I wasn't good at selling and I needed to do something about it. I did a Dollar-A-Day challenge in 2024. But I quickly realized that frenetically trying to sell something worth at least $1 per day wasn't the best way to go about it. I didn't have that many products and my distribution channels were not figured out.
So I ended this challenge but I still needed to learn about sales. I decided to focus on what had a better upside than grinding to make $1 per day and that's my automation and operations skills. The same amount of energy could bring 100 or 1000 times more.
Now, the problem is: there's a lot of noise when it comes to sales. Lots of people tell you to read a bunch of different books but usually the methodology is proposing only various pieces of the sales puzzle. Then a guy on Twitter, Eli Finer, recommended this book with a cringy title and a cringy cover.
I've bought the audiobook, listened to it probably 4-5 times, and I've gone through two dozen sales conversations applying it so far (November 19, 2024). It's a simple and solid framework. It's weird because I'm now excited to jump on sales calls and practice this framework. This shit really works!
Let's get into the method and book summary with some insights I garnered along the way.
The Secret of Selling Anything
The author hammers in the first part, and throughout the explanation of the selling framework of the second part, that it's crucial for the person selling to uncover the motivations of the buyer. It strays away from trying to "excite" some motivation to buy in the prospect. We need to uncover the motivation of the person and if the offering matches then we can move forward with pitching.
The second important point is you don't need to fake who you are or become somebody you are not. You just need to be interested in the business of the person and their problems.
But anyway, let's get through the whole framework. There are 5 steps.
Step 1: Uncover the prospect's motivations
This is the classic problem definition phase where you ask genuine questions to the prospect to understand what motivates them and how you can potentially help them achieve their goals.
It takes some time to refine your questions and ask the most important ones upfront. I recommend jotting down some questions ahead of the call. You can ask Perplexity to research the person and their business for you and give you a summary. It forces you to think about their business and come up with relevant questions.
Here if you are not selling custom services, the nice thing is your questions compound. So you'll eventually end up with a tried-and-true stack of questions.
Now that you have your questions and you are on the sales call, you can do a few minutes of small talk and then get right into it. Here is how you can start off the sales call (inspired by Jay Mac):
"So on these calls I normally run through some key questions to understand a bit more about your business, current challenges, and goals etc. I can then tailor my services a bit more specifically to help you. How does that sound?"
Then you can get straight into the questions.
When it's an inbound lead, you're basically trying to answer the question:
- What is it you want to accomplish through the purchase of this product?
And when outbound:
- Ask about the facets of their life or business in which the product would be involved.
Develop questions based on industry and product:
- Think about the key factors that go into a prospect decision and design question that will uncover the most important factors to this person.
A few examples:
- What's your biggest onboarding problem facing you right now?
- How do you visualize your dream onboarding?
- How many clients can you onboard now? How many would you like to onboard?
- What do you want your onboarding to accomplish first and foremost?
- What current problems do you have with your onboarding? Which ones are the biggest and most impactful?
The pitfall I often fall into is to get straight into requirement gathering and talk about the technical detail of what the person is wanting to automate. Nowadays, I try my hardest to focus as much as possible on the context around the project and understand the underlying problem.
Once you feel you have a solid understanding of the problem, you can jump on to step 2.
Step 2: Restate the motivation and confirm with the prospect
We want to make sure the prospect feels heard and understood. But that we're also 100% on the same page.
We want to use one sentence or paragraph to summarize it and get their agreement on it.
- I think we agree then that what's needed is a way to accomplish XXX and do it in the framework of what you're paying now. Is that correct?
- In other words if we find a way to accomplish XXX, then you'd be in a position to do XXX. Is that the crux of it?
If the person doesn't agree, then ask more questions until you both are on the same page and the person agrees you understand their situation.
Once they agree, it's pitching time.
Step 3: Present your offering
In the previous two steps, we've uncovered precious information about what the prospects needs. Now we pitch our offering and emphasize aspects of the offering that connect to the goals and motivations of the prospects.
Essentially, you have a proposition ready and you share it with the prospect. So what's the price, what that includes, how long it would take, etc.
If you have a specific offer or product, that's great. But if you are doing more custom work, you'll definitely want to prepare ahead of the call and have something to pitch that makes sense.
Step 4: Discuss questions and objections
After sharing your proposition, the prospect will likely have questions or objections to the offering. Here the author proposes a 3-step process:
- Listen
- Agree
- Suggest
So the goal is to have the prospect highlight what they think is important and for you to listen attentively to this before speaking.
Then saying "that's a good and valid point." Or something of that nature.
Finally, look at the offering TOGETHER and see what could address the question or objection. He strongly advises to avoid confrontation or sounding confrontational.
Step 5: Closing the deal
To get a smooth close, you need to encourage a decision the prospect has already taken.
Pretty simple. But the goal here is to be relaxed and state the next steps to take the order or whatever next step is necessary to get the money.
A few examples of questions to initiate the close:
- Should I go ahead and set up a contract for you to approve?
- Do you have any objections to starting a contract? I can send it over to you right now.
- Can I assume this is a firm commitment from you?
- Is it alright then if I go ahead and write the contract?
- I may as well go ahead and write the contract. Is that alright with you?
- Can we call this a deal then?
- That seems to cover every aspect of the deal, suppose I make up the contract and send it over after the call. Would that work for you?
- This seems an ideal situation for you. We've covered it from every angle. Shall I write up a contract and send it for your approval after the call?
- I guess that's it. I'll write up a contract unless you have any reason why I shouldn't.
If he says no, go back to step 2 and see if anything was missed. Afterward, go back to step 3 to ensure you are both on the same page and get his agreement.
If the prospect needs to think it over, there may be a few reasons:
- he's not convinced he wants what you are offering and not convinced he doesn't want what you are offering. He's not sure because the presentation wasn't good enough. Go back to step 1 and 2 to make sure you covered everything.
- Prospect hasn't been completely honest (might happen less with this framework.)
- Is there anything you haven't told me that would help me understand your situation better?
- The prospect wants to shop around first.
- Mostly because the seller doesn't listen and understand properly what the person wants. They don't concentrate on what they want and present benefit that are not relevant to the buyer so they wonder if there is other things they are missing.
- Prospect is afraid he's overlooking something. He takes a day or two before taking a decision. He wants a cooling off period.
- Why? How much time would you like?
Ultimately, never leave a call without:
- An order
- A definite no
- An understanding of when the prospect wants to take a decision and on what basis.
- Contact them halfway through to see if they need anything in the meantime and if something has changed.
- If nothing has changed, contact them on the date and time they mentioned.
- Or another call scheduled to finish the conversation
That's it. There's nothing magical about it. It's pretty simple. It emphasizes listening to people, understanding them and seeing if you can help. Once it's established, you're helping them get out of their own way and yourself to get out of your own way so you can solve their problem.