Month: March 2025

De-Militarizing the Language of Sales

We tend to speak in the language that we think.  The reverse is also true.  Yet, outside of scripting, we tend to pay very little attention to our words spoken and thought.

Words thought and spoken, before, during and after a sales interaction will affect your mindset, which will affect mutual trust and respect.  Whether these words, and their associated behaviors and perceptions increase or decrease trust and respect is up to you and your awareness.

War and Military Terms Used in Sales and Marketing
Killing it
Crushing it
Nailed it
Target marketing
Targeted businesses
Closing (with the enemy; in-range)
Tactics
Strategy
Campaign
Sales Force
Captive (agent)
Capture (Lead information)
Resources
Guerilla Marketing – asymmetrical warfare
Overcome
Lay-down sale (implies surrender and submission)
Hunter (type of salesperson)
A hunter eats what they kill (quote from a hunter)
Winning sales
Losing sales

These terms create an adversarial relationship with the prospect.  They also dehumanize the other person, which may help to justify mistreatment and violence.

You often hear warlike language in sales and business culture today.  You might even use some of it yourself.

If you want to change that:
Step One:  Acknowledge your current state
Step Two:  Understand your WHY for your current state
Step Three:  Understand your WHY for your desired state
Step Four:  Test and implement new words

Here are some thoughts from other writers:

Please add your own thoughts in the comments below.

What About Leads?

“Leads” are a many splendored thing, especially in sales organizations that haven’t yet figured out the shortcuts that are actually short.

Leads fall nicely into the category called “Selling the Dream.”  Many who buy this Dream, too often are delivered the Nightmare, and not the shortcut.

There are exclusive leads, warm leads, hot leads, cold leads, info leads, referred leads, interested leads, guaranteed to buy leads, old leads, phone book leads, email leads, very interested leads, cheap leads, expensive leads, shit leads and even Glengarry Glenross leads, direct from Alec Baldwin, in his NYC accent.

All leads are wonderful.  And all leads suck.  Leads make perfect sense.  Until humans get involved.  Although a lead seller will swear it’s all highly reliable data, leads are human.  Uh oh.

I have bought insurance leads, life, health, telemarketing, direct response, B2B, LinkedIn, etc etc, in multiple industries over decades. 

No matter who the lead provider, prospects are people, and people are prone to do unexpected things.  Illogical things.  For example, buying things they don’t need and ignoring things they just said they were sure to buy.

From one perspective, providing leads is a great business to go into.  If the leads don’t work out, you still get paid, and you can just blame the salesperson for not closing.

If the leads do work out, that’s because your leads are so much better because anyone with a pulse can close them.

Almost as foolproof as selling guns to both sides of a war.

Only one small problem is that the business also attracts a lot of shysters and make-money-quick at everyone else’s expense kind of people.  They will be your competitors.

I have endured over a dozen of these lead generation demos recently, and it’s nearly impossible to tell them apart because nearly all of them say the same stuff to differentiate themselves.

Our leads are the best because blah, blah, blah, blah.  And you can trust me because our leads are exclusive and blah, blah, blah.  Exclusive, my ass.  Like a prospect only filled out YOUR advertising and no one else’s?  Really?  Good thing I’m stupid.

So if you go into that business, you better be unique enough not to be dragged down by your peers to compete on price and have a long-range plan to outlast the posers.

If you pull it off and create something worthwhile and unique, I will sign up waving a credit card with no limit.

Of course, you could also sell guns to both sides.  But I digress

Pain Point Diggers

Question (on Reddit)

LinkedIn’s all sunshine, but how do you find actual pain points?  Beyond LinkedIn, where do you research?  How do you spot unspoken issues, and how do you dig deeper when they say “everything’s fine”?

Answer (by Paul Bunn)

They’re saying everything is fine because they aren’t as naive as you assume.

Successful prospects (humans) have a lot of experience with salespeople.  And they know a “Pain Point Digger” when they see one.

They know if they reveal anything to a Pain Point Digger, the digger will use that information to TRY to manipulate them into doing something they don’t want to do now.

They know from experience that Pain Point Diggers CANNOT be trusted.

Digging for pain points is a logical tactic.  Human beings, including yourself, are illogical.

It’s not your fault.  You’re just following logical orders.

Sales Combat Simulator

On Reddit recently, someone asked what people thought about the idea of a sales combat game where victory depends only on your sales skills in things like negotiation, persuasion, and handling objections. Demonstrating these skills will give your character more powerful weapons and more attack powers in the game.

I replied with the following:

About 30 years ago, freshly returned from a Tom Hopkins 3-day sales training course, I would have been very enthusiastic about your idea.

Mr. Hopkins fully indoctrinated us with the belief that selling was all about tactics and manipulation of our prospects. Tactics that equated sales with military-oriented “win at all costs” mindset. Even lying was encouraged, as long as you got the appointment.

Winning through combat fits the thinking perfectly.

Combine that with the extraordinary levels of frustration and anger towards selling and my at-the-time assumption that it was my inadequate selling skills that needed major improvement.

Your war game concept would have been just what I thought I needed.

After all, I know my product is what they need, and I am the expert, and I know they will be much better off after they buy it.

I also know that if I don’t sell them now, then I won’t get paid my commission, so their failure to buy is keeping me from making a living.

And I want to get the accolades and recognition for being great at selling that others are getting.

Because I have been doing everything my manager said to do that would work if I just say the right things at exactly the right time.

THERE WAS ONE THING THOUGH…

Then I learned, sooner than later, fortunately, that sales can just as easily be a collaboration.

A mutually acceptable process towards doing business.

I discovered from someone who had studied over 300 top 1 percent salespeople over 40 years that real success in sales could happen without going to war.

That the people in my market, or any market, are not my enemy. They are not objects to be vanquished and defeated on some imagined battlefield.

The reason that prospects resist or appear to fight back is that they are feeling invaded and pressured. And that pressure and invasion is being intentionally created by a salesperson who is hell-bent on making them buy something they don’t want.

That may have been the way of selling 100 years ago, when the likes of Henry Ford believed selling was just another assembly line process. And prospects were just raw materials being turned into cars. However, times have changed.

What if selling, in a different way of thinking, could actually be a path to peace instead.

PS. To get the adrenaline rush of simulated combat and the feeling of a victory deserved, I took up paintball.

Logical Selling vs Functional Selling

I recently discovered that one of the significant blocks to understanding HPS is that it doesn’t make sense in terms of the logical assumptions of traditional “assembly line” selling.  HPS works because prospects and salespeople, aka humans, are psycho-logical, not just logical.  

Linear assembly line selling, founded circa 1920, is the basis for all of the variations of mainstream selling, and it is largely assumed to make logical sense.  However, in practice, it doesn’t work very well, with average true closing ratios of around 20 percent.  

And also because it is based on logic which “makes sense”, no one questions the creation of the 80 percent that never want to see the salesperson again after they have tried “everything it takes” to get them to buy when they didn’t want to.

This cognitive dissonance between what’s logical and what works is very well articulated by Rory Sutherland in the first chapter of his book, Alchemy.  Rory is a legend in the advertising world and has insights into marketing and human behavior that I find both fascinating AND extremely useful.

How Do I Get Past the Gatekeeper?

Taken from a Reddit thread

Question

How do I get past the Gatekeeper as a Recruiter?

I mean I did it a lot of times, but I need a technique that works all the time and not just on days when my intuition and flow sparks.

Good input anyone?

Answer

The key to dealing with gatekeepers in a productive way is MUTUAL respect, which means you have to respect them FIRST.  No matter how convincing it may seem, DO NOT lie or try to sneak past a gatekeeper.  Gatekeepers are continually trained up by our competition on every clever, logical, trick or tactic out there and they have every right to shoot it down or block it.  Tactics are inherently disrespectful.  If you can work WITH them instead, you will be the only one who is never blocked.

And, in my experience, they often know more about what your target company is doing and buying than the executives for whom they are gatekeepers.  Without further ado, here is a link to a blog post that contains a script that works 99 percent of the time:  https://highprobabilityselling.blog/2009/01/16/prospecting-and-the-gatekeeper/

If you notice the date, this process was created many years ago.  However, I heard it used multiple times as recently as yesterday on live B2B calls with real gatekeepers, and it still works wonders.  We would change it if needed, but haven’t found a reason.

PS. A lot of salespeople we have coached feel it’s too direct an approach and try to “tweak” it to make it more comfortable (for them).  The reality is that gatekeepers work for and with very direct communicators, and they respond amazingly well to the script as it is.

Making Peace With Selling

The following is from a conversation I initiated 2025-02-28 on the High Probability Selling Company page on Facebook.

HPS:  One of the reasons I am so passionate about High Probability Selling is that it can make the world a more peaceful place.

Tom:  Explain plz

HPS:  Much of the unnecessary drama and conflict in this world comes from people trying to change other people against their will.  This is especially prevalent in sales.  Most salespeople have no idea that there is any other way of selling.  Paul Bunn and I are working to change that.

Tom:  yes

Mike:  HPS is direct to the question, honest in the relationship between buyer and seller, and unlike much activity called “the sales process” HPS excludes clever rhetorical and fake “getting to know you” posturing.

Smoozing and begging and badgering is not part of HPS nor is assuming the sale through educating a person.

In the end which begins with in the beginning, HPS is conditioned upon mutual respect.

That’s why it has the potential to improve human relations.

Tom:  I’ve read the book and used it when I was in sales…it does work…

I always thought it needed a beginning to end video presentation of how it works…sorta like a role play….

Mike:  that would be good.

Don:  I was fortunate to have taken the class with Jacques, and that’s exactly what we did, role played through it all.  It was life changing.

HPS:  Role playing does help, but it does not stand alone very well.  Before a student tries to say or do any of the things we teach, it is crucial that they understand what is behind it all.  We can do that in a class or coaching situation where the students are closely monitored, but we are concerned that the steps of HPS may do more harm than good when presented as a video recording that is viewed without that deeper understanding.  But we are working on it.

Zero Objections?

This blog post is extracted from a Reddit thread titled, “Struggling to Overcome Sales Objections? Read This.”

At one point in the conversation I wrote, “I changed my sales paradigm over 25 years ago and haven’t had to overcome an objection since.”

One person asked me:

What are you doing differently to have zero objections in 20+ years? I acknowledge the framework you went through is still in existence and I agree it is no longer relevant, but to say you don’t handle ANY objections seems unrealistic.  What are objections, really, in your opinion?

I responded with the following:

Before changing my worldview of selling, and whenever I slip back into trying to turn a prospect into a sale (I ain’t perfect), I had to handle plenty of objections.

Objections are simply the reasons a prospect doesn’t want to buy, generally expressed when we are trying to get them to buy.

Let’s be real, when you and I are shopping for a new car, we don’t list our objections in our minds UNTIL we encounter a typical sales situation. 😉

Sales resistance is caused by selling or being sold in the way that it is usually done.

Objections are really just resistance to being sold on a non-mutually acceptable basis.  A defense system to counter being sold.

Prospects buy in their own time and their own reasons.  And much of what we sell requires a real commitment to follow through on the purchase.

So, the choice is between objection-based selling or commitment-based doing business.

Do prospects have reasons that hold them back from buying?  Yes, we all do.  Are these reasons for objections or objections that need to be overcome by a salesperson?

Not at all.  Because we can seek them out and respect them before they become a defense system.  It’s our way of being as salespeople that makes the entire context of objections necessary in the first place.

I guess the real question is to ask our prospects if they feel the need to use objections at all?

You can find me on Reddit as the Illustrious Bunnster.