Do you ever get overwhelmed by the competing ideas out there on selling? You ever say to yourself, which of these approaches actually works? Well for years I said that same thing and that's why I started to follow what the data said, what results said as opposed to just what some guru told me. And that's what led me to
the ideal sales strategy. In this video I'm going to show you the only sales strategy you need to know. Check it out. So the only sales strategy
you really have to know is the Game Plan Selling DSP, which is something that
I've written about for years and it's really one cohesive strategy with three key legs to the stool, and those legs are where
the DSP comes from. We need to be distinct,
so we need to be perceived as unlike the competition,
as unlike anyone else. We need to be systematic. We need to have that repeatable, effective, proven approach to selling. And then we have to have
that prospecting playbook, that list or that set of
prospecting activities that we're following on a regular basis that we know is going to help us ultimately hit our sales goals. And so when we break it
down into the three areas, I'm gonna give you just a
quick surface-level overview of how we would look
at each of those areas. So the first piece is that
we need to be distinct. We need to be the complete and total opposite of everyone else. And so what this often
makes me think of is what my dad used to
tell me about business. He used to say, Marc, if
you want to be successful in sales and in business,
what you want to do is identify where everyone is marching, the direction that everyone's going and then once you know
exactly where they're going, I want you to go the exact opposite way. I want you to do the exact opposite. And I thought to myself at the time, man, that's kind of weird, but now that I've gotten to see what works and what doesn't work, I understand now that we need to be the distinct opposite of what all the other
salespeople are doing. Because just think, right, when you are watching this video your competitors are
calling on your prospects, and how do you think
they're starting the call? They're starting the
call with some version of hey George, how are you today? Or they're going in and
they're pitching their product and services and then talking about all the features and
benefits that they have. And so what we need to do
is start to think about how can we have an approach that really is the complete opposite
of what they're doing? And that's what leads us to this idea of having a pattern interrupt. We need to break the pattern
at every single step. And so what pattern
interrupt basically means is that there are typical
patterns that we go into and as a result, that
the prospects go into. And so what we want to do is
avoid those typical patterns that this average salesperson goes into, so that way the prospect go
into that pattern either. So let me give you an example
of an opening conversation, the actual start to the conversation, just the first couple of
seconds of how most sales people are starting their call, right? So they're getting on
the phone with a prospect and they're saying, hey Sarah,
how are you doing today? Some version of that. And what we see is that
that's immediately creating a patterned response on
the part of the prospect. The prospect is naturally
gonna want to do what? They're gonna want to move
back because they're like, ugh, this is such an
obvious salesperson, right? And so what we want to
do is have an approach that really breaks that pattern in a powerful yet simple way. And so here's the opening that I would suggest that you
use, and I'll tell you just a little bit about the data in a second on the backside of this. Better responses. Hey Sarah, Marc Wayshak calling. How've you been? Now timeout. What was different between
those two openings? You'll notice that there was
a difference in language, which we'll explore in just a second, but there was also a big
difference in tonality and approach and the feel that
the prospect is going to get. Now, the other difference of course is there was different language changes. I mentioned my name. I made it seem like maybe
they should know who I am, but I didn't pretend like
we went to college together, but I made it seem like, eh,
should I know this person? And then I said, how have you been? Now the data shows,
very recent data shows, that when you start calls
with how have you been, you have actually a six and a
half times higher likelihood of actually scheduling a meeting
as a result of that call. Six and a half times. It's a different approach than
many of us have used before but starting with how have you been has a huge increase in effectiveness. And what it's doing is
it's breaking the pattern, because they're saying to
themselves, how have you been? Do I maybe know this person? Do I not? It's not manipulative, but it's
just a little bit different. It's a little bit distinct in
a way that gets the prospect saying, hmm, yeah maybe
I'll give them 20 seconds. Another example of distinction through really a pattern interrupt is the response to the age-old question of, why should I do business with you? Right? If you've been in sales for long enough you've had a prospect say, so
why should we work with you? Or, why should I do business with you? Now again, typical prospect response would be something along the lines of well, we do this, or we do that, or we're this great, or we're awesome, or we're the best, or we
have the best service, or you get me, right? You get all of these typical responses that are kind of cheesy and
your prospect is already going to have expected that, right? They expect you to go
into that tap dance mode, that hey we're gonna dance for you and show you how great we are. Instead, a way to break
that pattern is through a completely different approach
to answering that question. So next time a prospect says, "Why should I do business with you?" I challenge you to say the following. You know what, George? I really appreciate your
asking me that question and quite frankly, at this
point in the conversation I'm not sure that you should. Would it be okay if I ask some questions to find out what's
really going on and then I could tell you if I think
that we're a better fit. Timeout. Now what did I do? I answered in a way that's a
complete pattern interrupt. They expected me to push at them. They expected me to put
all this pressure on and instead I took a step back. I said hey, you know what? I'm not sure that you
should do business with me. How real is that, how genuine? It's so much more effective
because what you're doing is you're taking all that
pressure off of the prospect in a way that really makes them think, wow, this person's an expert. They're obviously successful,
because they're not saying that I need to do business with them. I'm so used to people saying that. And so as a result, you
are setting yourself up for a lot more success
in a way that makes you completely distinct from the competition. Now the next part of
this sales strategy is being systematic. We said you have to be
distinct, systematic, and then have that prospecting playbook. And those are the three legs of the stool. And this piece is all
about being systematic. It's all about having a repeatable yet proven system for selling. And so when we look at how can we have a systematic
approach, and what are the key components to having
that systematic approach? It's really just three important phases. The first is that we need
to connect with prospects on a level that is going deeper than what they're typically expecting. Now one of the reasons that human beings are going to be more effective
than artificial intelligence or other machines at selling
for a long time to come is the ability to connect. When we can connect with prospects on a level that is not guarded, not, uh I need a little space, we are immediately
inviting them to open up. And so what we need to think about is how can I connect with
the person in front of me? How can I connect with
the person on the phone? And one of the most simple
ways to truly connect, again thinking from a high level here, is to really effectively mirror what the prospect is doing and saying, and not in a robotic way but thinking of yourself a
little as a chameleon, a little bit getting to
their level of approach. How do they come across? What's their vibe? How quickly do they speak? How loud are they? And starting to just
slightly match that approach. And so again, I'm not talking about huge changes in your personality here, but what I'm saying is
that if you're taking to a prospect who answers
the phone and says, "Hey, Marc Wayshak here," I want you to also raise
your voice to that level. On the other hand, if
you're taking to a prospect who sounds something more like, "Hello, this is Marc," I also want you to come down a bit. You're not gonna suddenly say
hi, this is nice to meet you, but instead it's hey, Marc,
great to connect with you. Right? It's just a lower tonality
and that's how we're connecting with prospects
in a meaningful way. Now we can go a lot more deeply into this. This is a big topic,
this idea of connecting, but really matching our
prospects and mirroring them in a way that makes them feel
immediately less guarded, that's the first step to
really getting through. Now the next step to
really being systematic is to have a disqualification approach, is to disqualify prospects
that aren't a good fit. In fact, I use the term
disqualify for every prospect. Right? We've all heard that we
need to qualify prospects or persuade them to do business with us, what I'm saying is that
we're going the opposite way. I want to use a mindset and
an approach that's thinking, you know what? I'm going to disqualify
people that aren't a good fit. And through that process
of asking questions and understanding that
realistically only about 50% of the people that I talk
to are really a good fit, I'm now coming across as I
don't need this business. I'd like it, I'd love to work with people that are a great fit, but I don't need it. And so if you think back
to that earlier role play of the why should I do business with you, it's just an extension of
the disqualification mindset where we're asking questions to understand is this person a fit? So we're not going in
with the goal of really getting it to be a fit, but instead just determining whether this is a fit. And if it is, then that
leads to the last piece here, which is the constant
feedback presentation. The constant feedback
presentation is very simple, but we want to remember that when we actually are presenting, we don't want to bombard people with information. We don't want to throw up all over them. And instead, we really want
to make it a two-way dialogue. And so the constant feedback
presentation is simply this, you are going to be presenting
a little bit of information and then you're gonna
be getting some feedback immediately back from the prospect. And again, this concept is much deeper than just what we're talking about, but I just want to give
you that high level, which is let me show you one thing that we're going to do differently. You show them that and then you say, "So, how does that sound?" Or, "Does that make sense?" And what you're doing is you're
constantly getting feedback by asking these little questions of, does that make sense
based on what I just said? And you're pulling them
back into the conversation. So the conversation becomes
that real two-way dialogue and it's just back, forth, back, forth, as opposed to me just throwing up hours of content all over the prospect. Does that make sense? See what I did? It's so powerful, so simple,
and it just naturally makes someone say, yeah okay. The last component of this sales strategy of the Game Plan Selling DSP is having your prospecting playbook. It is the third leg of the stool. And it is so important, because again most salespeople are going up and down, up and down each month, right? So they're some months that are good and then they get busy
because they had a good month, and so they're not doing
as much prospecting and so then as a result, next
month business is slower. A prospecting playbook is
all about understanding exactly what you have
to do in order to hit your sales goals from a
prospecting perspective. What I'm going to focus on in
this video is understanding the only metric that
you really need to know. And there's really only one
metric that most salespeople actually have to hold
themselves accountable to, and that one metric is
discovery appointments. Discovery meetings,
meetings, initial meetings, whatever the word you want to use, but it's those first
meetings with a new prospect. That is the only metric
that you need to track is how many meetings,
how many initial meetings do I have to set each and every week? If I set this many meetings on average, I'm going to hit my sales numbers. That is the one metric that we need to hold ourselves accountable to. And so then you can of course
work backwards from there. So let's just think about
the math for a second. Think about what your sales goal is for the next month. About how many discovery
meetings do you have to conduct on average in order to hit that goal? So maybe it's five, maybe it's 10, maybe it's 50, maybe
it's 100, I don't know. It just totally depends
on the type of business that you're in and the type of sales and the size of sales that you actually make. Understand exactly what that metric is and own that number and
live by that number. So let's say just for example, your goal is that you need to set 10 initial meetings each and every week. So that means two meetings every day. And so as a salesperson,
I'm saying to myself, I don't leave the office until I've set my two meetings every single day. If that becomes my focus, now
all I have to think about is well, what activities go into
generating those meetings? And then I've got to do that activity whether it's making cold calls, or asking for referrals and introductions, or going to networking events, or getting more marketing leads. Whatever it is, I now know exactly what those activities have to look like in order to hit that one metric. And so having said that, now that we understand
that it is most important to know exactly how many meetings we have to have each
week, now the question is what are some of the best activities that we can do in order
to drive those meetings? And the most effective
prospecting activity that we can really conduct
is asking for introductions. And so what that means is
asking people in our network, prospects, clients, people that we know, for introductions to other
people just like themselves. So let's just say it's
asking your clients. Hopefully you already have
some kind of a client base, and so are having
conversations with your clients where you're sitting down with
them and you're asking them if there are any other
people that they know that might potentially be a fit
for your product or service? And then digging into that conversation and asking them if they'd be willing to introduce you to those people. Not asking for a referral. There's a reason we don't
ask for referrals anymore. People are kind of
guarded about referrals, it's a buzzword-y phrase and it's not clear what it really means. What we want is we want introductions. We want that client to introduce you to that person that they know. And so by asking for
introductions in a way that's not sleazy or
uncomfortable but just genuine, something that sounds like this, George, I could use your help. The way I grow my business is by servicing the heck out of my clients so that way at the end of the day they'd
be willing to introduce me to others just like themselves, people that I could really help. I'm wondering, would you
be willing to introduce me to some other people that you think that I might be able to help? Now if you need to rewind
this video and go back and listen to exactly what I said and just script out that
exact phrase, then do so. It's so simple, it's so powerful, but by asking for those introductions, you are going to see
yourself grow this business exponentially in a way
that it's just leveraging the existing people you already have. So there is the only sales
strategy you need to know. I want to hear from you. Which of these ideas did
you find most useful? Be sure to share below
in the comments section to get involved in the conversation, and if you enjoyed this video then I have an awesome, free eBook on 25
Tips to Crush Your Sales Goal. Just click right here to get it instantly. Seriously, just click right here. It's free. Also, if you got some value, please like this video below on YouTube and be sure to subscribe to my channel by clicking my face right here to get access to a new
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