The Top 10 Negotiating Lines and How To Use Them feat. Chris Voss

one guy got back to me at Lawn Service guy said he wanted X number of dollars to to do all the landscape in his house and he just looked at him said how am I supposed to do that and a landscaper immediately cut the price significantly a lot of people learn how am I supposed to do that it's a great way to get people to bargain against themselves Christopher boss is an American businessman author and professor Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator the CEO of the Black Swan group limited and co-author of the book never split the difference here's Chris Voss ladies and gentlemen thank you happy to uh happy to be here we were just kind of rock and roll into this and uh I'll give you some background we'll get some q a and then I'll throw something at you at the end so asking asked for the top 10 greatest negotiation responses number one is now bad time to talk now I'm gonna I'm gonna dig somewhat into uh why you want to get people to say no versus saying yes and and there's a million reasons for that also but I will tell you an initial indicator in my view because Dan talked before about um if somebody says hey I guess I want to talk to you about something that's mutually beneficial uh you know that's a in that's a an indicator a behavior of a half heart annoying lame and frustrating Dance come to recognize that and it immediately turns him off um we're actually developing within my company we've we've developed this we get specific profiles of what do halfs say what's an indicator of a half and why you should wanna um walk away as soon as possible nicely the last impression is a lasting impression but um if you've got a few minutes to talk is one of those things uh so I mean how long is a few minutes when somebody said to you have you got a few minutes to talk when was it ever actually less than five which is a definition of a few right so it's now a bad time to talk in place of that why is that one of our top 10 lines there's only there's only one of two answers and this is this is why Howard asked me to do a fill in a blank so you could take notes if you wanted to to write it down because clearly if you write something down you're more focused and you're more likely to retain it it's an accelerator of learning so there's only two answers you ever get if uh it's now a bad time to talk one of them is hesitation and they say why no no it's never a bad time to talk go ahead what do you got when someone responds like that you've got a thousand percent of their focus which is what you called for in the first place their focus their attention is dancing you got their attention now keeping their attention is a secondary issue but you've got their attention now what happens when you say have you got a few minutes to talk well they think how long is a few minutes what do you want to talk about when's my next appointment that's what goes through people's minds when you say have you got a few minutes to talk what does that mean you do not have their attention you just blew the first seven seconds by put cladding their brain with those thoughts so it's now a bad time to talk they stop they clear their head and they go no what do you got or they say yeah it is a bad time to talk but I can talk Tuesday at one now you just got an appointment for their focus and their attention which is what you were after in the first place that's what we say oh that's we get over and over again I remember seeing this come up in a thread on LinkedIn once and somebody on LinkedIn you know the level of discussion in there of people clinging to their own beliefs someone wrote well I don't want to say it's now a bad time to talk because what do you do if they say yes and my thought is do you really want to talk to somebody who says yes to that if they're willing to say yes now is a bad time to talk you want to keep talking think about how stupid that is so it's now bad time to talk any of you that from this point forward don't at least experiment with this loss is on you I'm sorry I'm blunt all right so extending um I never ask anybody if it's a good idea we consistently ask over and over is this a ridiculous idea and is this also will begin to get us some underpinnings of why no works one of the reasons why no as an answer works is what we found from our own experiences no matter how fatigued somebody is somebody can say no and clear their mind every one of you listening to me right now we all have the same problem we suffer from decision to fatigue no matter who you are you have capacity so X number of decisions in a given day you start running out of gas at some point in time it's between the decisions that you've made the number of clicks every click is a decision your circadian rhythm or you've had to eat what a good night's sleep you had the night before doesn't matter you've all got so much gas in a tank we see over and over and over again and people on my staff are especially my assistants are told never ask Chris how or what question after one o'clock in the afternoon because if you say what do you want to do what do you want me to do how do you want me to handle this after one my reaction because I'm fatigued is going to be I don't know stop bothering me go away don't bother me again which there's a couple of you don't want do not want to trigger that sort of response from somebody because then my last interaction with you was you annoyed me and the last impression was a lasting impression so it also begins to put you on a slippery slope if you're working for me of a downward spiral where I don't think you're that smart because all you did was annoy me now all they they've all been taught and I've explicitly say this never ask me a question ever after one o'clock in the afternoon where I can't say no because if you say do you want me to do this I'll say no do this this and this and I will in fact ask answer the question that they want to ask was how do you want me to do it but something about saying no triggers my ability to Think Through steps first time I ran across this Jack Welch book signing La I'm standing line of 200 people they're doing everything they can to minimize the amount of time you spend with a book signer for a whole variety of reasons not the least of which I'm at a book signing a couple years ago there are 300 people online the people orchestrating the book signing walk up to me and go like from the moment somebody walks up to you to the moment they move on you've got 30 seconds otherwise we're going to be here for six hours we don't have that much time we got to get everybody through this line 30 seconds per person we're going to ask them their name before they walk up to you we'll write it on a piece of paper they will hand you a book with their name it's going to take you 30 seconds for you to look them in the eye sign to Bob nice seeing you good luck Chris and they're going to move on 30 seconds and doing the same thing with Jack Welch because they got to move everybody to the line Plus they don't want me pitching Jack Welch they don't want me asking them over to the house they don't want me asking them over to dinner because my wife makes a great meatloaf saying all that's going to happen they're gonna want pictures so I know I get seven seconds when I walk up to Jack Welch I want to pitch him I'm coming to speak at the negotiation course I'm teaching at USC I ain't got time to lay this out and he doesn't have time to listen and it's late in the day I walk up to him and I say is it a ridiculous idea for you to come and speak at the negotiation course I teach at USC and he looked at me in the eye and he started to squint and then he looked up into this universe and he got this hideous scowl on his face and he just he just froze and my first thought was killed Jack Welch he got so mad because he looks Furious that he had a stroke and he died and he's getting ready to fall over so when he initially doesn't die I'm relieved but now he looks Furious I mean Furious I think he's going to start screaming scary get this guy out of here I don't know what he's gonna do he finally unfreezes he looks at me and he says this is my personal assistant's name this is special Twitter account we have set up to communicate with her I will call her and tell her who you are I think we're going to be in Los Angeles in the fall if we are we'll come in and speak at your class reach out to my assistant I'll let her know what's going on decision fatigue he said no and he thought through all the next steps and he laid him out for me now is it a ridiculous idea and are you against the next two going back and forth with Rob Robert Herjavec over him sending some people to one of our courses I had lunch with Herjavec generous dude sweetheart of a guy completely generous he paid for lunch it's my favorite kind of lunch on top of that I was at a steak restaurant so it was even better he paid 90 minutes and he paid great guy I look at him and I say we got a one of our in-person sessions coming up in New York can I give you a ticket he looks back at me and says how many can we buy one more indicator of a generous decent human being we're going back and forth on the tickets my son who runs my company he doesn't care that to Robert Herjavec he's mad because we're going to sell out and he wants to sell the ticket and he's hoping Herjavec doesn't take it so he can sell it he's on the East Coast we're on the west coast in L.A herzovic's offices in La I was living just up the street at the time my son calls me at 4 30 in the afternoon 7 30 in New York he says you get herself on the phone and get a commitment for the tickets before the business day starts tomorrow or I'm selling his ticket and we're going to sell out because we're on a verge of selling out now and you're holding up the whole circus and I can't wait to the start of the business day tomorrow because the business day starts three hours later in LA and by the time we get up in LA New York's going to lunch we're going to be out of luck so I get need a decision from harjavik now at 503 in the afternoon I sent him a two-line email is it a ridiculous idea for you to commit to three tickets for our course now second line are you against paying for them before the business day starts tomorrow that's a 503 email again decision fatigue five o'clock in the afternoon when's the last time you tried to close somebody with a hard decision after three o'clock in the afternoon let alone after five the email response from herjovic comes back at 504. no we're willing to commit to three tickets right now no it's not a problem my assistant will be within in touch with you within the hour and we'll pay for the tickets are paid for at 5 23. I've got all the emails time stamped our favorite negotiation one-liners and why all right number four have you given up on what's the context this is context driven I see a lot of people trying to manipulate me who've learned this and they'll send me in an opening email I have you given up on doing business with us well now I have because you just tried to manipulate me with one of my tools now I don't mind if you use my tools with me but if you want to use them against me I smell it really quickly so any of you that want to try have you given up on as an opening line it's going to sound harsh it's out of context you deserve to have that door slammed in your face on the other hand it is the most effective restarter for people who are ghosting you hey I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free there's a link below in the description or you can wait till the end of this video or you can simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there it's almost a one thousand percent guarantee of a response in many cases from three to five minutes the person receiving it seeing it I'm not kidding you when you send that one-line text or one line email sit there and wait because the response may come screaming back at you it will restart the conversation [Music] literally I know of two or three instances in probably 10 000 when it didn't one instance when the answer was yes now context the system is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you have achieved if they're ghosting you they're not responding you're part of the problem which means they've gone dark on you for one of two reasons number one you're not listening to them It's a larger subset of communication with them with you is doing them no good the first problem is probably that you're not listening you're pitching and they get tired of giving you the counterfeit yes or the maybes and it just can't take it from you anymore and they just stop responding because you're not listening to them number two they've lost all influence on your side again communication with you is doing them no good in communication with you was doing them any good they would still be communicating what does that mean is you take away when you sin have you given up on and they respond five minutes later if you go back to the same type of communication that you were using that led up to that point you've just blown your One-Shot reset I was coaching an ex-girlfriend for about five or six years ago she says hey this guy you know we're pitching him on this investment he's not returning our text anymore and I said perfect shoot him a text saying have you given up on making this investment he's going to get back to you right away she did he got back to her right away she went back into the same pitch that drove him away in the first place and she never heard from him again if you send this you have to rethink how you got into this in the first place because your communication system is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you achieved you cannot go back to communicating with them the way they you were communicating before chances are you were pitching and you weren't listening you've got to go into listening and using one of our skills principally summary to try to get back on track there was another point I was going to make on that but it'll come back to me all right we're going into five and six actually how it has a question go ahead no no you you gave me an alternative to that oh you must have a legitimate reason for he's saying I don't know can can anybody Howard says You must have a legitimate reason for it we'll get it we'll get into that in a minute but here's one that I wanted to get into we're coaching we're coaching a guy in a negotiation with Coca-Cola selling them a Health Care Program he says they got to get we gotta we have an agreement but they haven't signed a contract got to get the contract signed by the end of the calendar year or this is all going to go down the tubes and again I'm working with is hurt this so we say perfect you send it you send uh send the email send a text have you given up on getting the contract signed by the end of the calendar year so we get a response every time silence this guy got back to us and he said you said it's warped we don't know what's going on I said no we do know what's going on the answer is yes and it's really hard for people to say yes especially this one that's why you get silence so he here's you know going from certainty uncertainty to certainty going uh with Dan Sullivan before you didn't know if they've given up now you know whether you like it or not you have a solid answer they have given up you have to recalibrate all of your communication now to try to salvage this and here's what's going on I guarantee you that your counterpart has lost all influence on his side of the table Coca-Cola you know and the guy with coaching says yeah but if he doesn't sign this it's going to hurt him and I say oh you know you know what that that's not good enough here's what this guy's looking at he's trying to make a decision whether to get his hand cut off which is losing your deal or getting shot in the head which is what he's faced with I promise you this guy's fine for his life here's how you get him out of it you send him another email saying like look all this business nonsense I can't take it anymore let's go out let's get a steak and a scotch you know we'll have a couple of drinks we'll have a few laughs I promise you we won't talk business he said if you can get him out of the office into a social environment and you don't ask him a single business question if you get him out of there and get him laughing he'll tell you what's going on you won't have to ask sends an email they make an appointment to have dinner together they have dinner my buddy is not pressing business at all a few drinks in this guy begins to explain to him how he's fighting for his life in Coca-Cola he's worried about losing his job they've moved him somebody else has got the contract now and he offers to tell him who it is and connect so if you ask that no oriented question and you get a yes you have to read what you're learning you might not like the answer but you're actually smarter having gone from uncertainty to certainly all right moving down the line letting out know a little time to encourage collaboration read the book you know that how am I supposed to do that is the story of how the book opens and a lot of people have picked that up as a way to bargain like somebody says uh one guy got back to me at Lawn Service guy said he wanted X number of dollars to to do all the landscape in his house and he just looked at him said how am I supposed to do that and a landscaper immediately cut the price significantly a lot of people learn how am I supposed to do that it's a great way to get people to bargain against themselves well what it really is is a polite way to start indicating to people that the answer is no friend of mine uh Ned colletti was a GM of the Dodgers those are either Baseball fans probably know who Ned is great guy and Ned and I were talking about this one time a few years ago and Ned said he'd like to let out know a little at a time what does that mean nobody should get blindsided with no people should be given gently indicators that there are problems if you've got problems with what they're proposing if you can't do it or you won't do it or it's a bad idea to do it no is an answer but it's really about your fourth response and letting out know a little at a time now how am I supposed to do that how question is principally designed to create implementation if you don't want to do something because it's unimplementable you say to somebody how am I supposed to do that like all right I'll do it give me some implementation based on my constraints every now and then somebody says well what if they tell me how to do it well you just push them to their limit without making them angry because when somebody turns around and gives you implementation as a negotiator in many cases your job is to find out where the boundaries are and maybe one time in ten somebody will turn around and say this is how you do it well perfect you've just learned a lot you've been given implementation that they think is reasonable plus you've pushed them as far as you can on that issue which in many cases is your job as a negotiator the other thing it is again my son Brandon he said how am I supposed to do that is forced empathy you don't ask a how question so much is to get an answer is you get you ask a question in order to make them think what Danny Kahneman would call triggering slow thinking if you look at somebody and say how am I supposed to do that and you say it deferentially you don't say like how am I supposed to do that where your tone of voice says I think you're stupid you say it deferentially you make them stop and look at you and see you as a human being at least potentially as a collaboration partner who's looking to collaborate but just needs some help so it's forcing them to empathize with you which is one of the things that's a good thing to do in your negotiations so it's forced empathy number six your offer is very generous I'm afraid it just doesn't work for me that hits a number of awesome psychological buttons positive attributes are reinforced by the recognition of them if someone's being stingy with you to their in their brain they're being generous that's what empathy is about what is it to them not to you you need more generosity at somebody when they've given you a stingy offer you start off by saying you've been very generous it makes them want to be even more generous and the story they're telling themselves in their head is that they're being generous anyway you want to encourage more of it and hesitancy to turn that dial up by saying you're being very generous and to say I'm afraid it just doesn't work for me I'm afraid it's an important part of that ass of that statement it just doesn't work for me the beauty of that is that it takes away external criteria one of the things that I think Bob child then he talks about a lot or he may even speak of because I think we're going to see him tomorrow they some people say well in negotiations go to external criteria go to an external set of criteria that you can both agree on well look what if the market price is X and you don't have the money the external criteria is a market price does that mean you got to pay the market price if you don't have the budget or the funds stupid idea so saying it just doesn't work for me takes away external criteria as a way to take you hostage we have never had anybody say I reported back in any response when someone said that just doesn't work for me somebody fired back say yes it does you made a lot of money last year no it doesn't work for me I've never had that fired back at anybody what what typically happens one of the students in Georgetown was doing this in a negotiation in his day job in a business and his partner sat down for some people across the table they came into a low ball offer and he looked him in the eye and said you know you guys offer is very generous it just doesn't work for us he said the people on the other side of the table looked at each other and looked back at him and said you're right it is low and gave him a higher offer how often does that happen how often does it have to happen all right number seven you call the Black Swan group on the phone and you get my son on the phone and you say to him how are you today and he's going to say back to you it sounds like you've got a place you want to start and you were immediately going to get into the conversation now of the number of people that asked you how are you how many of them actually wanted to know what is how are you really how are you is a temperature check where someone is trying to get a a bead on what mood you're in find out whether or not they can lay out what they called to talk to you about in the first place you've just gotten around all of that dancing back and forth back and forth back and forth and got right to the heart of what they had on their mind anyway which is what they went through in their head before they dialed the phone and called you and you just put time back in your day and in their day now the only time Brandon's ever gotten any pushback on this he said one time one guy did say okay I'd love to get into that but really how are you the guy wanted to know he wasn't mad that he tried to get right into it right away and my son was like fine you know and then they had the social conversation this guy wanted to have because then it was about serving the person on the other side of the phone and that guy who's a minority wanted to have that how are you conversation which if it enhances the moments in the interaction is cool but at least two out of three times they really don't care how you are my back hurts my my legs hurt my I get I get varicose veins I don't want to hear that what they really want to know is are you in a mindset where they can talk to you so how are you is really a probe on the other side's part to find out if they could talk to you about what's on their agenda and when you say sounds like we've got a place you want to start bang you just hack that and you move forward all right responses to questions number eight and nine you answer a question at your apparel everybody knows the question behind the question is much more important so why is answering a question at your peril well number one most people usually don't are don't have the ability to ask a good question like when I ask a question I'm pretty good at it because I listen and I actually want an answer but most people they ask you a question and you answer the question they start talking about something like good God I had no idea that's what you were talking about if I'd have known that before I answered I'd have given you a completely different answer what makes you ask again that what makes you ask what makes you ask upward inflection genuine curiosity inquisitive you're gonna find out what's driving them I'm in a presentation a couple years ago while I'm still doing security stuff Insurance Company thinking about getting into k r Insurance kidnapping Ransom there's insurance for it there's insurance for everything they say have you kept your government uh security clearance and I have intentionally not and but I think for three reasons and I think the answer to that of no is so startling that people are going to ask me follow why not what's going on have you kept your government security clearance no conversation then goes in another direction we don't get back to this topic in the entire presentation I never get the opportunity to come up with my brilliant explanation of why I don't have the government security clearance it never comes up and we don't get the contract to this day I don't know why they asked what makes you ask might have changed it um seems like you have a good reason for asking that same thing you're not being disrespectful by digging into the motivation behind somebody's questions finally uh number 10 seems like you have a a good reason for not doing that when people are failing to perform and you want them to open up this is what you've got to say seems like you have a good reason for not performing seems like you have a good reason for not meeting the deadline they are never gonna tell you what the real reason is or what's going on behind their side of the table if you say why didn't you do that do you know you failed in a in an agreement all the accusatory stuff they're not coming out of that shell to let you know what's going on contractors subcontractor negotiation Washington DC subcontractor completely failing to perform contractor sits down with the subcontractor who's been making excuses blaming it on other people for lack of performance sits down with them says it seems like you got a good reason for not performing as per the contract guy on the other side of the table kind of shrugged his shoulders said no I don't it ain't worked it out and they fixed everything you don't sit down to find out what's stopping them because you want to hang them maybe you do but you really sit down because you want to get people back on track and this is where it gets people back on track all right so we got quick couple questions and I want to tell you about the certainty the 10 questions for negotiation certainty real quick and it'll also make you guys I have a question yes Chris I loved your book first of all um and I tried one of your techniques and unfortunately I must have screwed it up so how am I supposed to do that and the other person said that's not my problem all right so what did you just learn about that person well that I can share oh what you learned is when you got problems they aren't there to help you yeah you know somebody just dropped into half instantly in front of your eyes mm-hmm how does that affect your long-term happiness yeah I mean it's a client right and it's just uh yeah what's that close well you know they should be they should be on a short list um you know what the answer you got back from them is if you genuinely come to them with something you're struggling with and you're trying to get collaboration they're not there for you yeah no I agree I would agree this is a particularly difficult one mm-hmm not else it's not an elf client yeah yeah yeah you know what and a half what we found since we've instituted this half L framework in in smoking people out early on the halves are not repeat customers they're not good long-term customers the elves every moment a half takes from you keeps you from a moment with an elf yeah there's there's a straight trade there agreed thank you welcome okay let me lay this there's certainly uncertainty quiz I came up there on this uh inspired by by Dan in one of his recent talks and you're grateful to be part of strategic coach and I threw this together um send it back to us send it back to us and and and and here's what we'll get now now allow me to be blunt with you if you score on this because if if you get seven or three seven you're certain three you're uncertain now seven things you're certain of on on this list which would give you 14 minus 3 and 11. if you score 11 or higher on this I can't help you you're kidding yourself and I can't help you but these are things we really want people to just actually think things through and if there's stuff here you're not so sure if you can take advantage of what what we can give you so what here's what we could give you we got a class called the N9 which is quick down and dirty on our nine negotiation skills and we're normally charging like 115 in order to get you to group coaching we want to give you a free group coaching session but you got to have at least some idea of what we're talking about so we need you to pay for the N9 my son wants to give you the N9 for like 99 which is not a lot of a discount at all it's a tiny little discount which is like why are we even given a discount at all because it's not going to matter but if you email info info Black Swan LTD put genius in the subject line we're going to want you to sign up at that rate 99 per person for each person on your team to go through the N9 then we'll give you a free hour of group coaching and we need to know that you have at least some idea of what we're talking about and if you don't do the N9 we can't be sure that you got a grounding enough in the skills for the group coaching to not be a waste of your time and your attention even more valuable this is a way for us to make sure that your time and attention is not be wasted in a group coaching call and we've also got there's a couple of PDFs one on the three types that will respond to your email with we'll send you the PDF ebook on the three types and set you up for the group coaching call you got to have at least some grounding in the skills for that group coaching call to do you any good but go through the certainty uncertainty quiz and see what you think and if you're certain of all these things as a possibility that the reason we can't help you is because you're 10 times smarter than we are anyway and we would be a waste of your time um and I think I'm just about out of time so I left me a note yeah um I think we should have more questions but what I wanted uh I thought this was incredible and when I asked you to do this it's exactly what I was thinking um but so much of this was done in the context of a negotiation but it occurs to me that so many of these are things that you can use in emails or subject lines on your website in sales letters but but this is the kind of thing and and when we talked about the form and make sure that you download the form so that you can use it he's created it it almost like Mad Libs where you can fill out with your own information I would I would create variations on the themes to think about using this in personal Communications business Communications uh but this is not just a negotiation this is actually a form of influence in getting to next exactly yep yeah yeah we use it across the board we we had a fair amount of people pushing back on us in marketing saying we're still going to ask you ask questions and marketing till we've done enough marketing on of our own material and split tested the yeses and no questions and even in the marketing the no questions give it give us much higher rates of return like do you want to make more money no uh that's a yes question you know stupid that's constantly out there in the marketing all our marketing if you look at it we don't actually ask questions at all well this is genius Network and it's obvious that you just shared a bunch of Genius uh before before we finish up we still have a couple minutes uh does anybody have a question or a situation that you'd like to get feedback from while Chris is right here I do great Babs hi um so I have two questions okay so first one is simple you know the have you given up on email line or text um you put that in the subject line yep and Senator Senate send it naked nothing else the subject line and maybe put it inside just the same thing if I repeat it I'll put it in the same site you know what one guy coached one time he took all the coaching and put it all in one email so he's have you given up on doing business with me and then his next line was because I haven't yeah okay so um that's great but the other question is about what your offer was which is a very generous offer oh look at you it is a generous offer I mean you know the group coaching calling so but I just want to clarify so you're saying like we have a group of people that I think would be really great to go through group coaching call with um first day um do the negotiation nine course which I've done and I loved it and I got a couple other people to do it too um and um after after I did it I guess they they jumped on but uh yeah so they so to me that's a great way to get them to do negotiation nine so that then they can do the group coaching call and ask questions and stuff like that so um so thank you for that so that that's the clarification I need and you know what if you guys do that also info at Black Swan LTD subject line genius CC me Chris at Black Swan LTD okay and I and I will monitor the follow-up to make sure that everything gets where it's supposed to be ah I I'm pretty sure um our program advisor team is already setting up a group thing um you know so like customized and all that which is great I'm pretty sure they're in the process of doing that with somebody Maya or somebody's working with them to work that out but uh there's other people we could do that with it's a group of I do it make everybody as effective as possible Dan yeah uh Chris I wondered uh since you've started Black Swan to this point what's one thing you've learned in your business life that you wish you had had at the beginning of your FBI life how to smile more when I was talking just take take a couple of miles an hour off my speed ball my fastball that I threw at somebody's head in the government and I would I would I would have gotten it would have been fewer hurt feelings inside different government agencies I I got I was under house arrest in Columbia at once because I didn't smile enough when I said stuff they didn't like so you know I would have been able to go drinking while I was in Colombia instead of having to stay in the embassy the whole time wow all right well you did great man let me shake your hand um the fact that I did not interrupt is because this is a genius and you saw Mastery so good job thanks thanks Dean Jackson has a question we can't leave till I get it I get one question yeah Chris that's so great I had a quick question around uh initial engagements because I know we use I use something called the nine word email that we send out often and it's the same sentiments just asking somebody a question looking them right in the eye essentially you get their full attention that way um but on the morning after we send an initial email to someone who inquires about a franchise say and they we send them all the initial information the thing that we're trying to do is to see are people willing to engage in a dialogue is my top priority for the the um engagement there so one the winning question that we've been asking people is we'll email them and say uh um hey Chris thanks for your inquiry are you and are you uh an investor are you looking for something you can run as an owner operator would be a question that we would um engage with people and so I'm one and we've done the same thing on the real estate side when people can come to a real estate website will ask them that same thing are you an investor are you looking for a house to live in um as an example of that kind of split um question that we would ask somebody if they're coming in I work with a podiatrist and we offer a book on called the plantar fasciitis solution so then when somebody responds the next morning we'll ask them a question a choice question seems to always be the ones that we have hi Chris does your does your heel hurt more when you get up first thing in the morning or does it progressively get worse through the day um so I'd love to hear your take on kind of initial emails like that I I I I got no problem with that because you're not trying to use yes as a way to lead them down a Garden Path of a commitment agreement right you actually first of all they're responding to you and secondly you're trying to engage in some diagnosis early on keeping from wasting people's time right the cautionary the caution thing there though is as they're going down a path with you are they pumping you for information oh are they pumping you for information or they genuinely want to engage with you they may be looking for free Consulting now you might not have problem with giving free Consulting we don't do it because it's always so the the path would be a uh would be going somewhere so it would be here's my question to you the people that respond the next morning do you have a 100 close rate oh no no it wouldn't be 100 closer hold on before this continues we're gonna have a five minute soft break till the top of the hour John Raymond's is going to take us home with a discussion about his Investments and his thoughts on the the future uh while you guys are taking a bathroom break or whatever you guys can continue this I just realized that we're we're going to come back at the top of the hour so the reason I asked that question is is my guess is those that you don't close the normal human reaction is I did something wrong I didn't dial in with them I didn't ask them the right question somehow I failed and point of fact at least 20 percent of the people that are interacting with you are simply looking for free Consulting if that's what they're looking for we look for those indicators as early as possible and we kick them out because 20 of the people are wasting our time and I need to focus on the people that are not wasting our time this gets us into a separate topic than when I was absolutely I like your structure I got I got no problem with your structure and the way you get into it there might be a couple tweaks to try try to weed out the free Consulting people that I would look for a little earlier okay because we're yeah I'm just looking to see um you know our that's the first step I know that 100 of the people that buy are what we call five-star prospects meaning they're willing to engage in the dialogue they're friendly and Cooperative they know what they want they're ready to get it now and they'd like us to help them and so I'm just progressively trying to go through those five things like the staged lighting at the drag races so rather than what most sales situations do is they start at the bottom and they start saying here's why you should buy this franchise because it's on sale if you don't buy before the end of the month the price is going up University right yeah and I know that they have to be all five so it's much easier and softer to be able to see are they willing to engage in a dialogue with uh seemingly low consequence question that's still related to what it is you know like saying I would I would tell you I would I would still other than the choice questions just across the board because you're genuine and honest and you want to be as much of an elf to them as you want from them the problem is the the the vampires the parasites ask you ask questions and they live on you ask questions yeah and anytime you ask a yes question it's not an alternate choice but it's just for a straight yes the problem is you're engaging in behavior that the people that are are parasites engage in also and you can't help but trigger a response because you did something that the parasite does not defensive thing yes I get it and even even entrusted relationships we see this becomes a little bit of an issue when they get no reason not trust you but you still you engage in the behavior the parasites did that's the big problem that's great okay I hope you found that video awesome and useful so if you want to get a free copy of my book I want you to click here and if you want to watch some more videos that'll be useful and awesome click here go ahead you're over here do it now come on thank you watch them [Music]

Channel: Joe Polish

Views: 176,090

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Id: hOo1nIDlXVI

Length: 47min 33sec (2853 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023