whether or not we can actually help them. Because when we detach ourselves from the sale and we open up to them, what do they do with us? They open back up, right?
I want you to imagine how selling would be for you if you learned how to disarm your prospects, every single one of them, within the first 30 seconds of every conversation you're on. How many more sales do you think you would make? Okay, how would it be different for you?
So, I'm going to give you a few examples of this push-pull dynamic and how to avoid creating sales pressure. Because if we trigger sales pressure, if we trigger sales resistance in the first 30 seconds, what happens? This happens. Do you agree? They emotionally shut down. You have the very best questions. They stay mum. They don't really open up to you. They give you one or two-word answers in return. They stay service level. And then what objections do you get at the end? "I want to think it over." "I need to talk to my spouse." "I need to keep getting more quotes." Stop the madness. You don't have to go through hell anymore. Selling can be so much more easier.
All right, now I want, uh, why don't we have somebody that came back up here? Uh, was it Dan that I didn't even come back up here? Dan, come back up here, man. You got to be my prospect real quick. So, do you remember when I asked, I, I told you I was going to come have you back up here? So, do you remember when I asked this question? "Well, why should we go with you? We already have a policy. Why should we go with you?"
Okay, we kind of talked about that. Now, what does the average salesperson say when they hear that? "Well, why wouldn't you go with us? We've been, go ahead and sit down. Okay, thank you. We've been rated the number one company. We have the best price. We have the best coverage. We have the best customer service. Owners have the best integrity." I love that. And I'm sure they do. But everybody says that. We've been AAA rated. The Better Business Bureau. We have the best this. We have the best that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's in one ear out the other to the average prospect.
So how do we actually do this? Instead of telling them why they should go with us, why not find out why they even ask the question in the first place? What's behind the question? How do we disarm them to get them to open up?
All right, so what I want you to do is I want you to ask me that question. Can you hold this? Can we turn this on? All right, and then I want to play a game with you guys. I'm already over a few minutes. I now, I could stop here. You guys rather go eat the tuna salad? Keep going? All right, I was going to give you a few examples, but hey, myig, the salad's probably pretty good. I know we don't want to cut you short here. We've been practicing this for years. Okay.
All right, so I want to play a game. When he asked me this question and I respond, I want you to raise your hand when you feel the sales pressure go out of the room. So I want you to close your eyes. So everybody close their eyes right now. Don't open them. Don't peek. And when I respond, as soon as you hear the pressure go out of the conversation, raise your hand. I got to drink some water. I'm getting caught up here. Okay.
So, you want to ask me the question. "So, why should we go with you?"
"Well, you know, I'm not quite sure that you should yet."
"Yeah, I mean, we'd have to understand a little bit more about, you know, kind of what you have in place now to pay the mortgage and all the expenses, just to see if, you know, if we can actually help. Because, you know, maybe you don't even need us. But for example, like, who do you have your policy with now?"
Stop there. Okay, let's do that again. Ask me the same question. "So, why should we go with you?"
"Well, you know, I'm not quite sure that you should yet. You know, we, we'd have to understand a little bit more about kind of what you have in place now to pay the mortgage, the expenses, you know, just to see if we can actually help. Because, I mean, maybe you don't even need us."
"Oh my gosh, maybe you don't even need us. You might not be ready for that ninja move yet. I don't know. You come across with a weird tonality. It's going to sound weird. Casey's going to get upset at me. We'll teach you that later on. Got to teach you some. That's maybe too ninja for you."
Now, what do we do? Three-second pause. Very, very important. When I said, "Well, well, I'm not quite sure that you should yet." Because what would happen if I said this? "Well, I'm not quite sure that you should yet. I'd have to know a little bit more about." What did that just do? Duded the question. Took away the emotion. "Well, I'm not quite sure that you should yet. We'd have to understand a little bit more about X and Y and Z, just to see if we can even help you. Because you maybe you don't even need us."
Now, do I know they need us? Do I need to tell them they need us? Right there. My goal is just to disarm them, to let their guard down. Because once they let their guard down, they're in. Baby, they are in. They are open up. Because when you admit that you might not be able to help them, what do you think they look at you as? Oh gosh, it's not the typical salesperson. I hear. You think they want to hear, "Oh, we can definitely help you for sure. I know we can." How many other salespeople said that to them that day? Every single freaking one.
All right, you want me to give you one more example, or should I pack it up? You guys are getting hungry. Oh, okay. All right. Now, okay, here we go. All right, so let's say that you have, anybody ever get the A-type hardcore personality? You get on, they're like, "Show me. Just show me what you got. Show me. Just send me the code. I'll tell you if I'm interested." Okay. All right, I know you do. I used to get some of those too. Those are my favorite.
All right, now here's what you're going to do. So let's say that they're just mum, they're not really opening up. You're asking really good questions, but they're just giving you one or two an, two-line answers. Because you know if they stay surface level, what are you going to do at the end? "I need to think it over." "Your price is too high." "Oh, the clock's beeping. I'm way behind."
So you're going to lean in. You're going to, "I don't need you to do anything. Just, just act like you're a prospect." You're going to lean in. You're going to say, "Now, okay, so between you and I, and off the record, what's the real reason why you're possibly looking for more coverage?" Stop. You don't need to answer. Let me do that again. "So, John, between you and I, and off the record, what's the real reason why you're possibly looking for more coverage?"
Now, what do you think he's going to do? "Uh, no, I can't tell you the real reason." So when I say, "Between you and I, and off the record," we're going off the record. See what I just did there? Get another example. How about this? Let's say you get the "think it over" objection. Oh, I've got thousands of these. Let's say you get the "to think it over" objection. You don't know how to resolve it yet because you haven't gone through a training. You just don't know. So I'm going to give you the Band-Aid approach. The last thing you can do is do this.
"Now, John, between you and I, and off the record, what's really holding you back from moving forward so you can protect your family financially?"
"Well, Jeremy, I'm just not sure we have the budget."
"Because John's losing his job in a week." Well, now I know the real concern. Because I want to think it over, is that a concern? No. You think they just go around for a month later and just think about it every day? There's some objection they don't want to tell you. So they say, "I want to think it over." But when I find out the real objection, do I want to know the real objection, or do I just want to hope and pray they show up a month later? No. I want to know the real objection, right? See how that works?
All right, now what we're doing here is we're humanizing the entire sales process from the very first words out of her mouth. This is how you create trust. This is how you differentiate yourself and you get your prospects to view you as the expert, the trusted authority who's going to get them the results they want. And they will gladly throw money at you. They will pay you more because they trust you way more than anybody else. I hope this training was super helpful for you today. Remember what we just came over. They don't give any time. Hey, look, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I, I asked, I, I asked for them to get give me 60 minutes. I said, "You don't even have to pay me. I don't want 35, 40 minutes. I'll go 60." Like, "No, we have to stay to 40." So it's not my fault. I tried.
All right, so three steps to becoming a recession-proof sales agent. We went over becoming a problem finder and problem solver, not a product pusher. Stop pushing. Number two, asking the right questions, but at the right time, the right tonality, the right delivery. Those are all learnable skills. And number three, eliminating sales resistance. So we disarm our prospects, they let their guard down and open up to us. Everybody, thanks for having me on here. Thank you for your. You had a good response. I couldn't even, I couldn't even do anything with you all right.
Oh, I got one last thing. One last thing. Because I, I don't know the slides. Those are like from a week. I told, I changed slides like up in 10 minutes before we get. They didn't make it. You guys want to follow us? Just follow me on IG. Just go to Jeremy Lee Minor. Jeremy Minor. You guys will have it somewhere. You can join our free Facebook group, salesrevolution.pro. Thanks, everybody. Hey, you have a great company, by the way. I just want to say something. Stick around for a second. Stick around for a second. Got something we got to announce you guys. I, I told Casey, I, I told Casey I would say one last thing. We train a lot of companies in your space. And when I looked at at quility scripts, I'm like, "Wow, these are pretty good compared to like, we see some scripts from other comes like, whoa, damn. No wonder nobody produces in your company. These scripts are actually really good." So I just want to congratulate you guys. All right, thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. All right.