Category: Articles

Blog posts that are articles.

Is This Really What Your Prospects Want?

Today, you need some appointments for the week and next. So you call your prospect list.

You’re polite and courteous with your introduction and you give your pitch.

They say it’s too soon after the holidays, and they’re too busy right now.

You explain why now is much better than later and persist in making an appointment…after all it will only take 20 minutes…just so you can establish a relationship… Everyone says to sell the relationship first.

You make it seem as reasonable as you can; they mention how the economy is bad and they don’t want to do anything new right now.

You acknowledge their concern, and you persist in trying to set an appointment.

After all, you’re just trying to help them, maybe save them some money…if they would just give you 20 minutes, then they would see the value that you provide.

Finally, they relent and ask you to send them a brochure, which they will seriously consider and then get back to you.

You offer to bring it to them on your way home from the office.

They tell you they’ll be out running errands then so just put it in the mailbox, then they say “Thanks, and then goodbye”.

With all the hope you can muster, you drop it off in their mailbox on your way home.

Of course, nothing ever comes of it.

If everyone says to do it that way, why doesn’t it work?

Selling With Respect

Respect the prospective customer’s right to decide what they want, without trying to change their mind. That is a major principle behind High Probability Selling. 

We want to find out what the prospect’s decision will be, not how to influence it. Since we estimate probabilities, we need to know what the truth really is, without our interference. 

Asking the right questions, in the right way, gets us a lot closer to the truth. 

For instance, we find that open questions work better than closed ones. Questions that give the prospect as much freedom as possible in how they choose to answer. It may take a little longer, but the response is usually more revealing.  

We give a lot of control to the prospect, and we do a lot of listening. That’s respect. 

Understanding High Probability Selling – Podcast Interview of Carl Ingalls by Paul Cuomo

Summary below written by Paul Cuomo, for the podcast he published on 29 June 2021:

For many of us who have read sales books, took courses or browsed through the thousands of hours of free sales training online, we often notice that much of the material and concepts are a regurgitation of past concepts. High Probability Selling is not. High Probability Selling is a way of selling without “getting people to buy.” No persuading, no convincing, no arguing, no handling objections.  No impressing people, no pretending to be a friend, no groveling for the sale…..yes you just read that. I had a wonderful discussion with Carl Ingalls, a Consultant who trains salespeople on this methodology.

High Probability Selling the book, was written by Jacques Werth and the process was discovered by observing behaviors of top sales performers within his organization. The book was recommended to me in the late 1990’s and it has had an enormous impact on me.  Very excited to share this interview with the audience.

Paul Cuomo, The Foundational Sales Podcast

Listen to this podcast here. 72 minutes

Blinded by Love (of what you sell)

Be careful when selling something that seems like a “no brainer”. If the reasons to buy it are so compelling that it sounds too good to be true, this will raise suspicion in the prospect’s mind too often. No amount of logic will overcome that, and it is terribly frustrating to try.

Also, your enthusiasm, even when sincere, is likely to come across like every other excited salesperson trying to push the prospect into a sale.

There is a special way of being that is the ultimate goal of High Probability Selling. And this is how we avoid triggering that general sense of unease a prospect may feel about the salesperson.

That way of being is naturally neutral and objective. No agenda and no attachment to the immediate outcome.

There’s No Such Thing as No Pressure Selling

That’s what Todd Liles says in his blog post at https://www.servextra.com/blog/sales/6-keys-to-low-pressure-selling/

It makes logical sense, because if you believe that selling is about getting someone to buy, it is impossible to do that without applying some pressure.

However, in High Probability Selling (HPS), we do not believe it’s about getting someone to buy. For us, selling is about finding people who want to buy for their own reasons, without any influence from us. We call that No Pressure Selling.

However, we actually do apply pressure in one way. Although we don’t try to get the prospect to buy, we do try to get them to make a decision. We ask, “Is that something you want?”

One way to sell with even less pressure than we do in HPS, is to be completely passive and wait for a sale to come to you. We don’t recommend that.

HPS From People Who Have Never Heard of It

That’s how Jacques Werth learned it. He discovered High Probability Selling (HPS) by watching and copying what hundreds of very successful salespeople were doing.

by Carl Ingalls and Paul Bunn

That’s how Jacques Werth learned it. He discovered High Probability Selling (HPS) by watching and copying what hundreds of very successful salespeople were doing. Nobody had a name for it, until Werth created the name and wrote the book.

These top salespeople used a variety of methods, which Werth compiled into a single process. None of them followed that complete process, but most of them followed a common theme, a way of being when they were selling.

The process varied between these salespeople, but their way of being was the same, and that is what we focus on now.

This HPS way of being does not follow the commonly accepted doctrine of selling. Once you look outside of that doctrine (getting people to buy), you may start to see examples of HPS in the broader world around you.

For example, “Do you want to buy some Girl Scout cookies?” is pure and natural HPS. They don’t ask us if we need it. They don’t spin it to make it tastier. We respect them, because they are standing up and asking us a direct question, and they respect us to decide if we want cookies without being persuaded. Mutual respect.

Exercise. Find and note examples of the HPS way of being, and especially from people who have never heard of High Probability Selling.

We will write more about this. Meanwhile, your comments and questions are very much appreciated.

If Spammers Do It – Don’t

by Carl Ingalls and Paul Bunn

If you look like a spammer, talk like a spammer, and walk like a spammer, most people will delete your message or hang up on you without caring what you have to say.

So, as a general rule, we avoid doing the things that spammers do. A lot of High Probability Selling is the opposite of what they do (but there are a few exceptions).

Here are a few things a spammer is more likely to say than someone who is not a spammer.

  1. On the phone, saying, “How are you today” before mentioning the purpose of the call.
  2. On the phone, taking too long to get to the point, and sticking rigidly to their script.
  3. An email that starts with, “I just wanted to…” or any other first reference to themselves. Like the recipient cares about what the sender wants.
  4. Mentioning their previous unsolicited messaging, as if you should feel guilty for ignoring them. “I was wondering if you got a chance to review my previous email.” Like you really need someone checking to see if you did your homework.

There are a lot more. You are welcome to add your thoughts in the comments below.

Exercise: The next time a piece of spam email lands in your inbox, take a close look at it. Pay special attention to the things that irritate you, and write them down. If you can, also write down why those things irritate you. Do the same with a spam phone call. Then think about how you want come across to prospective customers.

A Word That Says It All

There is a single word we say to a prospect that demonstrates one of the most important ways of how we are being. It’s a very simple word that says so much.

Can you guess it?

When we respond to something the prospect says, it’s usually the first word we say.

It signals acceptance. It’s an early indicator that we are not going to try to change someone’s mind.

If you are an experienced practitioner of HPS, and can’t think of this word, it may be because you use it automatically, without being conscious of it.

If you can’t figure out what the word is, don’t worry. It’s ok.

And that is the answer. That’s the word. It’s ok.

Simple Selling – Why Is It So Hard?

The simplest way to sell something is to find people who want it. That’s the basic idea behind High Probability Selling (HPS). But why is it so hard to do?

We complicate things. We go far beyond just finding people. We try to change their minds. We try to get them to do something we want them to do.

These are deep habits, and they are very difficult to let go of. However, changing those habits is necessary to be successful when applying HPS.

There must be some kind of emotional reward that reinforces our need to influence or persuade other people. Here is an article that talks about such rewards: “How to Break Up with Your Bad Habits” by Jud Brewer.

We will discuss this in our next HPS Community Forum (scheduled for Thu 12 Oct 2023 at 10am USA Eastern Time on Zoom). If you want to attend, please Contact Us and please provide an email address where we can send you the Zoom sign-on details. Anyone with an interest in High Probability Selling is welcome. No charge.

Bold Feedback About the Trust and Respect Inquiry (TRI)

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