Just Sign Here: How to Sell Your Knowledge, Experience and Advice to People Who Don't Know They Need It

By Rob Cuesta

Selling professional services is not like selling products. Products can be seen. They can be felt. They are tangible. You can give them to a potential buyer and let them get used to owning them. Heck, they can be owned!

Professional services just aren’t like that. You can’t give someone a bag of advice. You can’t let s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brightflame Books
• Release date: May 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781988179032

Book preview

Foreword

I Hate This Book

By Mike Koenigs, 10-Time #1 Bestselling Author

www.YouEverywhereNow.com

This book might just as well be called Burn Your Sales Books, because that’s what you’ll want to do after you read Just Sign Here.

How do you sell to a crusty old dinosaur that doesn’t want to listen to your pitch or read your proposal? We’ve all felt that way at some point, but it turns out that every sales pitch you’ve ever made was like that: behind your buyer’s eyes is a watchful lizard that cares for nothing but its own survival. That’s the basic premise of Just Sign Here.

The result is a deep dive into the darkest recesses of the human psyche, drawing on the latest advances in neurochemistry, neuroscience and psychology.

Rob has been a client of mine for 4 years, buying programs and products, attending my livestreams and as a guest on the expert panels at my live events. Little did I know that as he sat in my events and livestreams, he was probably thinking There goes the Oxytocin trigger. Where’s the Dopamine? Give them some Dopamine!

Somehow, Rob manages to sell softly, without selling and above all without coming across as salesy. Talk to him and as you come away you’ll realise you bought into something—an idea, a proposal, maybe a product or program—without ever quite realising you were being sold to. Dammit, when exactly did I agree to write this foreword???

In this unusual book, you can get a peek into how he does it.

I say this is a very unusual book for three reasons.

First, his approach to sales is not just different. It will blow your mind—or your buyer’s. Many sales books focus on scripts and clever language patterns that somehow sound hollow and fake when you try to trot them out in a sales meeting. Instead, Rob shows you how to literally drug your prospect into buying. No, you’re not going to have to put a roofie in your buyer’s coffee: It turns out that there are simple ways to force someone’s brain to release specific chemicals through what you say and do in a meeting. Get those in the right order and you might as well have slipped them a mickey.

Second, it is based on real-world, real-business results. Unless you have the luxury of a corporate marketing budget, you need to make the most of every lead that walks through your door. The numbers game gets expensive when every number has a cost—pay-per-click fees or whatever—so you need to get out of that, and play a smarter game. Rob has filled his book with real-life examples from his own business and his clients—both the successes and the failures—told with his very British sense of humor, that reveal how to close five- and six-figure deals, sometimes without even needing a sales meeting.

Third, it is a book meant to be used, not just read. This is not a ‘shelf development’ book designed to be enjoyed, laughed at and then languish on your bookshelf while you congratulate yourself on how much you know. If you do that, you have missed the point and cheated yourself. It’s not even really a book. It’s a tool box. Full of tools you can pull out over and over again. This book provides not just handy hints and tips. It gives you a structure and a process you should commit to memory and use to win every pitch and presentation you make.

I actually have a confession to make. I’m disappointed with this book. I hate every page.  I’m disappointed that Rob has put so much valuable information into a book that sells for so little. This should be a $2,000 program, not a book that sells for the price of a latte and a muffin. And as a writer myself, I hate that Rob has made the job so much harder for the rest of us by giving so much value and writing such a darn good book.

The bar has been raised!

Mike Koenigs, 10-Time #1 Bestselling Author

www.YouEverywhereNow.com

Disclaimer

It’s truly sad that we live in a world where I have to write this section, but my lawyer, my accountant and my colleagues have threatened to use various parts of my anatomy as bookends if I don’t include it, so here it is.

The publisher and author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work, including, and without limitation, warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or suitable for every situation.

Nothing in this work is a promise or guarantee of earnings. The content, case studies and examples shared in this work should not be assumed to represent in any way average or typical results. Neither the author nor the publisher is familiar with you, your business, your market or your circumstances. Therefore the case studies we are sharing can neither represent nor guarantee the current or future experience of other past, current or future clients. Rather these case studies and examples represent what is possible by applying the strategies presented.

Each of these examples is the culmination of numerous factors, many of which we cannot control, including pricing, market conditions, product or service quality, offer, customer service, personal initiative, and countless other variables, tangible and intangible. Your level of success in attaining results is dependent on a number of factors, including your skill, knowledge, experience, ability, connections, dedication, focus, business savvy and financial situation. Because these factors vary from individual to individual, we cannot guarantee your success or ability to earn revenue.

You alone are responsible for your actions and results in business and life, and in your use of these materials, you agree not to hold us liable for any of your decisions, actions or results, at any time, or under any circumstances.

No portion of this work is intended to offer legal, medical, personal or financial advice. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom.

Under no circumstances, including but not limited to negligence, will the author or publisher, or any of their representatives or contractors be held liable for any special or consequential damages that result from the use of, or inability to use, the materials, information, or success strategies communicated through this work, or any services following this work, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

The fact that an organisation, individual or website is referred to as a source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organisation or website may provide, or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that internet websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it was read.

In other words, nothing in this book should be taken as any form of contractual obligation. Neither the author, nor his company, nor the owners of the intellectual property rights to the book or their assignees warrant any result from implementing the ideas in this book, and we accept no liability for any damage, loss or harm to you or any third party arising from any interpretation or implementation of the ideas in this book.

Caveat lector.

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Preface

This Is Not

An NLP Sales Book

That’s real NLP, that is. I learned it direct from Richard Bandler.

I looked at Glenn with what he must have assumed was a perplexed look. "If you say that in a sales meeting, they have to buy from you, he added, as if he thought it would make things clearer. It’s hypnotic, you know!"

Now, don’t get me wrong. Glenn is a smart guy. He had built a successful manufacturing business, sold it to a major competitor and then, rather than resting on his laurels and retiring, had set up a management consulting business advising other small manufacturing businesses on how to grow.

It’s just that, right at that moment, he was talking nonsense.

A moment before, he had shared with me what he believed to be the epitome of sales language. The Holy Grail that every salesperson needs to know, to transform their closing rate.

What was it, you may be wondering?

By now, you, like me, are thinking this has gone on long enough.

Actually, that was it. One phrase. By now, you, like me…

Glenn had heard it in a sales training 15 years before, and apparently it was the only thing from the whole two days that had stuck in his mind.

It’s what NLPers¹ refer to as a phonological ambiguity.

The idea is simple. If you say a phrase that sounds like another, there’s a moment in which the brain can’t figure out which one you meant, and the person hears both.

The phrase by now, you, like me, for example, also sounds like, buy now! You like me!

There’s one problem.

Phonological ambiguity works when the message gets through to the unconscious mind: you don’t want your prospect sitting there, consciously puzzling over what they think you might have said or not said.

Unfortunately, most of the time in a sales meeting, you’re talking to a part of the brain we’ll call the Reptile Brain. We’ll talk about the Reptile Brain a lot more later in this book, but for now let’s just say that one of its main tasks is to stop your sales messages getting through.

And in order to do that, it’s listening consciously to what you say. Every word. Very carefully.

So I’m not going to be teaching you clever sales phrases that literally force your customers to beg to buy from you (I lifted that gem from a very dubious sales page for a ‘how to sell’ course).

You’ve probably also come across another gem of the NLP armoury: matching and mirroring. Somehow, by the time this makes it into a sales book, it’s been dumbed down to ‘if your prospect scratches their left nostril scratch either your right nostril (mirroring) or your left nostril (mirroring). Apparently, this mutual nostril scratching is so powerfully hypnotic that, once again, they will be powerless to resist your sales message, sneakily hidden as it is amongst the nostril scratching, pen tapping, throat clearing and anything else you can mimic.

So I’m not going to be teaching you clumsy body-language tricks, either.

Now, don’t get me wrong.

I like NLP. I know it works…when it’s done right.

I am an NLP Master Practitioner and NLP Trainer. I’ve taught NLP and persuasion skills to everyone from members of the UK armed forces to the management boards of some of the world’s largest banks. I once even had a neuroscientist fly in from Greece to attend one of my courses.

I’ve coached senior executives in some of the world’s largest accounting and consulting firms, and international attorneys.

I’ve taught decision making to MBA classes.

I’ve taught how to sell from the stage and how to sell on video.

I’ve taught and coached leaders and managers at two of the world’s largest IT companies.

All of that work involved NLP.

But I’ve always taken a very contrarian approach to NLP.

You see I’ve always been fascinated by how people communicate. In school, when my classmates were down on the sports field kicking an inflated pigskin around in the mud, I’d be in the library reading up on psychology, linguistics and anything else that I thought would give me an insight into how people think, communicate and—most importantly—get other people to do stuff they might not do without a gentle nudge.

In the years since then (more than I care to admit to), I’ve added to my studies NLP, standard economics, behavioural² economics, neuroscience and neuroselling, the science of persuasion, an MBA, an accountancy qualification, and the experience of more than 20 years of selling advisory, consulting and coaching services.

It’s given me… perspective.

So. No tacky sales lines. No clumsy matching and mirroring.

Instead, we are going to be looking at what is going on inside your prospect’s head as you talk to them, at a chemical level (don’t worry, though, I’m not a biochemist, just a normal person who will explain it in the way a normal person will understand). We will look at what makes people do the things they do. What makes them buy, and what makes them not buy. And what makes them not buy when it’s obvious they should (and what to do about it)!

This book is not everything I know. But it is enough to make you into a highly skilled seller.

Inevitably, writing a book like this involves pulling back some curtains. I’m sure my clients—past and present—will have been first in line to buy this book, and will be analysing every conversation they ever had with me and every presentation they ever watched.

As one client told me with a smile as he wrote out a cheque to join my $20,000 mentoring group, "I know what you did, I just have absolutely no idea how you did it. And I want to learn!"

Thank you to my loyal readers

This was the first book that I released for pre-order on Amazon Kindle, and within 48 hours it was a #1 bestseller in three categories, on three continents. In the 5 weeks between its announcement and release, 401 copies were sold (most non-fiction books sell 250 copies a year), and another 308 copies in the 6 weeks since then

I could not have done that without you.

Rob Cuesta

Oakville, Ontario, Canada

Introduction

Sales And Me

My sales career started early.

At the age of seven, I spent the summer at my grandmother’s house in a small village in Spain. One day I noticed that she kept splashing herself with liquid from a bottle, and the liquid smelt kind of… flowery.

So the next day I filled a bucket with water, decapitated a bunch of her flowering shrubs and created… Well, I don’t know what it was, but it definitely wasn’t perfume.

Undaunted, though, I filled some old bottles with the somewhat disgusting ‘flower soup’ and headed off round the neighbourhood. I sold four bottles, all of them to good friends of my grandmother.

Lesson 1: A winning smile and a good connection will actually get you so far in sales, but no further.

Fast forward a few years, and I was a teenager who wanted cash (Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guides don’t grow on trees!). There were jobs that I did around the house for free—mowing the lawn, washing dishes, etc.—and it occurred to me that I could probably get paid for the same jobs by my neighbours. As it happened, we lived in a neighbourhood with a high proportion of older families (many years later, I discovered they are known as ‘empty nesters’), and I cleaned up.

Then disaster struck. We moved to a new part of town, and suddenly I was surrounded by families with their own cash-hungry teens. For several months my finances were severely depleted, until I discovered that a few blocks away there were streets full of empty-nesters. I was back in business!

Lesson 2: Go find a market that is hungry for what you do, rather than trying to sell to people who don’t need it or—worse still—have their own in-house team!

After school I took a year off before heading to university. I wanted to travel, so I took a job in a shoe shop. Every day I went in and sold shoes to people who wanted shoes. I sold lots of shoes.

Each week I was in the top three for shoe sales in the store. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what my boss wanted. The company made very low margins on shoes, so we were expected to sell ‘sundries’: polishes, leather insoles, shoe trees... all kinds of stuff that people didn’t think they needed.

The challenge was that, compared to the price of the shoes people were buying, the sundries were expensive: when you’re buying a pair of shoes for $30³ (that’s how long ago this was!), spending $10 on a protective spray or $20 on a pair of insoles so the shoes will fit better is a stretch.

I’ll confess, I struggled.

Then winter came. Now people were coming in and spending $150, $200 or even more on boots. Spending $10 on a spray that will make your $200 boots last longer is a bargain. I cleaned up (so to speak!). Within a couple of weeks I was the top seller in the store: shoes, boots AND sundries.

Lesson 3: It’s easy to sell people what they want, but if you want to sell them what they need you have to show MASSIVE value compared to the price.

Forwards another 15 years, and I was working for the world’s largest management consulting firm, leading (and winning) multi-million dollar pitches.

During one pitch, the partner in charge of the team had spent an hour subjecting the finance director of a major international corporation, and his team, to ‘death by PowerPoint’. Next came the manager who would be leading the project if we won. He launched into carefully prepared consultancy speak. Things weren’t looking good for us. Finally, I stood up. I handed out a short document I’d prepared setting out our proposal. It had my name on it, and my credentials in the front.  My manager and I had carefully discussed how I was going to present it, and I followed the plan exactly.

The next day we heard we had won the project. On one condition. I was to lead the team, not the manager who had presented. I felt awful. Surprisingly, my manager was happy to stand down and let me run the show.

Lesson 4: Clients respect—and want to hire—authorities

Lesson 4a: Authority is not the same as hierarchical position

Later, I found out I’d been set up. I was always going to be the one to lead the project, but the meeting had been engineered so that the client would request