Michael: So Ken, how is this different than traditional sales training or techniques?
Ken: The real big difference here is this is all about selling based on a person’s own emotion and it’s all about emotional selling. It’s really kind of based on a lot of the research that’s just been coming out in the last five years or ten years where now we’re doing CT and MRI scans of the brain and we can actually see what part of the brain’s involved as people think or as people make decisions. So in the past in traditional sales techniques you’ve got certain things like, you know, here’s 13 different closes or here’s a script and here’s the questions you’re going to ask people and here’s how we convince them that your product’s better because here’s the different reasons say this car is better than another car or here’s the reason you should buy this jewelry or here’s why this financial investment is better than say a different one. Whereas, with what I’m talking about we’re actually eliciting someone’s actual unconscious decision making strategy. People unconsciously have a very, very specific way that they make decisions and what’s really fascinating is people don’t even know themselves how they do it consciously. If I were to walk up to you, for example, and say “Gee, how do you make the decision when you go to buy a car” you actually don’t know consciously but there’s actually an unconscious strategy that you’re using to do that. And so what we do with this is we actually elicit that unconscious step-by-step process that a person’s using and what we do is we just use that in the sales process.
Michael: Is this something new because we’ve all heard that people make decisions based on emotion and then they back the logic up by non-emotional fact and logic. Is it really that new or has it been around for that long?
Ken: Exactly, that’s the point people make emotional decisions and then they justify it with logic. Now, if I were to ask you, you know that, you probably seen lots of different sales training programs and so we know people make emotional decisions. Right. Now, how are you going to sell knowing that?
Michael: So Tom Hopkins and Sales Scripting is there still a place for these techniques?
Michael: So you think it’s making this Tom Hopkins and the alternate choice of the closing questions and the sales script thing over the phone, you think that what you have is making some of these things obsolete?
Ken: Oh, it’s not only obsolete but once you start using these kinds of techniques, not only this technique where we’re talking about really tapping into the person’s emotions and their unconscious decision making the person’s actually telling you what they want and how they want it. If you go back to trying to use the sales closes and stuff you find that it’s just so uncomfortable and you realize that, geez, I don’t even know how to phrase it, it’s literally like rude to people.
Michael: But what do we call the technology that you have?
Ken: We’re eliciting their unconscious buying strategy.
Michael: Can you tell me about the history? How you developed and learned this?
Ken: Sure. The early part of this was way back when I first got out of college the very first job I had was as a prison guard and as a prison guard I had some experiences. One of the experiences I had was literally like three months after I got the job a guy that got hired the same day I did as a prison guard got fired and when I heard he got fired, you know, I asked about it and found out he had gotten fired because he had brought in a whole bunch of marijuana to a prisoner. And my first thought was good Lord, why would somebody do that, you know, you know it’s illegal, you know you’re going to go to prison if you do it, why would you literally just within three months of getting hired bring in marijuana and give it to an inmate? And at that moment I started, you know, really questioning that and found out inmates were really phenomenally good at manipulation and they really have some phenomenally good strategies of manipulating people and conning people and tapping into people’s unconscious thought processes. And so really, really got into that and actually even started teaching it to the prison system.
Michael: When you got into it how did you get into it? You were interested in this because you started studying it and what ways did you take action to get into it?
Ken: Number 1 I just started studying what were the inmates actually doing? What did they say? How did they say it? And what I discovered is there was this whole setup process they were using and found out that they were actually looking for certain kinds of ways of thinking and then they were using how people were thinking against them.
Michael: Can you think of an example from way back then?
Ken: One of the things that inmates did was they would give you something, you know, randomly. Lots of inmates have lots of time so they draw pictures and some of them are actually phenomenally good artist. So they would come up to you and they would give you a picture or let’s say I’m going about my job throughout the day and I’m doing stuff and all of a sudden this inmate comes up and he does me a favor. Maybe he goes and gets something that he knows I’m going to get or maybe he mops the floor and says “Geez, you know, I just mopped the floor for you or I did this without you even asking.” So they would literally like do you this favor and then a day or two later they’d come back and they’d ask you for a little teeny tiny favor they’d say “Hey, can you do this for me, remember I did that for you.” And whatever they were asking you would be all this really, really minor. For example, one of the things that I would do is inmates would ask for like a little slip of paper so they could write a request on it and normally I would just handle that at one time during the day. So one of the things an inmate might do is come up to you in the middle of the day and asks me for one of those slips of paper.
Michael: He did a favor for you.
Michael: So the right of reciprocation, natural law.
Ken: And then they’d keep building on that. So now once you’ve done something small now they escalate it a little bit and get you to do another little favor but even more. And then again it’s another favor but it’s even a bigger favor. And now at that point they can turn it around on you because they can say “Look, you’re not supposed to have done all this. If you don’t do me this other favor I’m going to turn you in.”
Michael: Really. Did they ever do that to you?
Ken: Not to me, but again that’s what they did to a lot of jail guards and that’s why this guy brought the marijuana in. It was almost like fishing, you know, they catch you and kind of reel you along until they get you to a certain point and then psychologically you’re trapped.
Michael: Very interesting.
Ken: I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.
Michael: Any other examples you can think of from the inmate’s experience, any jail guards get in any trouble?
Ken: Oh, yeah. It happened literally every year or every few months you’d have somebody get in trouble we’d see it all the time. For example, I have a brother who’s really well known here in the United States because he’s an expert in medical systems for jails and he sets up the medical plan for jails. And so inmates are always trying to con the system there and get more medication or get things that they shouldn’t actually be entitled to. So for example, one of the things we often see there is, again, you probably heard there’s a psychological principle called fliking or similarity, inmates use that phenomenally well. So again they’ll be standing there talking to you or maybe sitting there talking to the doctor or nurse and all of a sudden they just make a statement like “Wow, you’re a lot like me” or “We’re very similar” or “We’re a lot alike” and then they’d give you an example of how we’re alike. See we’re alike because we both like this or we’re both alike because we both think the similar way. And so now all of a sudden the doctor or the prison guard is starting to think oh, this guy is not a bad guy he’s okay. And then again it’s do me this little tiny thing that’s not out of the realm of possibility, you could easily do it, but it’s just slightly beyond what you would normally do. And then they would, again, reel people in by doing that.
Michael: Okay. So how did you delve into this study of these unconscious behaviors? Was it jus by observation?
Ken: Basically just by observation and, again, what I found is there were certain inmates that were just phenomenally good at this and what I did at that point is you spend all day long there you’re with them for eight hours so you sit there and you ask them “How are you doing this? What are you doing? Why are you so good at this and nobody else is?”
Michael: And you would interview these guys?
Michael: Would they be open about it?
Michael: And they’d tell you.
Michael: So like what would they say?
Ken: Oh, they’d say here’s what I do. I interviewed the guy that actually got the other guard fired.
Michael: Tell me about that.
Ken: I said “How did you get him to bring you this marijuana, I mean how did that happen?” And at first he wouldn’t talk about it but you’re there in the same environment with him, you know, eight hours a day five days a week. So again a little while they start to brag, they start to talk, he said “Here’s how I did it, you know, I gave him this picture that I drew.” And then he started telling me about his girlfriend and so I had my girlfriend meet with his girlfriend and then my girlfriend gave his girlfriend this present. So again it was this whole process. I went from being a prison guard and then became a hypnotherapist and as a hypnotherapist people come to you all day long and say I’ve got this particular problem I’m doing this. For example, I’m afraid of spiders or I’m afraid of heights or, again, really common was love sickness, people would come in and they’d go, you know, I just broke up with my boyfriend and I’m all depressed and I can’t get over it, it’s been six months, you know, the guy moves to another state and I still love him.
Michael: And you would hypnotize them and help them get over that.
Ken: No, actually what I learned as a hypnotherapist is why were they still feeling emotions? Why were they still in love with this person? And what I discovered there, and again, is that people have a very specific unconscious strategy or a step of steps that they go through unconscious level to fall in love. And not only do they see that with these people that were all depressed because they broke up but I saw it with couples that would come in and need like couple therapy. What we find is when they were dating accidently they’d fire off the other person’s love strategy so boom they’d fall in love. And then what happens is we go back to our normal strategy the way we do it. A good example in sales is every single time a salesperson goes to sells somebody else, for example, if you were going to try and sell me you’d be using your unconscious strategy the whole time because that’s just what you know unconsciously but it’s going to be totally different than my strategy. So again when couples are in relationships they start doing their strategy to somebody else and they don’t understand why it’s not working. Geez, I buy him all these flowers or I keep telling him I love him and the other couple goes, well that doesn’t matter to me. So what I really discovered as a therapist is here was these unconscious steps that people were using to know things unconsciously to make decisions, to fall in love, to buy a car, to decide if they were going to buy this business or if they were going to accept this job and then as a therapist what I would do is just go in and help them work with a strategy and we’d either change it or we’d teach them to use it so they could use it consciously. And then what happened I became a stock broker and, you know, I’d sit there all day long and people would come in and ask me about investments and what I really quickly figured out is wait a minute, these people aren’t any different than my clients as a therapist. And so what I really quickly started doing was finding out what people’s unconscious strategy was to make the investment decision. You’re listening to an exclusive interview found on Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com.
Michael: Did you become good at it?
Ken: Oh phenomenally good. You know I always make this statement a lot of times in class that I’d go months and there literally wasn’t anybody that didn’t buy them. I remember one time when somebody didn’t buy and I actually marked it on my calendar and said geez, this person didn’t buy because it was just unusual. And it turned out two months later that I got something from my Compliance Department and said geez, you got compliance shop and here’s what they said and I was able to go right back to my notes and say “Wait a minute, what they said isn’t exactly true here’s what happened” and my Compliance Department was born away because I knew exactly who the client was, what day it was and I had the whole conversation down.
Michael: So what happened, a client complained?
Ken: No, compliance sends what they call shoppers to you and these shoppers don’t have the ability to buy they just come in and go through the buying process, and so they can’t make the buying decision there’s no way they can turn around and say okay, here’s 10,000 buy this mutual fund for me, so they literally don’t have that possibility. So for me I elicited this person’s strategy used it and then they didn’t buy and I was like “Oh, this is really strange, this is weird, what’s going on here?”
Michael: Because it was very rare someone didn’t buy from you.
Ken: It literally liked never happened.
Michael: Wow, and then you figured it out.
Ken: Well, like I said then I put it in my notebook, you know, I wrote it down to the [inaudible 12:54] I said this person didn’t buy and I can’t figure out why. And then like I said two months later it showed up they couldn’t buy they were just a spy, they were just a shopper trying to figure out if I was following the compliance rule.
Michael: So how were you compared to the other stock brokers in your firm, I mean were you doing better numbers than them?
Ken: At one point, yeah, I was doing phenomenal numbers, you know, again there’s a whole lot of things that go into selling, part of it is how often do I pick up the phone and make phone calls.
Michael: Right. You were probably more efficient.
Ken: That was the thing like I said it was very rare that somebody didn’t buy if I could get them in front of me.
Michael: Okay, you use the term selling code and what does that mean and what I hear you saying is I’d love to learn and my HMA consultants would love to be able to meet with someone and learn people’s unconscious buying strategy, is there a system for eliciting that with everyone?
Ken: Yeah. And what it comes down to is you’re going to ask specific questions in a specific way and you’re going to get the person to tell you what their strategy is and what I’ve discovered over years from this is there’s a whole process to it and the kind of first step is, yeah, we need to establish rapport with the person, but then the next part of the process is we’ve got to literally pre-frame the conversation. So what I have to do if I’m going to elicit somebody’s strategy is I have to take them from where they’re at right now and put them back into the moments in time or the specific state of buying.
Michael: When we use examples, let’s use examples for my HMA Consultants in like you’re meeting with a client, so let’s use that. If we have an example come up let’s keep it within that frame, okay.
Ken: Okay. So, Number 1 I’d need to go in and I’d need to establish rapport. There’s a bunch of things that we can do, specifically, unconsciously to establish rapport. For example, there’s this thing called an unconscious reading which is every time you meet somebody you actually move your body in a very specific way that’s unconscious. You might nod your head, you might move an eyebrow, but everybody does a very specific unconscious body movement when the bleep somebody. So all we have to do is match that right in that first second and as we do the person automatically goes whoa, I like this person.
Michael: I see, so give me an example. Let’s say I walk into your office and you’re interested in my consulting services and you get up from your desk and you run your fingers through your hair before you shake my hand.
Ken: Chances are I’m going to do something else which is I’m going to maybe nod my head, I’m going to say I and I’m going to nod my head. And so what you want to do is nod your head that exact same way.
Michael: And unconsciously they’re going to feel that.
Ken: Instantly. Another thing you can do unconsciously to establish rapport is you can actually unconsciously watch someone’s breathing pattern, the rate that they’re breathing, and if you match that and you start breathing in the exact same pattern you inhale every time they inhale, exhale every time they exhale their unconscious line is going to go whoa, this person’s just like me. You can do that with tonality on a voice that’s one that very few people do but it’s really, really effective.
Michael: Well, what if someone’s like a loud powerful talker.
Michael: Because you want to be as much like them as possible.
Michael: So they feel comfortable. They feel like they’re with their own self.
Michael: And then there’s less resistance.
Michael: Alright, that’s interesting. What are some other things we can do?
Ken: The next thing we want to do, once we’ve kind of established this initial rapport is we want to get the person into the frame of mind, or we kind of want to frame the entire conversation, and framing the entire conversation is really, really, important. So for example, if I were just randomly making cold calls to businesses as a marketing consultant I wouldn’t make these random calls and say “Look, I’m a marketing consultant and I’m looking for people blah, blah, blah, blah.” Instead I’d frame that initial conversation and say “Hey, you know, I’m so and so with such and such company and I’m just doing a quick survey. Do you have a minute to take the survey?” Because the second you frame it as a survey all of a sudden now the defense level goes down, they automatically think okay, now the guy’s not trying to sell me anything. You’re going to say “Do you own the business”, you know, how long have you owned it? Do you do any marketing? Are you happy with your marketing? Those types of things and all of a sudden now you’re starting to get into “Look, they’re not happy with their marketing or they feel like they could use more marketing.” Well, now you can easily segway into what you want to.
Michael: Now, let’s locate the opportunity analysis. I know we’ll get into this but tell me if this is just too early. Let’s look at the opening line. So let’s say my HMA Consultants they walk in, they’re meeting their potential client face-to-face, the look for something, they find matching mirror whether it’s the breathing or the initial movement or their tonality and then you sit down and we have here this script for the opening line. You know, Ken I don’t know how much I told you over the phone about who we are and why we’re getting together today so let me tell you quickly a little bit about what we do, what I do, and what my company does is work with business owners, people like yourself, helping them to maximize their marketing success. Most of our clients are small to medium sized companies with sales under $5 million dollars per year. We work with a unique marketing approach. We look at all your marketing assets and fin ways to leverage and optimize your success from the assets you already have in place because we try and leverage existing marketing assets you can often realize dramatic and a profit…
Ken: You can stop because they’ll tell you right off the bat…
Ken: Several different reasons. Number 1 starting off telling them all about you. They don’t give a crap about you, they never will. When I’m deciding and making a decision it’s never going to be about you it’s always going to be about me. So that initial even thing, let me tell you about me, don’t even do it there’s absolutely no reason for it. A better type of approach I’ve established a rapport with them a question I could say is “Look…
Michael: Have we established rapport?
Michael: Shaking their hand mirrored and match.
Ken: Yep. Or if I need to establish more rapport what I’m going to do is ask them a little bit about themselves. How did you start this business? How did you get involved in it? People love to talk about themselves, so if I need to establish a little bit more that’s what I would add. I’d say “Look do you mind if I ask you, how did you even get involved in this business?”
Michael: Okay, just right off from the beginning.
Michael: Okay because we have lots of questions about them and their business afterwards.
Ken: No, that would be my initial question just before I even ask anything else. I’m just curious, how did you even get started?
Michael: Can you take me around and show me the place?
Ken: Right. The second you walk in the door you can just go, you know, before I ask you anything else or before I even tell you about me I’m just real curious, I mean this is a fascinating business, how did you even get started in this?
Michael: And then just shut up.
Michael: What does that do for me?
Ken: Number 1 it gets you talking about you, and again, now it develops a rapport. This guy cares about me unconsciously I’m going to think okay, this guy’s interested in me which is the exact opposite of when I walked in the door and said let me tell you a little bit about me, you know. I work for this company and here’s what we do.
Michael: Okay that’s good. So let’s get rid of this whole opening paragraph. If they ask how we get paid we work strictly on a project like…
Ken: That’s going to come at the every end.
Ken: Yep, they don’t need to know that upfront, they’re not going to care upfront.
Ken: Now, that I’ve got a little bit of rapport I’m going to ask an easy simple question and it’s kind of like an inviting question. The question would be, you know, I’d probably just take my pen because I’m probably holding my pen or something, and I’d probably say “Look, if I can wave this magic wand”, you know, and I’d kind of laugh and I’d go “Well, it’s not really a magic wand it’s a pen but hey if I had a magic wand” and I’d start just like that. What would you like, what challenge are you facing, and just let them talk again. You could actually phrase that question a little bit more specifically, again based on what they’re doing. Like okay, let’s say I had this magic wand and I was Aladdin and I could completely change how you’re marketing your company and get you more customers and get you more business, what would you like, if I had a magic wand?
Michael: So what am I listening for?
Ken: That’s just going to get them to start talking. You’re just going to listen and what we’re listening for is, again, they’re going to start saying things and I’m listening for just different kinds of words. And as people talk they use words, we always use normalizations we use words. Words like I want to grow my business and when I hear that or when you hear it we automatically do this thing of “Okay, I know what that means you want to grow your business”, but the fact of the matter is you have absolutely no idea as the salesman when a guy says “I want to grow my business.” You have absolutely no idea what that means, none, and I guarantee you it doesn’t me what you instantly think it does. You have to now ask, I take that phrase, grow my business and I’m going to say “Okay, what does that mean? What does growing your business mean?” And now the guy is going to actually start to tell me what he’s talking about. Maybe he means I want to keep it the same level attempt but I only want to work four days a week or maybe he means I want to double my income or maybe he means I want to keep my gross sales the way they are but I want to increase my profits. See how it could mean several different things?
Michael: Yeah and that brings up an important point today to many consultants because a lot of them are starting off from the bat saying we’ll grow your business 25% to 100% in the next 60 to 90 days without spending money on advertising making a promise where you may not even have to deliver that until you find out what the potential client would be happy. So let them tell you how much growth they want.
Ken: Yeah exactly what’s important to them? What we’re looking for as we elicit this unconscious strategies we’re looking or what’s important to them and the specific order they’re going to use as the criteria.
Michael: Alright, how important is this order?
Ken: It’s everything. It’s exactly like less think of your clients as a safe and if he’s a safe then in order to get the sell I got to dial the combination and open the safe. And if I got to open the safe there, not only do I have to know the numbers like 13, 43, 6, but I have to know the order of those numbers I have to know left 13, right 46, left 6. Now, if I know those numbers but I put them in the wrong order, let’s say I go left 43, right 6, left 14 is the safe going to open?
Ken: Exactly, but I’ve got the right numbers.
Michael: So how many different numbers are there to open up the safe?
Michael: It could be infinite.
Michael: Some people have a lot more than others.
Ken: Well, no what we’re going to find, as far as infinite variety but as far as the number itself it’s usually going to be around four, some people might be as many as five, some people might be as few as three, on average it’s going to be around four quote/unquote “to things” and if I’ve got those four things in the right order, and again order is everything. See if I give them the four things but it’s in the wrong order that’s when people come up with objections and they go “Well, yeah, but.” This yeah but or the whole thing of objections tells you, you don’t have the order right and you don’t have the things in the right order because once you have the right things in the right order it’s impossible, nobody ever has objections at that point, it’s literally unconsciously impossible for us to have an objection. And then fun thing is when I’m teaching this to people in a seminar because I’ll take the sales manager or one of the people and I’ll say “Look, I’m going to sell you this consulting and I want you not to buy it.” When I get done do not buy this from me give me some kind of an objection. And then what I do is I listen to strategy and I feed it back to them in the exact order and I say “Okay, do you want to buy this right now?” And they always go “Okay” and the entire class like freezes at that moment and starts cracking up because I said “Wait a minute I told you not to buy from me” and the first thing he goes is “Oh, yeah, okay wait a minute, do it again.”
Ken: I’ve never had somebody not automatically go “Okay, I’ll buy.”
Michael: Well, hopefully we’re going to talk about that order. What are code words and what are hot button words? Is this part of discovering the order?
Ken: Yes. See what we’re going to do is like somebody’s going to say to us okay I want to grow my business because we’re listening to that, the code word is going to be grow. Now, what’s going to happen is I’m going to ask the person okay, what’s important about growing your business and he’s going to say well, you know, if I grow my business I’m going to have more money. And then I’d say okay, what’s important about having more money? And the person’s going to go well, if I had more money then I’m going to have more ability to buy things for my children or I’m going to be able to send my kids to private school. And as we start asking okay, what’s important about that and ultimately what’s important about that? For more exclusive interviews on business, marketing, advertising and copywriting go to Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com.
Michael: When you keep going what’s important about that? What’s important about that? You don’t get any kind of reaction or resistance, you know, that it starts sounding like a therapy session.
Ken: No, uh-um, people literally love to tell you. And a lot of times too you’re right, initially it seems like it’s going to be uncomfortable but I’m telling you from being on the other side of it when somebody’s asking you that it’s really not and we can use bridging comments and statements and literally I can say to the person “Look, you know, this is going to seem unusual, this is going to seem kind of odd and I’m going to keep kind of asking you this but the reason I’m asking is because I really want to find out ultimately what it’s really all about for you.” And as we make those kinds of statements and set it up, see that’s where this pre-framing and setting it up gets really, really important the person totally relaxes and they get really, really comfortable about telling me exactly what’s important.
Michael: Alright, so what are we listening for? We’re listening for what’s important right?
Ken: And they’re going to give me these specific words like the freedom to enjoy things with my family. That word freedom what happens is when you get use to doing this and you get a little of a practice with it you can actually hear as they tell you this all of a sudden they’re going to emotionally mark out certain works. You’re going to literally hear it in their voice.
Michael: Oh you mean identify words.
Ken: Yeah, they’re going to be a little bit more emotional in their tone of voice when they say a certain word and literally after you practice a little bit and after you ask people this you’re going to literally be able to hear it right off the bat.
Michael: If you do a lot of these do you start hearing some similar patterns in people?
Ken: Yeah, people have similar patterns and what I find a lot of times is again some of the code words and some of these hot button words and the difference between a code word and a hot button word is really the emotion involved. A hot button word is really, really emotionally charged, so when I use it oftentimes just repeating it back to the person you’ll literally see the person emotionally flush, you know, like skin their face will flush.
Michael: Yeah, like maybe they never have time with their kids and they say well, I want more time with my family.
Ken: Yeah. And so now when I sue that, when I repeat it back to them, I say what is it going to feel like when you are able to spend more time with your family?
Michael: Do you repeat it back like that?
Ken: Absolutely. That’s now how I actually go to close once I’ve elicited these code words in the specific right order the first step now is I’m going to feed it back to them and I’m going to say okay, so let me see if I’ve got this correct, you basically are telling me that what you want is this, this and this. Now, as I’m feeding that back to the person they always, every single person I’ve ever seen, does something unconsciously.
Michael: As you’re feeding it back.
Michael: Give me an example. I mean an example from your experience that you were one time doing this with somebody. Do you have a case study that you can remember?
Ken: Let’s say I’m doing this with a car and a person literally says to me okay, here’s my code and I’m feeding the code back and I say okay. So if what I understand is correct what you want in a car is you want something that’s got really good reliability and you want something that’s going to get really good gas mileage and you want something for a really good price. And let’s say that’s the exact order that they told me was important. Now, if I feed it back to them just like that and I say okay, you want something really reliable, you want something that gets really good mileage and you want something for a really good price, is that right? What they’re going to do is automatically unconsciously as I start the process of feeding it back to them they’re going to start nodding their head, everybody does that they can’t help it. And again a lot of times when I teach this Live we’ll get volunteers and I’ll say to the person “Look, don’t nod your head.”
Michael: Is it because you’re feeding it back to them in the exact order that they fed it to you?
Ken: It’s because I’m feeding it back to them in their exact unconscious order, the way they’re unconscious mind is storing it.
Michael: I see. So when they’re nodding their agreeing with you.
Ken: Yes, they’re confirming, yep, yep, yep that’s it.
Michael: Now, you need it in the exact order, what if you give it back to them in the wrong order?
Ken: Well, see that’s what I teach people all the time. Do it but feed it back to them in the wrong order.
Michael: In the wrong order.
Ken: Because it does two things. Number 1 for the person I’m feeding it back to in the wrong order I’m saying “Okay, here’s this car and what you told me is you want it for the right price and you want to get really good gas mileage and you want it reliable, is that correct” and the person will sit there and go well, yes I think. And see what happens is now if I’m doing that to you you’re going to have a really good experience of well, yeah that’s exactly what I said but it doesn’t feel right. And then I’ll say “Now watch” and then I’ll turn it around and I’ll feed it back in the right order and the person will instantly start nodding their head and I’ll get to the end of it and I’ll go is that right, and I’ll go oh yeah.
Michael: So you’ll feed it back to them twice.
Michael: You’ll do this for real.
Michael: So you get them to double confirm. The first one didn’t feel right then you’d say the same thing but in the right order, they don’t really realize the order they gave it to you, but that one feels right they nod their head and double confirm.
Ken: Exactly. For more information go to thebuyingcod.com.
Michael: That works better than just feeding it back one time in the right order.
Ken: Yep. And, not only that, but as the salesman now it tells me exactly yep, I’ve got it perfectly because if I’m feeding it back to them and I’m not getting this head nodding then there’s a piece missing and I got to go back and figure out what am I missing, there’s something I’m missing.
Michael: What if you find you feed it back to them twice and something’s now missing then what do you do?
Ken: I go back and say okay, it seems like this isn’t totally comfortable for you yet and I literally say “Hey, there’s something obviously kind of missing here let me ask you a couple more questions.” And then what I’ll do is I’ll go back to the strategy and I’ll start at the very beginning and I’ll say okay, the first thing you told me is that it needs to be really reliable and as we initially get them into the buying strategy what we have to do is go okay, go back to a time when you actually did this. So now we’re talking to a business owner I’d have them go back to a time when they actually bought something for their business. You know, again, since this is a buying strategy it could be something as simple as a copier or the last time they hired somebody, but I’m going to tell them go back to that moment in time when you did this and as you were doing this is that the very first thing you thought is oh, see it’s got to be reliable?
Michael: Are you asking them this?
Michael: So when you feel some resistance and it doesn’t feel comfortable, let’s say my consultants are selling consulting projects and you’re saying it looks like something’s missing it’s not comfortable, let me go back and ask you a couple of questions. Can you think of a time before where you invested in consulting services and is that what you’re saying?
Ken: I’d say okay Michael there’s probably some time in your life when you bought something for your business that would help your business out. Have you ever bought anything that really helped your business?
Michael: Sure, a printer.
Ken: Okay, cool. Now, when you went to buy that printer there was probably hundreds of printers out there to choose from.
Ken: Let me ask you, when you went to buy the printer what’s the first thing you did in order to decide? How did you decide to buy this printer?
Michael: I bought this one because I’d bought a previous printer it was a Brother Printer which was very reliable compared to my other printers, so I just bought another Brother. I looked for one that wasn’t that expensive and was on sale and was good value and that’s why I bought this printer.
Ken: Okay. So when you went to find this printer is there something in the very, very beginning that kind of told you, you needed a printer.
Michael: Oh yeah, I needed a printer for this new office because I needed to print stuff.
Ken: Now, you’ve started to give me part of the code here. First thing is probably that you needed one, the next thing has to do with the fact that it was the right brand – you said it was Brother – now again, when I say brand I just did something I contaminated because all you told me was that it was a Brother Printer and that that’s what you were looking for.
Michael: So by you repeating back it was the right brand what if…
Ken: I just contaminated it and I did some mind reading there and I went this is what he means by that and that’s a big mistake salespeople make.
Michael: Oh, so you made a mistake doing that.
Ken: Absolutely, and I did it intentionally to show you.
Michael: So what should you have done?
Ken: I would have said “Okay, so you needed a printer and it was important for you to get a Brother Printer and you were looking at the price and this was on sale and it was a really good value.
Ken: Okay. I’m guessing we don’t have the order exactly right and the reason I’m guessing is because you paused just a second there. So I can literally, because I’ve done this a whole bunch of times, generally if I got the order exactly right the people don’t even pause, you kind of paused.
Michael: That may be right.
Ken: So what I know is I don’t have the order right or there’s probably something missing.
Michael: Alright, very good. Yeah.
Ken: So again, now I keep asking questions and I go okay, so those things were all important…
Michael: Because you want to get that order right, right?
Michael: Now, I can’t even remember but you’re saying unconsciously I will.
Ken: See, that’s exactly true. No one knows their buying strategy consciously. As the salesperson I have to be good enough to elicit it from you.
Michael: Do you have to practice and listen for the order?
Michael: The combination.
Michael: And this is really, really important, right.
Ken: It’s everything it’s the combination to the safe. First off you said it was a Brother printer, it was on sale and it was a value.
Ken: First thing is you kind of needed a printer.
Michael: I needed a printer with this office.
Ken: Okay. And how did you decide which kind of a printer you needed?
Michael: I had a previous Brother at my other office which is very reliable compared to previous ones so I just went with that one for this one. And sense once I knew I wanted this brand or this Brother then I just shopped for price and just got a all-in-one which was going to do the job I didn’t need big time printing just something laser jet printer. And I bought it online I didn’t go shopping the stores, ordered it and it came to me boom and I’m happy.
Ken: Okay. So you had this previous Brother printer it was really reliable, you kind of got online then to look for other Brother printers.
Ken: Okay and then what? You just wanted one that did certain things.
Ken: Okay. Which was more important that it do those certain things or that it be a certain price?
Michael: That it do certain things, that it was a laser jet and that the speed per pages per minute was important and that it was decent and that it held at least 100 sheets of paper.
Ken: Okay and then the price.
Michael: And then the price, yeah.
Ken: Once you found this reliable Brother printer and you saw that okay, it does exactly the job I want it to do at the right speed, its 100 sheets and it’s the right price, did you then just automatically buy it?
Ken: Okay, that’s sounded [inaudible 35:20]. So let me ask you this, if you needed another printer maybe you got another room you need another printer. If you needed this other printer and I had this brand new Brother printer here really super reliable, I mean they just come out with this it’s even more reliable than past editions and it’s laser jet, it’s exactly the speed you need, it’s going to do a really decent job, it holds exactly the right amount of paper you need and it’s the exact price you want to buy it for. Would you buy it?
Ken: Now watch, I’m going to feed the same thing back to you but I’m going to feed it back in a different order.
Michael: Alright, let’s see.
Ken: Now, let’s say I’ve got this printer her and it’s the right price and it’s going to do the job for you, it’s laser jet, it’s the right speed and it’s decent and it’s going to fit the amount of paper it needs and it’s this really reliable Brother printer. Would you buy it?
Michael: Yeah. I didn’t feel – you’re right – in the last you kind of set me up, you know, since I knew what you were going to do but I don’t think it felt as right as the first time because of the order.
Ken: Well, yes, the order was different. Just watch, reliable, do the job, right price.
Michael: Yeah because reliability was my most important thing.
Ken: Right price, do the job, reliable.
Ken: Because you didn’t realize that sell 15 minutes ago.
Ken: See, if I’m going to see you something and I say “Okay, look it’s a great price, it’s going to do the job, and it’s reliable.
Michael: They’re all important but I say reliable first because that’s Number 1 on the list.
Ken: Yes, it has to be in the right order.
Michael: So it’s just a feeling, even though you feed it back in the wrong order but they’re all important.
Ken: It has to be in the right order.
Michael: Why the brain doesn’t, what is it?
Ken: Unconscious mind is not going to process it correctly.
Michael: Because it’s not matching.
Ken: Yes, it’s not matching your unconscious strategy.
Michael: Now, are we saying when someone feeds back reasons why, you know, buying criteria are they putting the order from most important to least important unconsciously?
Michael: So it’s the order in which we’re categorizing things of importance, right.
Ken: Yeah and that’s easy to find out. One generally as you tell it to you’re going to put it in the right order, but there’s sometimes when you don’t. So again, as a salesman I’m going to easily test that. I’m going to come to you and I’m going to go is it between price and it’s between reliability, which one’s more important to you?
Ken: See, if I ask you’ll tell me which ones more important.
Michael: Those questions we can even do before.
Michael: That’s to get the order.
Ken: Yes. Now, you’re going to get this order from them and how they’re going to buy a consultant and what’s the important to me about having a consultant and you’re going to get the exact order. And now what I’m going to do is now I’m going to go through the rest of this opportunity analysis that you got which is now I’m going to ask them all these marketing types of questions.
Michael: Let’s kind of summarize the opportunity analysis. We come in – oh by the way, tell me how did you get started in this business, let them start talking about themselves, mirror and match, you know, something they do unconscious from right when you meet them to their breathing tonality by then what are we doing next?
Ken: Then I’m going to kind of set it up. I’m going to say look, if I had this magic wand and I could accomplish for you with your business whatever you wanted to accomplish what would you want?”
Michael: Get them to talk more and listen for the combination.
Ken: Yes. And then they’re going to start to tell you things. I’d like my business to grow, I’d like it to run smoother, I’d like it to be less stressful.
Michael: Then you probe by asking what does that mean?
Ken: Yes and I’m going to say okay, when you say you want your business to be less stressful I’m not exactly sure about that so [inaudible 38:49] what does that really mean to you? What does less stressful mean? And then they’re going to tell me well, less stressful means I want to be able to have somebody else do the marketing for me. Ooh, that’s not what I thought initially when I thought about less stressful. See, you just gave me a big giant clue there now or maybe when he says less stressful maybe he’s going to say, you know, every time I run an ad it just doesn’t work and that’s so aggravating. So what I mean by less stressful I want to be able to run an ad and have my phone ring. See, two completely different meanings there to less stressful and as a consultant I’ve got to find out what does he actually mean by that.
Michael: So once we identify what they really want we’re either taking notes and putting these things in an order.
Ken: Yes, you’re going to have to take notes and all you do is going to write words down as the person says them. I wrote down Brother, reliable, do job, price.
Michael: Then what do we do?
Ken: I’m going to feed it back to them. I’m going to say okay, you said having a reliable printer is important and you said price is important, which one’s more important? Which is more important the price or the reliability and the person is going to tell me and I’m going to ask that a couple of times until I get the exact order. So now I know, okay reliability is more important than price. So I’m going to say okay, which is more important that I do the job or that it’s the right price and I guess oh, that it do the right job. And again, I’m going to say okay, which is more important reliability or doing the right job? Oh, back to reliability, so now I’ve got the exact order.
Michael: Okay or another way to get the order is take me back to another time you spent money on consulting. How did that happen?
Ken: Yeah, I mean how did you actually to hire that consultant?
Michael: And you want to look for that order too.
Ken: Yes. They’re going to tell you something, they’re going to say, you know, I felt he could really do the job for me or I felt he was an expert or it was the right price or, you know, I really like the guy.
Michael: Okay, so we take these notes down these words and we have them in front of us. Now, how would you suggest I segway into the opportunity analysis? How would I frame this next series of questions trying to identify whether they have assets or not?
Ken: Okay. Now, you’ve told me here was this printer, you know, that it needs to be really reliable and it need s to do the job, be the right speed and stuff, so now let me just take a look at your office and let me see, you know, what kind of a job we really need it to do here. So again if a person’s telling me what I’m really looking for is to grow my business I want my sells to grow by 25%, then what I’d use is I’d use that and feed it back to them and I’d say okay, you told me that it’s really important and what you want is to grow your business by 25% let me kind of ask you a few questions now to find out what you’re doing right now so that I can see how we might be able to increase it by 25%.
Michael: Here we go and then we take them through the opportunity analysis.
Michael: Okay, so you see how this thing is broken up into steps and how he’s got these kinds of closing questions?
Ken: Dump the closing questions.
Michael: Don’t even use them.
Michael: So as we go through the UST and we uncover they’re not using a UST in their business now say do you see how that can help your business and get them to say yes?
Michael: How would I end that section before I go onto leveraging current marketing growth?
Ken: I don’t’ even need to end that I just go right onto the next one. Now, when I get done going through this whole analysis of these different areas.
Michael: Tell me the reason why we dumped the closing questions.
Ken: Pressure. I don’t need it.
Michael: You don’t need it you’ve got the code.
Ken: Yeah, why do I need a closing question?
Michael: That’s true you’ve got the code.
Michael: Do you understand how UST can help your business by them saying yes, what are we actually trying to do as a typical salesperson?
Ken: What you’re trying to do as a typical salesperson is you’re falling back into that whole trap of a typical salesperson here’s what’s happening you’re sitting there on your side of the equation, they’re sitting on their side of the equation, and you’re saying to yourself, what the hell was this person thinking, are we still on the same side of the fence? And so you throw that question out there trying to find out, you know, are we still on the same side of the fence here?
Ken: I’ve got a code, I’m on his side of the fence, I don’t need to log those kinds of questions out there to find out.
Michael: Okay. So recommendation keep going through all this.
Ken: Yeah, I’m going to go through all of that. Now, once I’ve got it, you know, as the opportunity analysis I’m looking for what I can actually do. In my own mind I’m formulating here’s what I can easily do and here’s how as the marketing consultant that’s what I’m doing. You know, wow, guy doesn’t have a UST, guy’s not doing any direct marketing he’s doing just institutional marketing. Wow, the guy’s not even tracking his marketing. He doesn’t even have any idea how many people are calling him. Wow, guy doesn’t even have a Web site. And now I’ve identified all these things as the marketing consultant I know all about and he doesn’t have a clue.
Michael: And I’m taking notes as I’m questioning him.
Michael: All the things he doesn’t have.
Ken: Right. Now, to close him when I get to the very end of that – see, all that information like UST and direct response and tracking and all that stuff that’s good information for me, again he doesn’t give a crap unconsciously it makes no difference to him.
Michael: He just wants the code words.
Ken: Yeah. And so what happens is now I’ll get done and I’ll say okay, wow, here’s all the stuff I’ve kind of learned about your business and, you know what, I have this really, really, reliable way that’s going to do the job and it’s exactly the right price. Would you buy it? See, what I’m doing there is now I’m feeding back the strategy.
Michael: You’re using the printer example with me.
Michael: So it didn’t feel right because you went out of order.
Ken: Right, not only did it not feel right because what I’m talking about is doing consulting and consulting is a little bit different than buying a printer. So again there’s going to be a little bit of difference there.
Michael: That’s why I hesitated.
Ken: I’d need your exact strategy for how you’re hiring a consultant.
Michael: Right. So let’s say you’re selling me the printer and you say well, we’ve gone through this whole opportunity analysis about this and…
Ken: But feed back to you I’m going to say look, here’s this particular Brother printer, it’s really, really reliable because, and I’m going to tell you why it’s reliable and then I’m going to tell you here’s why it does the job because it’s this speed and it feeds 120 sheets and that price. So what I do is take your strategy but now I fill it in. You see what I mean by filling it in.
Michael: With this stuff that you know as a consultant.
Ken: Once I set the strategy back I’m going to say is that something you want? They have to say yes. If I feed you back your strategy and I say is that something you want you can’t say, no that’s not what I want because it’s your strategy. How can you literally at that point tell me no, I don’t want my own strategy.
Michael: That’s true and it’s simpler. Do you think this cuts down the sell cycle?
Ken: It not only cuts it down but it makes it sound like it. What you’re going to find is that as you’re asking people what’s important to them they start to tell you what’s important to them and now they start to feel this real connection to you. It establishes phenomenal rapport and they start to go wow, you know exactly what I want and not only do you know exactly what I want but you can give it to me. Most of the time you don’t even have to close you’ll just feed the strategy back to them and they’re going to like wow, how much is this going to cost? What do I need to do now?
Michael: I can’t wait to try this. Well, what are your motivational keys?
Ken: Now, motivational keys are actually the unconscious things that cause me to take action. Again, the reason they’re called motivational keys is because they’re motivating and what we want to do is kind of identify these as we’re going through and asking the person these questions. So motivation keys is things like towards or away from, and if somebody’s telling you their strategy they’re going to start to identify this they’re going to say look, I really want to spend time with my family. Now, they say want to spend time with my family I know it’s a towards if they say, you know, what’s really important to me is I hate the fact that I have to work so much and I hate the fact that I miss my kids’ plays and I’m never there when my son has his soccer game, that’s an away from. So I know, okay, now in order to push that button what I need to do is use it. Now, if you told me what’s really motivating you is I keep missing my son’s soccer games and I miss my daughter’s play now what happens as a consultant I say look, you can continue to do what you’re doing and if you don’t hire me you’re going to keep missing your daughter’s plays, you’re going to miss your son’s soccer game next year. What if your son gets on the elite team? How is it going to feel if you don’t do this and you miss his games next year? So how motivating is that for me? I just told you that’s my strategy it’s hugely motivated.
Michael: I mean it sounds pretty hard core selling.
Ken: You’re literally not using it as blatantly as I just did. What I’m really doing is I’m just going to feed it back in your right way.
Michael: You’re going to do it in the right way.
Ken: Yeah. I said it back to you that way because I wanted to make it really, really, obvious. But again, what I’m saying is, what you told me is important to you is you want to spend time with your daughter so by taking and using this UST you’re going to have a lot more free time.
Michael: What kind of people have you taught this whole strategy to?
Ken: Well, geez I’ve taught it to real estate agents. We teach it to
insurance agents and financial advisers, my [inaudible 47:17] car salespeople. Those are the three main categories right now that we’ve been teaching it to.
Michael: Is it hard to learn or how much practice is it going to take?
Ken: It takes a bit of practice and what I usually tell people is start off just in your normal everyday life and start getting good at just eliciting some of these buying strategy, you know, walk up to somebody in their office and go wow, really nice watch you’ve got on there, you know, I like that watch. How did you decide to buy that watch? And they’ll give you their buying strategy for the watch and then feed it back to them and then you ask questions. So if you were going to buy another watch and then feed them back the strategy and go, is that right, and if you get that bobble head you got it, let them walk out to the parking lot and I can see somebody’s car and say ooh, nice car, how did you decide to buy that? So what I do is I want to pre-frame it and the way I’m pre-framing it is just by saying ooh, that’s a nice car I’m interested in it because otherwise if I just randomly walk up to somebody and go ooh, how did you buy your watch? I don’t have them in the right mindset.
Michael: So if I’m getting objections anywhere, especially at the end…
Ken: I don’t have the right strategy in the right order, that’s all it means. I got to go back and redo it.
Michael: And have you had to sometimes go back a couple of times?
Ken: Always, yeah, but once you get good at it you really don’t have to go back because again you’re going to test it as you’re going and if you’re testing it you’re going to get that bobble head. If I get the bobble head I know I’ve got it in the right order.
Michael: This is good for a face-to-face, how about when my consultants are on the phone trying to set an appointment, how can we use it?
Ken: Again, when I’m on the phone like that the first thing is the framing, how do I frame the conversation? What’s the meaning of the conversation? Is it a survey or am I trying to sell them? Because if I come off that initially I’m trying to sell instantly the person’s defenses go up, now that makes it that much tougher. So if I were doing it on the phone I would go back to like I did as a stock broker. If I were doing cold calls I’d call people and say look, you know, I’m just doing a survey I’m with Morgan Stanley, do you mind if I ask you three quick questions? And if people said no, okay fine, you know, they’re not rejecting me they’re just basically saying they don’t have time for my survey. So Number 1 it doesn’t matter to me but then Number 2 now they’re taking a survey now it’s really easy to ask them questions. Okay, do you believe Social Security is going to be around when you retire? Nope. Do you have an IRA or a 401K plan? Nope. Ah, what are you going to do? And most of the time people laugh and go geez, I don’t know. And now I can really segway into well, you ever thought about sitting down with somebody? And now it doesn’t come across as a sales call now it’s like well, I’ve already identified the fact that geez I don’t think Social Security is going to be around I need an IRA, geez I thought about sitting down with somebody, yeah I’d like to do that. Again I would call up and I would just tell hey, you know, I’m doing a survey of local businesses about their marketing practices, do you mind if I ask you three quick questions? And then I’d have to think about it and need to come up with three really good questions, like I said, segway people into that whole geez, this would be something I would be interested in sitting down and talking about.
Michael: So what do you think if my consultants reworked this opportunity analysis, eliminate that first part and use this system, let’s say they’re closing now every four appointments they’ll get one client. What do you think this thing if they really practice and master they can do as long as they’re qualifying right from the beginning?
Ken: Honestly, they’d probably easily close 90%. If they’re doing it right they should close every single person, but realistically, even if they’re doing it half way right, you know, we should be getting up there in that 75% or three out of four.
Michael: I mean it totally makes sense because if you think about it most of the consultants, especially the new ones, the reason they’re not closing in many cases is they’re talking to the wrong person.
Ken: Yeah, so Number 1 we’ve qualified it. We’ve go the right person. Think about it from this point of view. Number 1 we’ve got the right person, Number 2 the person’s told me exactly how they their decisions. I can’t imagine why the person is lives like that.
Michael: Tell me if my consultants want to invest in your course, what is the course going to teach them? What does it contain? What’s in it? What are they going to get?
Ken: We’re going to have the audio and I’m going to literally walk them through. I’ve got to really break it down for you. A lot of it is very, very specific. If I change one word as I’m asking the question I’m going to get a completely different unconscious response. So I have to ask the question very, very specifically. So I talk to you about why you got to ask it this way and not this way? Why if I change one word here I’m going to get a completely different response from the person. And then literally we’ve got a worksheet there that shows you how to map this out. So as the person’s talking you’re going to carry around this little worksheet and you’re just going to make these little notes on it. And by the time you get done you’ve go this literally map of their unconscious decision making process.
Michael: And you can bring this like mind map with you on any appointment?
Ken: Yes, you should. If I want to sell the person I want to know how this particular person is making that decision. So, yeah, I want to bring that little questionnaire or this little mind map with me on every single appointment so that as I’m asking the questions I can just fill it out. Once I’ve filled it out now I’ve got the exact map or I’ve got the exact code to basically unlock this person’s strategy.
Michael: Is it a physical product? Are they on CDs or is it a digital product or what?
Ken: No, I told you we could do it digitally or they can just download it.
Michael: Okay, they can download it.
Ken: Yeah, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to set that up for them, we’ll make a special page for them where they can just order it and it’ll take them right to a download and they can just download it.
Michael: Ken this is awesome. This is powerful stuff. I encourage HMA Consultants to check this out and they’ll be a special link for anyone listening to this that they can go learn more about it. I appreciate you taking the time.
Ken: Oh, my pleasure. I love to teach this because it makes such a huge difference. I can tell you story after story after story of real estate agents bottom of the office, you know, within a year top three, car salesman, literally not earning $2000 bucks a month, in a month earning consistently over $10,000.
Michael: Wow. It’s not hard to open up a safe when you know the combination.
Ken: Well, see that’s the thing is all of these people once they learn is they come back to me and they go “Oh, my gosh as soon as I learned about these code words I started discovering stuff and people told me, you know, this car salesman came back and said “Wow, this woman came in and she’d been looking all over town for this car and she told me she wanted a really big truck.” So again what’s big is the code word. And the guy goes “Okay, what do you mean by big? What’s important about big?” And she said “Well, you know, I want to be high up so that I can look down and I can see really well. Everybody else in town had tried to sell her like a one ton pickup because they thought that’s what she meant when she says no, I want a big truck.
Michael: Yeah, they were guessing.
Ken: Yeah, they were contaminating. He asked her what’s important about big and she said “You know I want to sit up high.” So he found her a car where she was sitting up high and she went “Ah, you’re the first person that ever understood exactly what I want” and bought the car from him. The same thing with real estate salespeople, you know, I had a real estate agent come back to me and go “Oh, my gosh I was just taking this lady around and before I learned this she told me she wanted a house with a view and I took her around to 10 different houses and she didn’t like any of them.” And finally I asked her what do you mean by view? And she goes “Well, I want to be able to look out the kitchen window and not see my husband’s cars.” So he takes her up to this wooded area, you look out the kitchen window all you saw was four trees there was no, what you and I might of think of a view. The woman looks out the kitchen window the driveway is on the other side of the house so she looks out the kitchen window, can’t see a car for miles and she goes “That’s exactly what I wanted.”
Michael: Those are brilliant examples right there. So people say one thing but we hallucinate, we don’t know until we really ask and get the real reason the hidden reason the code.
Ken: Let’s say I come in and I’m buying an investment and I ask okay, what’s important about this investment and I go it needs to be safe, I’m going to automatically contaminate that; I don’t know what safe means. See, so as an investment adviser I’m going oh, okay so this person wants something, you know, that’s not going to fluctuate in value. Maybe they want something like a fixed annuity or maybe they want a CD or something like that. And what they mean by safe might mean I want to have so much money that when I retire I’m not going to worry about it. So no, I don’t care that it fluctuates what I care about is the maximum value in 20 years from now, that’s what I mean by safe.
