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FEARLESS In Qualifying Prospects and Handling Objections Copyright © 2005 By Paul Borgese [email protected] www.FEARMarketing.com Sales Career Training Institute www.SalesCareerTraining.com No part of this material may be reproduced, transmitted or presented in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher. It is licensed solely to the registered subscriber who downloaded it. To encourage others to download this document, please suggest that they visit http://www.FEARSelling.com for their own licensed copy. Distribution and/or duplication of any part of this material by any form or means is a violation of copyright law. This includes electronic and mechanical means such as photocopying, recording, email and computer storage and retrieval systems. Sales Career Training Institute 20 River Court, Suite 1007 Jersey City, NJ 07310 201.533.9282 To license and/or private label this material for use at your company, please call 201.533.9282 or email the author at [email protected].

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About The FEARLESS Series of Special Reports Typically, we recommend that salespeople and marketers who want to improve their selling skills should consider studying FEAR Selling since its individual components work synergistically as an effective holistic system. However, we recognize that there is a demand by some for help in specific areas of the sales process, and so we have excerpted and modified sections of the FEAR Selling System into these four Special Reports:

- FEARLESS Cold Calling - FEARLESS Relationship Building - FEARLESS In Qualifying Prospects and Handling Objections

Each Special Report provides an introduction to some of the basic philosophy that underpins the FEAR Selling System and then focuses on the relevant process. For more information on FEAR Selling, please visit http:// www.FEARSelling.com.

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Who Needs FEAR Selling? Life is all about sales. You must persuade: · · · · · · ·

your kids to go to bed early your boss to give you a raise someone to give you a job your staff to work harder your husband to mow the lawn this weekend your wife to spend less money your car repairman to do a good job.

The FEAR Selling System has been designed to help anyone who is trying to persuade someone else – anybody else - to their way of thinking. We will focus on what you should do in your role as a salesperson, but don’t forget that these strategies and tactics are applicable to any situation in which you must try to persuade someone to do something.

Why Everyone Needs To Learn How to Sell Leadership, management and sales all use the same set of people skills. Some might say that a boss has more control over her employees than a salesperson has over his prospects, but only the illusion of control separates the two situations. Many managers believe that because of the employer/employee relationship they have a certain amount of power over their employees, and that is true – but that power is limited. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 4

We are a mobile workforce. It is a freelance economy with no loyalties. Unless you are in Japan where there is a cultural expectation of lifetime employment – and even that sense of entitlement is fading fast due to economic pressures - you must remember that all jobs are temporary. If you don’t perform, or if your boss doesn’t like you, you could be let go. Similarly, if you as an employee find a better job tomorrow, you can quit and move on. In today’s mobile economy, if you want to stay employed you have to possess the skills that are in demand – and be able to persuade others that you have those skills. So, persuasion skills are more important than ever. Competition is fierce. If you are looking for another job, remember, there are dozens of other candidates with similar backgrounds to yours. The question is: how can you position yourself so that you stand out from the crowd? Similarly, as a salesperson, don’t be fooled into thinking that your product/ service is so much better than other competing products/services. It is difficult nowadays to differentiate one product from another in the mind of your prospect – but this is exactly what you have to do.

Learning What They Don’t Teach You In Business School At the time of the writing of this second edition of FEAR Selling, most business schools in the United States still do not offer a substantive sales or sales management course in their curriculum. From our experience in reviewing a great number of business school marketing courses, we have found that many of them do not adequately _____________________________________________________________________________________ 5

cover the human dimension of marketing and sales. They do not pay enough attention to the consumer-behavior aspects of the process. Marketing and sales skills– and the core skills of writing and speaking which underlie the marketing/sales processes - are crucial in today’s service economy. Yet one of the most common complaints of employers is that their employees do not have good communication skills. They can’t write well or present well. They lack good basic persuasion skills. This is why the Scholastic Aptitude Test (S.A.T.) is being modified to test writing and other language knowledge such as grammar. The S.A.T. is being changed in order to meet the needs of a changing world. Most undergraduate colleges and universities require that applicants provide S.A.T. scores. In our discussions with employers, we have discovered that many companies are already – or are planning to – require job applicants - including salespeople - to submit their S.A.T. scores. They want people who can write well, present well and persuade effectively. FEAR Selling will help you in all of these areas of persuasion.

Political Skills Versus Technical Skills In our early surveys of salespeople, we asked how many of them had taken a psychology course or had taken part in persuasive communications activities such as joining the debate team at school. Fewer than 14% responded that they had. Understanding human psychology, specifically how to influence others, is the key to sales and marketing. Yet our business schools focus more on technical rather than political (or people) skills. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 6

Why is that? Well, for one, it is easier to test technical skills like how to value a company by using the mathematics of discounted cash flows than it is to test political skills like making a sales presentation that will close the sale. Valuing a company by means of a certain mathematical technique has only one right answer. But judging whether or not a sales presentation was effective is very subjective. Focused as we are on measuring progress through testing, we gravitate toward teaching subjects that can easily be tested. It is much easier to attach a grade to one’s knowledge of financial mathematics than to the person’s actionable understanding of sales skills. Similarly, it is relatively easy to teach technical skills such as the steps you should take to launch a new product or do an initial public offering. But political persuasion skills are far more elusive. How do you teach someone to conjure the magic ingredients of charisma, rapport and credibility? This is where the FEAR Selling System comes in. This System is designed to fill this all-too-common gap in our formal education.

Who Leads? Sales or Finance As we mentioned earlier, the same persuasive skills needed to lead are the same ones that are needed to sell. Interestingly, during our research into sales effectiveness, we also discovered that there has been a change in the types of people chosen to lead organizations over the last three decades. It used to be that financial professionals – chief financial officers (CFOs), treasurers, chief accountants - were the ones who would rise to the top _____________________________________________________________________________________ 7

leadership positions more often than any other professionals in a company. Nowadays, however, a majority of leadership slots in Fortune 500 companies are filled with individuals with sales backgrounds. To run complex organizations, you need significant political skills – skills similar to those that a salesperson needs to persuade.

What Is FEAR Selling? If you’re reading this right now, odds are that you have hit a brick wall – or at least some of the pretty big speed bumps and potholes that await anyone on the road to success in sales. Whether you are a novice salesperson or a battle-weary veteran, FEAR Selling can help you. First off, let me say that we don’t presume to have all the right answers. Anyone that tells you that their system works for every type of product or service, in any economic environment and with every type of buyer (and many desperate sales consultants will tell you that their system will) – is selling you a dream. As we will see, the famous Greek philosopher, Socrates, knew how to get to the truth – and it’s not by having the right answers but rather by asking the right questions. And what we can guarantee you is that by the end of FEAR Selling, you will know most – if not all – of the right questions to ask, and perhaps more importantly, how to ask them. FEAR Selling is a flexible framework that you can adapt to your product or service, depending upon the specific economic conditions, competitive ___________________________________________________________________________________ 8

situations, and buyer objections that you face in your day-to-day life as a salesperson.

How Was FEAR Selling Developed? In my more than 16 years as a business consultant, I have found that increasing sales is the biggest challenge that my clients have to face. Cracking the sales code has been a problem I have been grappling with since my earliest days in the business world. So early on, I began to study the sales process from several angles. First, I first studied at the Wharton School of Business and focused on marketing. Oddly enough, at that time, most business schools, including Wharton, didn’t offer courses in sales. And even as I write this, most business schools still do not have serious sales or sales management programs. I quickly learned that sales is all about psychology and communication skills, so I concurrently enrolled in the liberal arts program at the University of Pennsylvania to develop my persuasion skills as a writer and speaker. I continued my education by obtaining a master’s degree in English at Cambridge University as a British Marshall Scholar, a master’s degree in public administration at the University of Pennsylvania as a Fels Scholar, and finally an MBA in marketing and finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. All told, up until my last day of graduation, I had spent nearly 14 years of my life and had obtained more than $250,000 worth of education – but all that education didn’t seem to do me much good in the real world. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 9

I obtained most of my five degrees on a part-time basis, while I worked fulltime as a marketing and salesperson. My formal education had given me a good foundation in sales, marketing, communication and psychology theory, but I was still fairly clueless when it came to applying all I had learned about human nature when I was under pressure in front of a prospect. It was depressing when I finally realized that even after all that time and money spent, I had not even scratched the surface of all there was to know about the selling process. It was only later when I gathered the experts necessary to piece together the entire FEAR Selling System did I appreciate how important this formal foundational education was.

Sales Training, Sales Training Everywhere I next began to read all the books, newsletters and self-study programs that I could get my hands on. I listened to all the popular and most of the lesserknown sales tape series in my car, on the train, anytime I had a free moment. I spent tens of thousands of dollars attending courses, not only on sales but on psychology, marketing, philosophy, leadership and business strategy. As you will see, this multidisciplinary approach to sales is what makes FEAR Selling more powerful in influencing buyer behavior than the majority of other systems that you may have already encountered. My results as a marketer and salesperson improved significantly because of all of this reading and training, but I knew I could do better. I knew that I was familiar with the individual tactics that worked but wasn’t really sure when to use them or if they could be more effective if I used them in a different way. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 10

Piecing Together The Sales Puzzle My situation reminded me of that old Indian tale about the blind men who bump into an elephant and try to figure out what it is by touching the different parts of the body. One of the blind men puts his arms around the elephant’s legs and thinks it’s a tree. Another feels its long trunk and thinks that it is a snake. A third feels the elephant’s side and thinks it’s a wall. I felt like those blind men, fumbling around in the dark. I knew bits of the sales puzzle, but I also knew that the big picture was eluding me. And because I didn’t have the proper perspective, I was blind to the real power of having an effective sales process. I knew tactics but didn’t know how to piece them together into an effective overall strategy. But I at least knew that I didn’t know. And I knew that I needed a system.

Surveys From The Trenches About six years ago, my colleagues and I at the Sales Career Training Institute decided to conduct a series of surveys, which our organization continues to build upon even today to keep up with trends in marketing and sales. The purpose of the surveys was to determine the biggest problems that salespeople were encountering as well as the main reasons why buyers weren’t buying. Following is a summary of the seven most prevalent problems encountered by salespeople as reported by sales managers and salespeople: 1) Our sales cycle is too long. 2) Our closing ratio of proposals to actual sales is too low. 3) Too often we are dealing with prospects that don’t have decision_____________________________________________________________________________________ 11

making power. 4) Our prospects use our quotes to get better prices from our competition. 5) We constantly must compete on price and so we must discount to win business. 6) We can’t get enough qualified leads. 7) The prospects we do get into the pipeline never seem to develop into actual sales.

These are all very common problems that salespeople encounter, and we will address each of these issues and many more as we delve into the FEAR Selling System. But we can only begin to understand how to solve these problems by studying buyer attitudes and behavior. Following is a summary of the five most prevalent reasons for not buying as reported by prospective buyers: 1) I get worried when salespeople don’t take the time to get to know my specific problem. 2) I don’t feel that salespeople have my best interests in mind. 3) I’m afraid that they won’t be able to deliver what they say they can deliver. 4) My job is on the line, so I can’t trust new vendors. 5) I don’t trust salespeople that talk at me instead of with me.

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As you can see, the majority of the answers to this survey revolve around fear and mistrust. Our research on buyer behavior and attitudes – as well as many other studies that we will reference throughout FEAR Selling – reveals that people buy emotionally rather than intellectually. The decision to buy or not to buy is more subjective than you might think. We have found that despite bidding processes and return-on-investment analyses that your prospects might demand, they typically buy based on emotions.

The Promise of the FEAR Selling System As we explore in the FEAR Selling System, one of the top reasons that salespeople fail is that they don’t have a system. Even though we suggest that you use the FEAR Selling System because of its multi-disciplinary approach to influencing human behavior and its extensive field-tested, results-oriented tactics, our greatest piece of advice is to use a system – even if it’s one that you’ve developed on your own. As difficult as it sounds, you must test and track your results to avoid wasting time with strategies and tactics that just don’t work. According to our research - as well as that of dozens of other credible sales effectiveness researchers and organizations - is that having a system – with a constant feedback loop, which will tell you if the system is working or not – is necessary if you are to achieve success in sales. FEAR Selling will take you step-by-step through such a system. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 13

Before we compiled these best-practices in sales into this edition of FEAR Selling, the Sales Career Training Institute’s students paid thousands of dollars for participating in our Webinars, teleconferences, live seminars and Boot Camp to discover the short-cuts to what works and what doesn’t when it comes to sales. Now, with help from the professional affiliates of the Sales Career Training Institute, we are able to offer this comprehensive course at a fraction of the cost of attending an SCTI-sponsored event.

The FEAR Acronym The FEAR Selling System is based on this basic concept of pacing and leading. First you must get your prospect’s attention and build trust, and then you can lead your prospect to the sale. The F and the E in the FEAR acronym are all about pacing; with the A, you will be pacing and then leading; and the R is about leading. So as a quick overview, the process is as follows: Find and Focus On Your Prospect’s Hopes and Fears: How To Uncover Your Prospect’s Emotional Hot Buttons And Use Them To Grab Their Attention Empathize With Your Prospect: How To Build Your Credibility By Making Your Prospect Feel That You Understand Their Hopes and Fears Ask The Right Questions At The Right Times In The Right Way: How To Find Out Your Prospect’s Specific Hopes And Fears That You Can Then Use To Sell To Them ___________________________________________________________________________________ 14

Reveal The Hope Of Your Solution: How To Position Your Presentation So That You Play Off of Your Prospect’s Hopes and Fears As you will see, the first three steps in the System focus more on listening while it is only at the end of the process that you launch into your presentation. Typically, salespeople use the complete opposite strategy. They talk at their prospect from the beginning without gathering the crucial information that can close the sale at the end. They immediately plunge into presenting first – providing their prospects with information without gathering the key information about their prospects’ hopes and fears that they should be inputting into their presentation. If you follow the FEAR Selling System, you will avoid this all-toocommon mistake since the System forces you to ask questions and listen upfront as much as possible.

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FEARLESS In Qualifying Prospects and Handling Objections

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You might never have been to a psychiatrist, but if you have, you probably realize that the good ones know how to ask the right questions to get you to open up to them. You as a salesperson, should think of yourself as part psychiatrist and part actor. In the Empathy Step above, we showed you how to act more interested – more concerned about your prospects’ problems, pains and fears. In a sense, to show your empathy, you have to act empathetic. Now, let’s focus on you as a psychiatrist.

Why Questions Work If you simply preach as a salesperson, you’ll be perceived as every other salesperson who focuses on their product’s features – and maybe benefits. You’ll be seen as pushing your own agenda. This is exactly what you don’t want. You want to gently guide your prospect rather than push them into buying your product. Remember, people buy for their reasons, not yours. They make decisions based on their buying criteria – they don’t decide based on the features or benefits that you think should persuade them. It’s all about their agenda, not yours. Selling benefits is often a necessary strategy when you are in marketing mode – that is, when you are casting your net wide to try to generate interest. When you are one-on-one with a prospect who shows some interest, however, it is then time to switch your focus from general benefits to their personal problems, their personal fears. Too often, salespeople keep throwing out the benefits of their products without really knowing whether or not those general benefits are indeed _____________________________________________________________________________________ 17

benefits in the eyes of the prospect on the other end of the phone or sitting across the table from them. As we discussed, the first step is to get your prospect to open up by fishing for their needs, their pains and their fears with your Prospect Fear and Hope List. Then you must get them emotionally involved in their problem to the point where you can influence them. You have to get them to a point where they acknowledge the fearful consequences of facing a future without the help of your product or the hopeful consequences of a future with your product/service. Behind every problem and every need, there is an underlying fear. Behind every objection, there is a fear. Your objective is to uncover those fears. How do you do that? Questions. You must ask much more than you tell. So err on the side of asking questions.

What Questions Will Do For You There are three main benefits to asking questions: 1) questions will make you seem genuinely interested in the your prospect and their problems. As we discussed in the Empathy Step above, many people long simply to be heard and understood. By focusing on your prospect and their problems through questions, you will show that you genuinely care about hearing their problems. And you should genuinely care, because you want to find out as much information as you can about their ___________________________________________________________________________________ 18

problems – especially how they perceive their problems. 2) questions will enable you to gather information which you can then use to position your product or service more effectively when you do so towards the end of the selling process. Information is power. And as we have covered elsewhere – especially in The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling section, don’t assume that you have all the information about a person’s problems. You need to ask questions at the right time about the right things in order to get the information you need to make the sale. 3) questions will make your prospect aware of the consequences of their actions or inactions. At the end of the day, you will not be able to push your prospect into the sale. This is what most people do. We have worked with countless salespeople who think that their product is the answer to their prospect’s problem, and they push and push and push to show their prospect that they have the answer. But people resist, especially when you push too hard. That’s why you must use questions not only to find out about your prospects’ problems but also to make your prospect aware of the consequences of their actions or rather inactions, that is, what could happen to them if they don’t buy your product. So let’s get started…

All Questions Aren’t Equal As the sales researcher, Neil Rackham, explains in his popular book, SPIN Selling, some types of questions are more powerful than others. Rackham _____________________________________________________________________________________ 19

describes the different types of questions, and which types are more effective than others. But we won’t go into that detail here. Again, our goal is to give you actionable tactics rather than focus on the details of research. We have simplified the process of asking questions for you. We’ll show you what to say, how to say it, when to say it, and why it works. We will cover many questions throughout this section, which you can use to get yourself out of the many tight situations that you might find yourself in as a salesperson. First, let’s make sure that you understand the difference between openended questions and closed questions.

Trigger Questions As we said, just like a psychiatrist or a detective, your job is to get your prospect to open up and tell you what is on their mind. To do this, you will ask open-ended questions – that is, questions that require them to respond with a relatively complex answer rather than a simple “yes” or “no”. Remember, you want to get them talking. Closed questions, which allow your prospect to answer you with a “yes” or a “no”, don’t get them to open up. Open-ended questions do. We will be teaching you to ask many different types of questions, but when in doubt, rely on the open-ended questions that we call Trigger Questions. Here are some examples of basic Trigger Questions: “Can you tell me more about…” “Can you be more specific?” ___________________________________________________________________________________ 20

“Can you give me an example?” These simple phrases will get your prospect to talk more in-depth about their favorite subjects – themselves and their problems. So when in doubt, fall back on Trigger Questions.

Use Orphan Phrases To Keep Your Prospect Talking A close relative of Trigger Questions are Orphan Phrases. Indeed, some Orphan Phrases also can be classified as Trigger Questions, but don’t get hung up on that technicality. Whereas Trigger Questions typically are used to start getting your prospect to open up, Orphan Phrases are used to keep your prospects spilling their guts. Keep them talking. Remember, you as the listener are in a more powerful position than your prospect when they are talking. You are gathering as much information as possible. That’s your job. You will use this information to give a killer sales presentation later – a sales presentation during which you will say exactly what they want to hear. But how do you find out exactly what they want to hear? You keep them talking. Use Orphan Phrases such as: “And…?” “And what else…?” “I’m not sure I understand.” _____________________________________________________________________________________ 21

“I’m sorry, I missed that last part.” (This works especially well when you are taking notes and you missed something that your prospect said.) “You mean…?” There are many Orphan Phrases. I’m sure you use some already without really being aware that you are using them. Think of some that you are comfortable with and use them. Why are they called Orphan Phrases? Remember the British author Charles Dickens’ famous orphan character, Oliver Twist. When he’s in the orphanage, he begs for more food and says: “I’d like some more, please?” Well that’s what you are doing with these Orphan Phrases, you’re begging for more information. You are creating a vacuum by using one of these phrases and then keeping quiet. By forcing yourself to be quiet, you will then force the prospect to fill the uncomfortable silence, and you’ll get more information. Resist the temptation to talk. Try to use as many Orphan Phrases as you can without becoming annoying to your prospect. Remember, it is a conversation. You have to contribute a bit, but make sure that they are doing the majority of the talking.

Floater Questions Another type of question that will allow you to test the waters – to test what your prospect is thinking is the Floater Question. Floater Questions enable you to ask hypothetical what-if questions that may help you to ask what might otherwise be uncomfortable questions to your prospects. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 22

Here are some examples of Floater Questions that the top salespeople we interviewed use: “I don’t know if this is appropriate to ask right now, but what would you say if we made the following offer…” You see, the person isn’t making a “real” offer, they are just floating one by their prospect to see their reaction. Another way of asking this question is by using what negotiators call Limited Authority. You pretend – or it might actually be true – that you do not have the authority to make an offer, and so you make an unofficial one. One of the salespeople we interviewed is fond of posing his most effective Floater Questions like this: “Let’s say that I can get my boss to agree to what you are looking for, do you think you would then be able to do the deal?” Here are some other ways to structure Floater Questions: “Let’s say…then what happens next…” “Let’s pretend…then would you…” “If I could get my colleagues to …., do you think you could get your colleagues to…?” “What would you say if…?” “What would you do if…?” “Would you buy today if…?” Again, what you are doing is feeling your prospect out by putting them in a _____________________________________________________________________________________ 23

hypothetical situation. They will give you at least some idea of how much they are willing to spend, or what is important in the negotiation for them, or how close to buying they are. Use Floater Questions to test the water before you try to close the deal.

Negatively Positioned Questions Positioning your Floater Questions - or any question for that matter – in the form of a negative can be an even more powerful way of evoking a real, emotional response. Why is this so? People have a tendency to want to disagree, especially with salespeople who they know have their own agenda. You can take advantage of this natural reaction to disagree by positioning questions in the negative. If you remember, one of the first questions we suggested you ask when interrupting someone with a cold call is: “Am I catching you at a bad time?” Our studies over thousands of calls reveal that a majority of people (64%) will either say “No, I have a moment” or politely tell you when you can call them back. Salespeople get a much less friendly response if they ask, “Is this a good time?” because people will tend to disagree and say, “No, it’s not a good time.” Through our own studies and many others that we have researched, we have determined that people generally tend to disagree with others. Some psychologists label this natural reaction as an ego-defense mechanism. Most people want to project an image of themselves as independent of others’ opinions, so their natural reaction is to say no, say they want to ___________________________________________________________________________________ 24

think about your questions or offers - or otherwise stall. How do you overcome such natural negativity? Fight fire with fire. Take advantage of the natural human tendency to disagree by asking your questions or even making statements in the negative. Instead of saying, “You really are going to want to hear about my product”, take a more humble stance by saying, “You might not be interested in hearing about my product or would you?” Not only will Negatively Positioned Questions help you take advantage of the natural human tendency to disagree, but they will also help you from getting boxed in when you are questioning your prospect. For example, if you say: “Do you want the car in dark blue?” The prospect might say, “No”, thus putting them in a negative state that you would rather them not be in. Of course, as we discussed in the Empathy Step above, you want to be in alignment with your prospect. You would rather have them agree with you, so you should ask: “I don’t suppose you would want the car in dark blue, would you?” If they say, “Yes, I would” then you are okay, and if they say, “No”, you are okay too because all you have to say is: “I didn’t think so” and you move on in the conversation. The most popular Negatively Positioned Question that we have found top salespeople using is actually a Negative Floater Question. It starts with: _____________________________________________________________________________________ 25

“I don’t suppose…” followed by your hypothetical offer. Other Negative Floater Questions can start with: “I’m not so sure you would agree but...?” “You probably aren’t interested but…?” “I don’t know but…?” As you will see in the final section of the FEAR Selling System, you will be using a similar test-the-water tactic by using the Thermometer Close.

How To Keep The Conversation Going After Bland Prospect Responses As anyone who has ever tried to sell anything knows, you are probably going to experience some resistance. People are either going to say “no” and try to hang up on you or walk away from you. Or they are going to make an objection as to why they are not interested in buying right now. They could give you what we call Bland Prospect Responses by say things like: “I’m just looking.” “I’m just gathering information right now but am not ready to buy yet.” “Thanks but we don’t need help with that right now.” ___________________________________________________________________________________ 26

You can keep the momentum going after such Bland Prospect Responses by using one of our favorite Negative Floater Question: “I don’t suppose you would be interested in…” Again, by asking a question, you have created a vacuum. The prospect is under pressure to fill that vacuum with a response. They are forced to reciprocate by answering you. They might try to brush you off again by giving you another Bland Prospect Response, but remember that your objective is to keep them talking at all cost. Get them involved, even if it’s only long enough to determine that they are not a good prospect for you. But what do you do when your prospect actually confronts you with an objection.

Prospect Objections: A Salesperson’s Greatest Enemy? Well, let’s talk about objections first. As the Japanese military strategist, Sun Tzu, said in his combat manual, The Art of War: You must know your enemy. And many salespeople believe that their greatest enemy in sales is the Prospect Objection. We will show you how to easily disarm your enemy, but let’s get to know our seeming enemy a bit first. Let’s explore a bit about what objections are all about and how they can actually help you sell more and sell faster. Because it is such an important issue for salespeople across industries, the Sales Career Training Institute has conducted many surveys and interviews _____________________________________________________________________________________ 27

with salespeople about sales objections and how to deal with them. Following is a summary of the concerns that a majority of salespeople have with regard to sales objections. Salespeople admit that they are: 1) Struggling to find the right way to answer the constant stream of objections that they hear from their prospects day in and day out. 2) Searching for ways to keep the sales process going – even if their prospect makes a strong objection as to why they don’t want to buy now. 3) Looking for sales tactics that enable them to pre-empt objections that commonly occur in their particular selling situation. 4) Confused as to why traditional sales tactics - that are designed to answer objections - seem to only create more resistance (that is, more objections) instead of helping them to answer the first objection smoothly and move on.

Obstacles To Overcoming Sales Objections In our recent surveys focused on overcoming sales objections, the Sales Career Training Institute asked sales managers their opinion as to why salespeople seem to be failing to find the real objections and then failing to overcome them if they do find them. Following are the top 4 answers that we found: 1) Salespeople lack the sales techniques necessary to uncover the real objections. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 28

2) They lack the self-confidence to ask the right questions at the right times, which could be very uncomfortable. 3) They have not prepared in advance with a credible response to objections - even though they may have heard the objection dozens of times before from other prospects. 4) They do not know the best way to weave answers to these objections into their product presentations. We will cover all of these concerns in this section and the final section, the Reveal Hope Step.

The Psychology of Sales Objections There are three basic reasons underlying any sales objection that you hear. The sales strategies and techniques that we cover throughout this section will help you to overcome sales objections, but the first step is to understand why objections occur. 1) Objections may occur because the prospect has doubts, fears or unanswered questions about your product/service - or you as a salesperson. 2) Objections may occur because the prospect is ready to buy but wants to confirm the purchase decision with another decision-maker, get a better deal or otherwise stall you in order to meet their own objectives. 3) Objections may occur simply because the prospect does not want to buy. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 29

Objections: Get Used To Them, Welcome Them, Or Better Yet, Ask For Them One of the biggest complaints of sales managers is that their salesforces take too long to close deals. With greater competition, prospects need more time to send out requests for proposals, review all of their available choices, set up meetings to qualify vendors and then finally make a decision. Waiting for prospects to call you back can be one of the most frustrating parts of the sales process. The way to avoid this is to find out more about the objections that your prospects might have about your product or service as early as possible. All too often, salespeople don’t know the most effective way to answer objections. They would rather try to avoid the hard questions as long as possible in the hopes that they can seal a deal without having to deal with those tough objections. But is this a good long-term strategy? First of all, many prospects who don’t reveal their objections to you may want to back out of the purchase later on, which, as many of you know, is usually even more frustrating than not winning the deal in the first place. Secondly, if you are using this strategy of bulldozing through the sales process quickly in order to avoid objections, it usually means that you are talking to the wrong people in the organization. If you don’t get any objections, you’re probably fooling yourself into thinking that you are actually talking to a decision-maker. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 30

Most decision-makers in organizations have gotten where they are by being careful about decisions they make. Such people cover the bases by asking lots of questions. If you are talking to someone who doesn’t ask a lot of questions and raise at least some objections, you are probably pitching a person in the buying organization who is too low to actually make a decision to buy. This is a waste of your time. We’ll show you how to ask the right questions that will help you find out who the decision-makers are and how they make their decisions later in the Ask Step. But for now, understand that you must deal with objections. Indeed, you should welcome objections.

Sales Objections, Sales Objections Everywhere According to the Sales Career Training Institute’s ongoing surveys regarding sales objections, rejection by prospects is the number one fear of salespeople across all industries. And typically, most salespeople see objections as the beginning of the end. Again, it will take some practice, but you must start thinking of objections as positive signals. Think of objections this way: 1) Objections may be an indication that the prospect is truly not interested, in which case, you save valuable time. The quicker you get to the objections - and determine that they are valid and that you cannot overcome them with your product/service, the quicker you can move on and spend your time prospecting elsewhere; or _____________________________________________________________________________________ 31

2) Objections may be simply a stalling technique used by the prospect because they are still unsure that they want to buy your product - or whether they want to buy the product from you. In this case, you should look at the objection as an opportunity to engage the prospect - and start building rapport.

Top 10 Sales Objections That You Might Hear – In One Form Or Another Interestingly, sales objections that our survey participants hear from prospects remain fairly consistent over time and across industries. Here are some of the most popular objections that you might hear: 1) “I need some time to think about it.” 2) “I’m interested, but I’ve already spent my budget.” 3) “Your competitors’ prices are much lower than yours.” 4) “I’m only interested in price.” 5) “I have to talk it over with my colleagues.” - or wife, or partner, etc. 6) “Call me in three months, and we’ll be ready to buy then.” 7) “We already have that covered by an existing vendor.” 8) “We can do that in-house and keep the cost down and maintain better control.” ___________________________________________________________________________________ 32

9) “We’ll need to get several other bids before considering your proposal.” 10) “We’re aware of your product/service, but it’s not the right fit for what we need.” The important thing to remember when you hear such sales objections is that you can overcome them by asking what we call Boomerang Questions. You may find, however, that a prospect’s objections are valid and therefore you should move on to a new prospect and not waste your time anymore. But our advice is not to take such objections at face value – at least not at first. You may have been taught when taking tests that your first answer is probably the right answer. Well, in sales, the first objection that you hear is most likely not the real objection. That is why you are going to use Boomerang Questions to find out the real objection that’s usually hiding behind the objection that your prospect tells you at first.

Asking Questions To Overcome Sales Objections After reading the Top 10 Sales Objection list above and thinking about your own experiences as a buyer, you may realize that many sales objections might be a defense mechanism used by your prospects to ease their own discomfort of having to face a salesperson. If your experience is anything like most salespeople who participate in Sales Career Training Institute studies, prospects just want to suck information out of you as easily and quickly as possible - usually by just getting you to send them your sales collaterals - and then get you out the door or off the phone so that you they can get back to their busy day. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 33

You must not fall into this trap or you’ll simply be wasting time sending out product-focused sales materials into a black hole and never hearing from these prospects again.

Before You Get To Yes, You Must Get To The Real Sales Objections Of course, your number one goal is to get the sale as quickly as possible. But in order to do that you must usually uncover and overcome your prospects’ real sales objections first. Think of objections as bombs that could explode in your face later on in the sales process. Your job as a salesperson is to qualify your prospects by finding those bombs fast and disarming them. Otherwise, you will spend lots of time thinking that you’re going to get the sale and gladly calling back your prospects or visiting with them again and again, only to discover that one of those bombs that you didn’t uncover blows up in your face at the final presentation or at some other point late in the sales process.

Ask And It Shall Be Given As you already know, you must use questions to qualify your prospects as you get to know them. You may have heard that there are no such thing as dumb questions. Well, we’re sorry to say that there are some not-so-smart questions and then there are smart questions that you could be asking. If you ask not-so-smart questions, you lose credibility, and most likely, you lose the sale as well. If you ask smart questions, you build rapport, get your prospects

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emotionally involved in the sales process, and uncover those deadly objections sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, we have found that most salespeople do not ask enough questions - and those who do ask questions, usually aren’t asking the right ones.

Boomerang Questions: The Answer To All Objections Many salespeople cringe when their prospects ask questions. But hopefully by now, you realize that you should welcome your prospects’ questions because their questions might indicate that there is at least enough curiosity, enough initial interest, and maybe some underlying pains or fears, that are motivating your prospect to find out more from you. From our research, we have found that it is how you handle these “objections,” which will strongly determine your success as a salesperson. So as to not keep you in suspense, we’ll give you the short answer on how to answer most objections that your prospects put to you. Most of the time, top salespeople answer objections or questions with what we call a Boomerang Question. Think of how a boomerang works. A boomerang is a special form of throwing stick used by the aborigines of Australia to hunt with. It is very ingenious weapon if you think about it. Unlike a regular spear or a rock, if you throw a boomerang at your prey, and you miss, your weapon doesn’t just fall uselessly to the ground. A boomerang returns to you so that you can use it again. Similarly, when your prospect asks you a question, we suggest that you _____________________________________________________________________________________ 35

mostly throw another question – a Boomerang Question - back to them. Their answer to your Boomerang Question will help you move closer to the sale because when your prospect responds to it, he or she may provide you with more information about their needs, pains, fears or hopes, and otherwise give you a clue as to why they are resisting your attempts at selling them. We’ll get into the details of how to throw Boomerang Questions most effectively later. But for now, remember that, especially in the beginning stages of your interaction with your prospect, you mostly want to answer a prospect’s questions with another question – a Boomerang Question.

It’s A Conversation, Not An Interrogation We suggest that you mostly use Boomerang Questions because we want you to err on the side of asking questions instead of making statements. Countless research studies on persuasion prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that getting a prospect involved with you through proper questioning can help you significantly in getting that prospect to do what you want them to do. But if Boomerang Questions are so powerful, why don’t we suggest that you use them all the time instead of only most of the time? Well, if you think about it, always answering a question with another question could get your prospect annoyed if not done smoothly. You could easily break rapport with your prospect by coming off as too pushy and seeming to ask too many questions. And remember, you must gain rapport, trust and permission early on– and maintain it on an ongoing basis – during this Ask Step. That’s why we emphasize the Empathy Step before moving ___________________________________________________________________________________ 36

on to the Ask Step. In order to maintain the sense that you are just having a friendly, let’s-getto-know-each-other conversation, you can’t simply keep asking questions and taking and taking information. A conversation is a two-way street. You have to give back sometimes, so you’ll have to take a stand sometimes and give up some information. By mixing Boomerang Questions in with your normal dialogue, it will seem as if you are having a natural, normal conversation rather than interrogating your prospect. Don’t worry…we’ll reveal ways to ask Boomerang Questions so that it doesn’t seem like you’re dodging your prospects’ questions all the time. More on this later, but for now, remember – most of the time you are going to answer your prospects’ questions – and statements for that matter – with another question – a Boomerang Question. The objective of the Boomerang Question – like Floater Questions, Negative Floater Questions, Orphan Phrases, and Trigger Questions, is to keep your prospect talking. The more they talk, the more likely they are to tell you the truth and reveal their true fears. We don’t want to imply that all prospects lie, but the reality is that we all lie – or at least withhold the truth – sometimes. But that’s exactly what you want to get at – the truth. So to paraphrase the Bible again, if you ask, it will be given, eventually. So keep them talking with all of these types of questions and phrases.

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Three Ways To Ask Boomerang Questions Effectively Some of you may be thinking that you would be uncomfortable not giving a direct answer to your prospects’ questions. You may not want to seem as if you are dodging their questions. That’s okay. We can safely say that nearly everyone whom we have trained with these techniques feels this uneasiness with Boomerang Questions at first. But they soon get over that discomfort once they realize how really effective Boomerang Questions are. Plus here are three delivery techniques that you should use in order to vary the way you throw your Boomerang Questions. These techniques will help you seem less abrasive in your attempt to get more information out of your prospect. 1) AGREEMENT AND STROKING STATEMENT + BOOMERANG QUESTION As we discussed in the Empathy Step, you want to agree with your prospect as much as possible. As one of our top salespeople says, “Save your big guns for your big ships. Don’t argue little points. Only take a stand when it’s really a dealbreaker – and try to put off any arguments until after you bond with them a bit.” Keep this in mind. Even if you disagree with what a prospect says, still try to use an Agreement and Stroking Statement to show that you are at least somewhat on the same wavelength as your prospect before digging deeper to find the real objection with a Boomerang Question. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 38

By using an Agreement and Stroking Statement, you will be able to avoid the tension that may result from a disagreement between yourself and your prospect. Remember, it doesn’t help you to flex your muscles and protect your own ego by arguing with your prospect. In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie has many simple yet powerful recommendations that are related to this technique. He suggests: · The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. · Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.” · Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view. · Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires. · Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

With these wise suggestions in mind, let’s quickly review some examples of Agreement and Stroking Statements: “I agree…” “That’s interesting that you say that…” “Good question…” “Good observation…” “Good point…” _____________________________________________________________________________________ 39

“I’m glad you brought that up…”

So the first technique to alleviate any resistance that you get by asking a blunt Boomerang Question is to soften it by agreeing with your prospect first and then follow up with the question. For example: Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of your competitors.” You:

“I’m glad you brought that up…we are more expensive than some of our competitors. Is that going to be an issue for you?”

In this example, you want to find out early on if they are not willing to make the investment in your product. In many cases, you can combat this argument by trying to prove that your product provides more value than your competitors, and so it warrants a higher price. But don’t launch into that defensive behavior by simply flexing your muscles and explaining why your product is better than the competition’s. Remember – never make assumptions. Always find out why someone is asking something. 2) ACTIVE LISTENING TECHNIQUE + BOOMERANG QUESTION As we discussed earlier, we want to show our prospect that they are important, and you can do this by consistently showing them that you are listening. In this second technique for softening an otherwise-harsh Boomerang Question, you repeat the prospect’s question back to them before tossing your Boomerang Question. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 40

For example: Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of your competitors.” You:

“Okay, so you are wondering why we price our products higher than our competitors. Well, first let me ask you…Is a higher price going to be an issue for you, even if we can justify higher value?”

You might even want to throw in an Agreement and Stroking Statement first. “That’s a fair question…so you are wondering why we price our products higher than our competitors. Well, first let me ask you…Is a higher price going to be an issue for you, even if we can justify higher value?” With this technique, you are showing your prospect that you are listening to them. This may seem simplistic, but our research shows that you should not underestimate this Active Listening technique of repeating the prospect’s question to them before you hit them with a Boomerang Question. 3) START THEN STOP + BOOMERANG QUESTION Of course, when someone asks you a question, your natural inclination is to try to answer them. With Boomerang Questions, we suggest that you fight this urge to answer in order to avoid putting your foot in your mouth by answering inappropriately. We are not suggesting that you dodge your prospects’ questions forever. Of course, that’s unrealistic. But we do suggest that you gather as much information about your prospects’ problems, pains, fears, buying criteria, and buying strategies before you launch into your product presentation. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 41

Sometime, it is hard to fight the urge not to answer prospect questions. Many salespeople whom we have interviewed are very anxious to get faceto-face with a prospect and tell them how great their product is. They might have spent days or weeks prospecting on the phone, and so are as excited as puppies to get out and jump all over their prospects. Let’s face it, we are all trained to answer questions from our earliest days in school. If we knew the answer, our hands would shoot up in the hopes of being called on, answering the question correctly and getting a compliment from our teachers. That’s okay. Sometimes, you will naturally launch into your response when your prospect asks a question. The third Boomerang Question delivery technique allows for this natural urge to answer questions. This will probably be the most natural of the three Boomerang Question delivery techniques for you to use. And it may be the most effective, in the sense that it meets your natural need to answer a question and makes it seem as if you are answering their question… but then you stop and throw your Boomerang. Here’s an example… Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of your competitors.” You:

“You’re right, we are more expensive. And I’ll take you through some of the reasons why we’re a better value. First of all, we………well, there are a lot of reasons, but before I do that, can you share with me why that might be an issue for you?”

Notice that you pause after starting to answer their question. This will make it seem as if you want to give them the information they requested. It will take the pressure off of you since you are “responding” at least to some degree. But again, you want to turn this potential objection around on them ___________________________________________________________________________________ 42

in order to find out information, perhaps about their budget or their current vendor or their buying criteria. We’ll get deeper into how to draw out key information later in this section, but for now, review these three techniques to deliver your Boomerang Questions. Trust us, this one technique will help you enormously.

The Negative Boomerang Question: The Most Powerful Of All Questions Before we move on, let’s show you how you can make Boomerang Questions even more powerful. Remember we discussed how Negatively Positioned Questions enable you to extract more information and avoid getting boxed in during discussions with your prospects? Well, when you combine the power of the Negatively Positioned Question with that of the Boomerang Question, you have what is perhaps the most the most powerful way to ask questions. Prospect: “It seems like your product is much more expensive than that of your competitors.” You:

“I’m glad you brought that up…given the seriousness of your problem though, your budget shouldn’t be too much of a problem for you, right?”

Your prospect will probably say something like: “Of course, budget is always a problem for us.” _____________________________________________________________________________________ 43

In this example, you have now opened the door to explore your prospect’s budget with them. This will help you qualify them. You might not be in the same ballpark in terms of what they think they can spend to solve their problem. You want to know as much about your prospect as soon as you can so that you can either: 1) avoid wasting your time trying to convince them to buy your expensive product when they simply don’t have the money to do so under any circumstance; or 2) move them into what we call the Values Elicitation Process to help them understand that the costs of buying your product are much less than the costs of having to deal with the consequences of their problem. But before we introduce you to the series of highly effective questions that make up the Values Elicitation Process, let’s take a step back and talk a bit more about how you should prepare for common objections that you face over and over again.

Preparing Yourself For Handling Sales Objections From the very beginning of your sales career, you should be keeping track of common sales objections that you hear from your prospects. Consider this market research as well. Just as you started the FEAR Selling System by trying to find out typical prospect pains, fears and hopes by asking your co-workers and prospects themselves, so to are you going to be collecting objections and looking for patterns so that you are better prepared to answer common ones as they come up in the future. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 44

We have found that top salespeople keep track of sales objections that they hear in order to find patterns, and then they test different sales strategies either to overcome those objections when they hear them - or even do what we call “pre-emptive strikes” when they see the objections coming. The key is preparation. Several top salespeople that we work with set aside a section of their records on each prospect to list the objections - or potential objections that might come up in future discussions. They also proactively seek out objections from lower-level employees in organizations - or in early discussions with the top decision-makers - so that they can overcome those sales objections in their sales presentations later on. Not only do you want to find out the most prevalent objections that your prospects have about your product/service, you also want to keep track of the Boomerang Questions that you find best enable you to overcome these common prospect objections. Always be testing to find the most effective Boomerang Questions and delivery techniques that work for you. When judging the effectiveness of questions, take into account: · how effective they are in terms of enabling you to extract more information from your prospects; and · how comfortable you are in asking the questions. Boomerang Questions simply won’t be effective if you are not comfortable and confident in asking them. Our research indicates that f you want to be successful in sales, you must _____________________________________________________________________________________ 45

get used to asking Boomerang Questions. But some such questions may be too uncomfortable for you to ask. Try to overcome your discomfort by getting used to asking them through constant practice with your co-workers or even your family and friends. Or, try varying the way you deliver the questions so that you are comfortable with asking them and therefore sound natural doing so.

The 8-Step Process For Preparing Against Sales Objections Here’s the basic 8-step process for overcoming objections: 1) Identify as many sales objections as possible early on. You must know what your prospects’ real objections are – their real concerns, real fears about buying from you - before you can try to overcome those objections, so try to find out what you’re up against as early as possible. Ask customers to critique your product - and even your presentation. Do the same of colleagues, your sales manager and even friends and family to get objective opinions. Ask them what makes them uncomfortable with your presentation. What makes it sound too “salesy.” 2) Keep a record of all objections. Write down the objections as well as your notes on what those who critiqued you said about your presentation. This could be difficult because your ego is at stake - but remember, you’re in this game to sell, not to protect your ego. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 46

3) Write out scripts to answer these objections. This is where Trigger and Boomerang Questions come in. You should be keeping a list of questions that you can ask the prospect to get them to open up and reveal more to you. Remember that you want to keep it conversational though. This way, you will keep your prospect comfortable by having them feel that they are in a two-way conversation rather than just having them feel as if they are on the receiving-end of a volley of questions. Remember, you want it to be as much like a friendly conversation as possible, not an interrogation. 4) Practice your responses to common objections – practice your various Boomerang Questions. Don’t stop at just writing down the answers and reviewing them once in awhile. Try to get used to comfortably responding without stumbling through your responses. For this, you need to practice with colleagues - or again with friends and family who are willing to help you grow in your sales career. 5) Develop sales collaterals that address these objections. When you write sales letters or have materials such as testimonials that address these common objections, you will gain credibility in the eyes of your prospect. They’ll feel as if you have “walked in their shoes.” You can “feel their pain” – you know their fears, and they’ll appreciate it hopefully, by giving you the business. 6) Constantly rework the scripts and your sales collaterals as you obtain more feedback. Like marketing, sales is about trying a strategy and then tweaking it to improve it on an ongoing basis. Don’t just stick with the same old responses to the objections. Try out some different ones - you might find better ways to address objections. But be careful, don’t be too much of a _____________________________________________________________________________________ 47

cowboy. Once you find something that works, stick with the essential components at least. Just tweak and test. 7) Keep all of your sales scripts and overcoming-objections scripts in a three-ring binder. This way, you’ll have them ready to review before you meet a prospect who is likely to bring up the objection. We suggest using a three-ring binder to reinforce the fact that you must be making modifications and improving and replacing these scripts as you receive more feedback from your colleagues, prospects and customers. 8) Review these scripts with your fellow salespeople. You want to gather as much feedback as possible as quickly as possible. You might have met with 20 people this week that gave you feedback, but maybe someone else in your office met with someone who brought up an objection that you’ll hear tomorrow. You’ll want to be prepared for it, so share as much as you can with one another. So now, you know that you must fight fire with fire. Stop yourself from simply answering your prospects’ questions aimlessly. Remember, you have a strategy. Information is power. And so you always want more information. How do you get more information? By asking more questions. We know we’ve drilled the concept of asking questions into you a lot by now, but our experience shows that even our most conscientious students fall back into the natural habits of wanting to present their products/ services, more than ask questions in order to find out needs, pains, fears and hopes first. Hopefully, by now, you understand that you must fight this urge to spill your guts all the time. Your goal is to get your prospect to spill their guts first, so that when you finally spill yours – when you present your product/ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 48

service as the solution they are looking for – as we will show you in the Reveal Hope Step, you will be better able to position your product/service so that your prospect will want to buy now.

Getting Your Prospects To Experience Their Fears and Long For Their Hopes We’ve already touched on Trigger Questions, Floater Questions, and Boomerang Questions – and generally how to make already-powerful questions exponentially more effective by positioning them negatively. These are incredibly effective tactics to use. You should use these tactics throughout the entire sales process, but there is a more structured series of questions that we have developed for you to use over and over. We call this series of questions the Values Elicitation Process. This process enables you to elicit – or draw out – from your prospect what they value – that is, what is important to them. Once you understand their values, you can then pitch your product/service more effectively, which we will cover in the final step of the FEAR Selling System. This series of questions is the most effective way to get someone to talk about: · what is important to them, generally; · why these issues are important to them; · the perceived seriousness of their problem; _____________________________________________________________________________________ 49

· actions they have taken (if any) to solve their problem; · the consequences of solving or not solving their problem; · their willingness to try to solve their problem; · their ability to solve their problem (whether they have the authority and budget). Basically, the Values Elicitation Process is a way for you to quickly qualify your prospect while also building their interest in hearing how you can help them solve their problems.

You Must Qualify Your Prospects What’s Important to Your Prospect and Why Is It Important As you will see, initially you will ask your prospect open-ended questions to find out what’s on their mind. You can be sure that whatever they talk about is at least of some importance to them. And you will benefit greatly from just shutting up and letting them talk to you about what their problem is generally and why it is important to them. Once you understand what your prospect values (that is, what is important to them), you will be better able to position your product/ service in such a way as to make it more attractive to them. How Serious Do They Perceive Their Problem To Be You want to qualify your prospect by finding out how serious they think their problem is. If you find that they consider their problem at least somewhat significant, then you know that you’re not wasting your time. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 50

If their problem doesn’t seem significant to them, then you might not have a good prospect on your hands. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t keep probing them. They either might not be fully aware of the seriousness of the consequences of their problem or they might not be the decision-maker whom you need to talk too. Actions They’ve Taken To Solve Their Problem What will also help you determine if they are serious about solving their problem is if they have taken some action in the past to try to solve it. This step also will help you determine if you have competition – either by another vendor or by their own staff. Someone else might already have tried – or currently is trying – to solve the problem. You want to know about such competition as early as possible. We’ll show you how to find out about competition without being blunt about it. Consequences of Solving or Not Solving Their Problem The Values Elicitation Process actually accomplishes two goals: 1) it enables you to discover what drives your prospect; and 2) it enables you to make your prospects aware of the consequences of their actions or inactions. Your objective is to get your prospect to do more than simply talk about their values and their problem. You want them to act on solving the problem by buying your solution. In order to get your prospect to act – to get them to move outside of their Comfort Zone far enough so that they realize that they must buy your product or service now, you must get them to acknowledge their current pains or experience their fear of potential pain in the future. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 51

Once you understand your prospect’s fears and hopes, you can paint a picture of how your product/service can help them overcome those fears and reach those hopes. You will do this by having them explore with you the negative consequences of not solving their problem as well as the positive benefits of solving their problem. In other words, you want them to become acutely aware of possible outcomes. You want them to talk about, and through their imagination, experience the pain of not solving their problem or the relief of solving their problem. As we’ve said elsewhere, you cannot convince someone to buy from you. You can only make your prospect aware that they should buy from you. Do not see yourself as trying to sell your prospect or you will come off too pushy. Rather, see yourself as trying to guide them towards taking some action to solve their problem – and most likely, they’ll strongly consider buying from you in order to solve that problem. Willingness to Solve Their Problem Here, you are trying to get a sense of how ready your prospect is to take action on their problem. You are further exploring the pain, fears and hopes of your prospect. It might be that they acknowledge their problem, understand the consequences of not taking action, but for some reason, they are not willing to take action now. You want to find out about their hesitancy to take action. Once you know why they are stalling, you can maneuver to try to get them to take action – or make a note to check in on the prospect in the future but move on in your prospecting so as not to waste your time.

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Ability To Solve Their Problem It’s one thing to be willing to solve the problem, but it’s another thing to be able to solve it. There are two aspects to qualifying your prospect for their ability to solve their problem – that is, their ability to buy your solution: 1) authority 2) budget Regarding authority, you want to find out who the decision-makers are. Can they make the decision on their own or do they need approval of others, perhaps a boss, an oversight board or a spouse? You want to make sure that you understand who actually signs off on the purchase or else you might be wasting your time pitching a subordinate. You also want to know what the process is for their decision-making. In this step, you are eliciting their decision-making process. You are probing for their decision criteria. What do you have to show them, tell them, prove to them before they make a purchase. Once you understand who makes the decisions and how decisions are made in your prospect’s organization, you will have a better sense of whom you should be pleasing with your presentation and the hoops you will have to jump through in order to get a buy decision. Regarding budget, you want to find out how much they are willing to spend to solve their problem. If your solution costs $1,000 and they are only willing or able to pay $500, then you are in trouble. Budget is another potential deal-breaker that you want to uncover early on in the process. Once you understand how much your prospect is willing to spend, you can _____________________________________________________________________________________ 53

start exploring with them their willingness and ability to spend a bit more in order to really solve their problem.

Now that you have a basic understand of what the Values Elicitation Process will do for you, let’s dive into specifics. Next, we’re going to tell you what questions to ask in order to extract these important pieces of information from your prospect. But, remember, you are in an information-gathering mode here. Don’t make assumptions - and ask more than you tell. The more, good-quality insights you have about their problems, pains, fears, their willingness and ability to take action, and their hopes, the better off you will be able to position your solution in the last step of the FEAR Selling System, which is called Reveal The Hope Of Your Solution. Before we get started with the specific questions, let’s be realistic. You may not be able to ask all of these questions, in this order, in one sitting, if at all. But this is what you are aiming for, because if you can get these questions answered honestly by the right people in the buying organization, then you are ready to seal the deal in the final step of the FEAR Selling System.

A Quick Review Of Where We’ve Been Before diving into the detail of this powerful process, let’s take a step back so that we can continue the process where we left off. Do you remember the process we went through to Find and Focus on your prospects fears in the first step of the FEAR Selling System? ___________________________________________________________________________________ 54

Let’s briefly review it here. You started by doing some market research to find out what others thought might be current problems. To do this research, you surveyed your colleagues at work, prospects and current customers. You gathered statements that make up your Prospect Fear and Hope List so that you could share that list with prospects in the hopes of triggering their fears. Your goal in gathering this information was to be able to get prospects to think, “Yes, that’s me – I have that problem” or “I might have that problem in the future.” This identification with the problems and fears that you dangled in front of them hopefully got them to engage you in further conversation. Your hope was to get them to think: “I have that problem, and maybe, just maybe, this person has some information that can help me solve that problem.” This is how you capture your prospect’s attention and get them interested in giving you a bit more of their time. Once you have identified one or more of their pains, fears or hopes, you then use the Values Elicitation Process.

The Values Elicitation Process Now that you know what you must do, let’s break it down and show you how to do it – with the questions from the Values Elicitation Process. Again, you are asking these questions in order to: 1) qualify your prospect, and 2) get them more interested in taking action now and buying from you. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 55

Of course, you can use variations of these questions that you are comfortable with. This is just an overview, but we will speak to each of these questions so that you understand the reasoning behind each and thus can be more effective in pacing and leading your prospect to the sale. Remember that sales conversations will probably never go as planned. Your prospect might try to take control of the conversation and lead you down another road – probably to ambush you and rob information from you that they can use for their own benefit when negotiating with competitors. The Values Elicitation Process is therefore merely a guide to the questions you want to ask. Of course, if you can, ask all of these questions – and in this order. That will work best. But don’t be frustrated if you have to jump around a bit. Just make sure that you cover the basics. To make it easy for you to review the Process, we have marked the key questions in red. The more you practice, the more you’ll understand the key questions, and how you can be most comfortable asking them.

What’s Important To You And Why 1) Maybe we can start at the beginning, can you just give me the quick overview of why you invited me in today? 2) That’s interesting…can you tell me more about that and why it is important to you? These two questions are ways to open up the conversation with the prospect. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 56

If you recall, we suggested that you get your prospect to invite you in rather than forcing yourself in. If you are the guest, it changes the power dynamic of the meeting. You’re there trying to help them solve their problem, not as a salesman trying to push your product. Again, use Orphan Phrases such as “And…?” “And what else…?” “I’m not sure I understand.” Phrases such as these will keep your prospect talking, which is exactly what you want. You are probing for their problems at this point. Try not to interrupt except to use the Active Listening techniques we taught you in the last step. In the early stages of the Process, you want your prospect to open up. You want them to be comfortable, so you want to pace them. You are going to show and tell them that you’ve seen the problem before – and that it is not uncommon. You pace your prospect by nodding your head, agreeing with them by saying “yes”, and otherwise showing them that you understand where they are coming from. Show that you are interested. Show that you are concerned. Again, think of yourself as an actor and try to act genuinely interested, genuinely concerned. Remember to match and mirror them verbally as well as their body language as we discussed in the section on Empathize With Your Prospect. Use the Active Listening technique that we discussed in that section as well. Stop them and repeat what they say back to them. Remember, paraphrase what they say but use some of the key words that they might _____________________________________________________________________________________ 57

have repeated more than once. If you can, tell an It-Could-Happen-To-You Story that shows someone else who has a problem or fear similar to the one that they are discussing. But again, if you use this technique, keep the story short. You want them to keep talking. So you might just want to say something like: “That’s interesting…I’m hearing that a lot lately.” By telling a story, or simply relaying that you’ve recently dealt with someone else who has the same problem or fears, you will not only build rapport, you will also reinforce the fact that their problems and fears are prevalent in the industry. It validates their problem. You’re basically saying to them - and might choose to actually say to them: “Yes, a lot of people seem to be having that problem nowadays.” Again, your goal here is to get them to realize that others have their problem, and so, you imply that they should be worried about it too. But you must not only make your prospect aware that their fears may come to pass, but also that if they do nothing to prevent their fears then they will suffer significant consequences as well. You want them to think about the potentially serious consequences of not taking action now. How do you do this?

How Serious Is The Problem Before asking the next set of questions, ask a Permission Question. Say something like: 3) I have some questions that I jotted down that I typically ask in order to help figure out what’s going on and to see if I can help ___________________________________________________________________________________ 58

you. Is it okay if I ask you some of the questions? By asking permission, you will feel more comfortable asking the questions. You have positioned yourself as someone who is trying to help them so they should invite you to ask the questions. 4) How long has this been a problem? 5) Why do you need to address this problem now though? With these two questions, you want to find out how long they have been struggling with this problem. If it’s a new problem, they might not be ready to take action yet because they haven’t yet experienced the negative consequences of not solving the problem. The second question enables you to start focusing in on the consequences of not solving the problem. Again, this question helps you understand their pains, fears and hopes, but also enables you to get your prospect to experience – at least in their imagination - the consequences of the problem simply by talking about it.

Actions Taken To Solve The Problem 6) What have you done so far to fix the problem? 7) How did that work for you? The answers to these questions will help you further determine how serious they are about solving the problem. If they have taken action, it means that the problem caused enough pain or fear of future pain to get them out of their Comfort Zone to take action. You want to know if this is the case. Also, you want to know if there is someone else in the picture with whom _____________________________________________________________________________________ 59

you are competing to solve the problem for them. It could be another vendor or in-house staff or they could even be trying to solve the problem themselves with no outside help. By finding out who your competitors are, you will be better able to position yourself as a better alternative. They might say nothing. But if they say that they tried something or are doing something currently, ask about it, whatever it is. If they say they are looking for vendors, ask: “Could you share with me who else you are talking to?” They might not tell you, but again it never hurts to ask. You might want to try an Orphan Phrase such as: “You are talking to people/ companies like…?” And then shut up.

Consequences of Solving or Not Solving the Problem 8) What is it costing you to live with this problem? 9) What happens if you don’t fix this problem? This is the heart of the Values Elicitation Process. This is where you are really finding out the consequences of your prospect’s inactions – and you are getting them focused on the consequences of their inactions. You are uncovering their pains, fears and hopes. You are going to use the word “problem” when talking to your prospect, but remember, that what you are trying to do is explore the fears that underlie what they are acknowledging as “problems.” Remember, problems have consequences. We don’t fear our problems, we fear the consequences of those problems. That’s what you are trying to get to: the fears about the consequences of ___________________________________________________________________________________ 60

their problems. If you understand these fears, you’ll be better able to sell to your prospects on the most powerful level possible: the emotional level. If you can, you want your prospects to work with you to calculate how much the problem is costing them. You want them to figure out a dollar amount associated with them not taking action and living with the problem. You can use this dollar amount later in comparison with the budget they are willing to spend to show them that the cost savings (benefit) of taking action outweigh the cost of buying your product. 10) What’s it going to be like if you don’t fix this problem? 11) How do you feel about that? With these two questions, you are trying to project your prospect into the future emotionally. You want them to experience the pain of not solving the problem. You are trying to get them uncomfortable. By getting them to acknowledge and experience this pain, you are trying to move them out of their Comfort Zone of inaction. You’re trying to get them more interested in taking action and buying from you in order to avoid that painful future. These questions will force your prospect to project themselves into the future and think about at least some of the problems that could occur if they fail to act now. Again, try to keep them thinking through and exploring the consequences of their inaction. If they don’t reveal to you that there are significant consequences – potential future pain – try telling an It-Could-Happen-To-You Fearful Story where there are serious consequences to not solving the current problem or avoiding the potential future problem. Here, you must paint a picture of a very painful future that someone else who has their same problem – their same fear – experienced. You must be a _____________________________________________________________________________________ 61

storyteller at this stage, telling them about the significantly painful consequences that might occur if they don’t take action to avoid that painful future now.

Willingness To Solve The Problem 12) How prepared are you to do what it takes to solve this problem? By asking this question, you are trying to get them to react to the pain and fear that you tried to dredge up with the previous questions. You want to see if the pain of having the problem is great enough for them to take action to solve it. Again, the problem might not be big enough for them to take action now, they might not perceive the problem to be big enough, or there might be other circumstances stopping them from taking action to solve this problem now. You want to find out what might be the obstacles to them taking action and buying from you.

Ability To Solve The Problem Authority 13) Who else – beside yourself – will be making the decision about how to solve this problem? This is your sly way of finding out if they are the decision-maker or not. You don’t want to insult your prospect by insinuating that they have no power to make the decision by themselves. That’s why you are asking about others – besides themselves – who need to be part of the problem___________________________________________________________________________________ 62

solving process. Again, how they answer this question will determine how you proceed. If there are others involved in the decision-making, you must try to set up another meeting to get the others on board. 14) How do you make decisions? Is there a process? A committee? 15) What are the key things that you (or they) are looking for in order to move forward?

Here, you are probing for their decision-making process. You want to find out buying criteria. What do they need to make a decision to buy from you? Do they need references? Do they want a demo? What’s the next step? Budget 16) Would it make sense to talk about what you’re able to invest to solve the problem? This is a Permission Question. You’re asking this here because most people are uncomfortable talking about money. Many of us were taught to skirt the issue of money in conversation because it’s not polite to discuss such issues with people. But let’s face it, all salespeople have encountered prospects that have a problem, want to solve it, but don’t have the money to solve the problem. As a salesperson, this is a waste of your time. You want to find out not only if the person has a problem, but if they can solve it by buying your product/service. You want to qualify the prospect’s ability to pay for your product/service. And this question will _____________________________________________________________________________________ 63

help you gently get their permission to open up the conversation about what it costs to solve the problem. 17) Do you have a budget set aside to solve this problem? If they do have a budget set aside, ask them: 18) Would you mind sharing the budget with me? Again, money is a difficult issue for most people to discuss. This is a delicate way to get people to open up with you about money. You are asking them to share information with you. From when we are very young, we are taught that we should share with others. With this question, you are using that social conditioning to help you extract information. And hopefully, you have built enough rapport with your prospect so that they are at least somewhat comfortable with sharing their budget with you. Many of your prospects will not have “budgeted” to solve the problem, because most people don’t think that way. It is your job to get them to think that way. Remember, you’ve hopefully already gotten the prospect to calculate (even if only roughly) the cost of living with the problem. If they don’t have a number in mind that they are willing to spend, try to at least get a ballpark figure of what they think they need to spend to solve the problem. You could say: “Do you think you can spend $100, $1,000 or $5,000? I’m just trying to get a general sense of your budget.” You can then begin to share with them the cost of your product/service. You already know what it’s going to cost them to live with the problem, so it’s your job to show them that the cost of living with the problem is much greater than the cost of buying your product/service and solving the problem. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 64

You cover the budget at the very end of the process because you want your prospect to understand the consequences of their inaction – and the cost of their inaction – before tackling the cost of solving their problem. By doing this, you are able to frame the price of your solution relative to the cost of them living with the problem. This will greatly enhance your ability to get them to buy your product/ service. When people hear your price upfront, they may react negatively. If they react negatively at this point, you can at least discuss the cost that they must bear of living with the problem and thus be in a better position to influence them of the logic of buying your product/service.

Positioning Yourself As A Trusted Advisor Remember that as you interact with your prospect, your attitude is extremely important. Again, you must position yourself as their trusted advisor – not someone who is trying to just sell them something. You must position yourself as someone who is interested in them and their problem. You are not interrogating them. You want to find out the answer to these questions because you want to help them. As a matter of fact, if they ever ask you why you are asking any of these questions, your response should be something like: “I really want to help you, I just need to understand the problem before I make any suggestions. Actually, we might not even have the solution to your problem.”

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This is a real credibility-builder. Most salespeople would never admit that they couldn’t solve a prospect’s problem. So remember, your attitude throughout this process is one of a trusted advisor. Also, if you ended the first step of the FEAR Selling System correctly, you asked them to invite you in. You positioned yourself as a guest – an expert guest willing to share with them your non-confidential research, your experiences with their competition. Make sure you remind them of this. Remember, your goal is to get your prospect to share specific personal information about what is important to them, their personal pains and fears, and other information relevant to the buying decision. Your goal is to guide your prospect through this process to get them uncomfortable – and thus get them to take action – and buy your product. Again, as you use this process, think of yourself as a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists must get a patient to open up to them so that they understand the patient’s problem. Their whole strategy is to get their patient to trust them enough to tell them the sometimes extremely painful reality of what they feel. As you know, we have already covered many trust-building tactics in the second step of the FEAR Selling System, Empathize With Your Prospect. Many of these techniques are used by psychiatrists and other therapists to get their patients to open up to them. You must use them too. As we said before, you should be weaving these trust-building tactics throughout the entire sales process from when you first talk to or correspond with your prospect through the very end of the sale and beyond. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 66

Once the psychiatrist understands their patient’s pains and their fears, he or she will be able to diagnosis the patient’s condition and then hopefully go about treating the patient. Similarly, once you know the pains and fears of your prospect, you will be in a better position to present your solution to their problem – your product or service – in a manner which will drastically improve your chances that they will buy it from you. Remember, the key to all marketing is differentiation. Don’t be a typical salesperson, lecturing them on why they should be buying your product. You are rather a trusted advisor, guiding them to the realization that they could have future pain, and that they should start avoiding that future pain now by buying your product.

Understanding The Value Of The Information You Have Gathered Again, the questions in the Values Elicitation Process are a guide. Our clients typically take this generic list of questions and modify it to make them relevant – if necessary - to their specific selling situation or to phrase the questions in a way so that they are more comfortable asking them. So, we have not only given you the questions to ask in the order that they should be asked, but, most importantly, we have explained why you should ask these questions. By knowing your objective at each step, you are better able to be flexible in your approach. Now that you have taken your prospect through the Values Elicitation Process, you have: _____________________________________________________________________________________ 67

1) obtained information that you can use to qualify them; 2) obtained information that you can use to position your solution to them; 3) set the stage for you to present your solution.

Let’s discuss each of these in turn: 1) You obtained information that you can use to qualify them. At different points in the Ask Step, you hopefully found out key information about the prospect. You determined if the problem was significant to them. If it isn’t significant, you might not want to spend time pitching them further. You also found out if they are the decision-maker. If they are not the decision-maker – or if others are needed to make the buy decision, you must set up additional meetings. You found out what they thought it might cost to solve the problem. If what they are willing or can spend to solve the problem is not in line with the cost of living with the problem or the actual price of your product/service, you may want to move on and not waste more time trying to pitch to someone who can’t afford the price of your product/ service. 2) You obtained information that you can use to position your solution to them. One of the key sections of the Values Elicitation Process is when you try to get your prospect to reveal their personal pains, fears and hopes. By knowing these emotional trigger points, you can work them into your sales pitch. Show them how your product/service can help them to solve ___________________________________________________________________________________ 68

their pain, overcome their fears and achieve their hopes. We’ll expand upon this technique in the final step of the FEAR Selling System. 3) You set the stage to present your solution. Although gathering information is an important objective of the Values Elicitation Process, perhaps even more important is that you have created a framework in the mind of your prospect regarding how they should think about their problem. If you took your prospect through the Values Elicitation Process effectively, you made them realize that there are negative consequences to not taking action and that there are positive consequences of taking action to solve their problem. Our research shows that prospects who have gone through the Values Elicitation Process are nearly five times more likely to buy than those who have simply heard a pitch without experiencing the Process. Of course, the information gathered from the Process is helpful to the salesperson when they pitch their product/service, but we have found that what is even more powerful is how the Process gets prospects thinking about the consequences of their actions/inactions. Regardless of whether you follow our suggestions closely or not, there is one suggestion that we hope you will take to heart. If you’ve learned nothing else from this section, remember this: ask more questions and pitch your product/service less. Just this piece of advice will get you a long way to selling more and selling faster.

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About The Author Paul Borgese is an author, speaker, consultant and the creator of two series of business books, The Business of FEAR and The 7 Deadly Sins of Business. In his marketing and sales books, Paul shows how proven systems coupled with customer-centric emotional triggers lead to significant growth in sales. Paul has more than 16 years of experience as a business advisor on a wide array of strategy, finance, business development, sales and marketing challenges for emerging-growth companies, financial institutions, not-forprofit organizations and global corporations. He helps executives and small business owners: • confront the challenges of the increasingly cluttered marketplace and the demands of the new age of marketing accountability; • develop customized sales and marketing systems that ensure significant ROI on every tactical investment in their overall marketing budgets; and • execute integrated marketing plans that leverage new online and offline techniques, including pay-per-click advertising, affiliate programs, and viral marketing. He has marketing and sales experience in a number of industries, including: financial services, advertising/marketing services, Internet, information technology, not-for-profit, corporate training, publishing and education. Paul has led consulting engagements for senior executives at: J.P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, IBM/Searchspace, Pfizer, Deutsche Bank (London), PNC Bank, KPMG, Kanoodle.com, and The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his consulting experience, he has served as a marketing director for two of the world’s largest financial professional services organizations, Financial Executives International and the Association for ___________________________________________________________________________________ 70

Financial Professionals. He also worked as a bank examiner for the Federal Reserve. Paul has lectured and written books, articles and white papers on a wide range of business topics, including: corporate strategy, sales management, marketing, entrepreneurship, information technology, risk management, business communications, banking relationships and corporate finance. He has served as a Teaching Fellow at New York University’s Stern School of Business and is the author of the bestselling book, M&A From Planning to Integration: Executing Acquisitions and Increasing Shareholder Value, which was published by McGraw-Hill. This book was recently featured on CNBC’s PowerLunch with Bill Griffeth and CNNfn’s The Money Gang. As an author, he is most famous for his series of books, which include FEAR Selling: How You Can Sell More and Sell Faster By Tapping Into Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated Emotional Needs; The 7 Deadly Sins of Marketing; and The 7 Deadly Sins of Marketing Online. For more information, please visit www.FEARMarketing.com. Paul was educated in the United States and Europe. He holds five degrees, including: an MBA in finance and marketing from New York University; a Master of Governmental Administration from the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Samuel S. Fels Scholar; a Master of Arts in English from Trinity College Cambridge University in England after being awarded the prestigious British Marshall Scholarship; a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Pennsylvania; and a Bachelor of Science in economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Paul is proficient in Spanish and was awarded a Certificate in Spanish from the University of Salamanca in Spain where he was a Cambridge Scholar. You may contact Paul at 201.533.9282 or via email at [email protected].

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BOOKS THAT MEAN BUSINESS BY THE FEAR MARKETING GROUP In addition to our consulting work, the FEAR Marketing Group also conducts a significant amount of research on sales and marketing effectiveness. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282.

FEAR Selling: How You Can Sell More And Sell Faster By Tapping Into Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated Emotional Needs Typically, before we worked with them, our clients were selling and marketing based on traditional features and benefits. If you’re still using these outdated tactics, you are in trouble. Recent studies by the Sales Career Training Institute and the Performance Marketing Institute have broken new ground when it comes to sales and marketing effectiveness strategies. Studies conducted by these not-for-profit Institutes have led to the development of the FEAR Selling System. One of the key findings of both of these Institutes is that today’s marketers are using hopelessly outdated selling strategies. Benefit selling (or what we call HOPE Selling) is only one half of the powerful Persuasion Equation.

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To get people out of their Comfort Zones and take action by buying your product/service, you must focus not only on the positive consequences of buying but also on the negative consequences of not buying your product/ service. Many of our clients sell complex products/services which require long sales cycles and therefore demand superior relationship-building sales skills. FEAR Selling shows how to overcome these challenges by finding and focusing on your prospects’ personal pains and fears as well as their hopes and dreams. By using both carrot AND stick persuasion techniques, you will easily multiply your persuasion effectiveness exponentially. So we have organized these persuasion techniques into an easy-to-use, stepby-step system that we share with our clients during our training seminars. Now, due to high demand, we have condensed the content of our 5-day FEAR Selling Boot Camp into the FEAR Selling System, which is available in book form. It covers everything you need to know to sell more and sell faster. Find out how to: cold call with confidence, position yourself effectively through your 30Second Commercial, get your prospects curious enough to invite you in to sell them more, bond quickly through proven trust-building techniques, ask the right questions at the right times to the right people, and present through powerful strategies that get your prospects to buy now.

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FEAR Selling For Financial Advisors Top financial advisors earn big bucks and so have the luxury of hiring staff and investing in sales and marketing systems that keep them winning clients with little effort. But you know if you are starting up as a financial advisor that the going can be rough at first. Recent turnover statistics show that up to 68% of new financial advisors fail within their first year. Why do they fail? Well, whether you are working for a large financial institution or if you are an independent advisor, you basically are running your own small business. You have to brand yourself, market yourself, and sell yourself. Unfortunately, many financial advisors whom we train don’t understand that they are in business for themselves. They have little formal sales training and limited marketing knowledge. They don’t know how to set up their own sales and marketing systems – but that’s exactly what they have to do if they want to survive in today’s cut-throat financial services arena. This version of FEAR Selling includes all the information from the original 5Day Boot Camp plus newly developed strategies, tactics and techniques specially designed for Financial Advisors. FEAR Selling For Financial Advisors covers everything you need to know to be a top producer. Keep a steady stream of prospects calling you. Find out how to: target wealthy investor segments, set up a highly leveragable referral system, cold call with confidence, position yourself effectively through your 30Second Commercial, get your prospects curious enough to invite you in to sell them more, bond quickly through proven trust-building techniques, ask the right questions at the right times to the right people, and tailor your offerings to your prospects so that they buy now. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 74

FEAR Marketing: Proven Systems and Emotional Triggers Guaranteed To Help You Sell More and Sell Faster We live in a new age of marketing accountability. There is no longer any excuse for marketers and small business owners to throw money away on marketing tactics without knowing their true return on investment (ROI). In fact, it’s stupid to do so. Indeed, if today’s marketers do not adopt the new marketing technologies, they will quickly find themselves squeezed out of the game - either out of a job or out of business altogether. FEAR Marketing was designed to help marketing executives and small business owners: • cut through the clutter of today’s increasingly crowded marketplace; • develop customized marketing systems that ensure significant long-term ROI on every tactical investment in your overall marketing budget; and • combine the emotional selling strategies first introduced in FEAR Selling with the marketing systems-thinking necessary to guarantee high returns on your marketing investments. Note: This second edition of FEAR Marketing does address the new online marketing technologies that many corporations and small businesses are now using to capture new clients at the lowest cost possible, but for a more comprehensive coverage of interactive, performance-based strategies, check out FEAR Marketing Online. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282. _____________________________________________________________________________________ 75

FEAR Marketing Online: How To Leverage The New Performance-Marketing Technologies Proven To Help You Sell More and Sell Faster The first edition of FEAR Marketing introduced us to the power of combining emotional selling with proven marketing systems. But nowadays, positioning your products/services more effectively and applying offline systems-thinking to your marketing is not enough. You also must tap into the powerful new online communication technologies that are available to target and generate qualified leads at the lowest possible cost. By complementing effective high-tech prospecting tactics with high-touch face-to-face sales strategies, FEAR Marketing Online shows you how to generate qualified, low-cost leads, create prospect interest, build trust, and close deals in order to succeed in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace. With the recent success of companies such as Google, Yahoo and E-Bay, marketers are waking up to the fact that the Internet is here to stay. But recent research by the Performance Marketing Institute shows that too many marketers and business owners do not realize that these hyper-growth Internet companies are basically marketing services companies that can help you catapult your own business to success. The Internet is not a business model in and of itself like the 1999 bubble-investors hoped it was. Rather it is a highly leveragable marketing tool that you must incorporate into your integrated marketing strategies if you want to survive today. With the rise of new marketing technologies such as pay-per-click advertising, affiliate programs and viral marketing, even small businesses can compete with their multinational corporate rivals if they know the new strategies and tactics which are necessary if you want to fight and win on today’s ruthless ROI-driven marketing battlefield. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 76

FEAR Leadership: How To Lead By Tapping Into Powerful Emotions To Motivate Your Organization From Fear to Hope In FEAR Leadership, the creators of FEAR Selling and FEAR Marketing show you how to use powerful persuasion techniques to motivate people to get things done. The leadership master, Nicollo Machiavelli, wrote in his world-famous leadership manual, The Prince: “Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved.” Machiavelli was right – it is difficult to be feared and loved at the same time by your followers, yet unfortunately, to lead today, you must sometimes tempt with the carrot as well as threaten with the stick. As many of today’s corporate leaders admit, you must create enemies in the minds of your employees so as to motivate them to compete and win. You must focus on consequences and award performance accordingly. In addition to showing you how to lead, this book also will show you how not to lead. This version of FEAR Leadership also includes excerpts from the previously published book, The 7 Deadly Sins of Leadership. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282.

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The Financial Services Marketing Handbook: Tactics and Techniques That Produce Results By Evelyn Ehrlich, Ph.D. and Duke Fanelli Everyone in the financial industry can benefit from The Financial Services Marketing Handbook (Bloomberg Press, 2004), from senior corporate management to independent financial advisors. Case studies illuminate both the innovations practiced by industry leaders—companies like Merrill Lynch, American Express, and Citibank—and perhaps more tellingly, marketing initiatives that failed. These up-to-the-minute case studies are integrated into a review of the keystones of marketing strategy: segmentation, positioning, situational analysis, and tactical planning. There are chapters on each of the specific tools of the marketer—from personal selling and sponsorships to the Internet and CRM. The 21st Century has already seen a major stock market collapse, unrolling scandals involving commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds and mutual funds, and industry-shaking changes in the regulatory environment. The Financial Services Marketing Handbook gives financial marketers and sales professionals the tools they need to survive—and thrive. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282.

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M&A From Planning To Integration Mergers and acquisitions are designed to build market leadership and create long-term value - in theory, anyway. M&A from Planning to Integration provides complete guidelines for ensuring these optimistic theories become reality, and outlines a systematic plan for developing, implementing, and monitoring a successful M&A deal. Examples from companies including Cisco Systems, GE, Microsoft, and others reveal M&A strategies that have worked in the real world, illustrate the book’s concepts in action, and help you apply those concepts and strategies to your own company. All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling 201.533.9282.

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