Tag: Selling MindSet

How Closely Should HPS Marketing Follow the Principles of How We Sell and What We Teach?

High Probability Selling is built on honesty, respect, and discovery instead of persuasion.  Marketing for HPS faces a tension:  most marketing in the world is persuasion-heavy.  If HPS marketing mimicked that, it would send a mixed message and contradict what we teach.

The closer HPS marketing aligns with the principles of HPS, the more credibility it builds.  When someone encounters our marketing, they should get the same feeling they would in an HPS sales conversation:

  • Direct and objective.  State what what is being offered and what it costs, without puffery or manipulation.
  • Respectful.  Leave space for people to say “no” without pressure.
  • Focused on discovery.  Provide clear information so prospects can decide for themselves if they want more.
  • Balanced.  Mention benefits and detriments honestly, not just positives.

Marketing is not exactly the same as selling.  Marketing usually needs to inform at scale, without direct two-way dialogue.  That means you may provide more explanation than you would in a prospecting conversation.  But even then, the tone and structure should reflect HPS:  clear, factual, and non-manipulative.

If HPS marketing drifts toward persuasion—promises, hype, or emotional hooks—it sets false expectations.  A prospect might arrive curious but unprepared for the objectivity and directness we teach.  That gap creates resistance.  When our marketing stays consistent with the principles we teach and follow, prospects experience alignment from the first touch through the sale and into fulfillment, as they learn how to implement HPS for themselves.

We would love to hear your thoughts and comments about marketing and HPS.  Please leave a reply on this blog post, so others can join in the conversation.

Possibility vs. Probability in Selling

Most sales training is built around possibility.  If there is any chance that someone might buy, the salesperson is taught to keep pushing, persuading, and following up until something happens.  The thinking goes like this:  the more possibilities you chase, the more sales you will eventually close.

High Probability Selling takes a very different view.  Instead of chasing possibilities, we search for probabilities.  We want to know, right now, what the chances really are that someone will choose to buy from us.  If the probability is high enough, we continue the conversation.  If not, we set it aside and move on for now.

This shift changes everything.  Selling based on possibility is exhausting.  It means investing time and energy into people who may never buy, and who may only be willing to listen politely while you talk.  Selling based on probability is efficient, respectful, and freeing.  It allows both the seller and the prospect to be honest about what they want, without pressure or performance.

The difference is simple, but not small.  Possibility-based selling keeps salespeople trapped in chasing.  Probability-based selling sets them free to discover.

We would love to hear your thoughts on this.  Please comment or reply to this post online, so others may benefit from your perspective. 

Who Else is Teaching Sales Methods that Resemble High Probability Selling?

High Probability Selling (HPS) has been around for decades, yet most sales training programs today still focus on persuasion, manipulation, and closing techniques.  Even so, there is a growing movement of sales thinkers and trainers who advocate methods that echo some of the same principles as HPS, even if they never mention it by name.

Here are a few examples:

1. The Challenger Sale (Matthew Dixon & Brent Adamson)
This approach emphasizes teaching, tailoring, and taking control.  While it still assumes that persuasion plays a role, the Challenger model encourages salespeople to qualify opportunities more rigorously and avoid wasting time on prospects who are unlikely to act.

2. SPIN Selling (Neil Rackham)
SPIN focuses on asking questions that uncover a buyer’s situation, problem, implication, and need-payoff.  It shares some similarities with HPS in that it reduces pressure on the seller to pitch and instead emphasizes discovery.  However, it still assumes the salesperson can lead a prospect to a conclusion through carefully structured questioning.

3. Sandler Selling System
Sandler training stresses equal business stature between buyer and seller, up-front contracts, and disqualifying prospects who are not a good fit.  This alignment with HPS is clear—especially the idea of putting aside low-probability prospects instead of chasing them.  Where it differs is in its continued reliance on techniques for nudging or steering the prospect.

4. Customer-Centric Selling (Michael Bosworth & John Holland)
This framework shifts focus away from persuading and toward facilitating a buying process that is on the customer’s terms.  It emphasizes listening and aligning with the buyer’s goals.  The overlap with HPS lies in respect for the buyer’s decision-making.  Still, it often circles back to “advancing the sale,” which is at odds with the HPS principle of waiting for probability, not possibility.

5. Trust-Based Selling (Charles Green, author of The Trusted Advisor)
This method focuses on transparency, credibility, and focusing on the client’s interests.  It resonates with the HPS principle that trust and respect cannot be manufactured but must arise naturally from communication.  However, it tends to overemphasize relationship-building, which HPS deliberately avoids in the prospecting stage.

The Distinction of High Probability Selling

All of these approaches represent a shift away from the hard-sell tactics that dominated traditional sales training.  They encourage more listening, more honesty, and more focus on whether the buyer is a good fit.  In this way, they resemble HPS.

But the difference is fundamental:  most of these systems still assume that persuasion and influence are essential parts of selling.  High Probability Selling rejects that assumption entirely.  Instead of persuading, HPS is about searching—finding the prospects who want what you are offering, and only then continuing the conversation.

That distinction may seem subtle, but it changes everything.  It frees salespeople from chasing, pushing, or performing.  It also frees prospects from the pressure of being sold to.  What remains is a respectful, efficient, and surprisingly simple way of doing business.

We would love to hear your thoughts on this, even if you disagree (especially if you disagree). Please comment or reply to this post online, so others may benefit from your perspective.

New Course: Fundamentals of High Probability Selling, an Interactive Workshop

In this workshop, you’ll gain a clearer understanding of what selling truly is, why “interest” doesn’t predict buying, and how to identify High Probability Prospects.  You’ll learn the principles and standards that guide HPS.  You’ll learn why most methods create resistance and weaken trust and respect.  You’ll see why uncovering potential roadblocks early shortens sales cycles, and how shifting from chasing business to choosing customers changes everything.

This workshop is the starting point for learning High Probability Selling.  Nothing else in HPS will make sense without it.

Details

  • Price:  $500 USD per student
  • Format:  Group workshop, live and interactive on Zoom
  • Duration:  2 weeks, possibly 3
  • Two sessions per week:
    – First session:  primarily instruction
    – Second session:  review and Q&A
    – Each session:  2–3 hours
  • Recordings:  
    – All sessions will be recorded. 
    – Students may view or download them at no extra cost.  
    – We may sell the recordings later.
  • Written materials included.
  • Schedule:  Will be set to meet customer requirements.
  • Open to all
    – with or without reading the book first
    – with or without prior instruction

To sign up and purchase:
https://highprobsell.com/product/fundamentals-of-high-probability-selling-500-usd

If you want to talk with an expert about this workshop, you may book an appointment here:  

Or email us: info@HighProbSell.com

More and More People Want a Less Manipulative Way of Selling

by Carl Ingalls and ChatGPT

It’s hard to put an exact number on how many people are actively searching for a less manipulative way to sell. But several trends make it clear that demand for a different approach is growing.

Distrust of traditional sales tactics is high.
Studies show that 60% of B2B buyers question the integrity of salespeople, and only about one-third find them genuinely helpful. Buyers want something more authentic.

Top sales performers are less manipulative.
Among high-performing salespeople, most rely little (or not at all) on manipulation. They succeed with honesty and transparency—and experience less stress while earning more trust from their clients.

Honest marketing is in demand.
In a recent U.S. survey, nearly half of respondents defined ethical marketing as truthful and transparent messaging. Three out of four believe companies that commit to ethical marketing will be more successful over the long term.

Even salespeople are speaking up.
On a public sales forum, one person summed it up:

“People love buying but hate being sold.”

The shift is happening. Both buyers and sellers are moving toward authentic, respectful approaches to selling—ways that focus on the real probability of a sale rather than trying to force one into existence.

That’s exactly what High Probability Selling is all about.

The Foundation and the Heart of High Probability Selling

by Carl Ingalls, with significant contributions from ChatGPT

I asked ChatGPT, “What is the foundation of High Probability Selling, what is the heart of it, and what is the difference?”

Here is a summary of its answer.

The foundation is the mindset and belief system that underlies all behavior in the HPS process.  The foundation is internal—your beliefs, attitudes, and approach to selling.

The heart is the core practice—what makes HPS different in action.  The heart is external—the actual behavior and methods you use with prospects.

Without the foundation, the heart of HPS could become just another technique for manipulation.

Without the heart, the foundation remains a good philosophy, but doesn’t translate into real-world sales behavior.

Together, they form a system that is both honest and effective.

We would love to hear your thoughts on this.  Please add your comments below, or use our Contact Us page.

Discovering Beliefs About Selling That May Be Holding You Back

Black and white portrait of a man with curly hair and a mustache, accompanied by a quote from Mark Twain about knowledge and trouble.

HPS Community Forum Discussion, Thu 3 July 2025 at 9:30 AM (USA Eastern Time)

During our last HPS Forum, one of our participants listed NINE separate sales training systems and trainers he had experienced in over a dozen years of his selling career.  There are over 70 sales training systems on the FIRST PAGE of a Google search for sales training. 

Most, if not all of them take the same general approach to selling; different tactics, motivation, processes, gurus, and psychological approaches abound.  All of them claim to be the end-all-be–all solution to everyone’s selling challenges and woes.  On the surface they are different, but underneath all the rhetoric and clever words; down deep they are all the same.  They are all founded on unexamined beliefs and thoughts from over 100 years ago.

The one premise that is sacrosanct and is “known” to all is that selling is about getting someone to buy, generally something the salesperson wants to sell but the prospect doesn’t want to buy.  Hardly anyone examines those principles and beliefs, and those who do question them are shut down by their managers and trainers.

The few who survive to transcend those beliefs become top producers and are no longer allowed near the group for fear that their perspectives will somehow damage the organization’s precious fragile status quo belief system.  They focus their time on the people who are ready to buy and do business.  But for heaven’s sake, don’t start thinking like them and scaring the rest of us…

Many of us, myself included, have been tempted by the lure of the irresistible offer… the no-brainer solution… the deal no one can turn down.  It’s not some kind of mass gullibility pandemic.  It’s unexamined beliefs and thoughts that keep us from a profitable outcome.

On this week’s HPS Forum we will uncover and examine some of these beliefs and thoughts that hold all of us back, waste our time and lives, or frustrate us far more than necessary.

We will, for an hour or so, stop chasing the dream pitch and the offer no one can refuse, and methodically take a real look at our collective and individual beliefs about selling, and share some ways to consider to change our perspectives, and therefore our results for the better.

Notes for the call itself:

  • Get back to the safety of Groupthink.  If there even were people who wanted to buy something, then there would be no need for a salesperson, right?
  • Nobody BUYS insurance; it HAS TO BE SOLD.  Everyone knows that.  And nobody (in their “right” mind) questions that because it’s so universally true.
  • All buyers are liars.  Prospects never tell you the truth.  Clients ALWAYS keep you from knowing what they can afford.
  • If there are no objections, then you’re obviously not working hard enough.  You can’t afford to leave money on the table.

Zoom Details Below

When:  Thursday 3 July 2025 at 9:30 AM (USA Eastern Time)
Google Calendar Link

To join this Zoom meeting (at the correct date and time), please click on this link.
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If you want to join the meeting by voice phone instead (audio only, no video), find your local number here and dial it from your phone:  
https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcgbhyheSS
You will need to enter the following:
  Meeting ID:
  Passcode:

This meeting will be recorded.  A link to the recording will be emailed to the people who attend this meeting.  If you want a copy of the recording for this particular meeting, and are not sure that you will be able to attend, please respond to this email with a request for the recording before the meeting begins.

There is no charge to attend.  You are welcome to invite friends and colleagues.

No bots are allowed.  This includes AI note-takers and recorders.  Humans only. 

Mystery of Sales Strategy – The Probability Game

Sales can be a bit of a mystery to many people.

People who do it, people who see it done, and the people who have never seen it done, but think they have. 

It has existed for a long, long time in the category of business alchemy and marketing. 

In the world of alchemy, what makes sense doesn’t work. What doesn’t make sense suddenly works. And then when we make sense of that, it doesn’t work anymore.

We look under every rock and internet resource and folklore and the rumor mill, constantly seeking that magic formula that will produce the results we seek.

The result we seek is for someone to say yes. 

In conventional sales techniques, gurus are all promising that they have the secret way to get everybody to say yes 100% of the time.

It’s been more than 100 years since assembly line style of scientific psycho selling has been invented.

We are all searching and seeking, drunk on dopamine that this one thing will be the one, the Holy Grail, the one phrase, the magic word, the technique that will get everyone we call and everyone we sit in front of and everyone we meet with to say, “Yes, where have you been my whole life?” 

Then something works.  We hear the yeses.  We draw the conclusion that we’ve been waiting for decades to draw, that we finally found the formula. 

So if an unexpected number of prospects say yes, when I’m using a technique that I picked up from a YouTube video by Jim Bandersnatch, then that’s why all those people, all of a sudden, said yes.  So now whenever I sell, I’m going to make sure I use the Bandersnatch technique, because that’s what made them say yes.

And of all the products and services that I sell, if the emotional charge, the emotional bookmark, the feeling was powerful enough when an unexpected person or persons said yes, then I become completely smitten with that particular product.  Because that product is the one that sells itself, a no-brainer.

And since I love the feeling of people saying yes, and I love the feeling associated of people buying from me, and I love the accolades that I get from people buying from me more than they buy from anyone else, then I’m going to chase that feeling constantly, even after conditions have changed.

Even after prospects (also known as people who are extraordinarily illogical) have changed their minds about the wonder product that I’m convinced will never stop selling, and they all stop buying it, even when I use the Bandersnatch technique.

So when things are working, whatever that means for us, and we happen to be using the Bandersnatch technique, and we keep our rabbit’s foot in our left pocket and a silver dollar in our right pocket, and we wear our shoes on the opposite feet, we don’t stop to inquire.

We’re like the gambler who thinks that they’re on a winning streak.

We worry about being attached to the outcome of a sale.  We’re not attached to the outcome of a sale. We’re attached to the feeling.  We’re attached to the thought that we found the magical combination of random factors that will produce the feeling that we’ve been seeking.

Casinos make billions of dollars off of that feeling, and normally intelligent, practical people, driven most of the time by common sense, will hand their money over to a casino as soon as they have had the feeling of getting lucky.

Now the professional poker player knows that the feeling of winning and the feeling of being lucky is the precursor to the apocalypse.

The professional poker player is a statistician.  Even when playing against people, they work in the field of mathematical probabilities, because they don’t give two craps about the feeling of winning.  They’re motivated by profit. Profit respects probabilities, and profit doesn’t care at all about feelings, and profit doesn’t care about beliefs.  Professional poker players laugh hysterically at beliefs. 

Most salespeople (at least the lower 99% according to our research and observation) run entirely on feelings, beliefs, hope and superstition.  The top 1% of salespeople operate on probabilities.  Real questions, definitive answers, real data, and they never ever operate on beliefs or hopium.

Jacques Werth dreamed of introducing High Probability Selling to a world full of super superstition.  He hoped that a straightforward, transparent sales process based on things like mutual respect and trust (like he observed and codified from three or four decades of observing top salespeople) would change the world.

It would somehow provide an alternative Way Of Being for salespeople (and those who find themselves having to do sales-like things in work, business and life).  This alternative way of being, way of interacting, way of communicating is based on probabilities.

It’s not exciting.  It doesn’t generate adrenaline.

When they made a sale or someone bought something from them, none of the top salespeople he studied did a happy dance.  They knew better than to establish for themselves an emotional bookmark, or even to consider that they would connect a specific technique or phrase and relate that directly to the fact that a client or prospect purchased their product. 

They knew intuitively that if they just showed up statistically at the right time and place, when their prospects and customers were ready to buy, that all that hope and all that attachment to the magic technique and the Holy Grail would actually stop and get in the way of business being done.

So what they really did was they figured out a way to reverse engineer the typical conventional assembly line sales process that everyone was taught, including them, and they removed all the parts of it that get in the way of doing business. 

All of the beliefs about making someone buy, the beliefs about manipulation, the beliefs about if I just use the right words, the beliefs about if I just used the Bandersnatch technique, all the beliefs, superstitions, where to put the rabbit’s foot, putting the silver dollar in the right pocket instead of the left pocket, wearing the right clothes, driving the right car, living in the right house, all the bullshit, all of the trappings of someone who is playing a sales game, instead of finding and doing business with people who want to do business.  

And unless you’re a professional poker player, stay the hell out of a casino if you have any propensity of thinking it’s about luck.  It’s actually High Probability Selling.  The casino is playing the probability game too, and the House never loses until someone comes in who’s playing the probability game against them.  And then they get nervous.

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.

Sales Techniques and Closing – A Conversation on Reddit

The following conversation is copied from the subReddit called “Sales Techniques”.

Here is the opening question:

I sell a pretty high ticket item at $7000 over zoom meetings. My average is to close 5-6 new clients per week. BUT, I miss on another 10 or so. Yes that is a great close ratio and my employer is incredibly happy with that. But I cannot seem to shake off the ones I miss.. anyone else? Oh, 2025 will be my 35th year in sales, you would think I was over this by now..

Here is how I (Paul Bunn, aka Illustrious_Bunnster) replied:

There is a way to reduce the number of appointments with the prospects who aren’t likely to buy in the first place.

By this point, you probably intuitively know at least half of the low probability prospects that don’t really qualify for an appointment yet.

Use the criteria for those that buy to (temporarily) disqualify the ones who don’t really fit, that you might hope will buy but don’t.

When you become more selective about whom you meet with, your number of sales will actually increase overall AND compared to the number of appointments you book.

It will initially feel like you’re going to “lose” sales, but you can’t lose sales that aren’t going to follow through anyway.

The time and energy you save from meeting with low probability prospects will lead to more “found” sales who are looking for a salesperson with higher standards.