Category: Blog

HPS Community Forum Meeting: 2023-12-07 on Zoom

The next meeting in this series will be on Thursday 7 December 2023, starting at 10am USA Eastern Time. The featured topic will be, “Will HPS Work for Your Customers?”

Anyone who has an interest in High Probability Selling is welcome.  No charge.

To register for this series, please send us your full name and your email address. A phone number is helpful, but optional. You can email us at info@HighProbSell.com or use our Contact Us webform. After we receive your registration details, we will send you an invitation with the Zoom details.

If you registered for any of the previous meetings in this series, then you are automatically registered (and will be invited) to future forum meetings. No need to request a new invitation.

For details, see the HPS Community Forum Series. That page also has a link to the HPS Calendar, which is continually updated.

This meeting will be recorded, but the recording will be made available only to those who show up.

Privacy. Please let us know if you want your email address to remain private or if it is ok for other members of this group to see your email address. If you want it to be private, then we will use blind copy to email notices to you. The downside of that is that some spam filters are more likely to block those notices.

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

HPS Community Forum Meeting – 21 Nov 2023 on Zoom

The next meeting will be on Tuesday 21 November 2023, starting at 1pm USA Eastern Time, and will be by invitation only. The meeting will be recorded, but the recording will be made available only to those who show up.

Topics. We will talk about the following:

  • Voicemail. Whether to leave messages or not, and why.
  • High Probability Selling for the Financial Services industry.
  • Questions submitted before or during the meeting.

For details, see the HPS Community Forum Series. That page also has a link to the HPS Calendar, which is continually updated.

To request an invitation, please Contact Us. We need your full name and your email address. A phone number is helpful, but optional.

Privacy. Please let us know if you want your email address to remain private or if it is ok for other members to see your email address. If you want it to be private, then we will use blind copy to email notices to you. The downside of that is that some spam filters are more likely to block those notices.

If you registered for any of the previous meetings in this series, then you are automatically registered (and will be invited) to future forum meetings. No need to request a new invitation.

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.

Next HPS Community Forum Meeting – 8 Nov 2023 on Zoom

The next open discussion meeting will be on Wednesday 8 November 2023, starting at 3pm USA Eastern Time.

For details, see the HPS Community Forum Series. That page also has a link to the HPS Calendar, which is continually updated.

To request an invitation, please Contact Us.

If you registered for any of the previous meetings in this series, then you are automatically registered (and will be invited) to future forum meetings.

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.