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Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to
your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
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List Builder’s Survival Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival and now
once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Igor: Welcome back to another edition of the List Building Lifestyle with your
host, Igor Kheifets. Ever since I started online, I've heard this term 'closer'.
People who are "closers", they were always celebrated because everybody thought
that you had to be closer in order to make a lot of money. And for years, I tried
to learn every trick that I could find on becoming a better closer. I would study
some NLP. I would study copywriting. I would do anything that I could, and I would
invest in any product or training that I could in order to become better at
closing people, at making people give me money, or making people say 'yes' to an
offer. In fact, I even invested in Jordan Belfort's The Wolf of Wall Street
course, The Straight Line System at one point. And that's a $2,000 investment.
Now, it's a great course, of course, and its sole focus is to help you become a
better closer, because that's what Jordan Belfort's famous for, right? He had a
team of closers working for him and he claims that, back in the day, all he needed
was for you to be hungry, young, and stupid, and he could teach you how to close.

Now, I found out eventually, that there is something wrong with this mentality
because any time that I shifted into the closing mode, I became so desperate for
the sale that this desperation almost transferred onto the other side of my
computer screen, whether I was writing an email, or maybe having a Skype chat, or
maybe a Skype call with my prospect, and the prospect would pretty much just back
out. And that would leave me frustrated for days, because I would beat myself up
for pretty much a screw in the sale.

Now, like I said, this is the wrong way to go about closing sales in your
business. In fact, if you are selling business opportunities, if you're marketing
business opportunities, more often than not, as soon as you try to "close"
somebody, they start coming up with objections and excuses, and they start telling
you how they don't have the money, or they don't have the experience, or they're
afraid it won't work for them, and so on and so forth. And what I discovered is
that there is a shift that is required of you, that is a mindset shift that you
can go through that will completely eliminate this neediness from your marketing
and will make people actually feel comfortable doing business with you, and even
change the conversation to a point where they're the ones asking you to basically
show them what you got. And the shift happens way before the sale, which is the
beautiful part because there's literally nothing that stops you from shifting
right now. And so, the shift has to go from trying to close a sale to simply
starting a sales conversation.

Now a sales conversation is a conversation where the prospect is going to say a
'yes' or a 'no' to an offer that he or she will be presented with at the end that
conversation. But before the offer will be presented to the prospect, there's
another stage that has to take place and that is to identify whether you and the
prospect are a good fit with each other. In other words, your job as a marketer is
to not close more sales, it is to start more conversations. And these
conversations have only one goal when they start out and that is to find out
whether or not this is a good fit. Quite literally, you want to identify the
problems that the prospect is experiencing and the solution you offer and to see
whether this is a great match.

Now, if it is a great match, the prospect will be excited to hear what you got and
all you have to do is get the prospects commitment before you share your offer to
tell you whether it's a good fit or not. Basically, the prospect does say 'yes' or
'no' at the end of that conversation, because 'maybe' is not an answered. 'Maybe'
is not an acceptable answer for a sales person. And so, if you make this
transition from marketing to close more sales to marketing in order to start more
conversations that lead to discovery, discovery conversations, and then these
conversations will lead to either a positive or negative response from your
prospect. You will notice how there is literally no neediness that you will be
projecting and that will lead to closing more sales.

Now, the approach is very counter-intuitive to most approaches out there. In fact,
again, observing this industry, observing the business opportunity space in the
recent years, I see more and more sales coaches and sales trainers and closers pop
up all the time. And I've had a few of these closers on my show as guests. And let
me tell you, these guys know what they're doing. They are extremely skilled at
getting people to say 'yes'. And to be honest, I am a bit jealous with their super
power, because I always wanted to be one of those slick talkers, people who are
able to get other folks to say 'yes' to virtually anything they want to sell.
However, when I went into selling the high ticket coaching program, something I've
talked about on the show many, many times and shared lessons from that, I learned
immediately that trying to close people, trying to push them into that big
commitment, almost never worked for me. I don't know if it could be working for
other people, perhaps. But for me, personally, pushing people into a big
commitment, into a large financial investment, and when I say large, of course,
it's relative to the prospect. So for somebody $100 is a large commitment, for
another person $10,000, and for another person it could be $100,000. So whatever
that large commitment is, pushing people into a commitment in any case always just
backfired for me, always. Because first of, it would change the dynamic of the
entire conversation from being this pleasant, easygoing conversation to being this
awkward and high-pressure conversation, which I really hated, because I just hate
pressure. I just oftentimes I don't know how to deal with it, so I want to
eliminate pressure, both for myself and for my prospect, as much as possible. And
one of the ways to do it is to not try to close a sale, but rather have a
discovery conversation where you are able to identify whether or not it's a good
fit, and then, the prospect simply has to say 'yes' or 'no' without any sort of
high stakes or whatever.

Another thing I really hated about pushing people into making a buying decision is
I felt like I was manipulating them. I felt like I was not allowing them to make a
choice. And it goes back to this old saying that says, "People love to buy, but
they hate being sold to." And so, think about it. When you are pressuring somebody
into a large commitment, if you're literally trying to manipulate them into a
'yes', they feel like they're being led to it. They feel that they have not really
made a decision on their own. However, if you would just started a conversation,
identified whether this is a great fit, and then presented them with a choice,
when they say 'yes' or 'no', it's them making a decision. And that 'yes', it
actually sticks. No kidding. This 'yes' will stick ten times better than any
high-pressure 'yes' you'll ever get from a prospect. This prospect, the one who
says 'yes' because they want to say 'yes' is usually going to end up becoming your
raving fan and will keep following you for years, and years, and years. And that
is why ever since this discovery for me, I went ahead and I completely changed and
adapted all my sales processes and every possible venture that I've ever started
into one of, "Here is what we got. Here is what this can do for you. Here's why
you should act now. And if you don't want to act now, it's perfectly fine." And by
doing so, and by removing the pressure from the prospect, I was able to easily
build quite a few businesses to the six-figure and multiple-six-figures sizes
without any high-pressure sales. It was really all built on goodwill. And this is
really my advice to you in this episode, is to truly consider the difference
between a marketer who is constantly trying to get a sale, and that marketer is
needy. And that neediness, the prospects can smell it like shit on a shoe. They
can really smell it and they will not do business with you if you're needy. To
shifting that towards starting a sales conversation, identifying the prospects
problems and desires, and seeing whether your solution is a great fit, and if it
is, simply presenting the prospect with a choice to say 'yes' or 'no'. And if they
choose say 'no', quite literally telling them, "If you want to say 'no', that's
perfectly fine. No hard feelings." And you will see how your business will boom as
a result of that, because the prospects will no longer feel like they're being
pushed into a decision, like they feel with virtually every other marketer and
every other business that they encounter. That's why everybody hates sales, by the
way. That's why everybody really hates being sold to. That's why when they kind of
step into a store, or whatever, like a shop, they have the sales representative as
come approaching them, asking, "Do you need any help?" They're immediately saying,
"No, no, no." Even if they do need help, because they "don't want to be sold to".
So create the other side of that. Creates a different environment within the
marketplace, and you'll notice how tons and tons of prospects will cling to you
and will insist on doing business with you, simply because you don't pressure them
into a decision.

Thanks for listening to The List Building Lifestyle Show, make sure to subscribe on iTunes
or Google. Play to never miss an episode because who knows just one conversion tactic
we share on the show might double your list and double your business. Download the
transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at listbuilderslifestyleshow.com and
don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy of “The Wealthy List Builder’s Survival
Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival . This is Igor Kheifets until next time we talk, have a good one.

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