how to eliminate personal sales rejection forever - transcript to... · how to eliminate personal...

How to ELIMINATEPersonal Sales Rejection

FOREVER...And Make More Sales

An Interview With Ari Galper,by Art Sobczak

TelesalesSuccess.com Inner CirclePlatinum Audio Seminar

How to ELIMINATE Personal Sales Rejection

FOREVER… And Make More Sales

An Interview with Ari Galper,

by Art Sobczak ©Copyright 2008, Business By Phone Inc. All rights reserved This is a transcript of the Telesales Success Inner Circle Platinum Members audio seminar “How to ELIMINATE Sales Rejection FOREVER…And Make More Sales” An Interview with Ari Galper, by Art Sobczak. Reproduction of any portion of this transcript for individual use is permitted if credit is given to Art Sobczak and Ari Galper, authors, and Business By Phone Inc., publisher. Any systematic or multiple reproduction (photocopies) or distribution by any means, including electronic, of any part of this transcript, or inclusion in publications is permitted by permission only. Copying and forwarding of this transcript is a violation of copyright law, unless permission is granted. Please inquire. Published By:

Telesales Success Elite Inner Circle of Sales Professionals Business By Phone Inc. 13254 Stevens St. Omaha, NE 68137 (402) 895-9399 Fax (402) 896-3353 Email: [email protected] www.businessbyphone.com

How to ELIMINATE Personal Sales Rejection Forever… Ari Galper with Art Sobczak

________________________________________________________________________ ©2008 Telesales Success.com

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Art: Hi again and welcome to the Telesales Success Platinum Inner Circle audio seminar. I’m Art Sobczak. Today we have with us Ari Galper. He’s the creator of Unlock the Game, a new sales mindset that overturns the notion of selling as we know it today. With a Master’s degree in instructional design and over a decade of experience creating breakthrough sales strategies for global companies such as UPS and Qualcomm, Ari discovered the missing link that people who sell have been seeking for years. His profound discovery of shifting one’s mindset to a place of complete integrity based on new words and phrases grounded in sincerity has earned him distinction as the world’s leading authority on how to build trust in the world of selling. Ari’s deep understanding of human communication and how it can be maximized in the sales process has lead him to discover the solution to the most dreaded selling experience of all – personal rejection. He has completely redefined how to connect with people over the phone and in his corporate training sessions, Ari demonstrates his mindset by calling new prospects in front of live audiences. Ari’s a practitioner of aikido, a special martial art that defuses conflict between two parties. He’s based in Sydney, Australia and is a sought after international speaker and trainer. His personal insights on how to build trust between buyers and sellers continue to break new ground in the sales industry. Unlock the Game has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, business owners and sales people increase their sales with a new mindset that creates trust between seller and buyer. Now on a personal note I, of course there’s a lot of people out there who teach selling and people who have I guess, come and gone over the years, who teach telephone selling. Some I know, some I didn’t pay much attention to, but I’ve got to admit I became intrigued when I saw Ari’s material and I studied him for a couple of years and just thought, “This is some really, really good stuff.” And then we bumped into each other at a marketing seminar from Dan Kennedy and hit it off and that’s why he’s here today. He’s got some wonderful material, so let me welcome Ari Galper. Ari: All right. Thanks for having me Art. I appreciate it. And I do remember us hooking up. That’s was great. That’s fantastic and I’m glad to be on the phone today. Art: Well let’s do this. I’m sure all of us can’t really wait to hear how you’re going to help us eliminate sales rejection. So tell us your story. How did you come up with your breakthrough sales program? Ari: Sure. Where Unlock the Game came from was about seven years ago when I was a sales manager and working for a software company. I was managing about 18 sales people and we sold online tracking software for websites, so you can actually track the visitors going through a website stage-by-stage for optimization to help improve the



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conversion rates. That’s kind of what we did back then and so I was sort of the manager and kind of the top sales guy and I was in charge of all the large accounts. So I had a couple of accounts I was working on and it took me about six months to finally get this really large prospect on the phone with me and my CEO. They were in New York and we were in San Diego. It was a big account. I had the CEO on the phone, the vice president of marketing, vice president of IT, all the players. So this is the account of the year that we’re all counting on and I finally pulled in this great call. So anyway, we had this great conference call and I was in a conference with our CEO. They were in New York. We were live and we said our hellos and I went into my demonstration of the products and kind of walked them through it. They were saying on the phone, “Ari this is fantastic. We love what we’re seeing here. This is the most amazing tool ever seen.” And they’re asking all kinds of questions like, “How does it work? How much does it cost? Who’s your competitor? Who are your best clients?” Of course I had all the answers, right? Because I had been trained by all the gurus out there and I was doing my thing like I was trained to do. There was so much chemistry on this call. It was like a love fest on the phone. Have you been there before with a client? Art: Oh I think we have all if we’ve been in sales for a while. We love that feeling. Ari: It just feels so right. They got the questions. I’ve got the answers. They’re stroking me left and right and they’re saying, “Ari, this is a fantastic demo.” My boss, in the back room, is like giving me a high five, “Ari nice job.” I’m going, “Yeah.” This is like the dream sales call. This is what it’s all about right? So were going back and forth. The chemise is great. I’m answering questions. They’re happy. They’re excited. They’re turned on and after about an hour the call will come to an end and they’re like, “Great. Fantastic.” And I’m like, “I’ll give you a call in a couple of weeks.” They’re like, “No problem. Give us a call and we’ll take it from there.” I’m walking on a high right now. I’m looking at myself going, “Damn this is a great call.” So we said our goodbyes and I reach for the phone in the middle of the conference room, big spaceship kind of looking conference phone. You’ve probably seen those before. I reach over the phone to hit the off button and by complete accident I hit the mute button instead. They thought I hung up the phone and left the call. So by accident I didn’t. I hit the mute button. So a little voice inside of me said, “You know Ari just pull your thumb back for a couple seconds and go to the dark side, go to the side of the prospect where no one ever goes before. Let’s just see what’s going on outside in the world because no one ever goes there in sales right?” So I pulled my thumb back and they started talking amongst themselves thinking I had what? Art: That you had left the call obviously.



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Ari: I hung up right? Art: Right. Ari: So they started talking and I’ll ask you, what do you suppose they started saying amongst themselves? What do you suppose after that amazing phone call they started saying? Any guesses at all? Art: Well I’d like to think based on what you said that they were all excited, they wanted to buy but I think there might be a “but” coming. Ari: Well that’s what I was hoping I’d be hearing right? Actually that’s what you expect to hear right? Art: Right. Ari: All that going back and forth. But let me tell you what I heard exactly word-for-word. What they said was, “Were not going to go with them. Keep using him for more information. And make sure we shop someplace else cheaper.” Ouch. It was like arrow in the heart and twist. And I just sat there frozen. I said, “What? I just did everything I was taught to do by the sales guru, the traditional ones. I was taught to answer objections. I was doing my thing. What did I do wrong?” And so I just sat there in shock for 10-minutes. I hit the off button as I had heard enough already and I was staring at the wall going, “What is going on here?” Right? And so I realized that somewhere along the way it’s become socially acceptable not to tell the truth to people who sell. It’s perfectly fine to say, “Sounds great. Makes sense. Give us a call back.” But without any intention of buying. So I started to ask myself, “What is it? Why were they afraid to tell me the truth? What was it that held them back to just tell me what their thoughts were?” Let me ask you a question, if they told me the truth as a sales person, what are we designed to do when we hear a no or an objection? What are we supposed to do? Art: Well, of course, a lot of people say you need to overcome the objection, right? Ari: Right. Were supposed to overcome it. But what were they preventing me to do to them? What were they trying to prevent myself doing to them by not telling the truth? What were they trying to avoid from me? Art: Well they didn’t want to get into an adversarial type situation. Ari: Your right. What they were really trying to avoid from me is pressure, is sales pressure and that is the key operative word today we’re going to talk about, which is sales pressure, which is inherent in the buyer and seller conversation and I have discovered that the major reason why prospects are afraid to tell you the truth is because they’re afraid of the sales pressure they’re going to get from you. And so that wall of pressure is hidden there underneath the surface and that’s what prevents a truthful conversation back and



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forth. That’s when I realized that the game has to change. There has to be a whole different way of approaching the sales process so you can diffuse that pressure to allow the truth to emerge. And so I uncovered this new way of thinking called Unlock the Game that essentially is a new way of thinking. The idea is this – your goal of the call to the prospect is not to make the sale. Your goal of the call to a prospect is to get to the truth of whether the sale exists or not and that’s the whole head shift that I came up with. And amazingly, it actually becomes much more pragmatic to focus on the truth because what happens is you ferret out people who really have no intention of buying. So you end up chasing less people who aren’t going to buy from you in the first place. And what happens is your entire aura changes on the call because you’re not putting pressure on people but you’re using dialogue to get them comfortable to tell you the truth of what they’re actually thinking and that’s my whole story and that’s where that whole epiphany came up to me. I realize my goal now is to get the truth from people and that requires a whole different way of thinking and that’s kind of how the whole Unlock the Game program got kicked off. Art: Wow fascinating story. So as you built your entire sales training program based on that one experience, so you had that huge revelation. Ari: Yeah, based on going for the truth between you and the buyer and so from that I created a whole different mental framework, a whole different mindset plus languaging – phrases and words to use that purposely diffuse the attention of the conversation that make them feel comfortable telling you the truth. I’ll get at that later on in our call. But it’s a system. There’s a mindset and there’s a phrase, there’s languaging. The two together allow the conversation to move into a natural dialogue so both people be themselves and be human and from that the sell happens. So that’s kind of where the concept came from. That’s the story that kicked the whole thing off and now I’ve got thousands of clients and they’re doing great. That was the beginning of it all. Art: Okay. Well that’s a powerful story. And in some of your material, I know you and I agree on most things, especially some of the myths that you like to dispel in selling. So why don’t you share some of your sales myths with us? Ari: Okay. Well I’m sure a lot of your folks have heard this before. Some of these myths - and I’m going to kind of debunk a few of them now on the phone with you and the folks listening - but here’s a classic one, I love to sort of debunk a lot. And I’m sure you can probably fill this one in, but you’ve heard this one before; when we hear some guru tell us sales is a what game? Art: Well it’s a numbers game and you’re right, I’ve talked quite a bit about that. Ari: We all know that don’t we? So we’ve heard that thousands and thousands of times. And my contention is this; In this day and age, with a different way of thinking, the selling is no longer about how many people you call on the phone. It’s about how deep you go on each call. The notion of the numbers came from a manager who was



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managing a sales rep who kept getting rejected and the manager said, “You know what? Just keep calling more, more, more, more and eventually you’ll get a few who will pop out and say yes.” That’s where the numbers game originally came from, which made it a really rejection filled kind of activity. So with the Unlock the Game mindset you can actually have better and deeper conversations with people on the phone, less people to call and more sales. So that’s the first myth I want to challenge in people’s minds to get them kind of open to thinking in a different way. Art: I agree and actually most people listening to this, who are actually our members, know that I say selling is not a numbers game. It’s a quality game. Ari: Yep. Art: Were on the same page there. Ari: Absolutely. It’s about your ability to connect with people, for them to trust you, to open up, to tell you what their issues are. If you can get to that level, you are doing extremely well. That’s number one, that’s number one. Myth number two is the whole notion that we’ve been taught that the sale is lost at the end. It’s lost at the close. You’ve heard this before - I’m sure your audience as well as your members - where the boss says, “Oh we lost it. You lost it at the end. You didn’t close it.” It’s all this emphasis around the close. That’s where all the pressure is and if you lose a deal, it’s all because you weren’t a good closer. And my contention is this – I believe in this day and age the sale is now lost at “Hello”. It’s lost at the beginning of the process, not the end, because if you don’t begin the dialogue in a truthful, open way where they trust you, then your ability to control the end is virtually nil because it’s over at “Hello”. They’re already playing a game with you. Their guard’s up. You’re chasing them. You’re playing games with them. It becomes a very difficult and painful experience. If you can enter the conversation, enter the dialogue from the beginning in a way where you are open with them, they trust you, that’s when it happens. That way the end happens by itself without you having to make it happen. Does that make sense? Art: Yeah great point and many people think that sometimes just because they have somebody’s who’s finally willing to speak with us we’ve got a good prospect here, which obviously isn’t the case. Ari: Right, exactly. So the pressure can come off the close. That’s not where it’s all going to happen. It’s going to happen on how good you are at the beginning. How good you are at building real trust with people. And that’s the whole notion we’re talking about today, is real genuine trust. Get on the phone with people and come across as someone who helps, who cares about them as a problem solver, then they’ll trust you. It should happen naturally from there. That’s the second myth I want to debunk today.



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Art: Okay. Ari: The third one is there’s this whole notion around that you should always be focusing in on the sale. Always focus on the close. Focus on what your goal is, to close, to close, to close, to close. The problem with that is it narrows your ability to be open to listening to what the other person has to say and what their thoughts are. So my read or definition of that phrase is it’s no longer about focusing on the close anymore. It’s about focusing on the truth of whether there’s a fit between you and them or not. So it’s a changing of trajectory, changing objective. So when you focus on the truth you say, “You know what? My goal right now when I call this client or this prospect is to discover one thing; to see if he and I are a fit or not, because you know what? I don’t know if we are or not. I haven’t talked to the guy yet.” So we get fed leads from our marketing department that says, “Here’s your perfect profile. Here’s the exact company. Here’s our client. Number of employees. Number of revenue. They’re it. Go get them.” We assume they’ve got to be our clients. Art: Right. Ari: But that assumption itself creates a slight arrogance on the phone. It creates over confidence. It creates a sales behavior and that behavior triggers what I call the wall to go up, which shuts down the sales process. So my contention with this thing is you need to focus on the truth first and be humble yet still focused on whether they’re a fit or not. So that’s number three if that makes sense. Art: That totally makes sense. Ari: Good. Good. Okay so number four is this whole idea of overcoming objections. And I’m not sure what your take is on this, I’m sure it’s slightly, sort of what I’m thinking here, but my contention is this – if someone gives you an objection that’s truthful, like the price is too high, we’re taught, as you said, to overcome it right? So if someone gives you an objection like, “The price is too high.” You try and sell over it and say, “Oh no, no, no, let me tell you why it’s high,” or try and defend yourself. That means you’re not acknowledging what they’re saying to be true. And that can create more pressure and more problems. So I believe that an objection should not be overcome. I believe an objection should be diffused. You should get behind the objection and get the truth of what they’re actually saying, meaning lower the resistance, lower the pressure - and I’ll go into some objections in a few minutes when we talk about the examples to round it out - but your goal, I believe - and I’ve seen proof of this now from my clients - is that when you get an objection, your goal is to diffuse it, meaning lower the pressure, lower the barrier, listen to get the truth and respond back in a way that reopens the dialogue but does not try and overcome the objection. See how beautiful that is when they begin to open up to you again and reconnect in a nice way. So that’s number four on that, on the objections part. Do you have a similar take to that?



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Art: Were totally on the same page. What I always say is that when you hear an objection you’re only hearing a symptom of the problem. Well we don’t know what the real problem is and most people are taught to essentially tell somebody they’re wrong by coming back with an objection rebuttal and you’ll never get somebody to change their mind when you tell them they’re wrong. So the only way we can get them to open up is to question them more. We’re absolutely on the same page there. Ari: Good. Yeah, the last thing you want to do is come across as someone who’s not willing to listen to somebody. Because for many people, if you don’t come across and want to listen, it’s over in their mind, they’ve shut you down. So the last thing is this - this is a biggie -that we’ve been taught traditionally that rejection is part of the game. It’s part of sales. You’ve got to be tough. You have to have a chip on your shoulder. It’s like this macho kind of fraternity kind of thing where if look as if you’re not tough enough to handle rejection in sales you aren’t cut out to do it. That comes from the traditional guys who’ve been beat up on the phones for years and years and years and years. They’ve gotten numb now with rejection. They go, “You know what? I’ve been beat up myself for years. If you don’t get beat up too you ain’t part of the game.” And I truly believe that and I’ve proven this over and over again now with my Unlock the Game System, that is this – rejection is triggered by behaviors that we do, that sales people do. It is triggered and if you know which behaviors trigger that and remove the triggers, rejection will never happen again. So I have ways of figuring out certain languaging, certain behaviors, certain tones of voice that trigger what I call the walls that go up that cause the prospect to shut you down. So if you’re constantly aware of those things and change those things, those behaviors, rejection gets eliminated permanently. And that’s a pretty tall order I’m suggesting that I can do this, but it’s been proven thousands of times now with my clients and there’s a way of doing this. That’s why the title of this talk is “How to eliminate personal rejection”. You do it by shifting your approach and your languaging. So those are the top five myths I kind of want to address directly and to take a stand here before we move forward. Is that cool? Art: Absolutely and it’s things that everybody is interested in I’m sure if they’re making any phone calls at all, particularly the rejection one. So I know you have three mindset principles that you teach that are really the foundation for Unlock the Game. So if you would, let’s get into those. Ari: Sure. Okay. So there are three basic principles behind the Unlock the Game mindset and the first one is a biggie, the first one is diffuse pressure. That’s number one. You should always be diffusing pressure on the phone with your prospects so that they trust you. Their guard comes down so you can really help them without a game going on because you’ve got to be able to break this sort of game of cat and mouse, going back and forth.



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So when I say diffuse pressure I don’t mean the overt used car sales pressure. I don’t think that your members do that. Most people don’t these days. I’m talking about under the radar pressure, inherent in the mere fact that you’re talking to a stranger. Their guard’s up. They don’t trust. They don’t know you. How do you do that? So let me give you an example right now of what I mean by that, a real tangible example your members can relate to and I’m sure we can all relate to this one. So let’s say you’re on a call with somebody for the first time. It’s a good prospect. It’s going well. The call’s going well. You’re having a great conversation and you come to the end of the call. What are we trained to do typically at the end of our first call with a prospect on the phone? What are we supposed to do at the end typically? Art: Well set up the next follow-up. Ari: That’s right. Were supposed to go, “Great. Well how about if we give you a call three weeks from now right? Or what about if we come by and visit your office?” It’s always a next step right? Art: Right. Ari: But what happens if you try and go the next step and the other person on the phone is not ready for that? What can go wrong? You say, “Hey let me give you a call this Friday. We’ll follow-up from there.” What can go wrong if they’re not ready yet? Art: Well either an objection or a lie. Ari: Right. Plus what will happen is you’ll break the trust that was created and they’re going to go - in their mind - they’re going to go; “Wait a second guy. Where are you going? I’m not ready yet.” And so by trying to move forward without knowing that, here it is, the truth of what they’re thinking, you risk losing that relationship. So I reinvented this whole element here in terms of what to say at the end of a call, because remember our goal is the truth, not the appointment. So we get the truth, we know who the right person is to deal with or not. So here’s what we teach in our program; Someone comes to an end of a call and it’s going great. Instead of saying, “Hey let’s get in next week.” Or, “Where should we go from here?” Whatever, what we say is this, we say, “Where do you think we should go from here?” And I’ll say it again. The call’s going great, I was tuned in. Here’s what we say instead of the old way, we say, “Where do you think we should go from here?” Art: So totally put it in their court. Ari: Absolutely. Not only put it in their court. But notice the tone of my voice. First of all, how I just lowered my voice. That was designed to remove the tension, the pressure of that person’s feeling on the call. They may not say it but they’re feeling it all right. So it’s in their court. But what that does is it gives them permission to tell us what?



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Art: The truth. Ari: Right. It takes the pressure off that moment. They tell us what’s on their mind, which is a total flip of the equation you see? And here’s the amazing thing, what happens is they open up and go, “Well I do have one more question. I did have one more about this.” Or here’s the funny thing - when my clients tell me, they go, “Ari, here’s the funny thing. I did that and they booked the appointment.” They said, “How about coming by next Friday and give us a demonstration?” And they book it. Art: Great. I love the wording. Say it one more time in the same tone of voice. Ari: Yeah, so it’s like this, the calls going great, “Where do you think we should go from here?” It just pulls all that tension off the call and what it does is it changes the perception of you as a person. They go, “Whoa. This guy is not trying to close me. This guy’s a human being. He cares. He wants to listen. He’s a normal person, not a sales guy,” you see? And that’s the whole notion we’re trying to get rid of here, is that negative salesman stereotype, because the stereotype is what creates the rejection. But you can eliminate it with these words and phrases and the mindset. Man, selling is like cruising a Ferrari. It’s just fun. And money just starts rolling in because you don’t have to push or control or conjole to make the sale work because you don’t have to control it because the client trusts you enough to tell you where they stand. And that’s the whole notion behind this first principle. Art: I love it. Ari: So essentially what I’m trying to say here is it’s your job, to move momentum from these calls. They can’t feel from you. They try to pull them down a process. When they feel, “Here it comes, here comes the close, here he is following-up with me,” they know that all you care about is your commission. Even if your heart’s in the right place it doesn’t matter. If you’re still using these words and selling the old way, they’re going to perceive you the old way. So that’s why this requires a different way of thinking, shifting your mindset and changing your phrases and words to create that real trust on the phone. Art: Right. I like it. Ari: That’s sort of the first major principle behind my entire system. And while were on this principle, let’s talk about objections for a little bit here because I addressed it earlier before and I’m going to give some examples of what we use with our program and our clients. So as I mentioned before, with objections we don’t believe, and as you said too, in trying to overcome, to prove what they’re saying is not true. We believe that our first goal is to diffuse, take the pressure out of the moment. So let me give you an example. When we hear an objection like this - this is probably common, what you probably hear and so do some of your members - we hear things like, “Were already using them as a vendor.” That’s a common one right? Art: Sure.



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Ari: We’re using someone else already, right? That’s a typical objection which might come across the phone and the reality is we don’t know if it’s true or not, but they might say, “Well we’re already using somebody else.” Right? So with my system the first thing you do if somebody ever gives you an objection, the first thing you say is this; So they say, “We’re already using somebody else.” Your response is always this, “That’s not a problem.” “We can’t afford your product.” “That’s not a problem.” “Your price is too high.” “That’s not a problem.” And it’s funny at first because it’s hard to believe that you don’t have to go for the throat so fast, but the first goal of that moment…let me ask you Art, when I just said to you that’s not a problem, what kind of went through your body, your mind when you just felt me say that to you? Art: Well let me just share a quick story with you. I was at a fundraising dinner for the Phoenix Baseball Little League and at the door they’re selling raffle tickets for an autographed Ted Williams jersey. And, I don’t know, $50 bucks is what they were, so I bought one at the door. And then I’m at the dinner and they’re doing some of the speeches before the auction and some of the kids were walking around the tables selling tickets and this little girl who had to be maybe 10, 11 years old who played in the Little League came up to me and she said, “Sir would you like to buy a raffle ticket for the autographed jersey?” And I looked at her and I said, “Oh I already bought one.” And she looked at me and said, “That’s okay.” And then I looked at her and I thought, “I’ve got nothing.” She said, “Get one from me.” And I did. But that’s what went through my mind. That was the same thing. Ari: She pulled the wind out of your sails didn’t she? Art: Yeah, yeah. It was okay for me to say that and that really wasn’t a good reason. Ari: Right, right. So it’s the same idea here. So the key phrase is this, if someone ever tells you an objection, I don’t care what it is – we don’t have the budget, price is too high, whatever. The first thing you always say is, (lower your voice) “That’s not a problem.” And it’s magical. What happens is there’s complete silence. You can hear them on the phone go, “Whew,” and breathe a sigh of relief. Because they’re actually for the first time hearing someone accept what they’re saying to be true. They’re like, “Whoa that guy’s not fighting me. He’s not pushing me. Oh my goodness. This is incredible.” They’re stunned by the response. Art: That’s right. Where’s the objection rebuttal? Ari: Right. They’re used to conflict. They’re ready for the fight. They’re ready for battle and all of a sudden you’re not battling. You’re not doing what they expect to do because you don’t believe in that way of treating people. So here you are saying, “That’s not a problem.” And they’re like, “Now what do I do?” So there’s more to this, don’t worry. But that’s the first step. That’s the first step for my system.



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And then the next for this example, I’ll give you the next step on this. For this example though if someone says, “We’re using another vendor,” here’s the response - and notice the languaging, notice the tone. It’s all part of the same system to diffuse the pressure, to reopen the dialogue. So if someone says to you or says to me, whatever, that they’re looking for another vendor, what you say is this, “That’s not a problem. I wasn’t looking to replace who you’re currently using. I was just calling to see if you’d be open to a different prospective that you may not have access to now.” And I’ll say it again, “That’s not a problem. I wasn’t calling to replace who you’re currently using.” First of all what does that do when the person hears, “I’m not calling to take out your current vendor.” What do you think they’re thinking right now? Art: Well what they’re doing is that it’s letting them know that it’s okay for them to continue talking to you because they’re not going to be threatened. Ari: Right. Their guard comes down. Exactly. So I’m saying, “I agree. Absolutely. I’m not here to replace your current supplier.” Which is true, I’m not looking to pull out your current relationship. Of course not. You have a relation with the guy. I’m just calling to see if you’d be open. Notice the word here? “Open.” Not, “If you’d be interested.” That’s a sales word. You never use the word “Interested”. It’s a sales word. “If you’d be open to a different perspective that you may not have access to now.” Art: And what we’re not doing is we’re not forcing them to make a decision, which is what a lot of objection/rebuttal-type teaching does and exactly the reason why people put up their defenses. Ari: Correct. We’re not cornering them into a yes or a no to force this decision. Exactly. And that’s the old way we’ve been taught to sell, which is to make people say “Yes” all the time to our proposition. All I’m doing here is diffusing the pressure, taking the pressure out of the moment and reopening the dialogue so we can have a two-way normal, natural conversation. And that is the entire system goal, to keep taking down those walls, so the truth emerges. You determine together if you’re fit or not. So that’s it for objections and I’ve got every single objection in my system written down with a response for every single one with their own unique languaging that lays out how to reopen dialogue and I can’t tell you just this alone has made my clients hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just to be able to diffuse the pressure nicely. And you know what? Everybody feels good when I call. Nobody gets hurt. No one’s taken advantage of and you know what? It creates real long-term relationships. Art: Brilliant. Could you share another one with us? Ari: Okay sure we’ll do one more, how about that? So let’s say someone - this is going to be like a shocker for some people on the phone because it might be kind of a new twist on things - but if someone says to us or someone says to me, “Ari your price is too high.” Now you’ve heard that one before I’m sure. We all have right?



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Art: Oh yeah. Ari: What’s a typical response to that? We’re supposed to be responding to in the old way. Art: Well the old school is a version of, “Well you know you get what you pay for.” Ari: Right. Or, “Let me tell you why it’s high.” Or, “Let me tell you why we’re better,” right? So you start even harder, putting more pressure on the person. So when I get a price objection, when my client says, “The price is too high,” now the first response is always what? “That’s not a problem,” right? Art: Right. Ari: So when someone says, “Your price is too high.” You say, “That’s not a problem.” That’s the first thing you say. You let it sink in for a couple minutes for both of you to calm down, because I know the reps are going to kind of be on guard too because they’re so used to defending themselves and fighting back. It requires a little diffusing of the sales person as well. So we say, “It’s not a problem.” And then my response with that is, “You’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. The price, there’s no doubt, the price can be perceived, perceived as high especially if you haven’t had a chance to experience the ROI yet on our product, absolutely true.” Art: Now that’s interesting. That is a different approach because on one hand you say, “You’re absolutely right.” Many people including myself, might say, “Whoa, wait a minute. You’re agreeing with them.” But then you totally turn it around with your next sentence. So I can see the psychology behind that. Ari: Exactly, exactly. So that’s the example. I’ve got 25, 30 more in my system. So we’ll move on but that’s the basic system behind that. Art: And I would assume that most of them follow the whole process of “That’s okay”. Ari: Yeah. It starts with, “That’s not a problem.” And then you fill in the blank, which I have written down in the system. Art: Right. Ari: For every single objection. Art: Okay. Ari: So let’s go to number two. Number two of the mindset -you’ve heard this before - is get to the truth, not focus on the sale. And that is such a head spinner of for people because in sales we’ve been taught to focus on what? Getting the deal right? Art: Right.



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Ari: That’s been our mantra forever but I realize if you only focus on that, your mind is not present to hear the truth of what they’re saying and you miss the majority of people who are playing a game with you. You don’t know who to sift in or out or not. You have a pipeline with a lot of people in your pipeline but most of them aren’t going to be buying from me. You have to get some mechanism to sift out those people who are playing the game with you. So this is how you do it. So number two is get to know the truth. And let me give you an example of what I mean by that so you can get your hands around this thing. Let’s say someone calls you on the phone and says to you, “Hey I’m interested in your service or products. Send me information.” What do we usually do, most reps do when they get a call from someone, “Hey I have a website,” or whatever and they say, “Hey can you send me some information please?” What do we tend to respond with typically, usually? Art: Well what many people do, or what I think they should do? Ari: No, most people who get that call, what’s the initial gut response if someone wants me to send information? Art: Sure. Yeah I’ll be happy to send you out a catalog. Ari: Exactly. Right. We say, “Sure, no problem. What’s your address and we’ll ship it out to you and then we’ll call you in a couple days and then we’ll follow-up with you,” right? Art: Yeah. Ari: Now the thing is what could be three hidden agendas behind “Send me information”? What could they be thinking behind that phrase? What would you think of say three agendas behind that phrase? Hidden agendas? Art: Well, let’s see, maybe they’re looking to compare you against their existing vendor. Ari: Yeah. When they’re shopping around, absolutely. Art: Maybe they’re a competitor. Ari: Maybe a competitor, absolutely. Maybe it’s a blow off. They want to get rid of you on the phone. Or maybe - and here’s the thing that no one ever thinks of - maybe they’re really interested. Art: Oh, that one. Ari: See where our mind goes? Art: Right.



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Ari: Because we don’t know. Here’s the problem, we don’t know the truth behind that phrase from people. We don’t know it. So it only reasons we react. Instinctively they go, “Great.” And now were stuck chasing them all day long getting voicemail and no calls back. That’s the problem. So with my Unlock the Game approach, again, in our mind we go, “Okay now wait a second here. What’s the truth behind what they’re saying?” So we have phrases to get the truth behind this ‘send me information’ thing. So here’s an example; someone says, “Send me information.” We say, “That’s not a problem.” That’s a key phrase for everything. Art: There are no problems in your system. Ari: There’s no problems. Life’s great. Who’s stressing out? It’s funny but the truth is we actually send it every time. “Send me information.” “That’s not a problem.” Because it gives us a space in the conversation to stay calm, you see? It gives us a place to stay centered before we react. So we say, “That’s not a problem.” Then we say this, “It might make sense if we figured out what the two or three core issues are you’re trying to solve, then I could figure out exactly what to send you. Would you be open to that?” Art: Okay, I see some commonalities there. “Would you be open to that?” Ari: Yeah. So we say, “It might make sense.” Notice the hesitation - might make sense, not it will make sense. “It might make sense.” You have to be humble here. “It might make sense if we just figured out what are the core issues you’re trying to solve? Then I can figure out what to send you.” Because logically you need to know that before you send somebody something. So here’s the point, they go, “Okay. Yeah no problem. That sounds good. What questions do you have?” Then boom were back where? Art: Were back into uncovering the truth. Ari: Exactly. And that’s how you do that with that pausing and with your goal in your mind think, “Okay my goal is the truth right now, not the sale.” It requires a major shift. Let me give you a great example. This happened to me recently. I got a call from my website and usually all my calls are focused for my staff but this person got through somehow. And he calls me on the phone, he says to me, “Hey Ari I work for XYZ Company, big corporation, and we’re looking to hire a sales trainer. We’re looking at you and a few other people and we’re in stage one right now. We’re collecting information, just gathering data and we’re looking at all the information and we’ll get back to you once we figure out what the next step is.” So you tell them about yourself. Isn’t that a classic kind of call? Art: Sure. Ari: So what does he expect me to start doing now after that opening? What does he want me to start doing? Art: Well he wants you to go into a pitch, which I’m sure you didn’t do.



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Ari: Well not only did I not do that - I don’t know how to pitch it anymore, it’s like out of my DNA, it’s like “Ari, you don’t know how to do it.” My mindset’s been so switched over I don’t even know how to do that anymore because I know it’s just the wrong thing to do. So here’s what I said instead given my whole way of thinking. I said, “That’s not a problem. That’s not a problem.” I said, “That’s not a problem. Funny thing is that at our company we have the same process as you. We have a phase one of the project. We collect information first, ask a couple questions to figure out if we’re a good fit or not. Would you be open to that?” And there was this complete silence on the phone. It was like dead. You could hear a pin drop. And I was sitting there waiting and waiting. He goes, “Okay, what kind of questions do you have for me?” And all of a sudden we’re back to where we should’ve been, which is in a normal conversation. Now we’re talking back and forth. Where he’s from? What’s his budget? And 10-minutes later we discover, one is he can’t afford me, two is he’s not a decision-maker. And three, he’s just looking around, discovering what’s out there, which has saved me what? Art: Saved you a tremendous amount of time. Ari: It got me out of the chasing game. I don’t have to chase him down. I don’t have to live on what I call the world of hopium, the drug where we feel like were hoping it’ll work out. You’ve heard of that drug before called hopium? The one that reps get all the time. Art: Hopium, is that what you said? Ari: Yeah the hopium drug. You hear of that drug? The reps every morning get a little drug in their veins – they hope they get a sale kind of thing. It’s the hopium thing. Art: I like it. Ari: So there’s no more hopium here. It’s just gone. It was all gone on that one call because my mindset was focused on the truth and I used phrases to open up the conversation to determine…the end of the call was fine. I gave him some free information, free an e-book, he’s on his way, he’s gone. But the point is I got to the truth and that’s a major revelation for people in sales because they have never been taught to go for the truth. They’ve only been taught to go for what? Art: Go for the sale. Go for the close. Always be closing, right? Ari: That’s right, which is just poison these days if you’re only focusing on that because that narrows your ability to extract the truth in your prospect. That’s number two.



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The last major principle behind Unlock the Game program is this, instead of being a pitch person on the phone your goal is to become across as a problem solver, a trusted advisor. And I know you’d help with this as well. But you need to change your entire aura or your entire approach to the initial call so they trust you at the hello. So the typical outbound call for a prospect call is what? You know right? Hi my name is, I’m with, we are in the neighborhood, whatever it is right? A typical pitch, right? Art: Right. Ari: So in my world our goal is not a pitch. Our goal is a two-way dialogue, a conversation. So I’ve got a whole system laid out to, actually it’s customized per industry to actually create what I call a problem statement. Phrase that you use to open the conversation where it opens naturally without a pitch at all. And so this example here how we teach it in our system to do this, and I’ll just warn you ahead of time for those of you who are like writing all this stuff down, be careful what you use because if you don’t have the right mindset in your own thinking, if you use the word [inaudible] sales it’ll just be scripted. It’ll sound like a script. It’s got to be real. It’s got to be authentic. So we begin the call and my clients all begin their calls like this, “Hi. My name’s Ari and I hoping you can help me out for a moment.” Art: Okay. Ari: That’s it. That’s all we say. That’s the opening. That’s it. Art: That’s the opening on a prospecting call? Ari: That’s it. Art: Really? Ari: And it’s kind of shocking I know because it’s startling. But let me say it one more time, “Hi my name’s Ari. And I’m hoping you can help me out for a moment.” Art: Okay. Ari: And what do you think happens 99.9 percent of the time as a response? Art: Well probably something like, “Well what do you need?” Ari: How can I help you? Art: Okay. Ari: Almost every single time. It’s like magic. It’s amazing when they say, “How can I help you?” And the reason why they do it is because I did it in a very natural, soft, no hype, no push tone. When you level out the tone and pull them in by modifying your



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voice, you’re not pushing somebody, what happens is it draws them into you so they say, “How can I help you?” Like normal human beings do in a normal conversation. So I’m stripping out, I’m stripping out all the sales stuff that creates the sales pressure on the phone. So they say, “How can I help you?” Now we have what I call a two-way dialogue, all within three seconds. Then we move to phase two, which is what we call the where you enter with your problem statement, which is a phrase that we craft for you that’s not a pitch about your solution, but it describes a problem that you usually solve for them. And that’s the whole shift in our approach because then we enter the conversation already in the mind of what their issues are. So we don’t do the whole spin thing where like, “Oh what problems are you having? What kind of situation’s going on?” We don’t like start cross examining them for questions. We enter the conversation already with a problem that we know our solution solves for them. And we know that by our history of selling what we sold. So we just go back and ask a couple of our clients and say, “Can you tell me right now what are two or three core issues by buying our solution that it’s solved for you? What problems went away when you bought our tool?” Does that make sense? Art: Yes. So you know based on your precall planning you’re calling into a particular industry where you sold into before. So you’ve solved these problems for somebody else. So what would be an example of a problem statement? Ari: Okay so let’s pick up an industry. What’s a common one for your people typically, your members, what industries are they typically in? Art: All over the board. Let’s say technology, software. Ari: Okay. So let’s say it’s software. Let’s say you sell software that improves sales productivity. Right? Art: Okay. Ari: Okay, so the typical way would be, “Hi my name’s Ari Galper. I’m with XYZ Software and we are a provider of a robust and a real time solution to help your people be more productive,” right? Art: Okay. Ari: Is that pretty fair as a common pitch? Art: Sure. Ari: For products. So that approach is all about the product, okay? Which immediately triggers “Oh-oh, sales person.” Art: Here comes the pitch.



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Ari: Right. So the last thing you want to do is talk about you, your solution. You want talk about the problem. So instead we - off the top of my head, I’ll create one for you - but we craft these specifically word-for-word, but here we might say this; “I’m just giving you a call to see if you’d be open to a different perspective on how you can significantly improve the productivity of your sales team.” Art: Okay. Ari: Now I didn’t mention the solution did I? Art: Right. Ari: I could be selling telephones for all I know. I did not mention at all the solution. All I mentioned was the problem that my solution solves for people. And here’s what happens. You get two responses every time. It’s so predictable it’s incredible. They say this, they say either one, they say, “Who’s this?” Art: Because you haven’t given your company name yet. Ari: No, no, which is fine. They say, “Who’s this?” Or they say, “What do you mean?” Which is what we expect them to say. We know it. It’s like, “Here it comes.” So when they say, “Who’s this?” We say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. My name’s Ari Galper and I’m with XYZ Software.” I’m not suggesting hiding where you’re from. I’m just saying say it when it’s appropriate, when they ask you for it. Ari: So they’re going to say, “Well who’s this?” Right? So I say, “My name’s Ari. I’m with XYZ Software and what we do is…” And you repeat the exact same problem statement. What we do is we have a solution that significantly improves productivity of a sales team. Right? So now were back to, “What do you mean?” Right? Art: Right. Ari: Then after that we then craft some more questions, what we call consulting questions. These are questions that go deeper into the problem. So they say, “What do you mean?” Then we go into, “Well what I mean specifically is that identifying gaffes in the performance of your reps who are out there in the field who say they’re calling clients who really aren’t.” They go, “How do you do that?” You see I’m going further and further and further into their world without yet suggesting a solution. Art: Right. So were still focusing on the problem. Ari: Only the problem. Until they say to you, “Well how does your thing work? How you do it?” You want them to ask for it, but if you push it prematurely in the dialogue it’s over. Even if the conversation’s going great, you think it’s wonderful. Remember my conference call when I thought it was wonderful? It doesn’t matter. They’re not going to hurt your feelings and say, “Hey man stop selling me sh*t.” They’re not going to tell you that. They don’t want to hurt your feelings. So you might think, “Hey Ari I



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had a great call today about pitching. I made an appointment next Friday.” You might think you have traction, but that traction compared to the traction if they build trust in the beginning is night and day. And that is the crux that makes Unlock the Game so different and successful from anything out there. And that’s kind of a nutshell of what I’ve come up with and that all my clients are loving now and they’re sleeping better at night, they feel better about themselves and they’re not pushing people and they’re making more money. So that’s kind of the essence of what it’s all about Art. Art: So conversational. Ari: Just natural. It’s about being authentic and here it is – stripping out all the elements that associate you with the negative salesman stereotype. You strip that stuff out and plug it in with natural conversation and problem oriented dialogue, you’ve just risen above everybody else out there in this economy. Art: Beautiful. Can you review these points again? Ari: Sure. Well let me cover this, the three main principles behind this concept and this mindset is this – one, diffuse pressure. Always think to yourself, “How can I make this person feel more comfortable to me? What can I do or say to lower the resistance? What can I do to make us even, make us equal? Both human beings, not rep to prospect. Number two is focus on the truth. Change your mental framework so your languaging changes and your whole aura changes so you become natural, so you become a natural conversationalists with wording where it shows that you care about them, not just your commission. And the last thing is, instead of being a pitch person on the phone shift to being a problem solver and that’s where we actually – as part of our membership we actually have an inner circle program as well - we actually have coaches who craft and create your own, what we call problem-solving statement. They’ve been tied to your industry and we have recordings for that. So that’s part of our membership program and that’s the summary of what it’s about. And I mentioned earlier I’m happy to make available to your members a free test drive of my approach. Art: Yeah, let’s talk about that because there’s no doubt that just in an hour here there are many word-for-word phrases that people can pick up and use right away. But I think we probably just scratched the surface here. And I encourage people to become a member of your program as well. So how can people take a test drive of it? Ari: Sure. Well my goal was to give you as much as I can in the hour but I’ve got so much more, as you can imagine. It’s a whole different way of thinking. It’s a different habit. Well they can go to UnlockTheGame.com/Art, under your name there and take a



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special FREE test drive. There’s an audio there called The Secrets to Selling Over the Phone, That Gurus Don’t Even Know. It’s a recording that I created. It gives you more information and let’s you listen into some more insights I created. From there, if all this is resonating with you and your members, we have what we call The Unlock the Game Inner Circle. It’s also a monthly membership program where you get a tremendous amount of value in terms of coaching - free coaching with the membership - as well as the calls with me every month and I craft new languaging every month. We have a tremendous community of members. We have our own private website with a whole community of live chat conversations and so it’s a very tight group of people and we all kind of get it. Were all kind of like, “Enough of the old way of selling.” So again take the free test drive at UnlockTheGame.com/Art. If you listen to it and they go, “This feels like me.” Then join our inner circle. It’s right at the top of the website and you’ll never look back again. Art: Okay, fantastic and I do encourage everybody listening to this to go take a look at it and again Unlock the Game and that’s forward slash? Ari: Yeah, UnlockTheGame.com/Art. Art: Right. Okay. Fantastic. Ari I’ve got to tell you I learned some things on our interview here today. Wonderful stuff. Again I encourage everybody go back, listen to this program again. Definitely go take a look at the transcript as well. Write down those word-for-word phrases and responses and questions that Ari shared. You’re going to benefit from that and then also go to his website and do take a test drive. You’ve got nothing to lose there as well. So Ari once again on behalf of all of our members and listeners I want to thank you so much for sharing this invaluable information with us. Ari: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Art: All right.

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