Category: Articles

Blog posts that are articles.

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

Sales Funnel… Inverted Inside Out

Here is another way of looking at the sales funnel metaphor and comparing the usual way of selling vs High Probability Selling.  Rather than turning the funnel upside down, consider turning it inside out.

Instead of being inside the funnel, the prospect is on the outside.  Instead of being constrained, the prospect is free to move.

The salesperson’s role is also different.  In the usual way of selling, the salesperson pushes the sale.  In the HPS way, the salesperson points the way and lets the prospect choose.

To download and view a PowerPoint Slideshow that animates this idea, see www.HighProbSell.com/images/sales-funnel-slideshow-09.ppsx

To play an MP4 video of the same, see www.HighProbSell.com/images/sales-funnel-slideshow-09.mp4

Also available on the HPS YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDk9dec3B8A

Sales Funnel… Inverted

What if you turned the typical sales funnel upside down?

In the usual way of selling, prospects are dropped into the top of the sales funnel. The salesperson, with the help of gravity, pushes them down into a narrowing path.

The upside down funnel is more like a mountain, a mountain that some people want to climb. Prospects are outside of the mountain, and free to go where they want to go without constraints.

The salesperson is more like a climbing guide, showing various ways up the mountain for anyone who wants to climb and who wants a guide. Prospects move up the mountain under their own power, against gravity, with no pushing from the guide.

It’s a different metaphor, for a different way of selling.

Teaching HPS… Inverted

Everything we do in High Probability Selling supports what we do later in the process.

So what if we teach the High Probability Appointment first, and then work backwards from there?

By the time we get to High Probability Prospecting, it should be much more obvious what we are doing and why.

Your thoughts?

Music… Inverted

A current HPS student remarked that High Prob is an inversion of traditional sales. And I was surfing YouTube shorts this morning and learned about another inversion that I found fascinating; Smoke On the Water by…wait for it…Beethoven?

Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AlSB7PCU2tM

What’s your metaphor for High Prob?

Relationship is Key, Right?

Ok, we can all agree on that one.

However, we might not all agree on the why, when, and how regarding building a relationship.

Here are some of my thoughts.

Why. If our purpose for creating a relationship is to get the prospect to buy from us, then we end up with a synthetic relationship. Too many prospects will see it as fake, which limits trust.

When. Same problem if we push for a relationship too early, while we are still strangers. Start with business, and let the relationship unfold over time. Don’t be in a rush.

How. Let the relationship be built on listening and acceptance, not talking and pushing.

We would all love to hear your thoughts and experiences regarding relationships and selling. Please put your thoughts in comments on this blog post.

Sell Me This Pen

Suppose you are looking for a sales job where you can apply your skills with High Probability Selling. And suppose a job interviewer hands you a pen and says, “Sell me this pen.”

What would you do?

High Probability Selling Versus Human Nature

High Probability Selling demands that we stop trying to control others, and this goes against some parts of our human nature. 

We begin life as babies who manipulate people in order to get the care that we need.  It’s a natural survival tactic that works. 

As we mature, we gradually learn alternative ways of interacting, ways that are less manipulative and more cooperative, but we never completely let go of trying to control other people. 

And this can get in the way of being successful with High Probability Selling.  Even the most proficient practitioners occasionally find themselves drifting into old habits. 

The trick is to learn to recognize when we are drifting, and to have a way of getting back into the High Probability way of being.

Different people have different ways of doing that.

How do you manage it?