The following is an email conversation between Carl Ingalls and a student of High Probability Selling (HPS). We are discussing the Trust and Respect Inquiry (TRI), as it was taught by Jacques Werth (the founder and discoverer of High Probability Selling).
This conversation will have the most meaning to people who learned HPS (with the TRI) from Jacques.
From: Tyler
Sent: Thursday 7 September 2023 8:37 PM 2037
To: Carl Ingalls; Paul Bunn
Subject: Re: New Short Course Ideas
Carl (and Paul),
At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I want to give you some bold feedback about the TRI from a student’s perspective. At the very least, I’ll finally be getting some of this TRI stuff off my chest after 10-plus years. I hope you’ll see this as sincere feedback. I have no axe to grind with anyone. Y’all have been very nice and very generous timewise with me.
BTW, I found all your other responses very helpful.
I think that teaching the TRI as a part of HPS is a huge mistake. I actually think it should be completely done away with in the HPS system. We all know that HPS works without doing a TRI, and I personally believe that the TRI is almost impossible to pull off productively in an outbound sales context in today’s day and age.
At the very, very least, it has been taught by Jacques in a very confusing way. And when you consider how adamant he was about it being so key to the whole HPS way, it just has always seemed to be an unnecessary burden for making HPS more mainstream than it has been.
It’s very hard for me to believe that, when Jacques followed those 312 top producers and took notes, he found that most of them were using something like the TRI. With all due respect, I am guessing that Jacques probably had a slight bias and attraction towards anything having to do with the field of psychology, and he wanted to try and fit this kind of stuff into the HPS method.
By his own account, Jacques has said that only about 7% of prospects fail the TRI (and that he only ran across 2 TRI failures himself when he was selling), and I cannot see why knowing about childhood traumas of our prospects helps us to know prospects in a way so that we can be of better service. We are not psychologists, we are salespeople.
The cost/benefit analysis of implementing a TRI does not seem favorable in any way shape or form. In terms of time spent and risk of irritating needlessly a prospect in that first hour, especially in today’s day and age of a super busy, “low bandwidth for invasiveness” prospect (in the age of having to limit Offers to 25 word or so), I think using a TRI is detrimental to sales success, especially if only 7% fail the TRI.
If I happen to take on a client that ends up being untrustworthy, because I did not use the TRI, I’ll just fire them later. No big deal. But the idea of eating up valuable time with every prospect in that all-important first hour to screen 7% of my prospects while trying to be a psychologist just seems so foolish and unproductive to me.
The other thing is this: HPS-ers can just let the simple power of demanding mutual trust and respect carry the day for getting mutual trust and respect! Our word economy in our Offers, our quick accepting of “no’s”, our conditional commitment questions from the get-go and throughout, our straightforward un-bending Discovery and Disqualifications, our demanding clarification on unclear prospect comments throughout the process, our not selling from our knees, our refusing to deal with anger (“you seem upset”), our clear proclamation of detriments, our not asking for the order, etc, etc, etc very successfully creates trust and respect in the prospect’s mind. And, if we don’t like any of their answers and/or cannot get commitments and agreements when needed, we just abort. No big deal. And if a jerk slips through, we fire ’em as soon as we decide it’s not worth having them as a client. Again, no big deal.
But trying to diagnose people in 45 minutes as to whether or not they are worthy of our trust and time seems to be not only unproductive, but also unfair, if you consider that the prospect might really need an HPSer like us. We also talk a lot in HPS circles about not judging, but that’s exactly what we are doing via the TRI – we are trying to judge, in a very suspect way, whether someone has the psychological make-up to be our client. What???!!!!
We are not professional psychologists, first and foremost, but even PHD psychologists get it wrong a lot. The “science” of psychology is far from perfect. And so, there are just too many variables, moving interdependent parts, biases, and unclear communications with their shaky interpretations to be doing something like this in a non-clinical environment.
Determining the level of resentment (and therefore untrustworthiness) that someone has from a 45 minute invasive discussion about their childhood traumas when you are there in a time-pressed way to see if they want your product or service seems like a crazy idea to me. And, believe me, I have tried to keep as open a mind as possible about this, mostly because of my respect for Jacques. I think the TRI was on very shaky ground 30 years ago, and that it is a total non-starter today.
After all is said and done, I really can’t see any reason whatsoever to do a TRI in a sales context, given all the above, even a TRI-Lite.
I also think that this whole TRI thing (even just mentioning it as a possible tool) really gets in the way of faster, sustainable learning of HPS. It’s a huge, unnecessary hurdle to both explain well and learn.
Well, there you go. I said it. LOL. I hope no one is offended.
Best,
Tyler
From: Carl Ingalls
Sent: Friday 8 September 2023 3:28 PM 1528
To: Tyler; Paul Bunn
Subject: About the TRI
If all I knew about the TRI is what Jacques had taught, then I’d feel exactly the same way as you do, and I probably would not have any way of getting a different perspective. Some of his best students came to the same conclusion that you did, and I can see why.
Fortunately, I was also exposed to what Jacques actually did with the TRI, both in what I saw him doing and in what he described himself doing. I also followed other people’s experiences with it, and eventually my own.
All of that gave me a very different perspective.
I fear that Jacques’ overselling the TRI has done a great disservice to many of his students. If you could find a way to forget everything he taught you about the TRI (and especially its name and purpose), and start fresh all over again, you might see its value. However, I do know that this may be a very difficult thing to do.
Paul and I teach this whole area very differently, so much so that people who had learned it from Jacques would not recognize it at all. For one thing, we do not isolate it as a separate step in the sales process.
Carl Ingalls
Ingalls Consulting, LLC
(doing business as) High Probability Consulting
Providing training and materials in High Probability Selling
Tel: +1 610.627.9030 USA Eastern Time
Text: +1 484.464.2557
Email: Ingalls@HighProbSell.com
Website: www.highprobsell.com
Blog: HighProbabilitySelling.blog
From: Tyler
Sent: Friday 8 September 2023 6:38 PM 1838
To: Carl Ingalls
Subject: Re: About the TRI
This was a super helpful response.
Thank you,
Tyler
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