Ari Galper – Founder & CEO of Unlock The Game | Unlocking The Sales Game

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About The Guest

Talking Points

• 00:00 — Intro
• 02:18 — Ari Galper’s origin story
• 09:07 — How to build trust with the customer
• 13:12 — Who does Ari Galper usually deal with in the market?
• 24:03 — When is the point when a salesman thinks that trust is being built?
• 25:57 — How to establish trust with the customer on a cold call
• 33:36 — What other parts of the traditional sales cycle are broken?
• 34:44 — What are the steps Ari Galper uses to close a sale
• 40:50 — How do you do a one-call close when nothing you do is pushing things forward in a sale?
• 44:20 — What is the biggest misconception about sales and what does Ari Galper want his legacy to be?
• 46:03 — Where do people connect with Ari Galper?
• 46:41 — What was the biggest challenge Ari Galper has ever faced in his life?
• 47:52 — Who was the mentor of Ari Galper?
• 48:53 — A podcast or a book recommended by Ari Galper
• 40:07 — What would Ari Galper tell his 20-year-old self?
• 49:46 — What does success mean to Ari Galper?

Show Links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/arigalper/
• https://twitter.com/arigalper/

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On this podcast, you’ll find interviews, Q&A, keynote presentations & conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship.

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Machine Generated Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

sales, trust, problem, people, call, selling, steps, build, clients, doctor, taught, conversation, question, ari, hubspot, talking, uncomfortable, relationship, hiring, languaging

SPEAKERS

Ari Galper, Scott D Clary

 

Scott D Clary  00:00

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I’m your host Scott D. Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network and the blue wire Podcast Network. The HubSpot Podcast Network has incredible podcasts like my first million. My first million is hosted by Sam Parr and Shawn Peri, they feature famous guests. They discuss how companies made their first million and then some they brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace. Here are some of the topics he talked about. If you like any of these, you will love the show three profitable business ideas that you should start in 2020 to drunk business ideas that can make you millions, asking the founder of Grammarly how he built a $13 billion company or Sass companies that anybody can start. If these topics are up your alley, go check out my first million listen to it wherever you listen to your podcast. today. My guest is Ari Galper is the founder and CEO of Unlock The Game. It is the world’s number one authority on trust based selling. He has been featured in CEO magazine, Forbes Inc, Sky News and the Australian Financial Review. As trust becomes the most important currency in the new economy. The act of selling as a dehumanizing process with endless chasing has been completely reinvented and anchored in the timeless values of integrity and trust through trust based selling. And his best selling book unlock the sales game already describes his revolutionary sales approach based on getting to the truth and why having a mindset of focusing on deep trust, instead of quote unquote, the sale is ironically 10 times more profitable. So we spoke about why trust is lacking in sales, and how we can fix it, why traditional sales is broken, how to close more deals and how to make sure they’re bigger deals, and also how to close them faster. Ari’s trust based selling model is one of the most prolific and impactful sales models you can ever learn. So we’re going to unpack that for you. And then lastly, we’re going to speak about some of the biggest misconceptions about sales that we need to kill right now. So let’s jump right into it. This is Ari Galper, He’s CEO of Unlock The Game and is the world’s number one authority on trust based selling.

 

Ari Galper  02:18

Well, Dashi is the origin story behind trust based selling. And I think we’ll probably start there that I gotta give context to today’s conversation. About 20 years ago, I was a sales manager in a software company. And we launched the first online website tracking tools. Now they’re now called Google Analytics. I’m sure you’ve heard of that before. And we launched the first one of those years ago, I was managing 18. Salespeople at the time, fast growing business, all the big opportunities to earn these leads came across my desk. And this one call came in off the website, I got the phone call. Huge opportunity, lots of websites, big international company recognize the name. The guy’s really nice guy, we had a great conversation. And he wants to he agrees to us having a conference call and live demo, show our product. So really excited about this. If I close this one sale, it will double the revenue in one transaction. That’s how big it was. So the whole team’s all pumped up. Give me high fives for the for the meeting. The day finally came Friday, four o’clock in the afternoon, and I closed door behind me. And I’m in my room in the conference room with our CEO and a big long conference table. And on the tables, the old school speaker phones, you know, the old Star Trek looking three legs on it. speaker phones, yes, I know those very well. Yeah, yep. And I hit dial tone and pick a phone dial tone came up, dial the number. My guy picks it up. He’s like, hey, Ari, how’s it going? It’s a good, good, good. And so we quickly had a quick chat. And then he says to me, Ari, let us tell you, who’s with us in the room today. I was like, Oh, do you relate to someone else there? Next thing I hear is my name is Chris. I’m CEO. Or like, Oh, this is good. My name is Mike. I’m Head of Global it. This is amazing. Didn’t realize it. I’ll be there. My name is Julian, head of marketing. Amazing. Like everyone on this call was basically a decision maker. Right? Like, it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen today. Like, they’re all

 

Scott D Clary  04:11

gonna happen. It’s gonna happen. Yeah, you. Everyone’s right there. You don’t have to bring anyone else in. That’s all. It’s all you need.

 

Ari Galper  04:16

Exactly. So I introduced myself, we will log in, I guess talking about a live demo of a product of their stats we collected ahead of time on their website, they logged in and saw as well, the first time they’re seeing this, and I’m showing it around. And I was hearing this noise on the phone call like, wow, this is great. This is amazing. It’s you’re asking me all kinds of questions. How does it work? How do we install it? How to implement this? I mean, they had all the right kinds of questions. I had all the answers. I was doing my thing. And so I was overcoming objections, and nicely ugly or poor with them. I mean, there were so much chemistry on this phone call. It was like a love fest on the phone

 

Scott D Clary  04:59

calls it that it just feels like it feels like everything’s good. You have all the right buying signals, like all the everything you’re saying is just perfect. Okay, so what so what?

 

Ari Galper  05:07

So no resistance, I mean, it really was a truly an awesome call. And the call comes to a close and like God says we are, this is great, we love it, look, give us a call a couple of weeks, follow up with us. And we’ll move this thing forward. I’m like, great. So I said my goodbyes. And I took my arm my hand and ready for the speakerphone. And the off button is a reason for the off button on the speakerphone. by complete accident, I hit the mute button instead of the off button. And a small click happened. And then sort of hung up the phone. And that’s put second, a voice inside of me said Ari, go to the dark side, be a fly on the wall, go where no one’s ever gone in the world of sales before and listen to it for a couple of seconds you have nothing to lose. So I pulled my thumb back for a couple of seconds. They started, they thought hung up the phone. And they started talking amongst themselves like now I left the call. And this is not a trick question. But what would you imagine they will say that after that call like that, what would you expect them to say after call we just had?

 

Scott D Clary  06:09

Well, I’d expect him to say based on based on what you just said like, that sounds great. Like we have to follow up with them in a week. Like let’s figure out how to implement let’s, you know, think of anything we didn’t think about on the call. But like let’s move forward with this. How do we get budget whatever that that the the regular next steps for I want I want this in my company right now.

 

Ari Galper  06:26

Exactly. That’s exactly what you expect them to call like that for sure. But let me share with you what I heard verbatim word for word. I’ll never forget it. It’s while we’re all here today. Here’s what they said. They said, We’re not going to go with him. Keep using him for more information, and make sure we shop someplace else. Cheaper. knife in the heart twist, I was in a state of shock. I could not believe it. And I finally stepped out of it hit the off button. Look at the wall in front of me. I said to myself, What did I do wrong? I was competent. I was professional. I wasn’t pushing. I did everything I was supposed to do in the book, the sales books, I read it at home. And on my shelf. I went the sales guru seminars and he probably went to I’ve heard the podcast, I did my due diligence as being good in sales. And here Look what happened to me. Then asked myself that I had epiphany actually that was this a somewhere along the way, it has become socially acceptable not to tell the truth to people who sell. Right. It’s okay. They say things like sounds good. Send me information. Oh, wait, we’re definitely interested. Wait, send me a what?

 

Scott D Clary  07:43

Quotes? I mean, a proposal?

 

Ari Galper  07:44

Yes. They just did. Without any intention of buying it. You spent your entire time chasing and chasing and dysfunctional behavior that’s just so dehumanizing when you don’t get to the truth. And I said to myself, why were they afraid to tell me the truth? What Why don’t you just tell me the truth, I’d be okay with that. And I realized what was going on, I realized back then that there is a sort of undercurrent flow of pressure that flows underneath every sales conference, you have someone in your sales process, now you can’t see it, and they can’t see it, where they can feel it. And they’re always gonna keep their guard up, and give you just a few breadcrumbs to keep you interested. Because they’re gonna hold back the truth from you, because they believe that your intention is to make that sale. And that whole pressure and are realize if I can figure out a system and a model to crack the code on this, and remove the pressure for the process, I can shift people’s mindset away from the goal of the sale. And they said, to build a real trust with people, I mean, deep trust, where you build what I call, moments of vulnerability vulnerability, where they open up to you and tell you the truth. And that became my whole mindset shift called unlock the sales game 20 years ago, which has now spawned 1000s of people who’ve changed their lives around this, but we teach a whole different way of selling we’re goal is not the sale at first, your goal is deep trust, we teach people how to do that very effectively.

 

Scott D Clary  09:07

Okay, that makes a lot of sense that that’s a problem that as long as you even though you’ve been operating this space for a while, the trust factor is still something that people have a lot of trouble with. And actually, the one thing that you mentioned is like, like uncovering the fact that even your customers is lying to you just to get a price or a quote or more information on the product. Like that’s like a salespersons worst nightmare. So, okay, so what’s so that is that is the issue with sales today. So what is what is this? What is the ability to build trust? What is that? Why have we not focused on that? Why have we not done it better? Because people have said for the longest time, you have to build trust to be able to sell. So it’s not unknown, but it doesn’t seem to be done effectively.

 

Ari Galper  09:51

Correct, because what’s happened is, we’ve been conditioned over the years to pursue and move this sales process forward with our own agenda, which is not their agenda. There’s a crisscross happening. It’s interesting because we’re unconsciously aware of this. And also we unconsciously put pressure in the process using the language that we use the words that we use. And we do so many we, we step on our own toes, unconsciously think about this, they’ve got a problem, we got the solution, right, straight line of sight. Because in the middle of that, us, we start doing presentations, we start to chase people, we started to get excited we started to previously offering we do all these things without really building deep trust. I’m not saying that if you’re listening to right now, you’re not trustworthy. I’m not talking about your integrity, when I’m talking about, I can build trust with people see what happens is, we’ve mixed the word relationship with trust. And I tell my clients and your comms a bomb for your listeners, stop building relationships with people in your sales process. Because I discovered relationship building and trust building are mutually exclusive. Right? Like, here’s what we do to build a relationship. Hey, how’s it going? Nice to meet you. Where are you from really see, we laid a real thick in the beginning. And they know it’s fake. They know it’s just sale stuff. They don’t want to become your friend anyways. But we’re top of the sales gurus, oh, build relationships. But they aren’t real. They’re just for the sales process. And they know it. And so they know the game. You see, trust building is different. It’s like a doctor patient relationship. Right? When you go see a doctor, they don’t try to become your friend. They don’t try to build a relationship with you. If I say I’m working on a bumper sticker right now, for my clients, you know, it’s gonna be called doctors don’t do coffee. Right? What you do is shift your thinking to the doctor mentality when you get when, when you go see a doctor, what’s the first thing they say to you? They say, what does it hurt? And you say my shoulder bothers me over here. He said, Let me take a look. Is it over here? Oh, right there. Oh, okay. I think you gotta get an x ray right away. So we can really analyze what the core of the problem here so I can see what we can do for you. Because right now, all I can see is some redness up there. Let’s go deep on this thing. See, see the doctor has it down. They’ve really nailed this idea of, of really addressing the problem. See in sales. We’re taught when we sense an opportunity. Yeah, we go right into, I can help you with that.

 

Scott D Clary  12:42

Yeah, you’re trying to be and you’re trying to be friendly, and you can and you can be friendly and trustworthy and have like a congenial disposition. That’s that’s not the issue here. Just Okay, so let’s, let’s, let’s dive into this a little bit more. So forget about relationship building, because it’s, it’s, it’s not they can see right through

 

Ari Galper  12:59

that you’re just genuine. It’s a very believe you are being that way because it’s inappropriate to go try and become friendly with someone who don’t You don’t even know.

 

Scott D Clary  13:10

It’s like I understand. Yeah. Okay, so Okay, so where does this process start? So let’s walk through and actually just educate the listener? Who do you usually deal with? Are we talking about like, a founder who’s trying to sell their product as a SaaS company you’re trying to sell professional services coaching services? Like what what is your sweet spot? Or is this universally applicable? Oh, yeah.

 

Ari Galper  13:32

lifted out is ideal for this because our model focuses on specifically with clients who are in a low volume, high price point, high margin, high trust business if you’re in that quadrant up here, this is your savior this will change your entire life right? Because see, we don’t think about what model we’re in we just try and sell as much as we can. And most people are selling in a how they should be in a low volume and a high volume low price web is so this is really for the advisor, the consultant the entrepreneur who’s got a long term high price point product.

 

Scott D Clary  14:06

Okay, okay, so then okay, so then customer either you’re you’re reaching out to a customer or even customer maybe feels like a lead form. Yeah, because you send an email first call first call with that customer. I’m assuming that’s when it starts or does it start even before in the marketing material or is that is that usually when it when it starts

 

Ari Galper  14:26

but we won’t talk about that today?

 

Scott D Clary  14:27

We’ll talk about that it’s another another day we’ll do it. But but so it

 

Ari Galper  14:32

happens all different ways, right? It’s the let’s let’s say for instance, there’s the inbound lead fills out a form right? Yeah. You know, it’s in then you schedule hopefully a consultation or call with the with the person and it rolls right into there because see, what usually happens is they show up on Zoom and let’s just say for instance, you know, for the first call with someone who inquires through a lead or whatever referral

 

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Ari Galper  16:04

And how those calls usually begin. priori, they just start with Hey, how’s it going? Nice to meet you. Where are you from? What do you do? Oh, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? It gets this whole thing going like this

 

Scott D Clary  16:16

sort of talk a little bit about the pandemic, you talk a little bit about, like work from home, you talk a little Yeah. You know, you go through the whole, like, the whole the whole spiel that everybody talks and you know exactly what I’m talking about. Like all the all the BS not but it’s kind of BS because you deal with every single person that you’ve you’ve spoken about the pandemic and COVID. And you know, every single time for the next eight calls for that day. And it’s the same conversation, it’s and you can tell everybody just tired of it. But you do it anyways, you go through these motions.

 

Ari Galper  16:45

That’s because we are taught by the Guru’s to build rapport. Know the relationship. Get them to like you and know you, once they like and know you, then they’ll buy from you. But they know it’s all a game. They know with social norms, they have to be nice to you. They know you’re being nice to them. They know it’s all fake anyways, but they play along with it, and you play along with it. And you wonder why at the end of the call they say to you, well, let me think about it. That’s really great. Thank you so much. Let me tell my partner about that. Call me next week. And we’re like, man, now I gotta chase this guy. What went wrong? Well, while I’m wrong is the whole mindset and how you approach that phone call, here’s how the call should go. You show up on the call. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you as well. And here’s how you started the call. You say you put the ball in their court, like a doctor, you say, can you tell me a little bit about your situation, about your business model? And so the challenge that you have right now that you’re looking to solve, and we’ll go from there, are you okay with that? Does that sound good to you?

 

Scott D Clary  17:57

And then you give them an open ended question and then they just let them talk.

 

Ari Galper  18:00

That’s right. And now it’s like it’s hit the balls in their court. Right And hello, there now opening up telling you where it hurts telling you their problem. Like it’s like the doctor and the patient telling you or telling you here’s a problem that it up. Right? And then he will normally happens is if you do this little piece, right? And it says help me the problems instinctively gonna go in your brain. You go, oh, man, perfect. He’s qualified. Oh, yeah, baby, this. This is good. This is Oh, he’s perfect for me. And you’re gonna go right into? Well, let me show you that. Let me show me God, I think we can help you with that. Absolutely. Yeah. See, we think we’re done with our job. But what I teach my clients is what I call going down the iceberg with people. That means peel back and unpack their problem, amplify it, show them the impact of it. And see if they want to fix it or not. That’s before we go on to your solution. So So first question is, can you tell me a little about your situation and your challenges and your background? We’ll go from there. They open up, you grab one of the problems they’ve got. So they might say to you? I don’t know, what’s a classic issue you might hear from one of your potential clients, they might say to you, if you asked like, oh,

 

Scott D Clary  19:09

classic issue. I guess it depends on the product that I’m selling. But let’s say it’s like let’s say it’s a marketing services. That’s an easy one. You know, I never I never know how to measure the the the return on like the row as the return on adspend. And from an investment for something that I purchased, like a marketing service. Like if I pay an influencer, for example. I don’t know how to measure how that affects my brand. And maybe I’m a consultant or maybe I have a software that helps with that. All

 

Ari Galper  19:38

right. Here’s what you say. The minute they tell you their problem. You ready for this one? Yeah, you say? Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

 

Scott D Clary  19:56

What and what are you doing there? You’re just doubling down so you feel like the first time that tell you, they’re not telling you everything. No,

 

Ari Galper  20:01

they’re only telling you service level problems, not the real truth. It’s an iceberg, my friend, and we’re always the top skimming skiing on top wondering what’s all what’s going on here. You got to stop moving things forward. You got to go down. See, we’re so used to opportunity. Damn perfect. Let me tell you when I got, you’re gonna love it. It’s great. See, we’re so passionate about what we do. We love what we do. We can help but just jump in and save the person from their problem. Yeah, that’s what we try to do. Doctors don’t provide medicine or prescriptions until they have fully diagnose their problem. Otherwise, they go to jail. What do we do? Let me write you a prescription right away? Oh, yeah. We just fumbled the ball. Before we can get halfway down the court. Because we’re conditioned, we sense an opportunity to jump right in. And so what you say instead is your rescue. Right? You go, you peel it back? You tell me more about that. And then they open up. And then all of a sudden you discover all these things. You say, Well, how long has that been a problem for last six months? Wow. What do you suppose the impact of of not measuring that connection? Is your business? I mean, in terms of decisions that you make and how much you spend? What what’s the ROI if you can’t measure that? Well, that’s that’s the problem. How much you spent so far on that an influencer and that campaign? But $10,000 a month? Wow. It’s a serious problem. And here is the definitive question to ask, you’re not done yet. It’s a is this a priority for you to solve, once and for all, where you have to live with this long term view and live with the consequences. And here it is. I’m okay either way. They’ve got to own the problem, before you’re allowed to provide the solution. It’s like a therapist and a patient. If the patient doesn’t own their own issues. They’re the worst patients in the world, you got to drag them through the therapy, right? But when what you got to make your customer own their own issue, because at the beginning, when they get to know you, they only give you a few breadcrumbs to keep the conversation going. And we just we take that we’re like, yeah, great, thank you so much. We’ve never been taught before, how to go peel the onion back and go real deep down their problem, and stay in that role as long as we can, until they say to you this. And here’s the magic phrase, when they say this, you have permission to start talking, when they say how can you help me?

 

Scott D Clary  22:45

That’s when you that’s when you start talking. That’s when they ask for it. So this is this is uncomfortable. Obviously, this is uncomfortable for most salespeople, because sort of like summarize what we just went through. You ask open ended questions, you shut up, you ask more open ended questions, but you’re just reinforcing and you’re forcing that person, you’re forcing that person to maybe even think deeper than they felt comfortable thinking about a problem. And that is, that’s like very, so this is just something that I don’t think there’s any way to make it feel good. And once you do an alliance is not

 

Ari Galper  23:19

happy call my friend. Yeah, we think it’s nice to meet you know, this is there a year clinic, your doctor, you’re doing an x ray on their problem, this is not a happy conversation, because your job is to get to the truth of the source of the real problem, because they won’t tell you at the beginning because they don’t trust you. It’s your obligation to help them understand the gravity of their situation. Now, of course on their own, they won’t admit it to you because they’re going to be vulnerable. They’re gonna say, Man, I screwed up 10,000 bucks a month out the window, I can measure it. I feel horrible right now. And we’re gonna tell you this, though, but I’ll tell someone they can trust that. Your job is to build deep trust with your prospects on your first conversation. So you can see that they’re fitting out with you not waste your time chasing ghosts. People don’t call you back by being friendly. And here’s the worst of it. Doing free consulting and over educating as a way of giving value I tell my clients stop giving value. Instead provide clarity. Clarity on issues it’s a very big difference. See, we’re taught by everyone Oh give value over deliver give him a lot. And you know what, the higher you because you gave him so much information. The last thing they want to know from you is information. What they’re asking themselves the entire time is this. Do I trust him? Do I trust him? Do I trust him? Do I they don’t care about how I use solve their problem. What they care about first is, Are you the one to solve it or not?

 

Scott D Clary  25:08

And then when’s the point where you feel like trust has been established? What are the cues? Or the signals that you have established? Trust?

 

Ari Galper  25:14

Sure. So when you say that when you say to them, is this a priority for you to finally deal with this once and for all, or live with it, and deal with the consequences? And I’m okay their way? And they say to you, no, this is serious. We gotta, we gotta stop losses here for sure. That’s when you now have the permission to pivot to your side of the court. And then you say that you say, well, if you’d be open to it, knows languaging. Ask permission all the time, they’ll just jump into it. Let me show you a demo. Let me show you some slides. Oh, yeah. Yeah, let me show what I got. No, don’t don’t jump into sales mode. And it’s so easy to do that because we’re so conditioned. With that old mindset. You say? Would you be okay, if I walked through my our framework or our roadmap for how we help people solve the problems you’ve got? Would that be okay with you.

 

Scott D Clary  26:06

I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today’s episode HubSpot. And as a leader, you’re always on the lookout for more ways to arm yourself with knowledge, the books, the seminars, and most importantly, the podcast and help you make the best possible decision for you, your company, your customers, because when you know more, you can apply more. And you can grow with HubSpot CRM platform, you can store, track, manage and report on all the tasks and activities that make up your relationships with customers. With a bird’s eye view over all your customer interactions. HubSpot empowers your decision making like never before. So you can give your business and your customers all the good you’ve got learn how to make your business grow better@hubspot.com. Now to flip that, because that was an inside lead. And that’s already an uncomfortable conversation. Now if you’re going outbound, yeah, I can only imagine this is even more difficult because I saw I when I was flipping through your book, there was some notes about like gatekeeper. And this is all interesting stuff is like classic sales one on one, how to deal with this stuff. So say you’re cold calling somebody and you don’t have the decision maker. Sure How you don’t have their information. You don’t even know who it is yet. You’re just trying to get to that person. How do you establish trust to somebody who doesn’t even have that problem?

 

Ari Galper  27:19

Yeah, so how do you establish trust on a cold call? Yeah. What you’re saying? Yeah,

 

Scott D Clary  27:23

exactly. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

 

Ari Galper  27:25

It’s actually easier than the other one.

 

Scott D Clary  27:28

Oh, that’s okay. All right. So, for me, that’s like the bane of my existence. Like, that seems like it would be the hardest thing to do.

 

Ari Galper  27:35

Because you the way you’ve been doing it has triggered resistance and pain. So you feels painful. Our way triggers no resistance and no pain. So here’s how it goes. Okay, the typical ways like this. Hi, my name is I’m with we are a How are you today? Are you have a couple minutes. That’s that. When you say that to someone with a typical sales approach, it’s over and hello. It’s over right there because they associate you immediately with the stereotype. You know, that’s why it’s so painful. Here’s how we handle a call like that. With our mindset, our languaging goes like this. So let’s say the guy picks the phone it says his name’s Scott. Hi, Scott. My name is Ari. And I’m hoping you can help me out for a moment

 

Scott D Clary  28:38

you’re gonna ask what what can I like now? Now I’m triggered to say like, well,

 

Ari Galper  28:42

of course that’s called a two way dialogue. And hello. That’s how you create a connection. Because they’re gonna they don’t know who you are. You can be the president can be tax up. You can be a client, that human nature, when you ask for help, is to say how can I help you? As long as you deliver it with that tonality? And that relaxed calmness? If you say, Hi, I’m already helped me out for a moment. You’re dead. Cut the energy out, remove the pressure, remove momentum from your sales

 

Scott D Clary  29:17

process. Is that the secret is that is that that seems to be like a theme to come back to remove the momentum.

 

Ari Galper  29:24

Well, one of our core principles is the idea of always removing pressure from the process and pressure is created by us that inadvertently puts momentum on them to move them where towards our goal. Our mindset shift is your goal is not the sale. Your goal is to truth and trust a letter to them or help them or not, it’s a different trajectory. So when you shift your mindset, you let go of your goal, move them forward, and you focus on being present with them too. Quite a human connection with them around their problem, that Chris’s bubble of vulnerability with you well, they feel comfortable opening up to you. And building real trust. Real trust is when they feel comfortable telling you their truth.

 

Scott D Clary  30:15

Real trust is when they feel comfortable telling you their truth and that’s what you got it that’s where you got to get to. And that’s what

 

Ari Galper  30:21

the iceberg is for, you got to get to on every sales call you have. Otherwise you’re skimming the top plane, what I call the numbers game, you know, the numbers game concept.

 

Scott D Clary  30:30

I know the numbers game concept of volume, dial for dollars, the

 

Ari Galper  30:35

more contacts you make, the more sales you’re gonna make. That’s like so 1980s Man, we discovered, it’s not about how many contacts you make anymore. It’s about how deep you go on each conversation. Now how many calls you make a couple other classic ones. Remember this one, the sales always lost at the end of the process, you know, you had to deal pending, it all looked good. It just like fell through like what happened. It was like the perfect sale, we discovered this economy. Now. The sales now loss anymore at the end of the process is now lost at the beginning of the process. And hello. And that’s

 

Scott D Clary  31:16

why is that? Why is that?

 

Ari Galper  31:18

Because we think our job is to pull them from A to Z down our path as fast as possible is we think the sales being made at the end. But what we don’t realize is if you’re not building trust with them, the beginning of the sales loss right there. I’ll give you example. I’ll give you example, we’re using our approach. Let’s say you’re having a first call with somebody over the phone. Okay, either inbound Lee, whatever referral, great conversation and good chemistry with like a good fit all they’re interested. And the call kind of comes to a close after your first call. What do we normally say to somebody another call like that? We say in sales, we say things like, Hey, how about we

 

Scott D Clary  31:59

set up a call for another, like, set up the next call? Whatever?

 

Ari Galper  32:02

Exactly. Yeah, we’ve been conditioned over the years to move things forward. Well, what happens if you attempt to move someone forward? And they aren’t ready yet? In the beginning, what do you break with them right there early on,

 

Scott D Clary  32:17

you’re gonna you’re gonna you’re gonna push back. They’re gonna not they’re not gonna not they’re gonna either they’re gonna lie about jumping on the next call, saying like, yeah, sure, whatever, because they feel pressure to do that. And they’ll either jump on it and then have no and then goes to after that. Or they’ll just, they’ll just not show up to the next call. Correct.

 

Ari Galper  32:37

That’s the cycle of pain begins right there. Because they feel pressure from you, that breaks the trust. So same scenario, but our mindset and our languaging Okay, call is going well, good chemistry could be a fit call comes through close, right and saying, Hey, how about we move forward? What we say instead is this we say? Where do you think we should go? From here?

 

Scott D Clary  33:05

Very, very, very clever. You just throw it back to them. He’s always throw it back to them. You’re letting them set their own pace.

 

Ari Galper  33:12

It’s not about me. It’s about them. And when you say to somebody, where do you think we should go from here? They’re usually in a state of shock. They can’t believe somebody in business actually asked them what they want to do. They’re so used to being pulled down the process. They know a mile away. It’s over right there. We’re like man sale socks. It’s like so painful. It’s so hard because you’re still selling from the old conditioning that you believe the goal is a next step. That’s not the goal. The goal is for them to say for them to say themselves, man, he just gets me he understands my issue. I feel something about just you know when you meet someone in that is totally get you’re like man, he just yet that’s what you got you but whoever listen to this has to learn how to do is a new skill set. You don’t know it now. Because if you’re still selling have been talking about today, you’re still in the old mindset.

 

Scott D Clary  34:30

Now, you mentioned Okay, so let’s see, what do we cover we’ve covered we’ve covered building trust we’ve covered slowing down momentum, the difference being trust and relationship. What other parts of the traditional sales cycle are broken? So I don’t know if it’s negotiation if it’s closing, if it’s demo, like what else? And also like, what else you work on? Like? Are you are you redefining like the whole process? Is that your thing? Is that like what you’re working on right now and that’s what you help find If there is a certain thing that you specialize it is everything broken?

 

Ari Galper  35:06

Fundamentally, yes, but I specialize in one specific area. And that is sales conversion only. Okay, how to convert the current leads you have in one single conversation, no multiple steps, no follow up. No next steps. It’s called the one call Sale system. I’m writing a book on that right now. And I’m teaching this to my private clients and they’re loving it. I set the bar for my private clients at 100% conversion on every call if the person is qualified.

 

Scott D Clary  35:47

If not explain that though. Because I get these other steps. Like you have to have po if there’s a Pio issued.

 

Ari Galper  35:53

I don’t mean like a sign contract. I mean, the verbal Yeah,

 

Scott D Clary  35:56

we’re gonna move forward. Okay. Okay. Okay.

 

Ari Galper  35:59

On the first. Not 20 steps later.

 

Scott D Clary  36:05

Yeah. Because like, I’m just thinking like, I’m, I’m traditional enterprise b2b sales, like, yes, you have all your steps, you have all your steps mapped out, you know, every step is active, and the buyers are like, that’s very normal. So what is this one one call close? This seems like it’s, it’s insane for somebody comes from an enterprise space is think like, I could ever close a deal in one call. So how do you get through all those steps? Psychologically, you built the trust? And then how do you get them through to close? So that means you’re hitting, you’re hitting discovery, demo negotiation, and closing like,

 

Ari Galper  36:37

no, no demo? No, no, I’m

 

Scott D Clary  36:39

just saying that you’re, I’m going through all the steps that I use. I know.

 

Ari Galper  36:43

I know. Because you those steps are steps we think we have to do to build trust. I’m throwing a bomb here and saying that all those long sales cycles. The reason for a long sales cycle, is because of a lack of trust. If you had built not you, but if you can build enough trust with some a decision maker, on our first conversation, there is no long sales cycle. The reason we’re in those cycles right now is because we’ve messed it up early on, we did a whole relationship thing. We did a demo early on. We didn’t we weren’t the doctor, we are the sales guy. Hence why we’re now stuck in a long sales cycle, Chasing Ghosts, if at all, I’ll just for fun. I’m gonna ask your your listeners and viewers right now take a verbal oath of me to non legal and verbal one to remove one key phrase for ever from the vocabulary as of this recording, and never use ever again, in the world of sales. Now, this might hurt just a bit. For those folks who’ve been in sales for a long time, said alright.

 

Scott D Clary  37:58

Yeah, let’s do it. I love it. I love it. Listen, if it works, I don’t think anyone’s going to push back you just got to challenge people, they got it. For anybody who’s listening to this, like, a lot of stuff that you know, that are he’s talking about. It’s some of it makes sense. Like immediately like the like the fact that you’re, you know, you’re going like with your five why’s and getting people to open up. And you’re not just taking surface level information. And you’re, and you’re pushing them into almost like an uncomfortable, but very, like candid conversation about their pain points. I think that’s very important. I think that this is one call close to me, like, if somebody can try it out. And I’m going to try that I’m going to try some of these steps, probably read more into the book and see if I can do it with some of my clients. It’s an uncomfortable thing to think about. Because obviously vebber If you’ve ever done large ticket deals, this is something that has never been discussed ever. It’s not something that is normally ever taught in any sales book ever. The one call anything I can see for a smaller deal. That’s pretty standard. But for larger doesn’t make a lot of sense. So I got to try it out. But the point is, you don’t try it out. You never know. So I am a firm believer in experimenting and trying different things. So if you have one, if you have one line that you think everybody should get rid of right away, like let’s do it. Let’s try it. Let’s see what the results are. I’m just a data guy. Like if it works, it works. I’m fine.

 

Ari Galper  39:13

All right, here it is. I’m gonna ask everyone to never again use this phrase after this recording for the rest of their lives. And here it is. Never again use the phrase follow up ever again in your sales career. All right. If I if I had them all in a room and asked to raise their hand how many of us were followed for the last few weeks? I have every hand going up. Who’s ready to email? I’m ready to follow up. Hi, I’m calling to follow up what’s the only industry in the world to use the word follow up?

 

Scott D Clary  39:44

Sales

 

Ari Galper  39:45

sales. Hi, I’m just kind of fallen off our last count it. It’s like you’re killing your own sale. They’re associating you with the negative salesperson stereotype. Because follow ups has I’m trying to move If things were forward towards my goal, this commission, my sale, you’re losing the sale right there. There’s a few more classes for the 80s. Remember those plastic ones? I’m giving you a call to touch base,

 

Scott D Clary  40:16

touch base, follow up, checking in, like, what are next steps like,

 

Ari Galper  40:22

oh my god, it’s so easy. And we’re so stuck in that old conditioning with that old language in which kills the trust. Here’s what you say instead, this because right from materials, you say, I’m just giving you a call to see if you have any feedback from our previous conversation, any feedback from our last meeting, any feedback for proposal, see feedback not going forward, it’s going where backwards away from the sale. When you move forward, you create momentum. When you create momentum, you put pressure on them. When you put pressure on them, you’re chasing a ghost. Plan the numbers game, if you want to live in that world and chase that painful situation, all the power to you. But there’ll be certain people on this call who go holy crap, where was already 20 years ago, 10 years ago, why am I still stuck and playing the numbers game when I could just shift the whole thing and play in a lower volume, higher conversion rate model, and not chasing ghosts anymore? And it’s totally doable. I’m doing right now my product class and they’re kicking ass.

 

Scott D Clary  41:38

Interesting, very interesting. And then I want you to just give a little bit more context on the how do you how do you because everything you’ve mentioned so far, is all about not pushing things forward, slowing down momentum. So that in mind, how do you do a one call closed? When everything you’re doing is not pushing things forward?

 

Ari Galper  41:59

Okay, so I’m not sealing conversation, there’s no pressure, you’re not, you’re not, there’s no close in our world only open. Okay? And so there’s no pressure you don’t pressure them to buy or say yes, on that call. Because if you do it right now, it’s funny, you said that it’s uncomfortable and awkward to do this. Now. It might be for people who are used to the old relationship, rubbing shoulders thing, but the client’s not uncomfortable. He’s like, this is great. Finally, someone is willing to understand me he’s he’s loving it. It just uncomfortable osteoporosis new it’s, it’s new territory. But what I’m trying to say is if you go down the iceberg, I talked about earlier today. And you asked that quite those question that I asked and this and that sequence, and then you ask them permission, would you would you be open to have me walking you through how we can help you with this. And then you create what I call, I develop a unique piece of IP, which is a game changer called a sales roadmap, which is a visual flow tool that you would show the prospect on your call of how you go about solving the problem. So it’s different, it’s a meta step, it’s not like showing your demo your product or, or discussing your services or your coaching program or your your marketing, it’s not pitching your solution. It’s a step in between that is called a visual roadmap where you walk them through the process for how you solve their problem, and you show them this visual tool. And they’re basically buying from you the roadmap, because all they really want to know is do you have a process to solve that problem? And are you the one to do it, they really don’t care about like the details of how you track the website and how you do the statistics, and how your software works. They’re really not interested in that now. We think they are. So we’ve been conditioned to believe that we show my solution. That’s great. They’re gonna love it. But of course, when that happens, what happens from them? They say, Well, let me think about it. Let me take it. That’s why you have to lay off the idea that your goal is to show them your solution. It’s not It’s a show them you have a roadmap to solve their problem. Because they’re trusting you that your solution will solve their problem for that. So when you walk up that process, the roadmap, and you say to them, you know, what are your thoughts on the roadmap? And they’re looking at the thing going, that makes sense. That makes sense. That makes sense. That makes sense. And you say to them this you say when that one thing they they’re on board you say? Where do you think we should go from here? And they on their own on their own say to you, here it comes. How do we move forward with you? You’re like, I love it. Oh my god. No energy, no resistance, no pressure. because you handle them with respect, or you stripped out everything, it’s sales oriented. And I’m gonna call you the doctors pretty soon.

 

Scott D Clary  45:14

Okay, I want to just, I’m gonna get closing thoughts from you on on sales. And then I want to ask you some rapid fire career questions. But just to close off this piece, biggest biggest misconception in sales? What is it? And how do you want sales to? How do you want to impact sales? What do you want your legacy to be on the world of sales,

 

Ari Galper  45:37

okay, so the real shift here is not viewing your prospects as targets. Instead, you view them as human beings, people who have problems, people who want to trust someone to solve their problem. And when you think from that perspective, then you become more authentic, you become more human, you take off what I call your sales armor that you bring to work every day, you know, this tails armor we have around us to find the bullets going our way to fight the fight. We’re like, Yeah, let’s get going with we T ourselves up, we get that fall well, because we’re so used to the fight. The resistance and that wall around us, makes us less authentic. If you can learn how to strip away that wall, and be your natural self with people and really be empathetic, and here it comes. And this is my goal, my mission is to have people who sell help their people, they’re trying to help feel that they care about them. How’s that for a novel, having your prospect feel that you care about them at a level where they can trust you. And that’s the missing piece of the equation that’s never been taught in the history of selling is how to build that moment with people. And when that moment is built, you have a client for life.

 

Scott D Clary  47:07

Amazing. If people want to grab your book, check out more of your stuff, website, social, all that stuff, where should they go?

 

Ari Galper  47:16

Look real simple. Just go to unlock the game.com all my books are there, free and froze there, you can grab a conversation with us as well unpack your situation. But I also have a live show I do once a month on LinkedIn called stump the guru where you can jump in and try to ask me your toughest challenge like you’ve done with me today. And I’ll help coach you there for free as well. Just come with me on LinkedIn very accessible there. Say hello, connect. Tell, let me know when you met me here and we’ll have

 

Scott D Clary  47:43

a chat. Amazing. Okay, let’s do some rapid fire career questions. So you were working for companies, you went into your own consulting practice, obviously very successful at that now. You speak you’re an author at people how to actually sell properly. But the biggest challenge that you’ve had to overcome in your personal or professional career, what was that? Had you overcome it?

 

Ari Galper  48:03

Well, I wouldn’t say it’s a challenge, but I will say is a moment that made a real shift for me. And that’s when I said to you in the mail, I want two books, I sent you a book called Lessons from Toby. And when my son was born, after my death was born, we were told that he had Down syndrome. And at first we know what the mentor lives, we’ve realized that a gift on our hands, if you know someone who has Down syndrome, you know how beautiful they are. They’re so loving, they’re transparent. They’re just have no hidden agenda. And he’s taught me so much about life about being present with people connecting with people wrote a book about him called Lessons from Toby, how to be centered in your personal business life and he has become our role model our school our mascot, like we need to be like him in sales. We gotta be honest, transparent, caring, open without a hidden agenda. And he has been life changing for me and my clients because he’s the inspiration for how we view helping people.

 

Scott D Clary  48:56

So that’s gonna dovetail into my second question, so you can choose Toby again. But the second question is, is one person has had a huge impact on your life? Who was that? And what did they teach? Oh,

 

Ari Galper  49:06

my probably my dad. He was a psychologist. Surprise there, right? A doctor and one thing he did say to me you always said me Ari, if the crowds going this direction. Make sure you go that direction. Always be the contrarian. And I know right now people listen this go on, man, this guy’s nuts. This is the opposite of how I’ve been taught to do things over the years. And I’ve learned that the world’s biggest home so commoditized today that you can’t win the game anymore on trying to differentiate your solution because everyone’s got similar solutions. But if you change the way you sell, and unique approach like this, this becomes your differentiation. How you become a category one.

 

Scott D Clary  49:56

Your favorite source to learn or grow podcast booked you’d recommend people to check out,

 

Ari Galper  50:01

I’d say check that Perry Marshalls at 20 sales and marketing that really made an impact on my thinking in terms of how I run my business and how I think about my ideal client. Amazing.

 

Scott D Clary  50:11

Like, you could tell your 20 year old self one thing, what would it be?

 

Ari Galper  50:15

Well, I’ll kind of tweak the message a little bit, because people always ask me this question on remember the conference call I had 20 years ago? What would I do? If I knew now it’s 20 years ago on that call to avoid that pain I went through and I use that answer real quick for that. And that’s good. And that is that I never would have had the call. Because on the first call with a guy, unpack their agenda, and made the decision, whether it’s worth my time or not to pursue it.

 

Scott D Clary  50:49

Like that, that’s good. And last question, what does success mean to you?

 

Ari Galper  50:55

Success means helping as many people as possible. My mission is to basically do that to get them out of that dysfunctionality in that process of dehumanizing themselves chasing ghosts and feeling horrible end of day