Meta Selling

Helping People to Buy a New & Better Way

Dr. Gary S. Goodman

• Publisher: G&D Media
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781722521707
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Ventas

Everybody wants to be a super salesperson, to be incredibly persuasive in their business and personal life. But nobody wants to seem like the sales stereotype: a scammer, carnival barker, or pest. In this breakthrough book, best-selling author Dr. Gary S. Goodman shows you how to do the impossible, to sell without selling the conventional, rejection-filled way. You'll Learn: The secret to partnering with people to unleash their desire to buy His brilliant meta-messaging technique to insure better results. To conquer human screening and voicemail to reach top CEOs and other influencers. Why dressing for success isn't what you think. To tap your instincts about the best time to sell, and especially, when to wait. The secret to selling to hesitant clients that have had bad prior experiences, by gently eliciting their happier moments. Meta Selling is truly a new and better way to persuade and to prosper, one that will empower you to capably control conversations while earning customers for life. Dr. Gary S. Goodman is the best-selling author of more than 25 books and audiobooks and an internationally renowned keynote speaker Fortune 1000 consultant. His other titles include: Selling Skills for the Nonsalesperson, Reach Out & Sell Someone, Selling is So Easy, It's Hard, Inch by Inch, Stinkin' Thinkin', and Stiff Them!

1

The 8th Wonder of The World: Getting Through Screening

Remember that scene in the original Star Wars movie when Obi-Wan Kenobi waves his hand in front of a Stormtrooper and calmly states, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”

He used what is referred to as a Jedi Mind Trick.

The trooper accepts his statement as fact and lets the droids pass without further question.

This is our exact goal with call screeners. We need them to pass us on to a buyer or to an influencer.

For this to happen, they need to change their default setting from perceiving us as threats. In a very short amount of time we have to convince them that we belong inside the fort they’re guarding.

If we over-explain we’ll seem amateurish and undeserving. If we try to break in forcefully, they’ll blow us off the path. Being snarky and defensive will also result in tears.

If we permit them to interrogate us, we’ll definitely lose.

They have a script and it works. It consists of these parts:

Hello, Alpha company; how may I direct your call?

Who’s calling?

Is she expecting your call?

And what’s this about?

Does she know you?

She’s not available.

I’ll tell her you called.

Goodbye.

This should sound familiar. It is baked into practically every screener, everywhere.

Maybe one in 100,000 sellers pause to consider what a losing proposition it is to permit this script to enter the conversation. They just succumb to it, and then get waylaid.

One in a million salespeople actually introduce an alternative call path for screening.

We’re going to do that, here. It constitutes one of Gary’s Greatest Hits. I’m really proud of this because it works.

It works? How do I know?

I installed an appointment–setting unit at a division of Xerox. Their purpose was to arrange first meetings with top brass at Fortune 1000 companies. They sold million-dollar hardware and software bundles.

On single calls, they were able to set meetings with the CEO at Boeing and other top-tier organizations.

To get through call screening was the first order of business. I totally redesigned the protocol for doing it.

The first precept, and this is an unwritten Meta Selling notion, is if you want to get cooperation you need to offer cooperation, first.

So, instead of making screeners tease the information out of us about who we are and why we’re phoning, we offered all the in formation, up-front.

“Hello, this is Gary Goodman with All Flakes Federal Supply. What’s the name of the owner there, please?

I offered my name in advance. Operating on the idea that if I want information, someone’s name, I need to volunteer mine. This creates transparency trust. I’m changing my stranger status. Suddenly, I’m a real human being, an individual and not the undifferentiated mass of callers that want something.

In this case, I trained people to say:

Hello, Gary Goodman, Xerox Computer Services for Mr. Smith please; thank you.

That’s it? That’s all?

No it isn’t. There’s more, but only if and when you need it.

Sometimes, when you sound authoritative enough, you’ll ONLY need this appetizer.

Of course, this raises an intriguing question: How can you sound authoritative?

Let’s start with the opposite, how to sound weak, which is probably how you come across, now.

If your tone moves up, as it does when you ask permission, then you sound weak.

Note, normally, we start the call by ASKING for Mr. Smith.

May I speak to Mr. Smith, please?’

This request sends a tonal meta-message that says, “I don’t have a right to speak to him. If I did, I wouldn’t have to ask!”

So, the answer to not sounding weak, to sounding authoritative, is to tell and not to ask.

Which is to say my voice tone starts HIGH and then goes down the stairs with each word as I announce:

Hello, Gary Goodman, Xerox Computer Services for Mr. Smith please; thank you.

“Hello, Gary Goodman” sounds like I’m saying, “Hi, how are you?”

It’s upbeat and cheerful, and then I sounds very businesslike as I say “Xerox Computer Services for Mr. Smith please.”

There is no pause between “please” and the words, “thank you.”

“Thank you” is said almost under my breath, as a tonal conclusion. I have reached the bottom stair and I am saying, “Now, go get him!”

The pacing of this first line is slow and deliberate. This is sending a meta-message of confidence in myself and in my mission, and it is to permit the listener the chance of processing all of this information the first time he hears it.

Which is very unlikely, no matter how slowly I go. Screeners are so used to their protocol that requires pulling info out like teeth that they are thrown back on their bums when they find no resistance and no tugging is required.

In fact, about 90% of the time you can count on them apologizing!

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Would you please repeat that?”

This apology enables us to be magnanimous and to extra slowly say:

“Sure, Gary Goodman, Xerox Computer Services for Mr. Smith please; thank you, again.”

Now, the screener is in our communicative debt. He failed to listen and we nicely repeated ourselves. There is a tacit obligation of reciprocity to put us through with no further ado.

But many screeners will go to their next question, but we are way ahead of them. From this point on, we have a suitable scripted reply to every question they could possible have. Each one ends with a directive to bring the sought out executive to the line.

“May I tell him what this is regarding?”

“Certainly, I’m calling at the personal request of our President. Mr. Bill Fello, and I’ll be happy to hold, thanks!”

Suddenly, the call is President-to-CEO, corporate officer-to-officer. Note the importance of it, and the implied privacy that it calls for. “Put this call through, right away; it’s significant!” is the clear implication of this reply.

And yet, this may still be insufficient to satisfy and engage the cooperation of certain executive, C-suite level screeners.

“Perhaps I can help you?” the screener could offer.

“I wish you could, but I’ve been asked by Mr. Fello to extend a personal invitation to Mr. Smith and I’ll be happy to hold, thanks.”

I should disclose that Bill Fello really was President of Xerox Computer Services and I obtained his formal approval to use his name in this manner.

In a notable meeting, he said, “Of course, you can use my name if it will get us meetings. Use-away!”

It really opened doors.

There are several keys to the astonishing success of this campaign. First, it was 100% original. You can’t say that about most scripts in the sales world, which are hand-me-downs from quainter era.

There is a threshold question that all of us need to address before we craft any new sales device:

Why is it needed?

The answer must be that we have a recurring blockage that has to be removed. The new screening protocol is needed to get obstructionists out of the way so we can have meaningful and efficient conversations with buyers.

Instead of accepting the sorry state of practice as a functional necessity, we take a fresh look at it and find a way to go over it, around it, under it, or through it.

With my new process, I am breaking out of the typical trap of being at their feet or at their throats. I’m not begging to get through. And I’m not bludgeoning my way through.

I am sounding polite, professional and firm.

Above all, I’m getting a job done with recurring success instead of recurring failure.

This is an odd thing to say, but most salespeople accept their lower status as a matter of fact. “I don’t deserve to speak to the CEO of Boeing” is the prevailing sentiment, instead of the opposite.

Also, they whisper to themselves, I have to do exactly what sales traditions would have me do, jot for jot.

This idea, on a tacit, unspoken and unrecognized level, is widespread.

If Meta Selling is saying anything, it is this:

The old ways must give way to the new. And it is up to US to invent these new techniques.

I was hired to help Xerox to sell million dollar packages. The old ways weren’t up to the task. As you see in campaign after campaign that I narrate in these pages, Meta Selling breaks the moldy molds of tradition.

The meta-idea I’m asking you to embrace is:

There is a better way!

Meta Sales gambits are new technologies-of-talk. They enable us to multiply our efficiencies and successes, and they simply must be continuously invented and be refined.

Screening innovations help us to prevail in the sale-before-the-sale, as I’ve said. If we can’t sell person #1, the screener, there’s no way we’ll sell person #2, the actual authorized buyer.

2

How To Be A Mind Reader

Sometimes I’m stunned by how little we know about our prospects. This has to sound odd in a time when we can investigate almost anyone at LinkedIn or Facebook and learn the most obscure details of people’s work histories, their education and the experience.

What we don’t know, in spite of all of this information, is what is coursing through buyers’ minds. If we pitch them, asking for a deal and they say yes, obviously they approve. If they proffer an objection, then they have issues that need to be addressed.

But in between yes and no there is a mysterious realm as big as the red spot on Jupiter.

A few months ago I heard a seller do something brilliant to shed light where there is darkness. It was utterly direct and simple.

He was following-up a proposal, and he asked: “What are you thinking?”

He wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The 8th Wonder of The World: Getting Through Screening
• 2 How To Be A Mind Reader
• 3 Getting People To Call You Back
• 4 Hurricane Gary—Making Actions Speak Louder
• 5 What Does ‘Responsibly Sourced’ Mean?
• 6 What’s It Going To Be: Yes, No, Or Maybe?
• 7 From Those Wonderful Folks That Gave You Pearl Harbor
• 8 Should You Dress For Success Or Look Good?
• 9 Are You A Cherry Or A Pit?
• 10 Finding Your Meta Selling Voice
• 11 How Much Money Will You Make?
• 12 But The SX-70 Is A Great Camera, Isn’t It?
• 13 Controlling Your Self-Talk When You Fail
• 14 Meta Ways To Build Trust
• 15 Are You Trying To Sell Me Something?
• 16 “I Have A Little Problem On My Hands & Was Hoping You Could Help Me Out”
• 17 Do You Sincerely Want To Be Rich?
• 18 Smart Calls Versus Dumb Calls
• 19 Tones Talk!
• 20 What Is The Best Time To Sell?
• 21 Small Talk Makes Big Money!
• 22 The Art Of Selling
• 23 The Power Of Politeness: Sir, Ma’am, & I’m Sorry
• 24 Doing The Impossible: Selling Without Selling
• Afterword
• Index