Buy More Houses – 5 Pillars of Successful Sales

Mike: This is the flipnerd.com Expert Real Estate Investing Show, the show for real estate investors whether you’re a veteran or brand new. I’m your host, Mike Hambright, and each week I bring you a new expert guest that will share their knowledge and lessons with you. If you’re excited about real estate investing, believe in personal responsibility, and taking control of your life and financial destiny, you’re in the right place.

This is episode number 319 and my guest today is John Martinez, the founder of Peak Performance Advisors, a training platform for sales people. He trains people in a number of industries but spends a lot of time focused on the real estate investing industry. There’s no doubt that investors can buy more houses by following a proven sales system and processes.

John’s company is one of the best at training sales people, and today he shares his five pillars of successful sales with us to help you better understand how to improve your closing rates and operate a more successful real estate investing business. This episode is packed with excellent information that you can apply right away. You simply do not want to miss this episode. Please help me welcome John Martinez to the show. John, welcome to the show.

John: Hey, good to be here, Mike.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. This is an exciting topic that we’re going to talk about. I want you to introduce yourself in a second here, but we really haven’t talked a lot about the sales process on the show before. And like I said, this is episode number 319, that’s kind of a shocker that every once in a while I feel like wow, we’re talking about this for like the tenth time. But this is a new one and this is obviously a critical one. I mean at the end of the day we’re all in the marketing and operations business, sales it’s obviously a critical role in that. So I’m glad you’re here and that we’re going to talk about this stuff today.

John: Absolutely, good to be here, Mike.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. Before we get started, tell us about yourself. Besides a good looking guy on the other end of this camera right now, who are you?

John: Yeah. So I’ve been building and training sales teams for about 15, going on 20 years now. Career started out mostly in the business to business world, so a lot of corporate sales training, things like that. Along the way, got into time share sales training, now we’re in about 50 industries. So we train everything from about a two minute sales cycle for a $49 product to a two years sales cycle, multiple hundreds of millions of dollars product.

But in the last couple of years my focus has really been in real estate. And the reason is because just so much money, so much effort is spent on the marketing piece to drive leads, but we saw a huge gap just really not a whole lot of focus on what do we do with those leads when they come in? What do the conversations sound like? And what structure should we use to move from the intake of the lead through the rest of the sales process? So that’s where we focus from where the lead comes in to the closing the deal.

Mike: Yeah, and it is a process. I mean we definitely have talked many times about the importance of follow up obviously is critical. But building that relationship with somebody and actually being a problem solver and trying to understand what it is that they want to accomplish because I think a lot of new people just assume, “Well, I’m going to find people that want to sell their house.”

It’s like well, the house might not be the real problem. That might be a symptom or you don’t really know the whole story until you can try to build rapport and build a relationship with them and kind of go through a formal process. And even if somebody tells you at the end that they don’t want to sell their house or this won’t work for me right now, like those things come back around, right?

John: Absolutely. And that’s the way we look at it. We look at real estate as a tool. Our job is to go in there and find out what’s the problem that the prospect really wants to solve or what’s the opportunity they’re trying to capture? And then we ask ourselves, can we use what we do our business, our service? Can we use real estate as a tool to help them bridge that gap and get there?

And when you have that conversation, everything just becomes so much easier. So much easier than, “Hey, here’s my offer. Take it or leave it,” and walk out the door. We really help the prospects to the sales process, connect the dots between where they are, where they want to be, and how important it is to even get there.

Mike: Yeah, and the great thing even for investors that are trying to buy houses is, you offer them a framework. They need a framework to work inside of instead of just . . . I’ve bought hundreds of houses, we follow a sales process. We know the importance of building rapport and building a relationship and follow up and all those things. But it never fails.

We’ll show up to a house and some other investor shows up at the same time and we’re prepared to go sit at the kitchen table and talk to them and kind of go through that process. And somebody else will walk around in flip flops and a stained up t-shirt for two minutes and say, “I’ll give you $20,000 for this dump.” And they’re like, they did nothing to build a relationship with that person at all. So you’ve developed what you call the five pillars of effective sales, right?

John: Right.

Mike: So that’s what we’re going to go through today. So why don’t we jump in? Why don’t you tell us where we start?

John: So yeah. So what we designed is basically a process. Every business needs to run on process whether there’s HR or marketing or any function of your business. The deal is when it comes to sales, most of us have just kind of winged it. We just go, “You know what, I’m just going to get out there and talk to the people and try to be friends and hopefully something good happens.”

So we try to build this process, so just like every other piece of a business you can have a sales process to follow. And these five pillars are kind of the building blocks to that process. So we start with what we call setting the ground rules which is really just setting the right expectations for the prospect. So when we step back and we look at any sales scenario, so think of yourself as a prospect going to a car dealership or something else.

Whenever we talk to that sales person for the first time, we usually have this apprehension, this kind of fear. We kind of hold back. If you walk on to a car lot for instance, you might already have a car picked out or have something you want to go see. But what happens when that sales person walks up to you and says, “Hey, what can I help you with?” What do you say?

Mike: Yeah, I’m just looking.

John: I’m just looking, right?

Mike: Right.

John: And why do we do that? Because we do that because we don’t want to be taking advantage of, we don’t want to lose control. At the end of the day, we want to make sure we make the right decisions. So that’s how prospects in real estate enter into these conversations, too. That apprehension, they’re going to hold stuff back.

So setting the ground rules is where we kind of relieve that tension and we do that by talking about, “Hey, this interaction, this conversation, this meeting, whatever it is, this is how long we expect it to take.” Because if you don’t know if it’s a five minute conversation or an hour conversation, the prospect is going to treat that very differently. We talked about what I need to accomplish. Hey, I want to ask you some questions or whatever it is, chat with you about your situation.

We also want to find out what the prospect’s agenda is. Hey, did you come into this with any questions yourself? What do we need to make sure we cover? That relieves a lot of the pressure. Okay, I’m going to get my answers covered.

And most importantly, what we do when we set the ground rules is, we set an outcome because one of the most annoying things for a sales person is leaving a sales call with nothing planned. I don’t know if I’m going to get the deal, not get the deal, if there’s going to be a next step. I guess I’m just hanging out here and I hope someone calls me back. So we kind of set that up for ourselves, but also for the prospect, we let them know this is the biggest thing we can do when setting ground rules to give the prospect permission to open up.

We let them know, “Hey, if this works out, that’s fantastic.” But that being said, we don’t buy every house we look at. So if for some reason timing is not right or something just doesn’t fit, no is okay, too. So we have the philosophy that yes is okay, yes is good, but no is okay too. If it happens to be a no, it’s no sweat. So we start that relationship off with, “Hey, if you have objections, concerns, it’s okay to tell me. I’m not going to beat you up and try to jam anything down your throat.” So setting the ground rules is where we relieve pressure. And we set ourselves up for a nice, easy, successful sales call and we make it comfortable for everyone involved.

Mike: Yeah. Well, talk a little bit about a couple of things I want you to maybe elaborate on are, how you position yourself as like being the decision maker or you’re just the trusted consultant that’s there to try to help them. Like a lot of real estate, I think some people are like, they hand them a card. That’s like CEO, I’m CEO of a one person company maybe. But just how you kind of position yourself as a part of that process, maybe share some thoughts on that.

John: Yes, so you’re right. Different companies do it different ways. Some, when it comes to negotiations, some want to use higher authorities. So they position themselves on purpose for not having authority because they want to call back to the home office and, “Hey, I have no control but this is the best we can do.”

Others, it can be a bit of an ego thing and there are many reasons why I’m the decision maker. I go into every sales call has a decision maker because essentially I am. So I don’t hide anything, I don’t pull any punches, but really we position it as instead of it being confrontational, it’s me against you, we position everything against, as we’re on a team against whatever problem or opportunity you’re trying to get rid of or go after. And together we’re going to make this decision. So instead of I’m the decision maker, we make it, we’re the decision maker.

Mike: Okay, okay. And what are your thoughts on, I know you service and you kind of train sales people in a lot of industries.

John: Yeah.

Mike: How does real estate differ? It’s obviously probably the largest kind of ticket items if you will. I don’t know if it’s the largest of all industries you serve but for most people sellers that we’re dealing with, it’s probably the largest item or transaction they’ve ever been through. So talk about their apprehension and relieving tension, some of those things, how they compare to somebody selling tacos or shorts or something like that at a clothing store. I mean, there’s some differences there, right?

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Relieving tension, some of those things, how they compare to somebody selling tacos or shorts or something like that at a clothing store. I mean, there’s some differences there, right?

John: Hey, absolutely, and great question. So essentially it’s business to consumer sales. And if we’re going to compare that to business to business sales, it actually ends up being a lot easier. Because at the end of the day, when we look at neuro economics and behavioral psychology and behavioral economics, all those things, what we’ve learned is that people make decisions emotionally.

So in the business to business world, it’s hard to find that personal emotion, that tie in for why someone should make a decision, what’s in it for them? We’re much closer to that in real estate. We can easily get to, how is this property impacting you right now? Is it impacting you emotionally, physically, mentally? How do you spend your time? Any of those things.

Because the closer we get to that personal impact, the easier it is to create motivation and urgency to change. So actually with real estate, I know a lot of people think it’s a complex sell but when you learn to do it appropriately, it’s actually one of the easiest sales out there because what you do directly impacts these people’s lives. Does that make sense?

Mike: Yeah. Awesome. So number two you have as defining the gap. So tell us some more about that.

John: Yes. So essentially in sales, all we’re doing is helping a prospect get from where they are to where they want to be. So if you’re drawing a map to anywhere, you’ve got to know where you’re starting from and you’ve got to know where you want to go, and you’re going to bridge that gap.

So first, you’ve got to define it. So number one, where are you? Why did you pick up the phone and call me? What made you answer that postcard? And we start to dive into, where am I right now? Then we want to get that drive down all the way to personal impact to emotion. “Well I need to sell my house.” Why? “I got repairs.” Okay, what else? “Well, I can’t afford the repairs.” Okay, what is that mean? “Well, it means these things are falling down. I feel horrible. I’m working extra hours trying to make this happen.” And we get to the emotion.

And once we identify where someone is, for the first time in their lives, many times, this is the first time these people have really consciously articulated what this property is doing to them and how it’s impacting them. So the first thing you want to do is help them get to this is what the property is costing me, whatever the emotional impact is. So that’s defining where you are.

And then we start talking about well, paint me that picture perfect scenario. Where do you want to be? And after you have those two points, map that gap defined, all you have to do with your product is find a way to bridge that gap with real estate. So then the conversation becomes, okay, let’s talk about then, if I could get you from where you are and how that’s making you feel to where you want to be, and what that feels like?

All at the same time, you’re creating motivation and urgency but what you’re also doing is reframing the way they’re thinking about this from this complex problem to a very simple problem. A very simple one question you’re going to get to at the end of the sales process which is bridging this gap worth doing a deal with us today? And we toss all the other trash out.

Mike: So in your experience, would you say this is what I believe that a lot of folks that we deal with, if we can position ourselves as that problem solver for them, to help them get to where they want to be. That they’re probably telling us more than they’ve told some of their closest family members because they’re like, they may be hiding something or they don’t want to admit something or whatever it is. I mean is that true in your case?

John: Absolutely. People will open up and the flood gates will open. And I did a call review this morning and it was in someone else’s house in Colorado, buying a house at a discount. They wanted to sell it for 80, she could do it for 30. And when you even listen to their words the prospect uses, it’s distressed and anger and “I’m frustrated.” And they really start to open up and that’s the problem you’re solving. The problem is, I don’t want to feel like this anymore. And so you’re exactly right, they really start to open up and you dig deep. It’s never about buying or selling a house.

Mike: Right, yeah. What do you think about from an investor’s standpoint? So when I go into a house when, you know, for years when I teach people, I coach people, we kind of talk a lot about, “Hey, it’s not about the house.” Try to focus on that person and try to help solve their problem. But some investors are going in, especially a lot of, I don’t mean to say it a negative way, a lot of small volume investors are so hungry for a deal, that they’re like walking and thinking, “I got to buy this house.”

But just maybe talk about the psychology. You’ve been talking about the psychology of the seller, but you as the buyer, the investor, talk about the kind of psychology and the attitude that you should have so that you can kind of optimize helping that person and probably optimize getting yourself a deal.

John: Well, number one you should always come out with the service-oriented attitude. So you got to have that in any business because every business is in business to solve problems. And if you’re not solving a problem, you’ve got nothing you can offer to people, you’ll go out of business. Beyond that just having the attitude instead of, I need to buy this house, you should actually flip it on its head and look for the reasons why it doesn’t make sense. It does a few things.

Number one, when you’re pushing too hard for a yes or a sell me this house, psychological reactant is, it’s something that a buyer or a seller goes through. And the more you push one way, the more they push the opposite way. So the harder you push for a yes you’re going to find that not only are you coming at it from a service perspective but your prospects are going to start pushing back harder, and start telling you all the reasons why they can’t sell it to you, they can’t sell it for that price, everything that’s going to get in the way.

When you do the opposite and you really question, do you really need to sell this house? Well, yeah, I do because of this. Is that that important? Tell me how’s that impacting you? Is that a big deal? And we actually flip it on its head and you try not to buy houses when you question everything that the prospect says and question the importance of it. What actually happens is they start selling you and they start telling you all the reasons why it’s important they take some type of action.

So not only does that psychology need to be there for the prospect, because if it’s not there they’re going to push back and make it even harder, but it has to be there for the investor. The investor has to question everything because that’s the only way they’re going to uncover objections, concerns, all those other things that the prospect might hide from them, that they’re just pushing, pushing, and pushing for a yes. So you’ve got to almost act as if you were that prospect’s best friend, and you’re going through this process together. And every time the prospect says, “You know, I’m thinking of selling my house.” You go, “Are you sure?”

Mike: Yeah. Talk a little bit about the, I don’t know if you have a rule of thumb. I’ve kind of given a rule of thumb just because I think it helps give structure when I coach people but of how to . . . because a lot of sales guys, maybe not the best trained ones, but a lot of sales guys are talkers, right?

And I’ve always said like, hey, kind of pull this back. You need to be doing like 75% listening, 25% talking. Ask open ended questions, try to get the person talking because like you said, they’re naturally very reserved. They’re waiting for you to say something. They have objections. But talk about some rule of thumb, or in your opinion, how folks should, in their mind, especially people that are like big talkers like say, “Man, I just need to go in there and shut up.”

John: Yeah, yeah. So if you’re talking you’re not selling. When you hear really good sales people, when I listen to these calls every single day, they might be talking 10% of the time. When they do talk, they’re not sharing what they know. The measure of a great sales person is not what you know and what you share, it’s the questions you ask.

So the greatest sales people out there, the top performers in all industries, not just in real estate, it’s carefully placed questions to guide the conversation. And make the prospect really realize on their own why they need to take action and how important it is. So yeah, we listen to calls all the time and you can even . . . Neil Rackham, the inventor of SPIN Selling.

He was with a company called Huthwaite and they did a study of about 35,000 sales calls over the course of 12 years. And what they found is that that’s actually backed up scientifically now, that the more questions a seller asks, the better success rate. The more a prospect talked, the better success rate. And they’ve even defined it down into not just the more questions and the ratio of talking, but what questions to ask and what order. So that’s actually three very specific questions you ask in a specific order to guide your prospect to get them to open up and share and do all that talking.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. So number three here of five, we’re making our way there, man. Discuss the exchange, what is that? Tell us about that.

John: So the exchange is this. Really, in any sales scenario there’s an exchange, right? If you’re buying a house you’re exchanging money. But there’s a few things that sometimes get in the way of a deal from going through. There’s things that a prospect has to give up or resources they’ve got to relinquish in order to do a deal with you.

So when we talk about a deal we often think about, I’ll give you this much money you give me a property, but there’s other forces in play. There’s relationships at play. So let’s think about if a prospect sister-in-law is a realtor and she wants to sell a house, or there’s family members who’s staying to maybe inherit the house if you don’t buy it. That’s a relationship. That’s something they have to exchange.

They might damage it or at least have to deal with something in order to do business with you. So the exchange are the resources a prospect has to give up to do business with you. So it’s important to discuss the time they have to exchange, the risk, any kind of change comes with risk, possible relationships. Because if you don’t discuss those things, that’s what can kill a deal at the end of the day. So the exchange is where we uncover all of those things.

And then what we do is we compare whatever they have to give up to get our help with what we determine that gap to be, the distance between where they are and where they want to be. And we help them get past all those objections so they don’t pop up at the end of the conversation or after we’re left the house and kill that deal before we really even started.

Mike: Yeah, like a big one is when there are multiple decision makers involved, and they’re not at the appointment with you. We struggle with that always where you think you’re talking to the decision maker and they’re like, “Well, I have three siblings and all four of us are going to decide together,” which, what do you do in that situation? I mean what is the advice? I mean sometimes some people say, “Hey, are all the decision makers going to be there with us?” which sometimes is impossible to do that. But how do you kind of navigate those waters?

John: So yeah, that’s kind of moving into decision process which is our next pillar. Most of these are going to be what we call complex sales where there’s more than one decision maker. And when we get to decision making, two points I want to make. One is sales people are usually really good at determining who can say yes. Who’s the decision maker? Who can say yes? What most sales people miss out on though is who has the power to say, to give, or to influence a no?

So those can be children living in the house, that can be your CPA or a financial adviser, that can be your best friend or your Uncle Jim you run everything by. So first, you’ve got to uncover all the decision makers and influencers, that’s number one.

Then leading into your question, what happens when they’re not all there? You’d like them all there, but you can’t always go there.

So what we do is we kind of mimic that conversation. If I’m talking to a husband and the wife is not there, “Jim, what do you think Suzy is going to say about all this? When you go back and you tell her what we discussed, how is she going to react? What is she going to say?” And then we can coach that prospect to sell to that other party. Because what you’ll hear is Suzy’s concerns won’t be with Jim’s concerns are. Oh, she is going to be worried about this. Let’s talk about that for a second. And we can go ahead and coach who we are talking to, to sell and to communicate with those people who couldn’t make the appointment.

Mike: John, before we get to the fifth step here, which is closing the deal, I want to ask you. We got kind of a question of the week that I want to run pass you, and this is going to be a good one. I’ve had a lot of people on this show over the years. They’ve opened my eyes to buying over the phone. We both know guys that their whole operation is they’re buying over the phone.

I’ve been classically trained to sit at the kitchen table and on the couch and talk to people and build relationships. And I think everybody understands that you could probably do a better job of building rapport in person. So the question is, what are the pros and cons, other than the obvious ones, of buying in person versus over the phone?

John: So obviously when you’re in person . . . and I practice this with this. I’m a kitchen table closer or the board room or however you want to put it. I love to be there and the reason is because you can read people. You can see their expressions. They’re more apt to answer your questions instead of dodge them. It’s just the communication is more real, you get deeper into it, there’s nowhere to run and hide. So face to face is always more effective.

That being said, your pros over the phone are going to be volume. You can reach out and talk and have more conversations with more people. My advice is if you’ve got a limited amount of leads and you can go see them, go see them.

If you’ve got so many leads overflowing that you can’t get to them all, you might want to use a phone a bit to take them through the sales process or at least qualify. So I actually got into the virtually wholesaling. I’ve just started my fourth week in it. So I’m in there, I’m doing it. We record these phone calls for our sales training we do. And I think we’ve closed like eight deals. We get about two leads a day. So we’re doing the whole sales process over the phone. So it is effective, you can do it. It’s a lot more difficult to do though.

Mike: Yeah, probably even more difficult when you’re in a competitive market. It depends on what market you’re in. Everybody thinks their market is competitive but some are clearly like on fire and I think it’s going to be hard to compete if they’re also talking to people that are at the kitchen table with them, building a relationship and looking them in the eye versus on the phone. So yeah.

John: Yeah. A definite advantage to being face to face, absolutely.

Mike: Sure, sure. Awesome, thanks for that. So back to the five pillars of effective sales, we’re on number five now which is closing the deal. So tell us more about that.

John: So closing the deal is easy. So it’s kind of funny. We’ve studied all kinds of sales processes from Sandler to SPIN and Actions, all of them out there. And a lot of the old traditional kind of broken and dysfunctional sales processes, everything is closing, closing, closing. Well, one thing we know now is the more times you ask for a deal, the less likely you are to get.

So closing is actually, it’s not a piece of a sales process per se. Closing isn’t something you do to somebody. You don’t wrestle someone down to a mat and close them. Closing, you have to think of as the natural outcome to an effective sales process. So where the sale is actually won or lost is back in that gap step, where we’re talking about emotion and pain and determining where someone is versus where they want to be.

And then all that rapport that’s built there and truly understanding someone’s issue. That’s where a sale is won or lost. Closing is just showing proof. Closing is just, you told me this, this, and this. You told me you’re feeling this way, this way, and this way. Let me tell you exactly how we would address those pain points. And at the very end, here’s the only close I’ve used for a decade, what would you like to do?

No fancy, no manipulative closes. When you go through the sales process and you define the gap, what problem can I help you with today? You talk about the decision process and you talk about the exchange. What are all the things that can possibly get in the way of this deal from going down?

And then you get to the close, all you’re doing is recapping and saying, “I heard this, this, and this. I heard these things could possibly get in the way. Here’s how we would handle it. We’ll solve pain, pain, pain, because we do business this way. We’ll take care of all these concerns this way. What is it that you’d like to do?” Closing is a natural outcome to a solid sales process. Many people look at closing as a sales process and in my opinion and scientifically, that’s just a wrong way to do it.

Mike: So talk a little bit about, there used to be people who kind of thump their chest at the one call close. And in my experience, the majority of houses we buy are in the follow up process. People need to like think about it, they need to talk to family, they need to pray on it. All these things that they may need to do.

And then it started to become clear to me overtime, and we still get some contracts on the spot, don’t get me wrong. But it always runs through your mind when that happens of, did I offer too much. Is that why I got it on the spot because I offered to . . . Like if you say I’ll offer you this and they say I’ll take it, like immediately. Like okay, what did I miss, right?

So kind of talk about that a little bit about . . . because real estate it’s a complex sale generally. It’s a big deal for the person that’s selling you, and how natural that process is for it to take time after your kind of offer if you will.

John: Well, it’s important to figure out at the end if that second call, if that put off, if that I need to think about it. is real or if it’s just a way to get you out the door because you’ve been pressuring them or they’re uncomfortable or there’s a hidden objection or concern. What we don’t want to happen is to really pressure them into a close when there is another step they have to take in their buying process.

But what we also want to we careful to do is let a prospect get away with a maybe or think it over when it’s just to get you out the door, when there’s this hidden objection or concern. Because if there’s a hidden objection or concern and you’re gone, now we can’t address it. If we can’t address it, we can’t help the prospect at all.

So it’s important to determine is this real or is this fake? So the best tool we use and we do a lot of one call closes, but we don’t pressure a prospect. What we do is we use yes is good, no is okay too. So when we get to the end of a sales call, here’s what we do. Okay, I need to think it over. And I listened to one this morning that it was exactly like this. I need to think it over.

Okay. Listen, after everything we’ve talked about today, I might have missed something, maybe timing is not right, maybe it’s just not what you’re looking for and that’s okay. We don’t buy every house we walk into. We never expect to. But after everything we’ve talked about, if you’re still not comfortable with the yes, let’s just call it a no. If we need to revisit it down the line, that’s okay. But let’s call it what it is. It’s a no.

And what this does is we don’t pressure a prospect for a yes. We pressure them for a no and often times that’s what triggers that hidden objection or concern to come out so we can deal with it.

The other beautiful part about that is if you make it a no, now they know you’re not a pushy sales person. They can voice it up to you. They know you’re not going to cram it right down their throat. You’re not pushing for a yes, you actually push for a no. But after you get through all the pain, you determine the gap, And they think you can solve it and now you’re backing out saying, “You know, if it’s not a yes, it’s a no and that’s okay. We don’t buy every house we walk into.” That sometimes is enough of a push to get them to, sometimes we don’t make decisions until we have to.

And sometimes that’s enough, but at the same time, if there is another part of the process or something they need to think about, we’re not pressuring them for a yes. So they will pick up the phone when we call. So even when we do that, we can put them right into our same follow up system and call a week later and say, “Hey, just wondering how you’re doing?” And in fact, they’re going to be more apt to pick up the phone because they know that you’re not going to slam anything down their throat. If you know that if it’s not a fit, you’re not going to let that deal go through.

Mike: Sure, sure. Talk about the importance of getting a yes or no, kind of setting that expectation I guess back up in the first part which is setting the ground rules, kind of like the upfront contract or some ability to say, “Look, are you going to be prepared to make a decision one way or the other today?” Or if that’s even necessary?

John: So yes. Sandler referenced that up front contracts. Sandler uses the upfront contract. There’s everyone on the top ten sales training programs out there uses some version of the advance agreement, the upfront contract. Everyone has a different name for it, but it’s there because it’s really important. And what we’re doing is we’re setting that expectation for a yes or a no. And it does so many things. It sets expectations and we always want to do that because we want a yes or a no. Maybe’s and think-it-overs kill more sales careers and deals than anything out there. So my rule of thumb is if it’s not a yes, it’s a no. The only caveat there is you always have to make sure your prospect knows no is okay, right?

You even start a phone call that way. “Hey, thanks for calling in. Usually these calls take a few minutes, you got a few minutes for me?” “Yeah, sure.” “Great. Okay, listen, people usually call in and they want to know what we do, how we do it, and how much we offer for the house, that kind of thing. Do you have the same questions?” “Yeah.” “Great. Anything else?” “No.” “Perfect. Listen, at the end of the call, I’ll find out a little bit about you, tell you what we do, and you can decide whether or not it makes sense to take some type of next step and what that might look like. If it does make sense, awesome, we’ll talk about it. If not, no sweat, happy to help you out. We don’t buy every house from every person who calls in here. So no sweat either way.”

You just want to set that expectation upfront.

Mike: Awesome. This is great information. Is there anything that we didn’t cover, John? This is one of your primary frameworks, but is there anything that we kind of missed here that people listening right now might be asking. We can’t hear them, but they’re like, “We should’ve talked about this.” Is there anything kind of glaring that we missed?

John: Right. You can go down so many rabbit holes with this stuff. There’s a one-off situation for everything. What about when they say this? What about this specific situation? Just to tie it all together, I’d say the big thing, the biggest thing with sales is two, and we hit on both of them already.

Your job is not to talk and share information. It’s to ask questions and find out how you can serve somebody. Number two, the more pressure you put on the prospect to do a deal, the less likely it’s going to become. The more times you ask for the deal, the less likely it’s going to come to fruition. The more you pressure a prospect for information and to do a deal, the less they’re going to share with you. So the less information you have to know how to really serve this prospect.

So you go into it with a mindset of, I’m going to ask questions and it’s a yes or a no. No is okay and by default, I’m pulling my prospect towards a no and I’m going to make them push me towards a yes. So go into it, not pushing for a yes. Go into it asking questions.

Mike: Awesome. Well, John, if folks want to learn more about you or your company, your training programs or anything like that, where should they go?

John: Peakperformanceadvisors.com. So www.peakperformanceadvisors.com. There’s some case studies on there. This stuff is outlined. That’s some other tools and different resources. That’s a best way to get a hold of us, get a hold of me. We have newsletters with tips, tricks, that type of thing that gets distributed. So that’s kind of our one place we put all the information.

Mike: That’s great. Well, I’ll add a link down below for peakperformanceadvisors.com right down below the video for anybody that wasn’t able to write that down or want to reference the show page. But John, thanks so much for joining us today. This is great information.

John: Hey, thanks Mike. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Mike: Good to see you. And anybody that’s listening right now, thanks for joining us for show number 319. We appreciate you and hope you’ll join us again on another upcoming episode. Have a great day.

John: See you Mike.

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