Mr. Colaizzi took the stage to defend his position and lecture Art and Joe on why Colaizzi bread was better than supermarket bread.
■ As Mr. Colaizzi began talking about his bread, it kicked off a self-disclosure dopamine loop in his brain that rewarded him for talking. He felt good, even though his conscious self didn't know why.
■ As Joe and Art listened intently to the lecture and gave their complete attention, it made Mr. Colaizzi feel important (the most powerful gift you can give another person). This created a feeling of obligation in Mr. Colaizzi.
■ In the process of lecturing Art and Joe, Mr. Colaizzi became more committed to his position that his bread was better than the competition.
■ Joe touched both wires to the emotional trigger by speaking in Mr. Colaizzi's language: That's exactly what we've been trying to tell you about us. We are the Colaizzi bread of truck leasing.
■ Using Mr. Colaizzi's language caused him to feel that Joe understood him, creating a powerful emotional connection and trust.
■ Mr. Colaizzi had committed to the position that his bread was different. To then refute Joe's claim that his truck leasing service was also different would be inconsistent. This incongruence would cause painful mental stress called cognitive dissonance.
■ All Mr. Colaizzi could do was smile and agree when Joe made his case.
■ The feeling of obligation Mr. Collaizzi felt when Joe and Art made him feel important caused him to want to reciprocate, which opened the door to negotiation. A deal was then struck that was fair to both parties.
Average salespeople delude themselves into believing that buyers make rational, logical decisions based on empirical data and information. But that's not how the human mind works. Emotions come first, then logic.
Rather than fold like a cheap lawn chair and lower the price, Joe managed his own disruptive emotions and flipped the buyer script, “Your price is too high.” He then shaped the decision process until it became virtually impossible for Mr. Colaizzi to make any decision other than yes.
2
A PERFECT SALES STORM
Your chances of getting struck by lightning go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say “Storms suck!”
The sales profession is in the midst of a perfect storm. Buyers have more power – more tools, more information, more at stake, and more control over the sales process than at any time in history.
Technology is accelerating disruptive change at an ever-increasing pace, creating fear and insecurity that leaves buyers clinging to the status quo. Technology also serves the purpose of lowering barriers to entry, thus releasing a relentless onslaught of “me-too” competitors. Differentiating on the attributes of products, services, or prices is fleeting at best and more difficult than ever before.
To buyers, it all looks the same.
Legions of salespeople and their leaders are coming face-to-face with a cold, hard truth: what once gave salespeople a competitive edge – controlling the sales process, command of product knowledge, an arsenal of technology, and a great pitch – are no longer guarantees of success.
Meanwhile, buyers have lost all patience for kitchen-sink data dumps of features and benefits and canned product pitches. They expect more from their interactions with salespeople. Buyers want to emerge from sales conversations with value beyond a dissertation of the rep's marketing brochures.
In response to this shift in buyer expectations, salespeople are being told that they need to offer insight, teach, challenge, and add value. However, deteriorating attention spans have made it difficult to get buyers to sit still long enough to be given insight, taught, challenged, or provided with added value.
These “modern” sales concepts sound intriguing and promising on the pages of a book or in a seminar, but land like a lead balloon in the real world with real buyers because the majority of salespeople haven't mastered the situational awareness and emotional intelligence to leverage these techniques effectively while maintaining human connections.
Many of the salespeople attempting these techniques leave buyers exasperated because the techniques just come off as self-important pitching. Salespeople are not learning and mastering interpersonal skills. They do not understand how to engage buyers on a human-to-human level.
Adding to the problem is an entire generation entering the workforce for whom text messaging, e-mail, and social media posts are the preferred, arm's-length form of communication.1 This new generation is a conundrum. They are socially aware but view human-to-human relationships in the abstract.
In this perfect storm, it's no wonder so many salespeople are struggling. It's no wonder that sales leaders are frustrated and more stressed out than ever. It's no wonder that buyers are starving for authentic human interaction. And it's not surprising that most companies are experiencing sales pipelines clogged with stalled deals, and staring down the barrel at 50 percent or more of their salespeople missing their quotas.
Meet the Ultra-High-Performance Sales Professional
In this new paradigm, though, there is an elite group of sales professionals who are crushing it. In this age of transparency where information is ubiquitous and buyer attention spans are fleeting, these ultra-high performers have learned how to leverage a new psychology of selling to keep prospects engaged, create true competitive differentiation, and shape and influence buying decisions.
The ultra-high sales performer is acutely aware that the emotional experience of buying from them is far more important than products, prices, features, and solutions. They know that to sell value, they must be valuable, and they must earn the right, through human relationships, to teach, offer insight, or challenge.
Over the course of this book, I'm going to take you on an unprecedented journey into the behaviors and mind-sets of the highest-earning sales professionals. I'm going to open a window into their minds and show you their techniques, frameworks, and secrets. You'll learn how to:
■ Leverage human behavior frameworks, heuristics, and cognitive biases to influence buying behaviors.
■ Manage and control the Disruptive Emotions that are holding you back.
■ Improve Sales EQ and build on the Four Intelligences required for ultra-high performance.
■ Shape and align the Three Processes of Sales to lock out competitors and shorten the sales cycle.
■ Influence and manage relationships with The Five Stakeholders You Meet in a Deal.
■ Flip the Buyer Script to gain complete control of the sales conversation.
■ Leverage Noncomplementary Behavior to eliminate resistance, conflict, and objections.
■ Disrupt Expectations to pull buyers toward you, direct their attention, and keep them engaged.
■ Gain Micro-Commitments and Next Steps to keep your deals from stalling.
■ Tame Irrational Buyers, shake them out of their comfort zone, and shape the decision-making process.
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