The Number One Deal Killer (When Making A Sale)

We often wonder why the sale gets killed. Why the customer walks away. Sometimes it's because we're doing a lousy presentation. Or we forget the facts. But often, we get everything perfectly right. And then it's time to ask for the deal. And we freeze. We get needy. We hope the neediness helps to get some empathy. And in reality, it kills the deal. Or at least puts us in a weak spot. So where does this neediness show up? And how do barriers help to avoid being needy?

Workshop: http://www.psychotactics.com/dc Speaking at Copyblogger: http://www.psychotactics.com/denver Contact me: sean@psychotactics.com Zany newsletter: http://www.psychotactics.com

Time Stamps

00:00:20 Introduction

00:02:25 Table of Contents: Status and Urgency

00:04:27 The Story of 5000bc.com

00:07:58 How Good Should You Be To Put Up Barriers?

00:10:02 Increasing Level of Barriers

00:12:43 Final Announcements

Transcript

Sean D'Souza: Hi, this is Sean D'Souza from psychotactics.com, and you're listening to the Three Month Vacation Podcast. This podcast isn't some magic trick about working less. Instead, it's about how to really enjoy your work and enjoy your vacation time.

You've probably heard of Pilates, but maybe not of Joe Pilates. Who was Joe Pilates? He was the guy who started up the Pilates system, except when he got to the United States he wasn't that popular, so he rented a studio right under the studio of some dancers. They would practice, and as you'd expect, as you dance more frequently you get more injuries. Joe's system, of course, would make sure that you were more fit. Now the important part is that he didn't have any clients. Yet, when someone called in and wanted to make an appointment, this is what he'd say: I can't work with you right now. I'm busy and you'd have to wait for a couple of weeks. He was busy. He was busy doing nothing.

That makes no sense, does it? Why not take someone who's willing to pay right now instead of waiting for a couple of weeks when they could change their mind? That's the whole point about neediness. If you are needy that's a deal killer. That's the number one deal killer no matter what you're selling, whether it be a service, a product, a workshop, just about anything. If you are needy, it's going to go down in flames.

Why is neediness so bad? There are two reasons why neediness is terrible, and the first is that it reduces your status. The second is that it derails urgency. Let's talk about status for a second. We don't even have to go very far to look for examples of neediness. Let's say a friend of yours wants to go for ice cream, and they get needy at that point in time. They are trying to convince you to come for ice cream and you're not that keen on going for ice cream. Immediately their status level goes down and your status level goes up. They need you to come along. You don't need to go.

But at the same time, the second factor kicks in, which is urgency. They want to have that ice cream right now, so the more urgent it is, the more they're going to pull you and the less urgency you feel. Yes, you might say, "Fine, we'll go for the ice cream," but notice how your status level has increased. Notice how your urgency has decreased. Whenever we're selling anything, the moment we're needy it doesn't work for us.

We think that the buyer is going to feel a little empathy for us, they're going to feel a little sorry for us, but something else happens. A switch turns in their heads and suddenly they don't feel any urgency. They don't feel the need to buy anything from us. Instead, what happens is the other person, they feel this need to pull out. That is just human nature. The moment we feel that we're in control and the other person is not in control, we don't feel the need to go ahead and follow their agenda. We think our agenda is more important. It's all because of this little switch of turning needy.

In 2003 we started out a website, a membership website, at 5000bc.com. Right at the start we decided that we were going to have only a fixed number of members. The second thing was that you needed to have read The Brain Audit, which is our book, before you joined 5000bc. Now think about it for a moment. It's a brand new website. Hardly anybody knows us. We've just started out in 2002. Psychotactics was brand new. Why would you put barriers in the way? Why would you tell them that they had to read a book before they could join? No matter where you go and what you read they tell you that you should reduce the friction. You should reduce that friction so that people can sign up for your product or service. Here you're getting barriers.

The barriers is very important, because it removes that sense of neediness. It's like okay, we're going to have five people in this workshop. It doesn't matter. We're still going to go ahead and with the workshop. Today our copyrighting course, our article writing course, it fills up in about 30 minutes. Those courses are in excess of $2,500. Almost no one on the internet fills up their courses as quickly as we do. How are these courses billed? The article writing course is billed as the toughest writing course in the world, and yes, you have to read The Brain Audit anyway, and yes, the notes are sent to you three months in advance and you have to go through the notes and listen to the audio. There are all these barriers.

Clients, knowing these barriers, still want to get there. They still want to do the courses and they sign up faster than ever before. By putting the barriers in place we are less needy, but there was a time when we used to be needy, when we used to do all the things that we were told, which is reduce the friction. So we reduced the friction. We had four people on the copyrighting course, nowhere next to full, nowhere next to half full. When you look at our website and you look at the form you have to fill, most forms have just a name and email address. Ours has the name, last name, where are you from, what city, country, where you found us. Why bother with so much stuff? Again, they're barriers. The more needy you are the less likely I am to feel any urgency. We saw that with Pilates as well.

When Joe started up his studio he worked on that concept of increasing his status level. Even though he had no customers he still increased his status level. Secondly, he made sure there was an urgency factory. They could come in only three weeks from now. You know this when you go to a doctor for instance. You go to a dentist and the dentist goes through his list and there are all these blank spaces but he goes, "No, no, no. It's March now and you can come in July." You are desperate to go there in July, especially if the dentist is really good.

You think wait a second, you said, "Provided the dentist is really good," and I'm not that really good. I'm not so good. But think about it, was Joe Pilates that good? When we started out were we that good? Are we still that good? People are always in a state of evolution. No matter where you are on the road you're always able to help your client in some way that is useful for them, but they have to feel this need. They have to feel needy. They have to sign up. It's only when they feel needy, when they feel this urgency, that they feel wow, this was great.

This is because how our brains are wired. We are happier with the chase than the reward. Once we get the reward we're like okay, but there's also a downside to neediness, and that is haughtiness. No one is saying that you need to be haughty or impersonal or rude. Say you go to a gas station and the person there is really rude. Does that make his status higher? Does that increase your urgency? No, it doesn't. We're not saying that neediness needs to be rudeness. The definitely of neediness would be more about putting in a barrier, several barriers if you can. It really depends. The point is that when a client comes in they have a small barrier. They jump over that better. Then they go to the second level and they jump over more barriers. The funny thing is that when they get to a higher level you increase the number of barriers.

When people join Psychotactics they just have to fill in the form, which is five boxes, but they still have to just fill in the form. Then when they join 5000bc they have to go on a waiting list. They have to be sure that they have read The Brain Audit, so the barriers increase. If we have a program like we used to have, the Protégé Program, they had to read The Brain Audit, they had to be on the list, they had to pay $10,000 in advance, they had to submit to an interview, they had to fill in a whole bunch of details and send it back. When it was free they just had a form, but then when they got to the point where they were actually signing up for a year-long program they were doing a lot more.

Not everyone wanted to do a lot more. One of the participants that signed up decided that she was just going to pay the $10,000 and she was not going to buy The Brain Audit. Renuka wrote to her and said, "You've got until Friday. If you don't get The Brain Audit by Friday the money goes back, right into your bank account." I want you to think about it for a second. What would have gone through that client's mind? She thought we were bluffing, so that's what we did. On Friday we returned all her money. She came back with this enormous sense of urgency. "I bought The Brain Audit. I was stuck. I couldn't buy it."

She bought The Brain Audit and she became the protégé, and she paid the $10,000. But if we were needy, we had to deal with her for the rest of the year. She would take advantage of that situation. This is not about domination. This is just human nature. You're dealing with human nature all the time. The more you reduce your status, the more the chances that someone is going to trample all over you. You can be polite. You don't have to be haughty or rude, but you'd never want to be needy.

This brings us to the end of this podcast. We covered how neediness reduces your status level. It brings you to the point of begging in a way. Immediately people change their behavior, their attitude towards you. The second thing that neediness does is it reduces the urgency. The moment you need them, they're not ready to move. But if they need your stuff, they're ready to move. Just by putting in those barriers in place it creates a sense of urgency. It reduces the need to trample all over you.

Let's face it, you have a far superior relationship with your clients. There is respect between both parties. If you're standing on stage and you're asking your audience to please subscribe to your website, well that's being needy. If you're selling something to someone and you're not creating a sense of urgency, you're not putting any barriers, well that's needy. Even on a website your language, your tone, if it doesn't have these barriers in place, it doesn't have this "Wait, we are fussy about our clients. Wait, we are fussy about our systems," then you're being needy.

Sometimes you have to be needy. Sometimes you have to ask for things, and immediately it reduces your status. It works but it's not as effective. It's very slow going. I'm not saying that you never need to be needy. The situation changes. It depends on a day to day situation and what you need, but as far as possible you want to make sure that your not needy.

What's the one thing that you can do today? Put a barrier, find a barrier. What is your next project about? What is the barrier that you can put in. Maybe a small barrier, business still, put in the barrier. The barrier increases your status and definitely increases their urgency factor to sign up for whatever it is you're selling.

That brings us to the end of this podcast. Now one of the ways to reduce neediness is to have uniqueness. When you have a uniqueness factor it means that you're standing out from the rest of the public. You're standing out from everyone else. If you would like to learn more about uniqueness, we have a program. It's not cheap. It's in excess of $800 but it's a really good program. The reason it's good is it shows you not only to get the uniqueness, but how to get to second level uniqueness. Second level uniqueness is so cool, because your competitor can't just step in and rob it away from you, can't take it away from you.

In fact, one of the stories there is about a property manager and how she was charging 6.9% for a commission, versus the others that were charging 8.5%. What was the difference? The one that was charging 6.9% was actually better than the other ones, but she didn't have this factor of uniqueness. Those set of words that you use, they make the difference between your product being just another me too brand, another property manager, versus something that stands out. That's what you can find at the Psychotactics site. If you haven't subscribed to the Psychotactics site, do so. Fill in the form. There are about four or five boxes, but you already knew that, didn't you?

One last announcement. The workshop at D.C., that's starting to fill up reasonably quickly. You know where to find that. It's at www.psychotactics.com/dc. Now it's time to go. Shall we play some mariachi? Possibly. I'll say bye for now. What's the next episode about? It's about attention and how tension is the critical part of attention. Bye bye.