CHAPTER TWELVE

The Law of the
Hook

A Captivated Audience
Stays to the End

Think about the most intriguing book you’ve read recently. How did the book begin? At what stage were you hooked? There’s no doubt something caught your attention right off the bat. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have kept turning the pages, staying up half the night trying to finish it. What about a television show or movie that you’ve seen recently that kept you on the edge of your seat and stirred some real emotions? How did the story open? It was no doubt captivating. Otherwise, your eyes wouldn’t have remained glued to the screen. Maybe the hero’s wife was killed, and you just had to know if he would find the strength to make it through and maybe even avenge her death. Maybe something completely unexplainable happened and someone, you hoped, would be able to figure out what it all means. Maybe a guy and a girl met and fell in love in some romantic location, but then had to face the reality of living in two very different worlds, three thousand miles away . . . and you had to know if they made it back to each other, somehow.

Now think about your last selling experience. How did it start off? Were you captivating? Did you pique your prospect’s interest so that she was compelled to move forward with you? Did you draw out an emotion in her that she truly wanted to feel? Did you create a desire in your prospect to want more of the same experience? If you were following the Law of the Hook, you did all these things and more.

The Law of the Hook says that a captivated audience stays to the end. That’s because the principle that keeps your eyes glued to a screen and your hands glued to a book is the same principle that keeps your prospects glued to you. You see, an audience is an audience whether in a sales office or a theater; and to keep an audience around, the performance must be captivating from the get-go. Think about it this way: When was the last time you finished a book that didn’t grab you in the first chapter? If you’re like me, there are probably several books gathering dust on your shelves that just didn’t make the cut because they weren’t intriguing enough in the beginning. They didn’t grab your attention. And the same is true of salespeople who fail to captivate their audiences in the beginning—they are brushed aside for someone more alluring.

On the other hand, when prospects are captivated by what you offer to them and by the way you offer it, they are compelled to give you their business; and not just once. Quality, high trust salesmanship is like a great book or movie; it captivates right away and keeps one coming back for more.

Consider the following hook from the opening of Louis L’Amour’s famous story, Off the Mangrove Coast:

There were four of us there, at the back end of creation, four of the devil’s own, and a hard lot by any man’s count. We’d come together the way men will when on the beach, the idea cropping up out of an idle conversation. We’d nothing better to do; all of us being fools or worse, so we borrowed a boat of the Nine Islands and headed out to sea.

Did you ever cross the South China Sea in a forty-foot boat during the typhoon season? No picnic certainly, not any job for a churchgoing son; more for the likes of us, who mattered to no one, and in a stolen boat, at that.

Now, all of us were used to playing it alone. We’d worked aboard ship and other places, sharing our labors with other men, but the truth was, each was biding his own thoughts, and watching the others.

There was Limey Johnson, from Liverpool, and Smoke Bassett from Port au Prince, and there was Long Jack from Sydney, and there was me, the youngest of the lot, at loose ends and wandering in a strange land . . .

It was Limey Johnson who told us the story of the freighter sinking off the mangrove coast; a ship with fifty thousand dollars in the captain’s safe and nobody who knew it was there anymore . . . nobody but him.

Fifty thousand dollars . . . and we were broke. Fifty thousand lying in a bare ten fathoms, easy for the taking. Fifty thousand split four ways. A nice stake, and a nice bit of money for the girls and the bars in Singapore or Shanghai . . . or maybe Paris.

Twelve thousand five hundred dollars a piece . . . if we all made it. And that was a point to be thought upon, for if only two should live . . . twenty five thousand dollars . . . and who can say what can or cannot happen in the wash of a weedy sea off the mangrove coast? Who can say what is the destiny of any man? Who could say how much some of us were thinking of lending a hand to fate?

Do you want to read on? L’Amour really has you hooked, doesn’t he? (It’s no coincidence there are more than 260 million copies of his books in print around the world.) Thanks to Louis L’Amour, you’re captivated to know what happens to the four salty wanderers. Do they really go for the treasure? Do they find it? Does someone get killed in the process? Is the death an accident or murder? “Who,” as L’Amour’s character says, “can say what is the destiny of any man?” That question is what’s got you hooked. Someone knows the destiny of these four men and you want to know too . . . so you go back for more.

What’s your hook? Do you have one? Do you offer your prospects something so intriguing and captivating that they have to know the rest of the story—that they can’t wait to see the deal through to the end? If you don’t have a hook, it’s time you did.

Based on what you initially say, do, hand out, mail out, promote, or distribute to ask for business, can you honestly say that you would be compelled to place an order with you? Would you be captivated by you? Would you do business with you based on the impact of your opening performance? If you’re not sure, it’s time to change the way you sell.

In the previous three chapters we discussed how to perform Acts 1 and 2 of the High Trust Selling System, which lead up to your sales offering. Let’s quickly review them here:

ACT 1: THE APPROACH

This is the process by which you predetermine who your best prospects are, and then initiate high trust relationships with them by effectively setting an appointment to meet.

ACT 2: THE INTERVIEW

This is the process that follows your Approach in which you conduct a high trust interview to secure the shared essence between you and your prospects. It is also in this Act that you establish your prospects’ needs, their buying strategies, and the emotional fulfillment you must offer in order to meet their real needs and gain their business.

And now allow me to introduce you to . . .

ACT 3: THE SOLUTION

The Presentation is about offering captivating, fulfilling solutions to your prospects in order to secure their devoted business. And that’s where applying the Law of the Hook must begin, because even if you’ve made it this far with a client, a poor presentation can quickly make a prospect disappear. That’s why making an early impact is so critical. (Remember the book analogy.) But before we get into the how-tos of Act 3, let’s first dispel some of the most common myths about presenting sales solutions.

THE HIGH TRUST SALES PYRAMID

SELLING MYTHS TO DISMISS

Since the early twenties, many who have engaged in the training of sales professionals have taught four specific strategies that are supposed to create high-impact sales openings. However, our extensive research over the last two decades no longer supports these claims as effective sales presentation techniques. The truth is that more often than not, practicing the following four questionable techniques will cause your prospects to leave the show before it’s over. Before we discuss how to hook your prospect with your sales presentation, let’s wipe the slate clean of any misguided selling notions you may have acquired along the way.

Selling Myth #1: Open-ended questions are more effective than closed-ended. Generally speaking, closed-ended questions can be answered with a single yes or no and little explanation, whereas open-ended questions elicit more information from the client. The status quo for years has been that asking questions that let the prospect do the talking is always best. However, this is not the case. The fact is that different sales situations require different types of questions, and to be effective you cannot resolve yourself to one form of questioning.

Remember that your goal is to learn the needs and values that your prospect holds most dear, and this will sometimes require you to be very focused and specific, asking direct questions to ascertain specific answers. And there will be situations that demand you to simply ask and listen. But the point is to not worry about asking the right type of question, and instead focus on getting to truly know the prospect, using whatever questions are most appropriate.

My company’s research has shown that, as a general rule, the closer a salesperson gets to closing a deal, the less appropriate open-ended questions become. Think of it this way: If you were spending time with someone with whom you were interested in furthering a relationship, your conversations would not remain on the weather and the last good movie each of you saw. If you were interested in building a long-term relationship with the individual, you’d eventually ask more specific questions that help you get to know the person, not just about the person. For example, knowing that an individual is a high school teacher gives you some insight about the person. But knowing that an individual became a high school teacher because he or she is passionate about helping teens discover and develop their gifts helps you know what makes that individual unique; it helps you understand something he or she values in life.

Selling Myth #2: You must demonstrate strong product knowledge. It’s good to know all the ins and outs of your product or service, and there is a right time and place to offer that information. But the fact is that if buyers don’t trust you or perceive that they stand to receive enough value from a purchase, product knowledge means little. Besides, in most cases premature product pitches lack empathy and are usually interpreted by the buyer as a unilateral tactic. Isn’t that what you think when someone does it to you?

As we discussed in the Law of Courtship, it doesn’t matter how much you can tell a person about your product or service if you haven’t first determined whether your product or service truly meets a real need or fulfills a real value of the prospect. You’re just blowing smoke otherwise, and that will quickly turn anyone off.

Selling Myth #3: Features close more sales. Similar to Myth #2, telling a prospect about the “wonderful” features of your product is not an alluring sales technique. The bottom line is that most buyers don’t care about features until they know you care about them. Initially, they care about their values, and if you’re not speaking on that level, you’re communicating on a different wavelength. I’m not telling you to be ignorant of the capabilities and features of your product, but I am telling you that you need to get rid of the notion that people are thrilled to hear about all the “stuff” that your product can do. As we’ve already said, that stuff doesn’t matter if it doesn’t in some way touch the prospect’s values or needs. Trying to use features to sell your product is usually selfish and rarely successful.

Selling Myth #4: Always be closing. To date, I have personally read or heard over seventy-five different closing techniques. If used today, most would have a negative impact in a selling situation. We have the Alternative of Choice technique, The Hot Potato, Assumptive Close, The Shoe on the Other Foot, The Boomerang, The Take Away, The What Would You Do Now, The Ben Franklin, The Social Proof, The Authoritative, The Bank Account, The Ego Enhancer—and a host of others. You could probably name a few more. And most of the sales training out there suggests that you need to constantly be rotating through these different closing techniques at different stages of the selling process in order to be an effective sales professional—as if your job is to somehow discover which closing technique works by matter of trial and error. I completely disagree with this notion.

The truth is that prospects actually close their own sales if you offer valuable solutions to their real needs and values.

For starters, such techniques take your attention off of what prospects are conveying to you—namely their needs and values. Secondly, the closing of a sale, if it’s done correctly, should never have to be forced or feel like a roll of the dice. Closing a sale should happen naturally because what is offered is highly captivating. Like a great movie, a prospect should be compelled to see the whole thing through. The truth is that prospects actually close their own sales if you offer valuable solutions to their real needs and values. And as you’ve already learned from the high trust interview in the previous chapter, prospects will tell you the precise benefits they are looking for from your product or service if you take the time to ask them in a professional, strategic manner. That means that when you move to your sales presentation, you can be confident that you’re offering your prospects exactly what they’ve told you they want. That’s what the Law of the Hook is all about.

Consider your last car-buying experience. What approach did the salesperson take? Did he sit you down and immediately start spouting knowledge of all the neat gadgets on the inside and outside of the car? Did it impress you? Did it make you want to buy a car from him . . . or just pull off one of his socks and stuff it in his mouth? Did he even ask you what you really wanted? I think most of us have had a car-buying experience like that. Do we go back to that guy for our next car purchase? Do we refer all our friends to that salesperson and that dealership? Most likely not.

But then again, maybe you’ve had a great experience buying a car. Maybe the salesperson sat you down and asked you what’s most important about a car to you? Maybe she shared with you her own frustrations about the car-buying experience and gave you her commitment to doing her best to make your experience enjoyable? Maybe she never even talked about all the gadgets on the car until she had listened to you explain what you wanted in a car. Would you want to buy a car from someone like that? Would you even consider her recommendation for a different car that she thought might be more suitable for your needs? And when you bought a car from her, would you be happy to go back to her again and refer your family and friends to her when they were in the market for a new car? Most likely. And therein lies the beauty of following the Law of the Hook. The power of the early impact often seals the deal.

MAKING AN EARLY IMPACT

We all know that first impressions cannot always be trusted. Haven’t you ever met someone and quickly made some conclusions about him that you later found to be completely off base? It happens all the time, doesn’t it? At a meeting, a corporate executive meets an executive from a competing firm and immediately assumes he’s obtuse and a little suspect of character. After all, he’s the enemy. Then, three weeks later, the two cross paths while at a movie with their kids, and they hit it off. They find out that they actually graduated from the same university and their kids currently attend the same elementary school. It changes everything.

Initial perceptions about people are often inaccurate because they are based on shallow knowledge—simply knowing things about a person. And when you consider the stereotype that most associate with salespeople, it becomes increasingly important that you overcome the sleazy, selfish-salesperson stigma as soon as possible. To form an accurate impression of a person, you must go deeper—you must get to know him, his values and desires. That means you must not only get to know your prospects and clients, but you must also allow them to know you as accurately and as early as possible. The best way to do this is by making an early impact that creates a positive and lasting impression.

To ensure that your prospects are hooked and remain hooked for the right reasons, remember the acronym, I.M.P.A.C.T.

Inspirational: If you’re not inspired by what you are offering a prospect, then he or she won’t be inspired to keep listening to what you have to say. This goes back to the reason you are in sales in the first place. Make a promise to yourself to only sell what you’re inspired to sell.

Motivational: To create a resounding impact means you must motivate your prospects to act. When a prospect can experience values gratification, the sale is nearly always a done deal.

Professional: It goes without saying that everything about you must be carried out with the utmost professionalism in your sales presentation. That doesn’t mean being stuffy or stoic. It simply means that you can’t afford to skimp when it comes to dealing with the prospects and clients you desire to serve for life. Think of it this way: If they are the best, they deserve the best.

Applicable: We’ve already discussed this in great detail, but it bears repeating. Determine beforehand whether the sales effort is truly worth your and your prospect’s time, and move forward if and only if the presentation can lead to a long-term, lucrative relationship for both sides.

Considerate: Don’t be so revved up to offer your solution that you are inconsiderate to your prospect. Be excited at what you have to offer, but also be willing to listen to what your prospect has to say. Always bear in mind that your most loyal clients will also be your friends and therefore should be treated as such from the very beginning.

Trustworthy: The bottom line is that your offering must be sincere if it is to make a measurable impact. Remember that even if you are a trustworthy person, if your product is not reliable, you are not reliable. Make sure that both you and what you sell are aboveboard and worthy to be trusted.

I share the elements of the I.M.P.A.C.T. acronym with you because I want you to fully understand what is behind the scenes of a captivating sales presentation so that when you are ready to offer your prospects attractive solutions to their needs, you do so at the right pace and with the right motives.

OFFERING SIGNIFICANT SOLUTIONS

Act 3 is one of the shortest components of the High Trust Selling System but it’s the most critical for creating a lasting IMPACT. That’s because it’s during your initial sales presentation that you finally get to shine. In fact, if you’ve done the preliminary work of ascertaining your prospects’ values and needs, and you are confident that your product or service can fulfill them, your sales presentation should be like offering a well-thought-out gift to a friend. And like choosing the perfect giftwrap, you must ensure that the words you choose enhance your prospects’ enthusiasm to receive the gift.

One of the greatest pieces of advice I ever received was very early in my career. One of my first mentors told me that I should never have to wing it when it came to presenting something that would make the sale. It was soon after receiving that advice that I took one of my greatest professional strides. I began to take the needs that my prospects shared with me during high trust interviews and created scripts for how my product or relationship could address them. I also began compiling the needs, figuring that many of them would be similar. I jotted them down in my “Success Journal” along with the scripts that I had written to address them. I then recorded the scripts on tape, ten times each, and listened to the tape until I could recite them professionally and naturally.

Please understand that knowing my scripts word for word was never my goal, and that wouldn’t have been the right goal anyway. When it comes to sales presentation success, memorization is not the key: knowing what to say is—and that’s what Act 3 is all about.

In order to present well, you have to be thinking like your clients ahead of time. You have to put yourself in their shoes and determine what you would ask and desire in the same situation. When you understand your prospects’ greatest needs and values, you can design an educated script that allows you to prepare to address them naturally, professionally, and confidently. That way, when you conduct a sales presentation, you aren’t fumbling with words or making offers that aren’t valid. Let me give you an example of how this worked for me when I was new to sales.

At the age of twenty-two, I was terrified to start my first sales job. All I didn’t need (but often got) was a prospect telling me she wanted to work with someone with a lot of experience. I didn’t have any. But I knew that if I was going to have an impact I would somehow need to be able to address this need that my prospects were conveying to me. I knew I needed to be prepared to solve the need before the next time it was expressed. As a result, I sat down and within an hour had the following script practiced and ready to go:

“While I might be new to the mortgage business, I am not new to the idea of taking great care of my customers. In fact, for the last six years, I have been instrumental in helping a multistore sporting-goods chain build the systems that enable them to take great care of their customers. The reason I chose ABC Financial as my employer is that they’ve been in the mortgage business for over ten years, have helped over fifty thousand families successfully buy homes, and are committed to the same level of customer service that I am. And I believe that their experience combined with my own will ultimately produce the results you desire.”

I never had to waffle on that need again. In fact, within about two months, I had recorded over thirty additional needs that my prospects had expressed to me, with solution scripts to address each of them. As a result, my sales soared and I remained one of the top producers in my company every month from that point forward. I know you can do the same thing. Start keeping track of every need your prospects (and existing clients) express to you. Write every one of them down; then create a script that conveys how you will address and solve those needs. (Note that integrity is important here—don’t write a script that expresses something you cannot or will not do). If you were to create one new script a week and practice it until your delivery was natural, I am certain you would elevate to the next level of sales success.

As a quick reminder, here are some of the most common needs that you are likely to hear prospects say they have of you. While I share these with you so that you have a clear picture of what we’re talking about, don’t limit your prospects to these needs. Just listen to what they tell you in the high trust interview and apply those to the scripts you create.

• experience

• knowledge

• integrity

• professionalism

• communication

• accessibility

• flexibility

• responsiveness

• creativity

• availability

• reliability

And, once again, here are the most common needs your prospects are likely to say they have of your product, service, or company:

• location

• delivery and turnaround

• product/technical support

• reputation

• innovation

• financial strength

• market share

• product line

• R & D (research & development)

• guarantees

Regardless of what needs and values your prospects express, the key to Act 3 is preparing solutions before presenting solutions. That’s what it takes to make a significant impact right away. And while it may take an extra commitment of time on the front end, once you gain confidence in performing Act 3, it will pay huge dividends.

Act 4: The Action

THE HIGH TRUST SALES PYRAMID

The most exciting part of any sales presentation is hearing prospects say yes after you’ve asked for their business. Once you’ve made an impact with your presentation, there will come a point when you must ask for the prospect’s business. If you’ve done everything right to this point of the sales interaction, Act 4 should be easy. In fact, there will even be occasions when you don’t even have to ask for business, but only confirm what a prospect has already made known to you.

For instance, let’s say you are a contractor selling home remodeling services and a potential client—a middle-aged couple wanting to finish their basement—asks you to come and give a bid on the work. Since the couple only knows of you from some former neighbors, and you know very little of them, you might begin an informal High Trust Interview while you walk with them through their home. If they tell you that the basement is for their son who is graduating from college soon, you know family is very important to them. If they then tell you that he will graduate in four months, you know that utmost efficiency is also very important for this particular sale. You might continue your informal interview by asking about their long-term plans for the home, or even about their retirement plans. Then you’d obviously discuss their desires for the details of the basement itself, which may include asking what types of interests and hobbies their son has, or even his plans for work—all of which would help you learn not only about the individuals but also give you the means to customize your service to perfectly fit their and their son’s desires and needs. Throughout this process, you will not only have built trust with the potential client, you will have gained the resources to make an effective, captivating presentation that has a high likelihood of being well-received—quite possibly without you even asking for the business.

The following is a very simple, four-step process for actively shifting top prospects to trusting partners by keeping them captivated.

Step 1: Know when to ask. Only at the end of a sales presentation, when you have thoroughly completed Acts 1 through 3 of the HTSS, should you even think about asking for business. In rare cases, a prospect may move you to Act 4 much quicker than normal, but usually that’s because a level of trust already existed in your relationship. In typical scenarios, when you’ve taken a prospect from the approach to the interview to the presentation, and all signs are still go, all that’s left for you to do is determine the appropriate time to ask. Remember, you can have confidence that, more often than not, your prospect will be ready to buy if you’ve come this far. Nonetheless, I’ve found that knowing how to read a prospect’s buying signals helps to avoid an awkward situation. Here are a few to look and listen for:

A. Positive body language

• Leaning forward, smiling, nodding the head, becoming more active in the conversation.

B. Price interest: the prospect asking,

• “How much does it cost?”

• “What is the price of this one?”

• “Is that all it costs?”

C. Value Interest: the prospect asking,

• “You would do that for me?”

• “It can do all of that?”

• “It comes with all of that?”

D. Questions about deliverables: the prospect asking,

• “How soon can I have it?”

• “When could it be delivered?”

• “Could I have it by then?”

• “Could you do it by then?”

E. Request for referrals: the prospect asking,

• “Who else is using this that I know?”

• “Do you have a list of clients whom you’ve served?”

F. Positive comments

• “That sounds like what I have been looking for.”

• “I love the way this feels.”

• “This is top-quality stuff.”

• “I can’t believe after all these years that I don’t have one of these.”

There are many more signals that will help you indicate when a prospect is likely to buy, but the key to receiving a positive response is to have done the legwork up front.

In our illustration, the couple’s positive reaction to your needs-specific solutions for customizing their basement would indicate that they are ready to move forward. Or they may ask something less subtle, like, “When could you start your work?” Either way, the couple’s positive reactions to your needs-specific suggestions—before a bid is even made on the job—would be a green light indicator that they are willing to move forward.

In the end, Act 4 should seem like the natural progression of your relationship, the imminent result of all you’ve done thus far. Trust me, when you are careful to follow the HTSS, and your audience is captivated, you will begin to look forward to asking for business.

Step 2: Know how to ask. When you’re ready to ask for business, you would say something like, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith, based on what I have proposed [what you’ve seen, how you feel, your evident interest], do you feel we have a basis for doing business together?” This is the only closing question you need if you have done everything right to this point, if you’ve established a level of trust. Nothing fancy, not seventy-five different closing techniques to memorize. One simple, straightforward question that elicits one of two answers: yes or no. If a prospect’s answer is yes, your high trust relationship is off and running. But don’t forget—even if prospects answer no at this point and you’re confident they are the type of clients you desire, you can still turn things around. We’ll discuss this in a minute. First let’s finish out the steps that follow when a prospect says yes.

Step 3: Know what to say next. It’s important to maintain the momentum of the relationship by agreeing on what the next step is. I always advise my students to try to avoid turning this part over to the prospect. I am a big believer that you must maintain control from this point to the end by keeping the dialogue alive. One of the most effective ways to do so is by reoffering your Unique Value Proposition that you originally offered in your Approach. Remember, if you resolve to give, you will receive.

For the couple in our illustration that might mean reiterating the original desires that they told you they wanted for the basement and for their son. Touching on this again will help remind them that your focus is first on their needs and values.

Step 4: Know what to do next. Every new client relationship must have an active growth plan if it’s to flourish from the start. Regular partnership planning keeps the energy alive in a high trust relationship and fosters clients’ desire to continue giving you their business. I’ll go deep on this in the final chapters, but for now understand that it’s most effective to set up a series of contacts up front so that you can focus and grow the relationship early on.

In our illustration, that would mean sitting down with the couple and determining a remodeling schedule that they are comfortable with and that is feasible to you, the contractor. From there you would set up not only a series of 2 or 3 progress meetings during the remodeling process, you would also indicate your desire to continue a mutually beneficial relationship with the couple and their friends and family in the coming years after the basement is finished.

THE INTERMISSION

We would all like to be in a position where we don’t get objections. But no matter what you do, people will always fear change and will often find some reason to object—even if it’s just out of habit. That said, however, the number-one reason salespeople get objections is because they haven’t effectively followed the selling process you’ve learned in this book. In other words, objections are mostly the fault of the seller.

Objections are the symptoms of a poor selling process.

If you do too much talking during a presentation and throw lots of features their way, it increases prospects’ sensitivity to price. If you talk too much about unrelated benefits, it increases prospects’ sensitivity to integrity. If you don’t thoroughly present solutions, it increases prospects’ concern for capacity or capability. What I’m getting at is that objections are the symptoms of a poor selling process, which in the end merely propagates a lack of trust. But if you master the process of approaching, interviewing, presenting, and asking for business, you will reduce your objections significantly, if not eliminate them all together.

Nonetheless, if you understand how to address and offer a solution for a need that arises from a high trust interview, you can effectively address objections the same way when they do arise. By taking time to ascertain the root of an objection—by asking simple questions like you did in your interview—you can determine whether it’s connected to a real need that you can solve. Once you’ve managed objections a few times you will find that most are directly connected to prospects’ needs and can be solved by preparing simple scripts (which you may have already written and practiced). Before long, most of your objection management duties will simply become objection prevention—an intermission in your sales performance, but certainly not the conclusion.

There will be an occasion, however, when a bull’s-eye prospect will say no to your solution offering, despite effective preparation, presentation, and objection management. At this point, it’s important to remember that if you thought enough of the prospect to target him in the first place, you should not give up immediately. While it’s important that you don’t spend an unreasonable amount of time fostering relationships with prospects that have yet to provide business, it is certainly reasonable to maintain regular contact with such prospects in hopes of eventually securing high trust and, subsequently, their business. I didn’t know it at the time, but this is precisely what I did when I sent my prospect a series of value-adding messages each month over an eighteen-month period of time before I got my first sale from her. (You’ll recall I shared this story in Chapter 9.)

When it comes to maintaining contact with top prospects that are not ready to do business, I recommend that you keep two things in mind. First, make certain that time committed to investing in the prospect wouldn’t be better spent on deepening relationships with existing high trust clients. Then, once that has been established, commit to adding value to the prospect through letters, phone calls, E-mails, etc., once a month for a minimum of two years. While some prospects will commit their business to you in less time, many of the top prospects in your field will have an established relationship with a competitor; and that usually takes more time to overcome.

Consider two salespeople, we’ll call them Susan and Brian, who work for the same company. Both prospect and sell from the same number of pre-established leads every week, and both have the same resources at their disposal in terms of marketing and follow-up material. However, Susan makes three times as much as Brian does—and that has been the case for the last three years. Why? For one main reason.

When Brian receives an objection from a prospect, he takes it personally and lets the relationship go. As he sees it, his job is to find those prospects that will meet his needs—who will find nothing objectionable about him, his selling techniques, or his product. And that’s why Brian doesn’t do much selling—or rather, why Brian’s prospects don’t do much buying, at least from him.

Susan, on the other hand, goes about things differently. When she receives an objection from a potential client, she sees it as an opportunity to improve, an opportunity to better customize her offering and thus more thoroughly meet the potential clients’ needs and secure their business. In fact, many of her stable clients today—ten of them to be exact—are actually former prospects of Brian’s who had objections that he was unwilling to manage. Not only do those clients provide her business that keeps her well ahead of her colleague, they also make up nearly half of her entire client base from which she generates three times as much sales and income as Brian—and she spends half as much time in the office.

Remember that the goal of all objection management is to foster a deeper level of trust and maintain the captivation of your audience. In most cases, you will not have a difficult time accomplishing this if you’ve been careful to follow the High Trust Selling System. Ultimately, if your audience is truly captivated—whether immediately following your solution offering or after some effective objection management and follow up—they will want to stay with you to the end. And in the elite echelon of high trust selling that means your business will realize the full value of their relationships. That is the ultimate goal of every sales relationship.

That brings us to the subject of the next chapter: the Law of Incubation, which says that the most profitable relationships mature over time.