CLOSING INTELLIGENCE: How To Get Others To Say Yes In Life

By Oscar Subirats

Amazon.com Sales Rank Accolades:
#1 New Release in Running Meetings & Presentations (January 25, 2023) (Books)
#1 New Release in Sales & Selling Presentations (January 30, 2023) (Kindle)
#7 Best Sellers in Sales & Selling Presentations (February 5, 2023) (Kindle)

Closing is an act that gets others to take action. Selling something is one thing—being a closer is another. Closers get commitments. They change lives, and they impact their own.

Closing Intelligence is all about closing. About how to handle that closing moment, whether it is a ten-minute conversation or a two-hour meeting. About how to break down your actions prior to that moment. About how to build the optimum chance of getting others to commit to your products, services, or ideas.

Closing Intelligence is for salespeople, decision-makers, and anyone who must learn how to successfully persuade people. By becoming a better closer, you can achieve what you want in life and business.

A closer is someone who can get people to say yes.

And Yes! moves the world.


Chapter 1

Have You Ever Wanted a Superpower?

What if you could do something that others cannot? What would you do with that? Would you harness it into good things in life? Would you use it to influence people? Would you use it to open the doors to accomplish the things you've always wanted to achieve?

In this book, I'm going to teach you how you can have an ability that other people don't.

I'm going to teach you how to have a superpower.


Praise for Closing Intelligence

"A few years ago, Oscar reached out and claimed he could help us do what we do even better. I said yes and then challenged Oscar to deliver rockstar results. That is exactly what he did. In less than six months, his unique techniques and abilities with people increased our closing rates at some events to over 90 percent. If you are struggling with getting others to act and can learn some of Oscar's skills from this book, there is no doubt it will impact your business."

David Finkel
Wall Street Journal Best-Selling Author
CEO, Maui Mastermind Business Coaching
Author of SCALE, The Freedom Formula
and Build a Business Not a Job


I met Oscar Subirats and was impressed by his sales technique. I've been continuously impressed by how he is able to get others, including myself, to consistently say yes. By applying even a fraction of what he teaches you in this book, your life can change."

Rick Spell
Former CEO and Current Board Member,
Raymond James Mortgage Company, Inc.
Majority Owner, Spell Restaurant Group

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oscar Subirats
• Release date: Mar 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215781210

Book preview

Introduction

Yes Moves the World

WHEN I STARTED MY SALES career immediately after college, I made just about every mistake you could make in any kind of sale. Why? Because while sales are basically the key to success for every business in the world, this fundamental concept is not usually taught in college. Most people believe that those who choose sales or end up in sales are simply born with a certain type of personality.

Throughout my life, I was told I had that type of personality. I was outgoing and outspoken, and I could make people laugh. I was extroverted and not afraid to be rejected. According to the world, those are qualities that make a great salesperson. I was raised by parents who were in sales and in real estate, and so, belief in a sales personality was instilled in me too.

But when I entered the sales world, I realized that I knew nothing. Looking back, I laugh at some of the big mistakes I made. Many of you who are reading this book may relate to what I’m talking about. We’ve all had those moments.

I remember one time when I was asked to put together a presentation. I was just starting my sales career, and I was beyond excited, certain that this was going to be the most powerful proposal the company had ever seen. I bought the latest laptop and spent hours creating the perfect production.

No one taught me how to make a presentation. I taught myself, and I was thrilled with the result.

The day of the meeting arrived. There I was, in the room with an important client, and, in my most engaging and animated voice, I gave my presentation. On the ending note, I turned around only to see that my client had dozed off. Can you imagine your client falling asleep? My presentation was supposed to wow people. I’d created a multimedia masterpiece that talked about the benefits and the values of the company, and my audience fell asleep in the middle of it.

More than once during the first years of my sales career, I would be talking, trying to wow the client with my energy and God-given communication ability, and I would suddenly see the other person staring at me as if I were from another planet.

Why? Because my tone, gestures, enthusiasm, and everything else were over the top. Sometimes, people wouldn’t even ask questions. They would just say, Thank you for your time. Let us think about it, and we’ll get back to you. And that was it.

Another early mistake I made was thinking that if you brought people together for a seminar and organized it with lunch and gave them free information, they would want to buy. I wholeheartedly pursued this idea, and I almost went into debt doing so. I spent my time, money, and energy promoting seminars that only a few people ever attended.

One time, I borrowed money to develop a multimedia disk that clients could watch on their computers and learn about my product, thinking that they would miraculously be influenced into purchasing. To this day, I have those disks as a wonderful artifact of yet another expensive trial-and-error technique that did not get people to buy.

This is often the life of a salesperson, of people who are told to try sales. They read books and watch videos, hoping to find a formula that will rescue them from frustration. They make mistakes and try tactics doomed to failure only because they don’t know any better.

As I was writing this book, people asked me what it was about. They expected that my book would cover the entire sales process, that it would talk about lead generation, marketing, prospecting, and the psychology of the sale, just like most sales books out there.

I have read those books too. When they finally got to the all-important topic of closing, they simply covered theory.

It’s quite disappointing, to say the least. The problems are presented, but the authors don’t provide the solutions. They don’t focus on getting a commitment. They talk about why salespeople or buyers react the way they do—but not what that means and not how to overcome it.

As I read those books, I realized that salespeople need that "Aha! moment, that This is how I’m going to get more people to say Yes!" moment.

That’s where this book comes in. I focus on closing a sale rather than writing about sales. This book is all about the essential moments of closing.

Whether you are in the sales pipeline of a large corporation, are in direct sales for a small business, or are a small business owner—whether you are in a short or long sales cycle—there will be moments when you will have closing opportunities. You will be in front of decision-makers, perhaps the CEO, the purchaser, or the business owner. You will be having a one-to-one or one-to-many, in-person or in-technology, opportunity when a commitment will be made. What you do in those moments, how you handle those moments, that’s what this book is about.

Well, what about prospecting and lead generation? I recommend that you read as many books as you can on the entire sales process.

In this book, what I describe is the most critical process within the process of sales—the process of closing.

It isn’t enough to say, And that’s how you close! or That’s how you make a sale! What does that mean? What’s the structure that paves the way? The sale doesn’t just happen. Whether it is a ten-minute conversation, a two-hour meeting, or a series of meetings, you have to understand the process so that you have the optimum chance of getting others to commit to your products, services, or ideas. That’s why it takes an entire book.

Closing is a process, a structure, that gets someone to take action. A closer is someone who can get people to say Yes.

This book encapsulates my journey of the last twenty-plus years. I have perfected the process for a clone-able, repeatable structure that can be taught to make people extraordinary closers, which is summarized in this book. I share the reality no one really tells you about, that to succeed in sales you must face human nature and real people and overcome their many obstacles and objections. This process is not based on theory or psychology but on real-life experiences and a structure that actually works.

In this ever-changing world, what we know today may not be the same tomorrow. What we see as the most outstanding companies in the world today may not be around tomorrow. And what is thought to be the most powerful way to connect with your clients today may not even exist tomorrow.

This book is not about using tactics that are popular at this moment to make sales. It is about teaching you a proven structure that will withstand the test of time. Technology will change. Buyers’ needs will change. The avenues they take will change. But human nature does not change.

This book is for sales professionals who want to become top producers. This book is also for the top producers who want to increase their closing rates. Every company—and every department and division—wants high performers. So, this book is also for managers who want to help their entire staff perform more like the top 20 percent of their salespeople. It’s also for CEOs who want to implement structures that are teachable to managers and other people in the organization, even nonsalespeople.

Every day, at some point, everyone is a salesperson. The step-by-step approach I teach here will impact the lives of all of these salespeople. By becoming better closers, they will get others to say yes.

And at every level of every organization, if there is no yes, nothing happens.

Yes moves the world.

Chapter 1

Have You Ever Wanted a Superpower?

WHAT IF YOU COULD DO something that others cannot? What would you do with that? Would you harness it into good things in life? Would you use it to influence people? Would you use it to open the doors to accomplish the things you’ve always wanted to achieve?

In this book, I’m going to teach you how you can have an ability that other people don’t.

I’m going to teach you how to have a superpower.

Ever since I was a small child, I’ve been able to look into people’s hearts. Over time, I’ve been able to open doors in my career that many other people were not able to. I had a specific ability that I was able to harness and use for good.

People open their hearts to me. I sit down in an airplane seat and, within thirty minutes, the person to my right or left is sharing feelings with me. It’s gone as far as having people tell me their deepest secrets.

Once, while sitting at a bar talking to my wife, a man next to me started telling me that he was thinking about suicide. Why did this highly personal revelation happen? Because, in those moments, I asked the right questions, questions that led him to tell me what he was feeling. I was able to open his heart.

I’ve been able to harness this ability—what I call a superpower—to open doors in my own life that allow me and others who I have trained to get people to share what is in their hearts.

In your personal life, you can connect with people in ways you cannot even imagine. This creates a life where people want to be around you. They want to learn what you have that makes you stand out.

In the world of sales, if you are able to channel that superpower correctly, you are able to turn it into becoming an excellent closer.

Not everybody is born with this ability. But in this book, I will show you how I’ve turned this superpower into a structure I can share. This is something you can learn—all you need is the structure.

Win the Heart, Win the Sale

I have been in the sales industry for over two decades. In that truly incredible stretch of time, I have gained knowledge and abilities I never imagined achieving. That experience and resulting expertise also gave me the initiative to build a multinational company and train hundreds of sales professionals.

There is only one reason for me to write this book: to share a secret—my secret. That secret is the structure you have in your hands, a step-by-step process for how to become an extraordinary top performer. As you must have guessed by now, it reveals the distinction between being an average salesperson and being a closer.

This unique structure for increasing and maintaining unconventionally high closing rates is called closing intelligence. Why this name? Because it was created through thousands of closing interactions, through actual results, research, and trial and error. And those results and that research provide intelligence, the intelligence that bestows confidence, creates an advantage, increases