People talk a lot about two main groups of prospects:

•  High level / high emotional state / sophisticated / intelligent
•  Low level / low emotional state / unsophisticated / uneducated

The issue is, almost all sales training is geared towards the low level prospects. 

There are a lot of reasons, but I daresay it’s because most people start their sales journey with low level prospects. They want a bandaid for the problems they’re facing at the time (”Think about it.”, “Speak to my partner.” etc)

This creates serious limitations on the career of a salesperson should they not look to do more training.

Unfortunately, most get stuck at that point. They don’t realize they are both the problem and the solution. 

What’s the difference?

Low level prospects can be defined as:

•  Low emotional state
•  Unsophisticated
•  Uneducated

They are typically found in lower ticket B2C offers. It might be a fitness coaching program, a program based around accountability and discipline. They also haven’t been through much coaching or made many purchases where they’d be dealing with a skilled salesperson.

High level prospects can be defined as:

•  High emotional state
•  Sophisticated
•  Educated

They are more often than not successful and coming from a place of abundance. They can be entrepreneurs or executives for example.

The big difference - high level prospects have been through this before. They are more educated and know all the basic sales tricks.

If you try and build pain at the start of the call, ask them all the usual questions, you will hit a brick wall.

High level prospects are often mistaken as argumentative or difficult simply because they are treated as low level prospects.

How do you adapt?

Low level prospects are typically pain avoidant. The old style of “build pain first” works most of the time. Ask them about their current scenario, why they are where they are, ask for stories and examples, have them feel every part of their current situation they are looking to escape. 

Now imagine doing that to an entrepreneur making 100k per month. Life isn’t that bad. They’re already doing well and don’t want for much.

If you try and build pain, they will hit you with a lot of resistance. Why wouldn’t they? They’re not taking a call to humour a salesperson who can’t read the room.

Instead, map out what their heaven looks like to them. What does success look like? What does a perfect outcome to them working with you look like? How does that differ from their current situation? Who will that allow them to be that they can’t be right now?

That right there, that’s the gap that makes the sale.  

Imagine if you were selling me a sales training package.

Would you try and build pain for 30 minutes? Ask me about how bad my sales skills are?

Or, would you ask me what I want to get out of the program you were selling?

What my ideal outcome would be on the back of completing it?

Action steps

Go over your current sales process and see if there are good prospects falling through the cracks because you don’t know how to speak with them. 

I’d say there will be a good percentage with most offers.