☎️ + 💻 = 💰 15 +years
Based in Germany, I know what it takes to close the deal on an international scale.
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Did you know that Socratic selling involves asking questions to understand a prospect's needs and pain points? This sales technique is particularly effective when selling complex or high-ticket items
Reframe of the day
when you’re anxious in a meeting, you can say to yourself:
🐲: You’re in my house
if you care why / how it works:
1) Creates a sense of control
2) Reframes how you relate to the buyer (a salesperson vs a “good host”)
Ken Griffin, founder of Citadel, has a $10 plaque behind his desk that reads: "If we're all going to eat, someone has to sell."
Of all the things this man could surround himself with, he chose a cheap plaque with a blunt truth about business.
"You're always selling. You're selling to candidates. You're selling to vendors, you're selling to counterparties, you're selling to customers."
And if you're always selling, you know what you're going to hear a lot of?
"No."
Griffin doesn't sugarcoat it. He tells two stories that illustrate just how brutal rejection can be.
1994 was a rough year, with Citadel losing ~4% of its capital. Griffin flew to Switzerland for a crucial lunch meeting, sat down, and his guest arrived only to say:
"Oh, I thought you were John Griffin from Fen Church. I got to go."
His lunch date got up and left the table.
Later that afternoon, a Swiss banker spent 45 minutes with him in a beautiful office, smoking a cigar, before closing with:
"Such a pity that such a bright young man picked the wrong career."
Two rejections in one day for the founder of one of the most successful hedge funds in history — and his takeaway was simply this:
"You just have to tolerate. You're going to hear no a lot, but you need to become accustomed to having to market your ideas and market what you represent and what you stand for."
Absorbing rejection and continuing anyway is the actual skill, whether you're hiring, raising capital, or winning customers.
Most people avoid selling because they're afraid of no. The ones who build great things have learned to expect it.
Why is everyone on the timeline talking about Claude agents and AI automation, but when I talk to you guys, you’re making less money than monkeys whose entire tech stack is Telegram and Google Drive?
I think you’re forgetting the only rule in business
WHOEVER MAKES MORE MONEY WINS
Having an AI that jerks you off while you build SOPs for a poorly positioned offer isn't going to make you rich
Picking up your phone and milking your buyers for money is what actually prints
You must CONTROL what your prospects REMEMBER from your discovery calls.
IF YOU'RE IN B2B SALES... TRIPLE BOOKMARK THIS
this is peer reviewed research - doing this at THE END of your discovery calls is going to increase your odds of closing drastically by controlling what they remember from it
Selective Recap™ - THE FRAMEWORK:
Shoutout Daniel Kahneman .. Nobel Prize winning psychologist
he proved people judge experiences by 2 moments: the peak (most intense point) and how it ended.
duration doesn't matter at all - only peak moments and the end matter for controlling someones memory.
I always preach:
- PIVOT your call with ~7 mins left to closing
- Prescribe extremely clear next steps
but before the pivot - deploy the Selective Recap™ that recaps 3 specific points which will control what they remember:
1. losses they can avoid (loss prevention language)
2. esoteric insights on buyers (the peak moment)
3. loss prevention map (the end)
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1. losses they can avoid (loss prevention language)
Your recap focuses on what they're currently losing, what they risk losing, and the pain of staying where they are.
Regulatory Focus Theory ... show that people with prevention focus are more sensitive to losses versus non losses.
executives default to prevention mode - they're more motivated to avoid losses than pursue incremental gains.
Examples...
For a private equity group:
Just to recap what we've covered so far FirstName.
CompanyName is losing 15-20 deals per quarter because dealflow is concentrated in referrals - this makes reactive instead of proactive. The team is spending more then 25 hours per week trying to manually source new deals but they're spending more time learning how to use new tech instead of actually using it and it's not likely you derisk dealflow in the next quarter continuing as is.
For direct lenders:
Just to recap what we've covered so far FirstName.
CompanyName is losing $2M+ in monthly originations because loan officers don't have qualified pipeline.
40% of the time is spent chasing deals that don't close instead of working with ready to close borrowers, and you mentioned competitors are capturing clients in your sweet spot because they're reaching them first.
--------------------------
2. esoteric insights on buyers (the peak moment)
novel information compounds, it's sticky.. especially when it's inside the PEAK MOMENT or at THE END
novelty actually creates the peak moment
this is where you recap the novel Info you provided in the middle of the call.. and ideally that info is peer reviewed research or anchored in real data
novel stimuli activates the hippocampus (memory centre)
when emotional processing occurs around that novelty, memory intensifies
when you teach them something they've never heard before, their brain literally encodes it differently - making it more.. drumroll.. memorable.
Examples:
For the PE group:
And what we uncovered using Mental Accounting research is that founders segregate 'finding a partner' into a completely different mental budget than 'running operations' - which is why your operational value-add messaging isn't breaking through and resonating.
For the lender:
And what we identified using Regulatory Focus Theory is that your if your loan officers are using promotion focused language, which you mentioned they are, it won't perform well with prevention focused borrowers - you cannot use 'growth capital' with the that audience
The novel info also pushes you to deploy the "Challenger Profile" frameworks which I use a lot as well, very effective in specific moments.
--------------------------
3. loss prevention map (the end)
Now they remember the pain, they remember YOUR unique insight, and you connect your solution directly to both.
Examples:
For the PE group:
Which is why our platform generates 50-80 qualified deals per quarter that match your exact thesis, eliminates that 30 hour manual sourcing burden so your team focuses on closing, and positions you in front of founders through signals well before your competition knows they exist.
For the lender:
Which is why our system delivers 40-60 qualified borrowers per quarter in your exact lending criteria by knowing what pools of borrowers are most concerned with, eliminating that time waste on promotions and growth capital in your market that is more concerned with surviving then growing - this will make sure you focus on ready to fund deals, and gets you in front of prospects before they talk to your competitors who know what moves them.
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THEN YOU PIVOT THE CALL TO "THE END"..
"We have [X] minutes left.
Let me prescribe the exact next steps we're taking together."
We prescribe a lot, get buy in, micro commitments so read this if you want that info:
https://t.co/d6YaC9dwKW
This creates:
- Timelines
- Leadership
- Commitment
- Accountability
It creates a real path you can walk them one, one micro step at a time - pure clarity - making it EASY to buy from you.
More importantly, this is THE END which they remember - you just did the Selective Recap™ and then you prescribe clear and easy to take next steps.
Walk them through:
1: What they're doing by [date]
2: What you're doing by [date]
3: When you're meeting next
4: Micro Buy In/Micro Commitments
People remember experiences as snapshots focused on the most intense moments and how it ends - not the average of the entire experience.
The peak was the esoteric insight (novelty = memory activation).
The end is your Selective Recap™ (recency effect + loss framing) + clear next steps
When they're in the buying committee meeting 2 days later - they remember:
- the loss they're experiencing
- YOUR Info for why it's happening
- YOU as the one who can fix it
Everyone else who just asked questions and sent a deck... Forgotten.
The difference between top 1% closers and everyone else is how we CONTROL MEMORY while everyone else hopes the prospect remembers them.
Selective Recap™ is how you control memory.
Stop explaining yourself. Let them misunderstand. Read by candlelight. Memorize prayers you don't believe yet. Fast until you see clearly. Delete your autobiography. Burn your manifestos. The story you tell about yourself is a cage. Visit graves of people you never met. Learn their names anyway. Sit in empty churches. Silence is older than doctrine. Stop waiting for permission. The elders are dead. You are the elder now. Teach yourself ancient languages. Not for resume. For resurrection. Walk at midnight. Notice what moves in darkness. Befriend it. Your fear is obsolete genetics. Murder it. Stop journaling feelings. Journal prophecies. Then make them true. Find teachers who scare you. If they comfort you they're lying. Comfort is the enemy. Read the texts they banned. Ask why they were banned. The answer is always the same. Learn to fight. Doesn't matter which discipline. A man who cannot defend cannot build. Stop consuming content. Create doctrine. Your doctrine. Forge weapons from your wounds. Every scar is a lesson you paid for in blood. Collect them. The crowd will call you crazy. That's how you know it's working. Find the others. They're looking for you too. Start the monastery. Physical or digital doesn't matter. Build the fortress. Man the walls. Something is coming and the soft will not survive it.
Sales truth the gurus don't want you to hear:
Being likable, confident and easy to work with > knowing the best discovery question or negotiation tactic
The tactics flow naturally when you let go of trying to be perfect and focus on actually wanting to help the customer/prospect.
I don't make the rules!
Sales Call Tip:
Every prospect will tell you their objection directly or indirectly within the first 2-5 minutes of the call
If you're actively listening to each word they say during that period you'll know what their objection will probably be at the end
But instead of handling it at the end of the call when you'll hear it after your pitch/offer, you handle it right at the beginning
Do this every call and thank me later when you're the top closer on your team
My view is that an investor is better off knowing a lot about a few investments than knowing a little about each of a great many holdings. One’s very best ideas are likely to generate higher returns for a given level of risk than one’s 100th or 1,000th best idea. -- Seth Klarman
sometimes I’ll recommend my clients to set just *one* intention for their next sales meeting
examples:
“slow down”
“listen more than you talk”
“stay present”
“be curious”
this works particularly well for sellers who overthink and are prone to information overload.
focusing on that one intention leaves room for all the wisdom in your body to enter your awareness mid meeting
@SDR_CADET ChatGPT voice mode and practice your talk track, it's pretty advanced
"let's run a mock disco call for my company (insert link). if at any point my answers get a big long winded or jargon heavy, call me out as a confused prospect"