FEARLESS In Qualifying Prospects and Handling Objections

Copyright © 2005
By Paul Borgese

paul@FEARMarketing.com
www.FEARMarketing.com

Sales Career Training Institute

www.SalesCareerTraining.com

No part of this material may be reproduced, transmitted or presented in any

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To encourage others to download this document, please suggest that they

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201.533.9282

To license and/or private label this material for use at your company,
please call 201.533.9282 or email
the author at paul@FEARMarketing.com.

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About The FEARLESS Series of
Special Reports
Typically, we recommend that salespeople and marketers who want to
improve their selling skills should consider studying FEAR Selling since
its individual components work synergistically as an effective holistic
system.

However, we recognize that there is a demand by some for help in specific

areas of the sales process, and so we have excerpted and modified sections
of the FEAR Selling System into these four Special Reports:

- FEARLESS Cold Calling

- FEARLESS Relationship Building

- FEARLESS In Qualifying Prospects and Handling Objections

Each Special Report provides an introduction to some of the basic

philosophy that underpins the FEAR Selling System and then focuses on
the relevant process.

For more information on FEAR Selling, please visit http://

www.FEARSelling.com.

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

· your kids to go to bed early

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

The FEAR Selling System has been designed to help anyone who is trying
to persuade someone else – anybody else - to their way of thinking.

We will focus on what you should do in your role as a salesperson, but

don’t forget that these strategies and tactics are applicable to any situation
in which you must try to persuade someone to do something.

Why Everyone Needs To Learn How

to Sell
Leadership, management and sales all use the same set of people skills.

Some might say that a boss has more control over her employees than a
salesperson has over his prospects, but only the illusion of control
separates the two situations.

Many managers believe that because of the employer/employee

relationship they have a certain amount of power over their employees, and
that is true – but that power is limited.
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We are a mobile workforce. It is a freelance economy with no loyalties.
Unless you are in Japan where there is a cultural expectation of lifetime
employment – and even that sense of entitlement is fading fast due to
economic pressures - you must remember that all jobs are temporary.

If you don’t perform, or if your boss doesn’t like you, you could be let go.
Similarly, if you as an employee find a better job tomorrow, you can quit
and move on.

In today’s mobile economy, if you want to stay employed you have to

possess the skills that are in demand – and be able to persuade others that
you have those skills. So, persuasion skills are more important than ever.

Competition is fierce. If you are looking for another job, remember, there
are dozens of other candidates with similar backgrounds to yours. The
question is: how can you position yourself so that you stand out from the
crowd?

Similarly, as a salesperson, don’t be fooled into thinking that your product/

service is so much better than other competing products/services. It is
difficult nowadays to differentiate one product from another in the mind of
your prospect – but this is exactly what you have to do.

Learning What They Don’t Teach

You In Business School
At the time of the writing of this second edition of FEAR Selling, most
business schools in the United States still do not offer a substantive sales or
sales management course in their curriculum.

From our experience in reviewing a great number of business school

marketing courses, we have found that many of them do not adequately
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cover the human dimension of marketing and sales. They do not pay
enough attention to the consumer-behavior aspects of the process.

Marketing and sales skills– and the core skills of writing and speaking
which underlie the marketing/sales processes - are crucial in today’s service
economy.

Yet one of the most common complaints of employers is that their

employees do not have good communication skills. They can’t write well
or present well. They lack good basic persuasion skills.

This is why the Scholastic Aptitude Test (S.A.T.) is being modified to test
writing and other language knowledge such as grammar. The S.A.T. is being
changed in order to meet the needs of a changing world.

Most undergraduate colleges and universities require that applicants

provide S.A.T. scores. In our discussions with employers, we have
discovered that many companies are already – or are planning to – require
job applicants - including salespeople - to submit their S.A.T. scores. They
want people who can write well, present well and persuade effectively.
FEAR Selling will help you in all of these areas of persuasion.

Political Skills Versus Technical Skills

In our early surveys of salespeople, we asked how many of them had taken
a psychology course or had taken part in persuasive communications
activities such as joining the debate team at school. Fewer than 14%
responded that they had.

Understanding human psychology, specifically how to influence others, is

the key to sales and marketing. Yet our business schools focus more on
technical rather than political (or people) skills.

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Why is that?

Well, for one, it is easier to test technical skills like how to value a
company by using the mathematics of discounted cash flows than it is to
test political skills like making a sales presentation that will close the sale.
Valuing a company by means of a certain mathematical technique has only
one right answer. But judging whether or not a sales presentation was
effective is very subjective.

Focused as we are on measuring progress through testing, we gravitate

toward teaching subjects that can easily be tested. It is much easier to
attach a grade to one’s knowledge of financial mathematics than to the
person’s actionable understanding of sales skills.

Similarly, it is relatively easy to teach technical skills such as the steps you
should take to launch a new product or do an initial public offering. But
political persuasion skills are far more elusive. How do you teach someone
to conjure the magic ingredients of charisma, rapport and credibility?

This is where the FEAR Selling System comes in. This System is designed
to fill this all-too-common gap in our formal education.

Who Leads? Sales or Finance

As we mentioned earlier, the same persuasive skills needed to lead are the
same ones that are needed to sell.

Interestingly, during our research into sales effectiveness, we also

discovered that there has been a change in the types of people chosen to
lead organizations over the last three decades.

It used to be that financial professionals – chief financial officers (CFOs),

treasurers, chief accountants - were the ones who would rise to the top
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leadership positions more often than any other professionals in a company.

Nowadays, however, a majority of leadership slots in Fortune 500

companies are filled with individuals with sales backgrounds.

To run complex organizations, you need significant political skills – skills

similar to those that a salesperson needs to persuade.

What Is FEAR Selling?

If you’re reading this right now, odds are that you have hit a brick wall – or
at least some of the pretty big speed bumps and potholes that await anyone
on the road to success in sales.

Whether you are a novice salesperson or a battle-weary veteran, FEAR

Selling can help you.

First off, let me say that we don’t presume to have all the right answers.
Anyone that tells you that their system works for every type of product or
service, in any economic environment and with every type of buyer (and
many desperate sales consultants will tell you that their system will) – is
selling you a dream.

As we will see, the famous Greek philosopher, Socrates, knew how to get
to the truth – and it’s not by having the right answers but rather by asking
the right questions.

And what we can guarantee you is that by the end of FEAR Selling, you
will know most – if not all – of the right questions to ask, and perhaps
more importantly, how to ask them.

FEAR Selling is a flexible framework that you can adapt to your product
or service, depending upon the specific economic conditions, competitive
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situations, and buyer objections that you face in your day-to-day life as a
salesperson.

How Was FEAR Selling Developed?

In my more than 16 years as a business consultant, I have found that
increasing sales is the biggest challenge that my clients have to face.
Cracking the sales code has been a problem I have been grappling with
since my earliest days in the business world.

So early on, I began to study the sales process from several angles.

First, I first studied at the Wharton School of Business and focused on

marketing. Oddly enough, at that time, most business schools, including
Wharton, didn’t offer courses in sales. And even as I write this, most
business schools still do not have serious sales or sales management
programs.

I quickly learned that sales is all about psychology and communication

skills, so I concurrently enrolled in the liberal arts program at the
University of Pennsylvania to develop my persuasion skills as a writer and
speaker.

I continued my education by obtaining a master’s degree in English at

Cambridge University as a British Marshall Scholar, a master’s degree in
public administration at the University of Pennsylvania as a Fels Scholar,
and finally an MBA in marketing and finance at New York University’s
Stern School of Business.

All told, up until my last day of graduation, I had spent nearly 14 years of
my life and had obtained more than $250,000 worth of education – but all
that education didn’t seem to do me much good in the real world.

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I obtained most of my five degrees on a part-time basis, while I worked full-
time as a marketing and salesperson. My formal education had given me a
good foundation in sales, marketing, communication and psychology
theory, but I was still fairly clueless when it came to applying all I had
learned about human nature when I was under pressure in front of a
prospect.

It was depressing when I finally realized that even after all that time and
money spent, I had not even scratched the surface of all there was to know
about the selling process. It was only later when I gathered the experts
necessary to piece together the entire FEAR Selling System did I
appreciate how important this formal foundational education was.

Sales Training, Sales Training

Everywhere
I next began to read all the books, newsletters and self-study programs that
I could get my hands on. I listened to all the popular and most of the lesser-
known sales tape series in my car, on the train, anytime I had a free
moment.

I spent tens of thousands of dollars attending courses, not only on sales but
on psychology, marketing, philosophy, leadership and business strategy. As
you will see, this multidisciplinary approach to sales is what makes FEAR
Selling more powerful in influencing buyer behavior than the majority of
other systems that you may have already encountered.

My results as a marketer and salesperson improved significantly because of

all of this reading and training, but I knew I could do better. I knew that I
was familiar with the individual tactics that worked but wasn’t really sure
when to use them or if they could be more effective if I used them in a
different way.
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Piecing Together The Sales Puzzle
My situation reminded me of that old Indian tale about the blind men who
bump into an elephant and try to figure out what it is by touching the
different parts of the body. One of the blind men puts his arms around the
elephant’s legs and thinks it’s a tree. Another feels its long trunk and thinks
that it is a snake. A third feels the elephant’s side and thinks it’s a wall.

I felt like those blind men, fumbling around in the dark. I knew bits of the
sales puzzle, but I also knew that the big picture was eluding me. And
because I didn’t have the proper perspective, I was blind to the real power
of having an effective sales process. I knew tactics but didn’t know how to
piece them together into an effective overall strategy. But I at least knew
that I didn’t know. And I knew that I needed a system.

Surveys From The Trenches

About six years ago, my colleagues and I at the Sales Career Training
Institute decided to conduct a series of surveys, which our organization
continues to build upon even today to keep up with trends in marketing
and sales. The purpose of the surveys was to determine the biggest
problems that salespeople were encountering as well as the main reasons
why buyers weren’t buying.

Following is a summary of the seven most prevalent problems encountered

by salespeople as reported by sales managers and salespeople:

1) Our sales cycle is too long.

2) Our closing ratio of proposals to actual sales is too low.

3) Too often we are dealing with prospects that don’t have decision-
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11
 making power.

4) Our prospects use our quotes to get better prices from our
competition.

5) We constantly must compete on price and so we must discount to win

business.

6) We can’t get enough qualified leads.

7) The prospects we do get into the pipeline never seem to develop into
actual sales.

These are all very common problems that salespeople encounter, and we
will address each of these issues and many more as we delve into the FEAR
Selling System. But we can only begin to understand how to solve these
problems by studying buyer attitudes and behavior.

Following is a summary of the five most prevalent reasons for not buying as
reported by prospective buyers:

1) I get worried when salespeople don’t take the time to get to know my
specific problem.

2) I don’t feel that salespeople have my best interests in mind.

3) I’m afraid that they won’t be able to deliver what they say they can
deliver.

4) My job is on the line, so I can’t trust new vendors.

5) I don’t trust salespeople that talk at me instead of with me.

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As you can see, the majority of the answers to this survey revolve around
fear and mistrust.

Our research on buyer behavior and attitudes – as well as many other

studies that we will reference throughout FEAR Selling – reveals that
people buy emotionally rather than intellectually.

The decision to buy or not to buy is more subjective than you might think.
We have found that despite bidding processes and return-on-investment
analyses that your prospects might demand, they typically buy based on
emotions.

The Promise of the FEAR Selling

System
As we explore in the FEAR Selling System, one of the top reasons that
salespeople fail is that they don’t have a system.

Even though we suggest that you use the FEAR Selling System because of
its multi-disciplinary approach to influencing human behavior and its
extensive field-tested, results-oriented tactics, our greatest piece of advice is
to use a system – even if it’s one that you’ve developed on your own.

As difficult as it sounds, you must test and track your results to avoid
wasting time with strategies and tactics that just don’t work.

According to our research - as well as that of dozens of other credible sales

effectiveness researchers and organizations - is that having a system – with a
constant feedback loop, which will tell you if the system is working or not
– is necessary if you are to achieve success in sales.

FEAR Selling will take you step-by-step through such a system.

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 Before we compiled these best-practices in sales into this edition of FEAR
Selling, the Sales Career Training Institute’s students paid thousands of
dollars for participating in our Webinars, teleconferences, live seminars and
Boot Camp to discover the short-cuts to what works and what doesn’t
when it comes to sales.

Now, with help from the professional affiliates of the Sales Career Training
Institute, we are able to offer this comprehensive course at a fraction of the
cost of attending an SCTI-sponsored event.

The FEAR Acronym

The FEAR Selling System is based on this basic concept of pacing and
leading. First you must get your prospect’s attention and build trust, and
then you can lead your prospect to the sale. The F and the E in the FEAR
acronym are all about pacing; with the A, you will be pacing and then
leading; and the R is about leading.

So as a quick overview, the process is as follows:

Find and Focus On Your Prospect’s Hopes and Fears: How To

Uncover Your Prospect’s Emotional Hot Buttons And Use Them To
Grab Their Attention

Empathize With Your Prospect: How To Build Your Credibility By

Making Your Prospect Feel That You Understand Their Hopes and
Fears

Ask The Right Questions At The Right Times In The Right Way: How
To Find Out Your Prospect’s Specific Hopes And Fears That You Can
Then Use To Sell To Them
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Reveal The Hope Of Your Solution: How To Position Your
Presentation So That You Play Off of Your Prospect’s Hopes and
Fears

As you will see, the first three steps in the System focus more on listening
while it is only at the end of the process that you launch into your
presentation.

Typically, salespeople use the complete opposite strategy. They talk at their
prospect from the beginning without gathering the crucial information that
can close the sale at the end. They immediately plunge into presenting first
– providing their prospects with information without gathering the key
information about their prospects’ hopes and fears that they should be
inputting into their presentation.

If you follow the FEAR Selling System, you will avoid this all-too-
common mistake since the System forces you to ask questions and listen
upfront as much as possible.

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 FEARLESS
In Qualifying Prospects and
Handling Objections

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You might never have been to a psychiatrist, but if you have, you probably
realize that the good ones know how to ask the right questions to get you
to open up to them.

You as a salesperson, should think of yourself as part psychiatrist and part

actor. In the Empathy Step above, we showed you how to act more
interested – more concerned about your prospects’ problems, pains and
fears. In a sense, to show your empathy, you have to act empathetic.

Now, let’s focus on you as a psychiatrist.

Why Questions Work

If you simply preach as a salesperson, you’ll be perceived as every other
salesperson who focuses on their product’s features – and maybe benefits.
You’ll be seen as pushing your own agenda. This is exactly what you don’t
want. You want to gently guide your prospect rather than push them into
buying your product.

Remember, people buy for their reasons, not yours. They make decisions
based on their buying criteria – they don’t decide based on the features or
benefits that you think should persuade them. It’s all about their agenda,
not yours.

Selling benefits is often a necessary strategy when you are in marketing

mode – that is, when you are casting your net wide to try to generate
interest. When you are one-on-one with a prospect who shows some
interest, however, it is then time to switch your focus from general benefits
to their personal problems, their personal fears.

Too often, salespeople keep throwing out the benefits of their products
without really knowing whether or not those general benefits are indeed
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benefits in the eyes of the prospect on the other end of the phone or sitting
across the table from them.

As we discussed, the first step is to get your prospect to open up by fishing

for their needs, their pains and their fears with your Prospect Fear and
Hope List. Then you must get them emotionally involved in their problem
to the point where you can influence them. You have to get them to a point
where they acknowledge the fearful consequences of facing a future
without the help of your product or the hopeful consequences of a future
with your product/service.

Behind every problem and every need, there is an underlying fear. Behind
every objection, there is a fear. Your objective is to uncover those fears.

How do you do that?

Questions.

You must ask much more than you tell. So err on the side of asking
questions.

What Questions Will Do For You

There are three main benefits to asking questions:

1) questions will make you seem genuinely interested in the your

prospect and their problems.

As we discussed in the Empathy Step above, many people long simply

to be heard and understood. By focusing on your prospect and their
problems through questions, you will show that you genuinely care
about hearing their problems. And you should genuinely care, because
you want to find out as much information as you can about their
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 problems – especially how they perceive their problems.

2) questions will enable you to gather information which you can then
use to position your product or service more effectively when you do
so towards the end of the selling process.

Information is power. And as we have covered elsewhere – especially in

The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling section, don’t assume that you have all the
information about a person’s problems. You need to ask questions at the
right time about the right things in order to get the information you need
to make the sale.

3) questions will make your prospect aware of the consequences of their

actions or inactions.

At the end of the day, you will not be able to push your prospect into
the sale. This is what most people do. We have worked with countless
salespeople who think that their product is the answer to their prospect’s
problem, and they push and push and push to show their prospect that
they have the answer.

But people resist, especially when you push too hard. That’s why you
must use questions not only to find out about your prospects’ problems
but also to make your prospect aware of the consequences of their
actions or rather inactions, that is, what could happen to them if they
don’t buy your product.

So let’s get started…

All Questions Aren’t Equal

As the sales researcher, Neil Rackham, explains in his popular book, SPIN
Selling, some types of questions are more powerful than others. Rackham
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describes the different types of questions, and which types are more
effective than others. But we won’t go into that detail here. Again, our goal
is to give you actionable tactics rather than focus on the details of research.

We have simplified the process of asking questions for you. We’ll show you
what to say, how to say it, when to say it, and why it works.

We will cover many questions throughout this section, which you can use
to get yourself out of the many tight situations that you might find yourself
in as a salesperson.

First, let’s make sure that you understand the difference between open-
ended questions and closed questions.

Trigger Questions
As we said, just like a psychiatrist or a detective, your job is to get your
prospect to open up and tell you what is on their mind.

To do this, you will ask open-ended questions – that is, questions that
require them to respond with a relatively complex answer rather than a
simple “yes” or “no”. Remember, you want to get them talking. Closed
questions, which allow your prospect to answer you with a “yes” or a “no”,
don’t get them to open up. Open-ended questions do.

We will be teaching you to ask many different types of questions, but when
in doubt, rely on the open-ended questions that we call Trigger Questions.

Here are some examples of basic Trigger Questions:

“Can you tell me more about…”

“Can you be more specific?”

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“Can you give me an example?”

These simple phrases will get your prospect to talk more in-depth about
their favorite subjects – themselves and their problems. So when in doubt,
fall back on Trigger Questions.

Use Orphan Phrases To Keep Your

Prospect Talking
A close relative of Trigger Questions are Orphan Phrases. Indeed, some
Orphan Phrases also can be classified as Trigger Questions, but don’t get
hung up on that technicality.

Whereas Trigger Questions typically are used to start getting your prospect
to open up, Orphan Phrases are used to keep your prospects spilling their
guts.

Keep them talking. Remember, you as the listener are in a more powerful
position than your prospect when they are talking. You are gathering as
much information as possible. That’s your job. You will use this
information to give a killer sales presentation later – a sales presentation
during which you will say exactly what they want to hear. But how do you
find out exactly what they want to hear? You keep them talking.

Use Orphan Phrases such as:

“And…?”

“And what else…?”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

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“I’m sorry, I missed that last part.” (This works especially well when you
are taking notes and you missed something that your prospect said.)
“You mean…?”

There are many Orphan Phrases. I’m sure you use some already without
really being aware that you are using them. Think of some that you are
comfortable with and use them.

Why are they called Orphan Phrases? Remember the British author Charles
Dickens’ famous orphan character, Oliver Twist. When he’s in the
orphanage, he begs for more food and says: “I’d like some more, please?”

Well that’s what you are doing with these Orphan Phrases, you’re begging
for more information. You are creating a vacuum by using one of these
phrases and then keeping quiet. By forcing yourself to be quiet, you will
then force the prospect to fill the uncomfortable silence, and you’ll get
more information.

Resist the temptation to talk. Try to use as many Orphan Phrases as you
can without becoming annoying to your prospect. Remember, it is a
conversation. You have to contribute a bit, but make sure that they are
doing the majority of the talking.

Floater Questions
Another type of question that will allow you to test the waters – to test
what your prospect is thinking is the Floater Question.

Floater Questions enable you to ask hypothetical what-if questions that

may help you to ask what might otherwise be uncomfortable questions to
your prospects.

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Here are some examples of Floater Questions that the top salespeople we
interviewed use:

“I don’t know if this is appropriate to ask right now, but what would you
say if we made the following offer…”

You see, the person isn’t making a “real” offer, they are just floating one by
their prospect to see their reaction.

Another way of asking this question is by using what negotiators call

Limited Authority. You pretend – or it might actually be true – that you do
not have the authority to make an offer, and so you make an unofficial one.

One of the salespeople we interviewed is fond of posing his most effective

Floater Questions like this:

“Let’s say that I can get my boss to agree to what you are looking for, do
you think you would then be able to do the deal?”

Here are some other ways to structure Floater Questions:

“Let’s say…then what happens next…”

“Let’s pretend…then would you…”

“If I could get my colleagues to …., do you think you could get your
colleagues to…?”

“What would you say if…?”

“What would you do if…?”

“Would you buy today if…?”

Again, what you are doing is feeling your prospect out by putting them in a
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23
hypothetical situation. They will give you at least some idea of how much
they are willing to spend, or what is important in the negotiation for them,
or how close to buying they are.

Use Floater Questions to test the water before you try to close the deal.

Negatively Positioned Questions

Positioning your Floater Questions - or any question for that matter – in the
form of a negative can be an even more powerful way of evoking a real,
emotional response.

Why is this so?

People have a tendency to want to disagree, especially with salespeople

who they know have their own agenda. You can take advantage of this
natural reaction to disagree by positioning questions in the negative.

If you remember, one of the first questions we suggested you ask when
interrupting someone with a cold call is: “Am I catching you at a bad
time?”

Our studies over thousands of calls reveal that a majority of people (64%)
will either say “No, I have a moment” or politely tell you when you can
call them back. Salespeople get a much less friendly response if they ask,
“Is this a good time?” because people will tend to disagree and say, “No,
it’s not a good time.”

Through our own studies and many others that we have researched, we
have determined that people generally tend to disagree with others. Some
psychologists label this natural reaction as an ego-defense mechanism.
Most people want to project an image of themselves as independent of
others’ opinions, so their natural reaction is to say no, say they want to
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think about your questions or offers - or otherwise stall.

How do you overcome such natural negativity?

Fight fire with fire.

Take advantage of the natural human tendency to disagree by asking your

questions or even making statements in the negative.

Instead of saying, “You really are going to want to hear about my product”,
take a more humble stance by saying, “You might not be interested in
hearing about my product or would you?”

Not only will Negatively Positioned Questions help you take advantage of
the natural human tendency to disagree, but they will also help you from
getting boxed in when you are questioning your prospect.

For example, if you say:

“Do you want the car in dark blue?”

The prospect might say, “No”, thus putting them in a negative state that you
would rather them not be in. Of course, as we discussed in the Empathy
Step above, you want to be in alignment with your prospect.

You would rather have them agree with you, so you should ask:

“I don’t suppose you would want the car in dark blue, would you?”

If they say, “Yes, I would” then you are okay, and if they say, “No”, you are
okay too because all you have to say is: “I didn’t think so” and you move
on in the conversation.

The most popular Negatively Positioned Question that we have found top
salespeople using is actually a Negative Floater Question. It starts with:

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“I don’t suppose…” followed by your hypothetical offer.

Other Negative Floater Questions can start with:

“I’m not so sure you would agree but...?”

“You probably aren’t interested but…?”

“I don’t know but…?”

As you will see in the final section of the FEAR Selling System, you will
be using a similar test-the-water tactic by using the Thermometer Close.

How To Keep The Conversation

Going After Bland Prospect
Responses
As anyone who has ever tried to sell anything knows, you are probably
going to experience some resistance.

People are either going to say “no” and try to hang up on you or walk away
from you. Or they are going to make an objection as to why they are not
interested in buying right now.

They could give you what we call Bland Prospect Responses by say things
like:

“I’m just looking.”

“I’m just gathering information right now but am not ready to buy yet.”

“Thanks but we don’t need help with that right now.”

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You can keep the momentum going after such Bland Prospect Responses
by using one of our favorite Negative Floater Question:

“I don’t suppose you would be interested in…”

Again, by asking a question, you have created a vacuum. The prospect is

under pressure to fill that vacuum with a response. They are forced to
reciprocate by answering you.

They might try to brush you off again by giving you another Bland Prospect
Response, but remember that your objective is to keep them talking at all
cost. Get them involved, even if it’s only long enough to determine that
they are not a good prospect for you.

But what do you do when your prospect actually confronts you with an
objection.

Prospect Objections: A Salesperson’s

Greatest Enemy?
Well, let’s talk about objections first. As the Japanese military strategist,
Sun Tzu, said in his combat manual, The Art of War: You must know your
enemy.

And many salespeople believe that their greatest enemy in sales is the
Prospect Objection. We will show you how to easily disarm your enemy,
but let’s get to know our seeming enemy a bit first. Let’s explore a bit about
what objections are all about and how they can actually help you sell more
and sell faster.

Because it is such an important issue for salespeople across industries, the

Sales Career Training Institute has conducted many surveys and interviews
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27
with salespeople about sales objections and how to deal with them.

Following is a summary of the concerns that a majority of salespeople have

with regard to sales objections. Salespeople admit that they are:

1) Struggling to find the right way to answer the constant stream of

objections that they hear from their prospects day in and day out.

2) Searching for ways to keep the sales process going – even if their
prospect makes a strong objection as to why they don’t want to buy
now.

3) Looking for sales tactics that enable them to pre-empt objections that
commonly occur in their particular selling situation.

4) Confused as to why traditional sales tactics - that are designed to

answer objections - seem to only create more resistance (that is, more
objections) instead of helping them to answer the first objection
smoothly and move on.

Obstacles To Overcoming Sales

Objections
In our recent surveys focused on overcoming sales objections, the Sales
Career Training Institute asked sales managers their opinion as to why
salespeople seem to be failing to find the real objections and then failing to
overcome them if they do find them.

Following are the top 4 answers that we found:

1) Salespeople lack the sales techniques necessary to uncover the real

objections.
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 2) They lack the self-confidence to ask the right questions at the right
times, which could be very uncomfortable.

3) They have not prepared in advance with a credible response to

objections - even though they may have heard the objection dozens of
times before from other prospects.

4) They do not know the best way to weave answers to these objections
into their product presentations.

We will cover all of these concerns in this section and the final section, the
Reveal Hope Step.

The Psychology of Sales Objections

There are three basic reasons underlying any sales objection that you hear.
The sales strategies and techniques that we cover throughout this section
will help you to overcome sales objections, but the first step is to
understand why objections occur.

1) Objections may occur because the prospect has doubts, fears or

unanswered questions about your product/service - or you as a
salesperson.

2) Objections may occur because the prospect is ready to buy but wants
to confirm the purchase decision with another decision-maker, get a
better deal or otherwise stall you in order to meet their own
objectives.

3) Objections may occur simply because the prospect does not want to
buy.

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Objections: Get Used To Them,
Welcome Them, Or Better Yet, Ask
For Them
One of the biggest complaints of sales managers is that their salesforces take
too long to close deals. With greater competition, prospects need more time
to send out requests for proposals, review all of their available choices, set
up meetings to qualify vendors and then finally make a decision.

Waiting for prospects to call you back can be one of the most frustrating
parts of the sales process. The way to avoid this is to find out more about
the objections that your prospects might have about your product or service
as early as possible.

All too often, salespeople don’t know the most effective way to answer
objections. They would rather try to avoid the hard questions as long as
possible in the hopes that they can seal a deal without having to deal with
those tough objections.

But is this a good long-term strategy?

First of all, many prospects who don’t reveal their objections to you may
want to back out of the purchase later on, which, as many of you know, is
usually even more frustrating than not winning the deal in the first place.

Secondly, if you are using this strategy of bulldozing through the sales
process quickly in order to avoid objections, it usually means that you are
talking to the wrong people in the organization. If you don’t get any
objections, you’re probably fooling yourself into thinking that you are
actually talking to a decision-maker.

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30
Most decision-makers in organizations have gotten where they are by being
careful about decisions they make. Such people cover the bases by asking
lots of questions. If you are talking to someone who doesn’t ask a lot of
questions and raise at least some objections, you are probably pitching a
person in the buying organization who is too low to actually make a
decision to buy. This is a waste of your time.

We’ll show you how to ask the right questions that will help you find out
who the decision-makers are and how they make their decisions later in the
Ask Step. But for now, understand that you must deal with objections.
Indeed, you should welcome objections.

Sales Objections, Sales Objections

Everywhere
According to the Sales Career Training Institute’s ongoing surveys
regarding sales objections, rejection by prospects is the number one fear of
salespeople across all industries. And typically, most salespeople see
objections as the beginning of the end.

Again, it will take some practice, but you must start thinking of objections
as positive signals.

Think of objections this way:

1) Objections may be an indication that the prospect is truly not interested,

in which case, you save valuable time. The quicker you get to the
objections - and determine that they are valid and that you cannot
overcome them with your product/service, the quicker you can move on
and spend your time prospecting elsewhere; or

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

Top 10 Sales Objections That You

Might Hear – In One Form Or
Another
Interestingly, sales objections that our survey participants hear from
prospects remain fairly consistent over time and across industries.

Here are some of the most popular objections that you might hear:

1) “I need some time to think about it.”

2) “I’m interested, but I’ve already spent my budget.”

3) “Your competitors’ prices are much lower than yours.”

4) “I’m only interested in price.”

5) “I have to talk it over with my colleagues.” - or wife, or partner, etc.

6) “Call me in three months, and we’ll be ready to buy then.”

7) “We already have that covered by an existing vendor.”

8) “We can do that in-house and keep the cost down and maintain better
control.”
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9) “We’ll need to get several other bids before considering your proposal.”

10) “We’re aware of your product/service, but it’s not the right fit for what
we need.”

The important thing to remember when you hear such sales objections is
that you can overcome them by asking what we call Boomerang Questions.

You may find, however, that a prospect’s objections are valid and therefore
you should move on to a new prospect and not waste your time anymore.
But our advice is not to take such objections at face value – at least not at
first.

You may have been taught when taking tests that your first answer is
probably the right answer. Well, in sales, the first objection that you hear is
most likely not the real objection. That is why you are going to use
Boomerang Questions to find out the real objection that’s usually hiding
behind the objection that your prospect tells you at first.

Asking Questions To Overcome Sales

Objections
After reading the Top 10 Sales Objection list above and thinking about
your own experiences as a buyer, you may realize that many sales
objections might be a defense mechanism used by your prospects to ease
their own discomfort of having to face a salesperson.

If your experience is anything like most salespeople who participate in

Sales Career Training Institute studies, prospects just want to suck
information out of you as easily and quickly as possible - usually by just
getting you to send them your sales collaterals - and then get you out the
door or off the phone so that you they can get back to their busy day.
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 You must not fall into this trap or you’ll simply be wasting time sending
out product-focused sales materials into a black hole and never hearing
from these prospects again.

Before You Get To Yes, You Must Get

To The Real Sales Objections
Of course, your number one goal is to get the sale as quickly as possible.
But in order to do that you must usually uncover and overcome your
prospects’ real sales objections first.

Think of objections as bombs that could explode in your face later on in

the sales process. Your job as a salesperson is to qualify your prospects by
finding those bombs fast and disarming them. Otherwise, you will spend
lots of time thinking that you’re going to get the sale and gladly calling
back your prospects or visiting with them again and again, only to
discover that one of those bombs that you didn’t uncover blows up in
your face at the final presentation or at some other point late in the sales
process.

Ask And It Shall Be Given

As you already know, you must use questions to qualify your prospects as
you get to know them. You may have heard that there are no such thing as
dumb questions. Well, we’re sorry to say that there are some not-so-smart
questions and then there are smart questions that you could be asking.

If you ask not-so-smart questions, you lose credibility, and most likely, you
lose the sale as well.

If you ask smart questions, you build rapport, get your prospects
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34
emotionally involved in the sales process, and uncover those deadly
objections sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, we have found that most salespeople do not ask enough

questions - and those who do ask questions, usually aren’t asking the right
ones.

Boomerang Questions: The Answer

To All Objections
Many salespeople cringe when their prospects ask questions. But hopefully
by now, you realize that you should welcome your prospects’ questions
because their questions might indicate that there is at least enough
curiosity, enough initial interest, and maybe some underlying pains or fears,
that are motivating your prospect to find out more from you.

From our research, we have found that it is how you handle these
“objections,” which will strongly determine your success as a salesperson.
So as to not keep you in suspense, we’ll give you the short answer on how
to answer most objections that your prospects put to you.

Most of the time, top salespeople answer objections or questions with what
we call a Boomerang Question.

Think of how a boomerang works. A boomerang is a special form of

throwing stick used by the aborigines of Australia to hunt with. It is very
ingenious weapon if you think about it. Unlike a regular spear or a rock, if
you throw a boomerang at your prey, and you miss, your weapon doesn’t
just fall uselessly to the ground. A boomerang returns to you so that you
can use it again.

Similarly, when your prospect asks you a question, we suggest that you
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35
mostly throw another question – a Boomerang Question - back to them.
Their answer to your Boomerang Question will help you move closer to the
sale because when your prospect responds to it, he or she may provide you
with more information about their needs, pains, fears or hopes, and
otherwise give you a clue as to why they are resisting your attempts at
selling them.

We’ll get into the details of how to throw Boomerang Questions most
effectively later. But for now, remember that, especially in the beginning
stages of your interaction with your prospect, you mostly want to answer a
prospect’s questions with another question – a Boomerang Question.

It’s A Conversation, Not An

Interrogation
We suggest that you mostly use Boomerang Questions because we want
you to err on the side of asking questions instead of making statements.

Countless research studies on persuasion prove beyond the shadow of a

doubt that getting a prospect involved with you through proper questioning
can help you significantly in getting that prospect to do what you want
them to do.

But if Boomerang Questions are so powerful, why don’t we suggest that

you use them all the time instead of only most of the time?

Well, if you think about it, always answering a question with another
question could get your prospect annoyed if not done smoothly. You could
easily break rapport with your prospect by coming off as too pushy and
seeming to ask too many questions. And remember, you must gain rapport,
trust and permission early on– and maintain it on an ongoing basis – during
this Ask Step. That’s why we emphasize the Empathy Step before moving
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36
on to the Ask Step.

In order to maintain the sense that you are just having a friendly, let’s-get-
to-know-each-other conversation, you can’t simply keep asking questions
and taking and taking information. A conversation is a two-way street. You
have to give back sometimes, so you’ll have to take a stand sometimes and
give up some information. By mixing Boomerang Questions in with your
normal dialogue, it will seem as if you are having a natural, normal
conversation rather than interrogating your prospect.

Don’t worry…we’ll reveal ways to ask Boomerang Questions so that it

doesn’t seem like you’re dodging your prospects’ questions all the time.

More on this later, but for now, remember – most of the time you are going
to answer your prospects’ questions – and statements for that matter – with
another question – a Boomerang Question.

The objective of the Boomerang Question – like Floater Questions,

Negative Floater Questions, Orphan Phrases, and Trigger Questions, is to
keep your prospect talking. The more they talk, the more likely they are to
tell you the truth and reveal their true fears.

We don’t want to imply that all prospects lie, but the reality is that we all
lie – or at least withhold the truth – sometimes. But that’s exactly what you
want to get at – the truth.

So to paraphrase the Bible again, if you ask, it will be given, eventually. So

keep them talking with all of these types of questions and phrases.

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Three Ways To Ask Boomerang
Questions Effectively
Some of you may be thinking that you would be uncomfortable not giving
a direct answer to your prospects’ questions. You may not want to seem as
if you are dodging their questions.

That’s okay.

We can safely say that nearly everyone whom we have trained with these
techniques feels this uneasiness with Boomerang Questions at first. But
they soon get over that discomfort once they realize how really effective
Boomerang Questions are.

Plus here are three delivery techniques that you should use in order to vary
the way you throw your Boomerang Questions. These techniques will help
you seem less abrasive in your attempt to get more information out of your
prospect.

1) AGREEMENT AND STROKING STATEMENT +

BOOMERANG QUESTION

As we discussed in the Empathy Step, you want to agree with your

prospect as much as possible. As one of our top salespeople says, “Save
your big guns for your big ships. Don’t argue little points. Only take a stand
when it’s really a dealbreaker – and try to put off any arguments until after
you bond with them a bit.”

Keep this in mind. Even if you disagree with what a prospect says, still try
to use an Agreement and Stroking Statement to show that you are at least
somewhat on the same wavelength as your prospect before digging deeper
to find the real objection with a Boomerang Question.

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By using an Agreement and Stroking Statement, you will be able to avoid
the tension that may result from a disagreement between yourself and your
prospect. Remember, it doesn’t help you to flex your muscles and protect
your own ego by arguing with your prospect.

In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie has many
simple yet powerful recommendations that are related to this technique.

He suggests:

· The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

· Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re
wrong.”

· Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.

· Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.

· Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

With these wise suggestions in mind, let’s quickly review some examples of
Agreement and Stroking Statements:

“I agree…”

“That’s interesting that you say that…”

“Good question…”

“Good observation…”

“Good point…”

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39
“I’m glad you brought that up…”

So the first technique to alleviate any resistance that you get by asking a
blunt Boomerang Question is to soften it by agreeing with your prospect
first and then follow up with the question.

For example:

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

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

In this example, you want to find out early on if they are not willing to
make the investment in your product. In many cases, you can combat this
argument by trying to prove that your product provides more value than
your competitors, and so it warrants a higher price. But don’t launch into
that defensive behavior by simply flexing your muscles and explaining why
your product is better than the competition’s.

Remember – never make assumptions. Always find out why someone is

asking something.

2) ACTIVE LISTENING TECHNIQUE + BOOMERANG

QUESTION

As we discussed earlier, we want to show our prospect that they are

important, and you can do this by consistently showing them that you are
listening.

In this second technique for softening an otherwise-harsh Boomerang

Question, you repeat the prospect’s question back to them before tossing
your Boomerang Question.
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40
For example:

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

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

You might even want to throw in an Agreement and Stroking Statement

first.

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

With this technique, you are showing your prospect that you are listening
to them. This may seem simplistic, but our research shows that you should
not underestimate this Active Listening technique of repeating the
prospect’s question to them before you hit them with a Boomerang
Question.

3) START THEN STOP + BOOMERANG QUESTION

Of course, when someone asks you a question, your natural inclination is

to try to answer them. With Boomerang Questions, we suggest that you
fight this urge to answer in order to avoid putting your foot in your mouth
by answering inappropriately.

We are not suggesting that you dodge your prospects’ questions forever. Of
course, that’s unrealistic. But we do suggest that you gather as much
information about your prospects’ problems, pains, fears, buying criteria,
and buying strategies before you launch into your product presentation.

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Sometime, it is hard to fight the urge not to answer prospect questions.
Many salespeople whom we have interviewed are very anxious to get face-
to-face with a prospect and tell them how great their product is. They might
have spent days or weeks prospecting on the phone, and so are as excited
as puppies to get out and jump all over their prospects.

Let’s face it, we are all trained to answer questions from our earliest days in
school. If we knew the answer, our hands would shoot up in the hopes of
being called on, answering the question correctly and getting a compliment
from our teachers.

That’s okay. Sometimes, you will naturally launch into your response when
your prospect asks a question.

The third Boomerang Question delivery technique allows for this natural
urge to answer questions. This will probably be the most natural of the
three Boomerang Question delivery techniques for you to use. And it may
be the most effective, in the sense that it meets your natural need to answer
a question and makes it seem as if you are answering their question… but
then you stop and throw your Boomerang.

Here’s an example…

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

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

Notice that you pause after starting to answer their question. This will make
it seem as if you want to give them the information they requested. It will
take the pressure off of you since you are “responding” at least to some
degree. But again, you want to turn this potential objection around on them
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42
in order to find out information, perhaps about their budget or their current
vendor or their buying criteria.

We’ll get deeper into how to draw out key information later in this section,
but for now, review these three techniques to deliver your Boomerang
Questions. Trust us, this one technique will help you enormously.

The Negative Boomerang Question:

The Most Powerful Of All Questions
Before we move on, let’s show you how you can make Boomerang
Questions even more powerful.

Remember we discussed how Negatively Positioned Questions enable you

to extract more information and avoid getting boxed in during discussions
with your prospects?

Well, when you combine the power of the Negatively Positioned Question
with that of the Boomerang Question, you have what is perhaps the most
the most powerful way to ask questions.

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

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

Your prospect will probably say something like:

“Of course, budget is always a problem for us.”

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In this example, you have now opened the door to explore your prospect’s
budget with them. This will help you qualify them. You might not be in the
same ballpark in terms of what they think they can spend to solve their
problem. You want to know as much about your prospect as soon as you
can so that you can either:

1) avoid wasting your time trying to convince them to buy your

expensive product when they simply don’t have the money to do so
under any circumstance; or

2) move them into what we call the Values Elicitation Process to help
them understand that the costs of buying your product are much less
than the costs of having to deal with the consequences of their
problem.

But before we introduce you to the series of highly effective questions that
make up the Values Elicitation Process, let’s take a step back and talk a bit
more about how you should prepare for common objections that you face
over and over again.

Preparing Yourself For Handling

Sales Objections
From the very beginning of your sales career, you should be keeping track
of common sales objections that you hear from your prospects.

Consider this market research as well. Just as you started the FEAR Selling
System by trying to find out typical prospect pains, fears and hopes by
asking your co-workers and prospects themselves, so to are you going to be
collecting objections and looking for patterns so that you are better
prepared to answer common ones as they come up in the future.

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We have found that top salespeople keep track of sales objections that they
hear in order to find patterns, and then they test different sales strategies
either to overcome those objections when they hear them - or even do what
we call “pre-emptive strikes” when they see the objections coming.

The key is preparation.

Several top salespeople that we work with set aside a section of their
records on each prospect to list the objections - or potential objections -
that might come up in future discussions.

They also proactively seek out objections from lower-level employees in

organizations - or in early discussions with the top decision-makers - so
that they can overcome those sales objections in their sales presentations
later on.

Not only do you want to find out the most prevalent objections that your
prospects have about your product/service, you also want to keep track of
the Boomerang Questions that you find best enable you to overcome these
common prospect objections.

Always be testing to find the most effective Boomerang Questions and

delivery techniques that work for you.

When judging the effectiveness of questions, take into account:

· how effective they are in terms of enabling you to extract more

information from your prospects; and

· how comfortable you are in asking the questions.

Boomerang Questions simply won’t be effective if you are not comfortable

and confident in asking them.

Our research indicates that f you want to be successful in sales, you must
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45
get used to asking Boomerang Questions. But some such questions may be
too uncomfortable for you to ask. Try to overcome your discomfort by
getting used to asking them through constant practice with your co-workers
or even your family and friends.

Or, try varying the way you deliver the questions so that you are
comfortable with asking them and therefore sound natural doing so.

The 8-Step Process For Preparing

Against Sales Objections
Here’s the basic 8-step process for overcoming objections:

1) Identify as many sales objections as possible early on.

You must know what your prospects’ real objections are – their real
concerns, real fears about buying from you - before you can try to
overcome those objections, so try to find out what you’re up against as
early as possible.

Ask customers to critique your product - and even your presentation. Do

the same of colleagues, your sales manager and even friends and family to
get objective opinions. Ask them what makes them uncomfortable with
your presentation. What makes it sound too “salesy.”

2) Keep a record of all objections.

Write down the objections as well as your notes on what those who
critiqued you said about your presentation. This could be difficult because
your ego is at stake - but remember, you’re in this game to sell, not to
protect your ego.

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3) Write out scripts to answer these objections.

This is where Trigger and Boomerang Questions come in. You should be
keeping a list of questions that you can ask the prospect to get them to
open up and reveal more to you. Remember that you want to keep it
conversational though. This way, you will keep your prospect comfortable
by having them feel that they are in a two-way conversation rather than just
having them feel as if they are on the receiving-end of a volley of questions.
Remember, you want it to be as much like a friendly conversation as
possible, not an interrogation.

4) Practice your responses to common objections – practice your various

Boomerang Questions.

Don’t stop at just writing down the answers and reviewing them once in
awhile. Try to get used to comfortably responding without stumbling
through your responses. For this, you need to practice with colleagues - or
again with friends and family who are willing to help you grow in your
sales career.

5) Develop sales collaterals that address these objections.

When you write sales letters or have materials such as testimonials that
address these common objections, you will gain credibility in the eyes of
your prospect. They’ll feel as if you have “walked in their shoes.” You can
“feel their pain” – you know their fears, and they’ll appreciate it -
hopefully, by giving you the business.

6) Constantly rework the scripts and your sales collaterals as you obtain
more feedback.

Like marketing, sales is about trying a strategy and then tweaking it to

improve it on an ongoing basis. Don’t just stick with the same old
responses to the objections. Try out some different ones - you might find
better ways to address objections. But be careful, don’t be too much of a
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47
cowboy. Once you find something that works, stick with the essential
components at least. Just tweak and test.

7) Keep all of your sales scripts and overcoming-objections scripts in a

three-ring binder.

This way, you’ll have them ready to review before you meet a prospect who
is likely to bring up the objection. We suggest using a three-ring binder to
reinforce the fact that you must be making modifications and improving and
replacing these scripts as you receive more feedback from your colleagues,
prospects and customers.

8) Review these scripts with your fellow salespeople.

You want to gather as much feedback as possible as quickly as possible.

You might have met with 20 people this week that gave you feedback, but
maybe someone else in your office met with someone who brought up an
objection that you’ll hear tomorrow. You’ll want to be prepared for it, so
share as much as you can with one another.

So now, you know that you must fight fire with fire. Stop yourself from
simply answering your prospects’ questions aimlessly. Remember, you have
a strategy. Information is power. And so you always want more information.

How do you get more information? By asking more questions.

We know we’ve drilled the concept of asking questions into you a lot by
now, but our experience shows that even our most conscientious students
fall back into the natural habits of wanting to present their products/
services, more than ask questions in order to find out needs, pains, fears
and hopes first.

Hopefully, by now, you understand that you must fight this urge to spill
your guts all the time. Your goal is to get your prospect to spill their guts
first, so that when you finally spill yours – when you present your product/
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service as the solution they are looking for – as we will show you in the
Reveal Hope Step, you will be better able to position your product/service
so that your prospect will want to buy now.

Getting Your Prospects To Experience

Their Fears and Long For Their
Hopes
We’ve already touched on Trigger Questions, Floater Questions, and
Boomerang Questions – and generally how to make already-powerful
questions exponentially more effective by positioning them negatively.

These are incredibly effective tactics to use. You should use these tactics
throughout the entire sales process, but there is a more structured series of
questions that we have developed for you to use over and over.

We call this series of questions the Values Elicitation Process. This process
enables you to elicit – or draw out – from your prospect what they value –
that is, what is important to them. Once you understand their values, you
can then pitch your product/service more effectively, which we will cover
in the final step of the FEAR Selling System.

This series of questions is the most effective way to get someone to talk
about:

· what is important to them, generally;

· why these issues are important to them;

· the perceived seriousness of their problem;

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 · actions they have taken (if any) to solve their problem;

· the consequences of solving or not solving their problem;

· their willingness to try to solve their problem;

· their ability to solve their problem (whether they have the authority
and budget).

Basically, the Values Elicitation Process is a way for you to quickly

qualify your prospect while also building their interest in hearing how
you can help them solve their problems.

You Must Qualify Your Prospects

What’s Important to Your Prospect and Why Is It Important

As you will see, initially you will ask your prospect open-ended
questions to find out what’s on their mind. You can be sure that
whatever they talk about is at least of some importance to them. And
you will benefit greatly from just shutting up and letting them talk to
you about what their problem is generally and why it is important to
them.

Once you understand what your prospect values (that is, what is
important to them), you will be better able to position your product/
service in such a way as to make it more attractive to them.

How Serious Do They Perceive Their Problem To Be

You want to qualify your prospect by finding out how serious they think
their problem is. If you find that they consider their problem at least
somewhat significant, then you know that you’re not wasting your time.
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 If their problem doesn’t seem significant to them, then you might not
have a good prospect on your hands. This doesn’t mean that you
shouldn’t keep probing them. They either might not be fully aware of
the seriousness of the consequences of their problem or they might not
be the decision-maker whom you need to talk too.

Actions They’ve Taken To Solve Their Problem

What will also help you determine if they are serious about solving their
problem is if they have taken some action in the past to try to solve it.

This step also will help you determine if you have competition – either
by another vendor or by their own staff. Someone else might already
have tried – or currently is trying – to solve the problem. You want to
know about such competition as early as possible. We’ll show you how
to find out about competition without being blunt about it.

Consequences of Solving or Not Solving Their Problem

The Values Elicitation Process actually accomplishes two goals:

1) it enables you to discover what drives your prospect; and

2) it enables you to make your prospects aware of the consequences of

their actions or inactions.

Your objective is to get your prospect to do more than simply talk about
their values and their problem. You want them to act on solving the
problem by buying your solution.

In order to get your prospect to act – to get them to move outside of their
Comfort Zone far enough so that they realize that they must buy your
product or service now, you must get them to acknowledge their current
pains or experience their fear of potential pain in the future.
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Once you understand your prospect’s fears and hopes, you can paint a
picture of how your product/service can help them overcome those fears
and reach those hopes.

You will do this by having them explore with you the negative
consequences of not solving their problem as well as the positive benefits
of solving their problem. In other words, you want them to become acutely
aware of possible outcomes. You want them to talk about, and through
their imagination, experience the pain of not solving their problem or the
relief of solving their problem.

As we’ve said elsewhere, you cannot convince someone to buy from you.
You can only make your prospect aware that they should buy from you. Do
not see yourself as trying to sell your prospect or you will come off too
pushy. Rather, see yourself as trying to guide them towards taking some
action to solve their problem – and most likely, they’ll strongly consider
buying from you in order to solve that problem.

Willingness to Solve Their Problem

Here, you are trying to get a sense of how ready your prospect is to take
action on their problem. You are further exploring the pain, fears and hopes
of your prospect.

It might be that they acknowledge their problem, understand the

consequences of not taking action, but for some reason, they are not willing
to take action now. You want to find out about their hesitancy to take
action.

Once you know why they are stalling, you can maneuver to try to get them
to take action – or make a note to check in on the prospect in the future but
move on in your prospecting so as not to waste your time.

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Ability To Solve Their Problem

It’s one thing to be willing to solve the problem, but it’s another thing to be
able to solve it.

There are two aspects to qualifying your prospect for their ability to solve
their problem – that is, their ability to buy your solution:

1) authority

2) budget

Regarding authority, you want to find out who the decision-makers are.
Can they make the decision on their own or do they need approval of
others, perhaps a boss, an oversight board or a spouse?

You want to make sure that you understand who actually signs off on the
purchase or else you might be wasting your time pitching a subordinate.

You also want to know what the process is for their decision-making. In
this step, you are eliciting their decision-making process. You are probing
for their decision criteria. What do you have to show them, tell them, prove
to them before they make a purchase.

Once you understand who makes the decisions and how decisions are made
in your prospect’s organization, you will have a better sense of whom you
should be pleasing with your presentation and the hoops you will have to
jump through in order to get a buy decision.

Regarding budget, you want to find out how much they are willing to
spend to solve their problem. If your solution costs $1,000 and they are
only willing or able to pay $500, then you are in trouble. Budget is another
potential deal-breaker that you want to uncover early on in the process.

Once you understand how much your prospect is willing to spend, you can
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53
start exploring with them their willingness and ability to spend a bit more
in order to really solve their problem.

Now that you have a basic understand of what the Values Elicitation
Process will do for you, let’s dive into specifics. Next, we’re going to tell
you what questions to ask in order to extract these important pieces of
information from your prospect.

But, remember, you are in an information-gathering mode here. Don’t make

assumptions - and ask more than you tell.

The more, good-quality insights you have about their problems, pains,
fears, their willingness and ability to take action, and their hopes, the better
off you will be able to position your solution in the last step of the FEAR
Selling System, which is called Reveal The Hope Of Your Solution.

Before we get started with the specific questions, let’s be realistic. You may
not be able to ask all of these questions, in this order, in one sitting, if at
all. But this is what you are aiming for, because if you can get these
questions answered honestly by the right people in the buying organization,
then you are ready to seal the deal in the final step of the FEAR Selling
System.

A Quick Review Of Where We’ve

Been
Before diving into the detail of this powerful process, let’s take a step back
so that we can continue the process where we left off.

Do you remember the process we went through to Find and Focus on your
prospects fears in the first step of the FEAR Selling System?
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Let’s briefly review it here.

You started by doing some market research to find out what others thought
might be current problems. To do this research, you surveyed your
colleagues at work, prospects and current customers. You gathered
statements that make up your Prospect Fear and Hope List so that you
could share that list with prospects in the hopes of triggering their fears.

Your goal in gathering this information was to be able to get prospects to

think, “Yes, that’s me – I have that problem” or “I might have that problem
in the future.” This identification with the problems and fears that you
dangled in front of them hopefully got them to engage you in further
conversation. Your hope was to get them to think: “I have that problem,
and maybe, just maybe, this person has some information that can help me
solve that problem.”

This is how you capture your prospect’s attention and get them interested
in giving you a bit more of their time.

Once you have identified one or more of their pains, fears or hopes, you
then use the Values Elicitation Process.

The Values Elicitation Process

Now that you know what you must do, let’s break it down and show you
how to do it – with the questions from the Values Elicitation Process.

Again, you are asking these questions in order to:

1) qualify your prospect, and

2) get them more interested in taking action now and buying from you.
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Of course, you can use variations of these questions that you are
comfortable with. This is just an overview, but we will speak to each of
these questions so that you understand the reasoning behind each and thus
can be more effective in pacing and leading your prospect to the sale.

Remember that sales conversations will probably never go as planned. Your

prospect might try to take control of the conversation and lead you down
another road – probably to ambush you and rob information from you that
they can use for their own benefit when negotiating with competitors. The
Values Elicitation Process is therefore merely a guide to the questions you
want to ask.

Of course, if you can, ask all of these questions – and in this order. That
will work best. But don’t be frustrated if you have to jump around a bit.
Just make sure that you cover the basics.

To make it easy for you to review the Process, we have marked the key
questions in red. The more you practice, the more you’ll understand the
key questions, and how you can be most comfortable asking them.

What’s Important To You And Why

1) Maybe we can start at the beginning, can you just give me the
quick overview of why you invited me in today?

2) That’s interesting…can you tell me more about that and why it is

important to you?

These two questions are ways to open up the conversation with the
prospect.

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If you recall, we suggested that you get your prospect to invite you in rather
than forcing yourself in. If you are the guest, it changes the power dynamic
of the meeting. You’re there trying to help them solve their problem, not as
a salesman trying to push your product.

Again, use Orphan Phrases such as

“And…?”

“And what else…?”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Phrases such as these will keep your prospect talking, which is exactly
what you want. You are probing for their problems at this point. Try not to
interrupt except to use the Active Listening techniques we taught you in the
last step.

In the early stages of the Process, you want your prospect to open up. You
want them to be comfortable, so you want to pace them. You are going to
show and tell them that you’ve seen the problem before – and that it is not
uncommon.

You pace your prospect by nodding your head, agreeing with them by
saying “yes”, and otherwise showing them that you understand where they
are coming from. Show that you are interested. Show that you are
concerned. Again, think of yourself as an actor and try to act genuinely
interested, genuinely concerned.

Remember to match and mirror them verbally as well as their body

language as we discussed in the section on Empathize With Your Prospect.

Use the Active Listening technique that we discussed in that section as

well. Stop them and repeat what they say back to them. Remember,
paraphrase what they say but use some of the key words that they might
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57
have repeated more than once.

If you can, tell an It-Could-Happen-To-You Story that shows someone else

who has a problem or fear similar to the one that they are discussing. But
again, if you use this technique, keep the story short. You want them to
keep talking. So you might just want to say something like: “That’s
interesting…I’m hearing that a lot lately.”

By telling a story, or simply relaying that you’ve recently dealt with

someone else who has the same problem or fears, you will not only build
rapport, you will also reinforce the fact that their problems and fears are
prevalent in the industry. It validates their problem. You’re basically saying
to them - and might choose to actually say to them:

“Yes, a lot of people seem to be having that problem nowadays.”

Again, your goal here is to get them to realize that others have their
problem, and so, you imply that they should be worried about it too.

But you must not only make your prospect aware that their fears may come
to pass, but also that if they do nothing to prevent their fears then they will
suffer significant consequences as well. You want them to think about the
potentially serious consequences of not taking action now.

How do you do this?

How Serious Is The Problem

Before asking the next set of questions, ask a Permission Question. Say
something like:

3) I have some questions that I jotted down that I typically ask in

order to help figure out what’s going on and to see if I can help
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58
 you. Is it okay if I ask you some of the questions?

By asking permission, you will feel more comfortable asking the questions.
You have positioned yourself as someone who is trying to help them so
they should invite you to ask the questions.

4) How long has this been a problem?

5) Why do you need to address this problem now though?

With these two questions, you want to find out how long they have been
struggling with this problem. If it’s a new problem, they might not be ready
to take action yet because they haven’t yet experienced the negative
consequences of not solving the problem.

The second question enables you to start focusing in on the consequences

of not solving the problem. Again, this question helps you understand their
pains, fears and hopes, but also enables you to get your prospect to
experience – at least in their imagination - the consequences of the problem
simply by talking about it.

Actions Taken To Solve The Problem

6) What have you done so far to fix the problem?

7) How did that work for you?

The answers to these questions will help you further determine how serious
they are about solving the problem. If they have taken action, it means that
the problem caused enough pain or fear of future pain to get them out of
their Comfort Zone to take action. You want to know if this is the case.

Also, you want to know if there is someone else in the picture with whom
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59
you are competing to solve the problem for them. It could be another
vendor or in-house staff or they could even be trying to solve the problem
themselves with no outside help. By finding out who your competitors are,
you will be better able to position yourself as a better alternative.

They might say nothing. But if they say that they tried something or are
doing something currently, ask about it, whatever it is. If they say they are
looking for vendors, ask: “Could you share with me who else you are
talking to?” They might not tell you, but again it never hurts to ask. You
might want to try an Orphan Phrase such as: “You are talking to people/
companies like…?” And then shut up.

Consequences of Solving or Not

Solving the Problem
8) What is it costing you to live with this problem?

9) What happens if you don’t fix this problem?

This is the heart of the Values Elicitation Process. This is where you are
really finding out the consequences of your prospect’s inactions – and you
are getting them focused on the consequences of their inactions. You are
uncovering their pains, fears and hopes.

You are going to use the word “problem” when talking to your prospect,
but remember, that what you are trying to do is explore the fears that
underlie what they are acknowledging as “problems.”

Remember, problems have consequences. We don’t fear our problems, we

fear the consequences of those problems.

That’s what you are trying to get to: the fears about the consequences of
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60
their problems. If you understand these fears, you’ll be better able to sell to
your prospects on the most powerful level possible: the emotional level.

If you can, you want your prospects to work with you to calculate how
much the problem is costing them. You want them to figure out a dollar
amount associated with them not taking action and living with the problem.
You can use this dollar amount later in comparison with the budget they
are willing to spend to show them that the cost savings (benefit) of taking
action outweigh the cost of buying your product.

10) What’s it going to be like if you don’t fix this problem?

11) How do you feel about that?

With these two questions, you are trying to project your prospect into the
future emotionally. You want them to experience the pain of not solving the
problem. You are trying to get them uncomfortable. By getting them to
acknowledge and experience this pain, you are trying to move them out of
their Comfort Zone of inaction. You’re trying to get them more interested in
taking action and buying from you in order to avoid that painful future.

These questions will force your prospect to project themselves into the
future and think about at least some of the problems that could occur if
they fail to act now.

Again, try to keep them thinking through and exploring the consequences
of their inaction.

If they don’t reveal to you that there are significant consequences –

potential future pain – try telling an It-Could-Happen-To-You Fearful
Story where there are serious consequences to not solving the current
problem or avoiding the potential future problem.

Here, you must paint a picture of a very painful future that someone else
who has their same problem – their same fear – experienced. You must be a
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61
storyteller at this stage, telling them about the significantly painful
consequences that might occur if they don’t take action to avoid that
painful future now.

Willingness To Solve The Problem

12) How prepared are you to do what it takes to solve this
problem?

By asking this question, you are trying to get them to react to the pain and
fear that you tried to dredge up with the previous questions. You want to
see if the pain of having the problem is great enough for them to take action
to solve it.

Again, the problem might not be big enough for them to take action now,
they might not perceive the problem to be big enough, or there might be
other circumstances stopping them from taking action to solve this problem
now. You want to find out what might be the obstacles to them taking
action and buying from you.

Ability To Solve The Problem

Authority

13) Who else – beside yourself – will be making the decision

about how to solve this problem?

This is your sly way of finding out if they are the decision-maker or not.
You don’t want to insult your prospect by insinuating that they have no
power to make the decision by themselves. That’s why you are asking
about others – besides themselves – who need to be part of the problem-
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62
solving process.

Again, how they answer this question will determine how you proceed.
If there are others involved in the decision-making, you must try to set
up another meeting to get the others on board.

14) How do you make decisions? Is there a process? A

committee?

15) What are the key things that you (or they) are looking for in
order to move forward?

Here, you are probing for their decision-making process. You want to
find out buying criteria. What do they need to make a decision to buy
from you? Do they need references? Do they want a demo? What’s the
next step?

Budget

16) Would it make sense to talk about what you’re able to invest
to solve the problem?

This is a Permission Question. You’re asking this here because most

people are uncomfortable talking about money. Many of us were taught
to skirt the issue of money in conversation because it’s not polite to
discuss such issues with people.

But let’s face it, all salespeople have encountered prospects that have a
problem, want to solve it, but don’t have the money to solve the
problem. As a salesperson, this is a waste of your time.

You want to find out not only if the person has a problem, but if they
can solve it by buying your product/service. You want to qualify the
prospect’s ability to pay for your product/service. And this question will
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 help you gently get their permission to open up the conversation about
what it costs to solve the problem.

17) Do you have a budget set aside to solve this problem?

If they do have a budget set aside, ask them:

18) Would you mind sharing the budget with me?

Again, money is a difficult issue for most people to discuss. This is a

delicate way to get people to open up with you about money. You are
asking them to share information with you. From when we are very
young, we are taught that we should share with others. With this
question, you are using that social conditioning to help you extract
information. And hopefully, you have built enough rapport with your
prospect so that they are at least somewhat comfortable with sharing
their budget with you.

Many of your prospects will not have “budgeted” to solve the problem,
because most people don’t think that way. It is your job to get them to
think that way. Remember, you’ve hopefully already gotten the prospect
to calculate (even if only roughly) the cost of living with the problem.

If they don’t have a number in mind that they are willing to spend, try to
at least get a ballpark figure of what they think they need to spend to
solve the problem. You could say:

“Do you think you can spend $100, $1,000 or $5,000? I’m just trying to
get a general sense of your budget.”

You can then begin to share with them the cost of your product/service.
You already know what it’s going to cost them to live with the problem,
so it’s your job to show them that the cost of living with the problem is
much greater than the cost of buying your product/service and solving
the problem.
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You cover the budget at the very end of the process because you want
your prospect to understand the consequences of their inaction – and
the cost of their inaction – before tackling the cost of solving their
problem. By doing this, you are able to frame the price of your solution
relative to the cost of them living with the problem.

This will greatly enhance your ability to get them to buy your product/
service. When people hear your price upfront, they may react negatively.
If they react negatively at this point, you can at least discuss the cost that
they must bear of living with the problem and thus be in a better
position to influence them of the logic of buying your product/service.

Positioning Yourself As A Trusted

Advisor
Remember that as you interact with your prospect, your attitude is
extremely important. Again, you must position yourself as their trusted
advisor – not someone who is trying to just sell them something.

You must position yourself as someone who is interested in them and

their problem. You are not interrogating them. You want to find out the
answer to these questions because you want to help them.

As a matter of fact, if they ever ask you why you are asking any of these
questions, your response should be something like:

“I really want to help you, I just need to understand the problem before
I make any suggestions. Actually, we might not even have the solution to
your problem.”

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 This is a real credibility-builder. Most salespeople would never admit
that they couldn’t solve a prospect’s problem.

So remember, your attitude throughout this process is one of a trusted

advisor.

Also, if you ended the first step of the FEAR Selling System correctly,
you asked them to invite you in. You positioned yourself as a guest – an
expert guest willing to share with them your non-confidential research,
your experiences with their competition.

Make sure you remind them of this.

Remember, your goal is to get your prospect to share specific personal

information about what is important to them, their personal pains and
fears, and other information relevant to the buying decision. Your goal is
to guide your prospect through this process to get them uncomfortable –
and thus get them to take action – and buy your product.

Again, as you use this process, think of yourself as a psychiatrist.

Psychiatrists must get a patient to open up to them so that they

understand the patient’s problem. Their whole strategy is to get their
patient to trust them enough to tell them the sometimes extremely
painful reality of what they feel.

As you know, we have already covered many trust-building tactics in the

second step of the FEAR Selling System, Empathize With Your
Prospect. Many of these techniques are used by psychiatrists and other
therapists to get their patients to open up to them. You must use them
too. As we said before, you should be weaving these trust-building
tactics throughout the entire sales process from when you first talk to or
correspond with your prospect through the very end of the sale and
beyond.

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Once the psychiatrist understands their patient’s pains and their fears, he
or she will be able to diagnosis the patient’s condition and then
hopefully go about treating the patient.

Similarly, once you know the pains and fears of your prospect, you will
be in a better position to present your solution to their problem – your
product or service – in a manner which will drastically improve your
chances that they will buy it from you.

Remember, the key to all marketing is differentiation. Don’t be a typical

salesperson, lecturing them on why they should be buying your
product. You are rather a trusted advisor, guiding them to the realization
that they could have future pain, and that they should start avoiding that
future pain now by buying your product.

Understanding The Value Of The

Information You Have Gathered
Again, the questions in the Values Elicitation Process are a guide. Our
clients typically take this generic list of questions and modify it to make
them relevant – if necessary - to their specific selling situation or to
phrase the questions in a way so that they are more comfortable asking
them.

So, we have not only given you the questions to ask in the order that
they should be asked, but, most importantly, we have explained why you
should ask these questions. By knowing your objective at each step, you
are better able to be flexible in your approach.

Now that you have taken your prospect through the Values Elicitation
Process, you have:

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67
 1) obtained information that you can use to qualify them;

2) obtained information that you can use to position your solution to

them;

3) set the stage for you to present your solution.

Let’s discuss each of these in turn:

1) You obtained information that you can use to qualify them.

At different points in the Ask Step, you hopefully found out key
information about the prospect. You determined if the problem was
significant to them. If it isn’t significant, you might not want to spend
time pitching them further.

You also found out if they are the decision-maker. If they are not the
decision-maker – or if others are needed to make the buy decision, you
must set up additional meetings.

You found out what they thought it might cost to solve the problem. If
what they are willing or can spend to solve the problem is not in line
with the cost of living with the problem or the actual price of your
product/service, you may want to move on and not waste more time
trying to pitch to someone who can’t afford the price of your product/
service.

2) You obtained information that you can use to position your

solution to them.

One of the key sections of the Values Elicitation Process is when you try
to get your prospect to reveal their personal pains, fears and hopes. By
knowing these emotional trigger points, you can work them into your
sales pitch. Show them how your product/service can help them to solve
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68
their pain, overcome their fears and achieve their hopes. We’ll expand
upon this technique in the final step of the FEAR Selling System.

3) You set the stage to present your solution.

Although gathering information is an important objective of the Values

Elicitation Process, perhaps even more important is that you have
created a framework in the mind of your prospect regarding how they
should think about their problem.

If you took your prospect through the Values Elicitation Process

effectively, you made them realize that there are negative consequences
to not taking action and that there are positive consequences of taking
action to solve their problem.

Our research shows that prospects who have gone through the Values
Elicitation Process are nearly five times more likely to buy than those
who have simply heard a pitch without experiencing the Process. Of
course, the information gathered from the Process is helpful to the
salesperson when they pitch their product/service, but we have found
that what is even more powerful is how the Process gets prospects
thinking about the consequences of their actions/inactions.

Regardless of whether you follow our suggestions closely or not, there is

one suggestion that we hope you will take to heart. If you’ve learned
nothing else from this section, remember this: ask more questions and
pitch your product/service less. Just this piece of advice will get you a
long way to selling more and selling faster.

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 About The Author
Paul Borgese is an author, speaker, consultant and the creator of two series
of business books, The Business of FEAR and The 7 Deadly Sins of
Business. In his marketing and sales books, Paul shows how proven
systems coupled with customer-centric emotional triggers lead to significant
growth in sales.
Paul has more than 16 years of experience as a business advisor on a wide
array of strategy, finance, business development, sales and marketing
challenges for emerging-growth companies, financial institutions, not-for-
profit organizations and global corporations.
He helps executives and small business owners:
• confront the challenges of the increasingly cluttered marketplace and the
demands of the new age of marketing accountability;

• develop customized sales and marketing systems that ensure significant

ROI on every tactical investment in their overall marketing budgets; and

• execute integrated marketing plans that leverage new online and offline
techniques, including pay-per-click advertising, affiliate programs, and viral
marketing.

He has marketing and sales experience in a number of industries, including:

financial services, advertising/marketing services, Internet, information
technology, not-for-profit, corporate training, publishing and education.
Paul has led consulting engagements for senior executives at: J.P. Morgan
Chase, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, IBM/Searchspace, Pfizer, Deutsche Bank
(London), PNC Bank, KPMG, Kanoodle.com, and The Wharton School at
the University of Pennsylvania.
In addition to his consulting experience, he has served as a marketing
director for two of the world’s largest financial professional services
organizations, Financial Executives International and the Association for

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70
Financial Professionals. He also worked as a bank examiner for the
Federal Reserve.
Paul has lectured and written books, articles and white papers on a wide
range of business topics, including: corporate strategy, sales
management, marketing, entrepreneurship, information technology, risk
management, business communications, banking relationships and
corporate finance. He has served as a Teaching Fellow at New York
University’s Stern School of Business and is the author of the best-
selling book, M&A From Planning to Integration: Executing
Acquisitions and Increasing Shareholder Value, which was published
by McGraw-Hill. This book was recently featured on CNBC’s
PowerLunch with Bill Griffeth and CNNfn’s The Money Gang.
As an author, he is most famous for his series of books, which include
FEAR Selling: How You Can Sell More and Sell Faster By Tapping
Into Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated Emotional Needs; The 7 Deadly
Sins of Marketing; and The 7 Deadly Sins of Marketing Online. For
more information, please visit www.FEARMarketing.com.
Paul was educated in the United States and Europe. He holds five
degrees, including: an MBA in finance and marketing from New York
University; a Master of Governmental Administration from the Fels
Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was
named a Samuel S. Fels Scholar; a Master of Arts in English from
Trinity College Cambridge University in England after being awarded
the prestigious British Marshall Scholarship; a Bachelor of Arts in
English from the University of Pennsylvania; and a Bachelor of Science
in economics from The Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania. Paul is proficient in Spanish and was awarded a
Certificate in Spanish from the University of Salamanca in Spain where
he was a Cambridge Scholar.
You may contact Paul at 201.533.9282 or via email at
paul@FEARMarketing.com.

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 BOOKS THAT MEAN BUSINESS
BY THE FEAR MARKETING GROUP
In addition to our consulting work, the FEAR Marketing Group also conducts a
significant amount of research on sales and marketing effectiveness.

All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling

201.533.9282.

FEAR Selling: How You Can Sell More And Sell Faster
By Tapping Into Your Prospects’ Deep-Seated
Emotional Needs

Typically, before we worked with them, our clients were selling and marketing
based on traditional features and benefits. If you’re still using these outdated
tactics, you are in trouble.

Recent studies by the Sales Career Training Institute and the Performance
Marketing Institute have broken new ground when it comes to sales and
marketing effectiveness strategies. Studies conducted by these not-for-profit
Institutes have led to the development of the FEAR Selling System. One of
the key findings of both of these Institutes is that today’s marketers are using
hopelessly outdated selling strategies. Benefit selling (or what we call
HOPE Selling) is only one half of the powerful Persuasion Equation.

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To get people out of their Comfort Zones and take action by buying your
product/service, you must focus not only on the positive consequences of
buying but also on the negative consequences of not buying your product/
service.

Many of our clients sell complex products/services which require long sales
cycles and therefore demand superior relationship-building sales skills. FEAR
Selling shows how to overcome these challenges by finding and focusing on
your prospects’ personal pains and fears as well as their hopes and
dreams. By using both carrot AND stick persuasion techniques, you will
easily multiply your persuasion effectiveness exponentially.

So we have organized these persuasion techniques into an easy-to-use, step-

by-step system that we share with our clients during our training seminars.
Now, due to high demand, we have condensed the content of our 5-day FEAR
Selling Boot Camp into the FEAR Selling System, which is available in book
form.

It covers everything you need to know to sell more and sell faster. Find out how
to: cold call with confidence, position yourself effectively through your 30-
Second Commercial, get your prospects curious enough to invite you in to sell
them more, bond quickly through proven trust-building techniques, ask the
right questions at the right times to the right people, and present through
powerful strategies that get your prospects to buy now.

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 FEAR Selling For Financial Advisors

Top financial advisors earn big bucks and so have the luxury of hiring staff and
investing in sales and marketing systems that keep them winning clients with
little effort. But you know if you are starting up as a financial advisor that the
going can be rough at first. Recent turnover statistics show that up to 68% of
new financial advisors fail within their first year. Why do they fail?

Well, whether you are working for a large financial institution or if you are an
independent advisor, you basically are running your own small business. You
have to brand yourself, market yourself, and sell yourself. Unfortunately, many
financial advisors whom we train don’t understand that they are in business for
themselves. They have little formal sales training and limited marketing
knowledge. They don’t know how to set up their own sales and marketing
systems – but that’s exactly what they have to do if they want to survive in
today’s cut-throat financial services arena.

This version of FEAR Selling includes all the information from the original 5-
Day Boot Camp plus newly developed strategies, tactics and techniques
specially designed for Financial Advisors.

FEAR Selling For Financial Advisors covers everything you need to know to
be a top producer. Keep a steady stream of prospects calling you. Find out how
to: target wealthy investor segments, set up a highly leveragable referral
system, cold call with confidence, position yourself effectively through your 30-
Second Commercial, get your prospects curious enough to invite you in to sell
them more, bond quickly through proven trust-building techniques, ask the
right questions at the right times to the right people, and tailor your offerings
to your prospects so that they buy now.

All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling

201.533.9282.
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 FEAR Marketing: Proven Systems and Emotional
Triggers Guaranteed To Help You
Sell More and Sell Faster

We live in a new age of marketing accountability. There is no longer any

excuse for marketers and small business owners to throw money away on
marketing tactics without knowing their true return on investment (ROI). In
fact, it’s stupid to do so. Indeed, if today’s marketers do not adopt the new
marketing technologies, they will quickly find themselves squeezed out of the
game - either out of a job or out of business altogether.
FEAR Marketing was designed to help marketing executives and small
business owners:

• cut through the clutter of today’s increasingly crowded marketplace;

• develop customized marketing systems that ensure significant long-term

ROI on every tactical investment in your overall marketing budget; and

• combine the emotional selling strategies first introduced in FEAR Selling

with the marketing systems-thinking necessary to guarantee high returns on
your marketing investments.

Note: This second edition of FEAR Marketing does address the new online
marketing technologies that many corporations and small businesses are now
using to capture new clients at the lowest cost possible, but for a more
comprehensive coverage of interactive, performance-based strategies, check
out FEAR Marketing Online.

All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling

201.533.9282.
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 FEAR Marketing Online: How To Leverage The New
Performance-Marketing Technologies Proven To Help
You Sell More and Sell Faster

The first edition of FEAR Marketing introduced us to the power of combining

emotional selling with proven marketing systems. But nowadays, positioning
your products/services more effectively and applying offline systems-thinking
to your marketing is not enough. You also must tap into the powerful new
online communication technologies that are available to target and generate
qualified leads at the lowest possible cost.

By complementing effective high-tech prospecting tactics with high-touch

face-to-face sales strategies, FEAR Marketing Online shows you how to
generate qualified, low-cost leads, create prospect interest, build trust,
and close deals in order to succeed in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace.

With the recent success of companies such as Google, Yahoo and E-Bay,
marketers are waking up to the fact that the Internet is here to stay. But
recent research by the Performance Marketing Institute shows that too
many marketers and business owners do not realize that these hyper-growth
Internet companies are basically marketing services companies that can help
you catapult your own business to success. The Internet is not a business
model in and of itself like the 1999 bubble-investors hoped it was. Rather it is a
highly leveragable marketing tool that you must incorporate into your
integrated marketing strategies if you want to survive today.

With the rise of new marketing technologies such as pay-per-click

advertising, affiliate programs and viral marketing, even small businesses
can compete with their multinational corporate rivals if they know the new
strategies and tactics which are necessary if you want to fight and win on
today’s ruthless ROI-driven marketing battlefield.
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 FEAR Leadership: How To Lead By Tapping Into
Powerful Emotions To Motivate Your Organization
From Fear to Hope

In FEAR Leadership, the creators of FEAR Selling and FEAR Marketing

show you how to use powerful persuasion techniques to motivate people to get
things done.

The leadership master, Nicollo Machiavelli, wrote in his world-famous leadership

manual, The Prince: “Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be
feared than to be loved.” Machiavelli was right – it is difficult to be feared and
loved at the same time by your followers, yet unfortunately, to lead today, you
must sometimes tempt with the carrot as well as threaten with the stick.
As many of today’s corporate leaders admit, you must create enemies in the
minds of your employees so as to motivate them to compete and win. You must
focus on consequences and award performance accordingly.

In addition to showing you how to lead, this book also will show you how not to
lead. This version of FEAR Leadership also includes excerpts from the
previously published book, The 7 Deadly Sins of Leadership.

All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling

201.533.9282.

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 The Financial Services Marketing Handbook: Tactics
and Techniques That Produce Results
By Evelyn Ehrlich, Ph.D. and Duke Fanelli

Everyone in the financial industry can benefit from The Financial Services
Marketing Handbook (Bloomberg Press, 2004), from senior corporate
management to independent financial advisors. Case studies illuminate both
the innovations practiced by industry leaders—companies like Merrill Lynch,
American Express, and Citibank—and perhaps more tellingly, marketing
initiatives that failed.

These up-to-the-minute case studies are integrated into a review of the

keystones of marketing strategy: segmentation, positioning, situational
analysis, and tactical planning. There are chapters on each of the specific tools
of the marketer—from personal selling and sponsorships to the Internet and
CRM.

The 21st Century has already seen a major stock market collapse, unrolling
scandals involving commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds and
mutual funds, and industry-shaking changes in the regulatory environment.
The Financial Services Marketing Handbook gives financial marketers and sales
professionals the tools they need to survive—and thrive.
All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling
201.533.9282.

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 M&A From Planning To Integration

Mergers and acquisitions are designed to build market leadership and create
long-term value - in theory, anyway. M&A from Planning to Integration
provides complete guidelines for ensuring these optimistic theories become
reality, and outlines a systematic plan for developing, implementing, and
monitoring a successful M&A deal.

Examples from companies including Cisco Systems, GE, Microsoft, and others
reveal M&A strategies that have worked in the real world, illustrate the book’s
concepts in action, and help you apply those concepts and strategies to your
own company.
All books are available through www.FEARMarketing.com or by calling
201.533.9282.

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