Author: Paul Bunn

Practitioner, student, and trainer and coach in High Probability Selling for over a quarter century.

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.

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.

Tonality When Selling

Tonality is very important, and it can’t be faked consistently enough through an entire live sales interaction, without being based upon personal principles and a well thought out mindset.  There are quite a few instances when we tend to up-speak, for example, which in a sales interaction can sow seeds of uncertainty and doubt, often without the salesperson realizing it.  A great example of tonality in speaking can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LpGIRhSZ3Jw

One of the fastest ways to become aware of a tone that isn’t working for you, is to record yourself ONLY and then play it back and listen with your eyes closed.  Many people find their own voice playback to be uncomfortable, but if you can hang in there, you’ll immediately pick up and become very aware of the tonality changes that actually create negative reactions, conscious and intuitive, and you will also be able to intuitively fix them.

It’s not always about what you say, it’s about who you are being while saying it.  We often focus on what to say (next) and completely ignore how we say it.

For example, any excess or inauthentic enthusiasm, although espoused by many a sales guru, if it doesn’t reflect your natural conviction, will come off as fake or manipulative.  Listening to your side of a phone conversation will show that instantly.  Sales is a leadership process.  People are reluctant to follow leaders who sound fake.

To Be Honest With You

The following was my response on Reddit to someone who suggested a salesperson say, “to be honest with you…”

Basically, be honest.  Saying you’re honest, even as a space filler, creates doubt and distrust.  Same thing with having the intention of getting prospects to trust you.  That’s inherently manipulative.  Just be trustworthy and trust the prospect first.

Radical honesty is more profitable.

Our prospects have so many choices nowadays, and they are the source of our prosperity.  “Disrespect the source of your prosperity, and it will continually elude you.”  C. Ingalls

A reply to my post on Reddit was as follows: “Never thought about it that way!”

“Being aware is more important than being smart.”  Jacques Werth

In-Person Appointments VS Zoom Meetings

Question

Now that COVID has passed, do you think that it is better to have appointments in-person face to face, or to continue with Zoom or Google Meet?

Answer

If you are a believer in having to have a meeting at all to sell, then either way will work. For example, if you (the salesperson) insist on meeting in person and the prospect is 500 miles away, then Zoom starts looking better for most people.

I have learned that where or how the appointment is conducted doesn’t matter much to me or my prospects. But that’s because, long ago, I gave up the traditional sales strategy that getting the most appointments equals the most sales, in person or otherwise.

The difference is in the conditional commitment level of the prospect towards something they want and I can provide, and the agreed upon purpose of the appointment or meeting if desired.

I don’t need an appointment to sell. I need a high probability prospect who is ready to buy if I can meet their requirements. Quite often, prospects prefer to buy without an appointment at all.

For a lot of buyers, a sales appointment is a waste of time, and it gets in the way of doing business for them.

The problem is that almost no salespeople bother asking IF the prospect wants to meet in the first place.

The Quest for the Perfect Offer

In spite of advising myself and others, for like 30 years, to give up the search for the perfect offer to which everyone will say “yes”, I confess that I still get excited by a compelling and crafty series of words that appear from time to time.

As it turns out, even marketing greats like Seth Godin can believe strongly in an irresistible offer which he was convinced would work perfectly. He’s written more than 20 super successful books about marketing. If anyone can create a perfect offer, he can.

The following is a timeless (IMHO) blog post about an irresistible offer (almost a no-brainer) that he created and used in real life, with real people, and the outcomes he observed.

Link: https://seths.blog/2005/08/i_changed_my_mi/

Worth a careful read…or three. I get something more everytime I read it. Seth’s blog has always been for me, time well spent.