Full Episode Transcript

How to Ask for the Sale Without Making it Awkward

Imagine you have a prospect in front of you. You've gone through all your qualifying questions and your product presentation stage. They seem engaged and genuinely interested based on their responses and body language. You discuss the various options the person has and the associated costs. You look up, you make eye contact with them, and feeling a bit uneasy as they just stare back at you, you reactively say, "So what do you think?" And as soon as those words come out of your mouth, you know that was precisely what you should never have asked.

When someone's interested in your wellness program but the conversation ends without a clear decision, that gap affects both their opportunity to get started and your revenue. Today, we're going to give that moment a process. So if you've had that instance where you felt unsure about how to bring the presentation to a close, buckle up, this episode is for you.

You're listening to Wellness Means Business with Casey Conrad. I'm Casey Conrad, and for almost 40 years, I've been helping fitness and wellness entrepreneurs turn their products, programs, and services into stronger, more profitable businesses. So, let's get down to business.

In our last episode, number 11, we talked at length about the money zone and why it's natural and quite normal to feel awkward asking for money. Sure, there may be a commission or income on the line, but that pit, that gut feeling comes from a place of really caring. That is, knowing that what you have can help this person, as well as a fear of the prospect's response and your uneasiness about how to work through their concern.

Your goal, of course, is to become comfortable with the discomfort and stay totally present with the prospect. This ensures that you aren't, say, unconsciously projecting the wrong body language and helps to maintain rapport between the two of you.

You should feel comfortable, by the way. If you followed one of the golden rules of selling, and that is that you have a bigger front end than a rear end, and maybe for those of you who are tuning in here and haven't listened to episode 11, what I mean by that is that there are eight steps in the sales process. Where we're at in this conversation is step five, asking for the sale.

And if you've done a good job with the first four steps, then this step, number five, is just a logical next step. It's not something that needs you to be clever or to be pushy or have 101 closes memorized. No. You've built rapport, you've uncovered the person's needs and wants, you've listened to their challenges and frustrations, and you know, you absolutely know that your product or service can help them. In essence, step five is really presenting to this person a recommendation based on what they told you they wanted.

And as simple as that seems, to many people, they get to this point in the process and they stop following a process. You see, with, with each of the sales steps, there are specific strategies, skills, and tools that you should be using that are proven to increase your success level. And in step five, the strategy that I've coined is RAP-RAP-IQ. And that's an acronym, and it stands for recap, affirm, present choices, recommend, ask, payment choices, invite, and quiet. So, let's break each one of these steps down.

First is the recap. This is where your qualifying questions and your listening skills came into play big time. In essence, the recap is where you're going to feed back to the customer the situation that they shared with you. You know, what you spoke about, what you had agreed to. So, for example, if they were dealing, let's say, with a slow recovery after pickleball matches, right? And that hindered their ability to win more matches and to get out on the court more, and they expressed a desire to use, say, maybe the BEMER and the infrared sauna twice a week, you're going to replay that back to them.

Affirm is exactly what it sounds like. After you've summarized what they told you and the plan that they wanted, you've got to get them to verbally agree. You do that by simply asking them, "Did I get all that right?" Or, "Is that a good summary of what we covered?" And I don't want you to get hung up on the words here, right? Use something that sounds like you. The only outcome that you want is for them to say yes, and maybe add some level of distinction that you missed. Yeah. Maybe they say, "No, I wanted to come in on Tuesdays and Fridays, not Thursdays." Whatever that is.

And I know it may sound so obvious to some of you, but I want to stop here and talk about why the affirm is psychologically important. Now, if you've ever heard of Robert Cialdini, he's the author of the book called Influence, and he describes the concept of commitment and consistency. That is, people tend to want their actions to line up with the commitments that they've made, right? So, you're helping the customer here connect the recommendation to something that they already said matters to them, and that affirmation serves as another important purpose. It checks that you actually understood them. So a yes to your recap confirms understanding, and of course, you still need a decision about the program, and that's of course where you're going to go next.

I can remember back in the 1980s, I took a Tom Hopkins training, and he had a strategy, he was in real estate, and his strategy was called the 100 yeses, and his goal was getting a client to say yes 100 times, and that was, in his opinion, getting them in the habit of yeses, making a close easier. Now, look, that was a little over the top for me, but the philosophy was pure Cialdini at its core.

Now, in wellness and fitness sales, of course, we're going to take a more sophisticated approach. We're going to recap and then just get the client to affirm that, yes, that's what they wanted.

Okay, we're moving on to presenting choices, and I know it sounds like the blinding flash of the obvious, but there are some nuances here that we need to discuss. You know that human beings want choice, right? In fact, we instinctively push back when we aren't given a choice. But there's also an opposite end to that spectrum, and that is when given too much choice, the brain gets confused. Now, remember this A confused brain wants to think about it, and that is not good for selling.

And that brings up another golden rule. When possible, you want to give the customer only two or three choices, and that may sound like a simple rule to follow, but you might have a lot of choices, right? You might have memberships and you might have a la carte and add-ons and, you know, all kinds of things. So, look, I, I don't have time to get into the nuances, the minutia about that today, but suffice it to say that when you have many options, what you have to do is you have to find a way to, to narrow the presentation down to two or three options that actually fit what the person told you about.

For example, let's say, uh, a wellness and recovery studio. You might have to start with, "Are you wanting to pay as you go, or take advantage of savings with our monthly memberships?" Right? So that's one way to start narrowing down the process. You're whittling it down to make it simple.

Now, of course, you're going to present in alignment with everything that you've discovered about them and what they told you during the qualifying stage. What you don't want to do is ask a question that you already know the answer to, because you're just going to make them wonder, like, were you even listening to me?

You've had this happen to you before. You were in a store and you asked someone something, or you said something to them, and later on they asked you that and you thought to yourself, "Well, what did I just tell you," right? So, you might laugh, but with, especially with newer salespeople or even just nervous salespeople, it's really listening to the client- And not making that fatal error at this stage, because it really can de- deplete the rapport process that you have. Okay? Some people might let it go by, but trust me, some damage has been done there.

Okay, you're now done presenting the choices, and you're going to move to the second RAP, and first is recommend. Now, this means that, let's say the prospect gave you enough information during the qualifying and the discussion of your products and programs, that you pretty much know what's best for them, right? If that's the case, then you want to share that recommendation.

Now, sometimes you're not going to be able to make a specific recommendation, but just say, you know, what I'd like to suggest based on what you said, but it's not a given. Okay? In either case, you want to use the customer's language. For example, let's say they say to you, "You know, I'm li- I'm tired of losing two days after every pickleball match." You're going to weave that back into your recommendation. "Now, John, you told me that you want to keep playing without feeling like your whole week revolves around those recovery days, and based on that goal and the schedule that you said, I recommend option B." Okay?

So you see how you want to weave those little nuances in so the customer really feels like, wow, they understood what I was talking about. And another reason for recommending is that people want to be led. You know, if you're selling something that's, say, newer, newer technology, or maybe the person just hasn't a lo- had a lot of exposure to something, they're going to actually feel better that you made a recommendation because some people have what we call internal sorts, and some people have external sorts, right? A lot of people have external sorts. They want some sort of validation. Not everybody wants you to give them a recommendation, but it's best to make one if you can.

Now, for those of you who are more naturally nurturers and feel a little awkward with this recommendation, you can use language that softens it. So now based upon everything we've discussed today, I think option B is going to be best for you.  Just remember that you are truly giving them the best recommendation, not the most expensive, not the one that's going to give you the highest commission, but the one that truly is best for them. And that allows you to use this type of language with total confidence, but more importantly, sincerity.

From there, you move into ask. Again, the language here can vary, but you want another verbal answer from the customer. I always say, "Which is best for you?" Or, "Which one do you think is best for you?" Or, "Which of these packages do you prefer?" You want them to give you an answer.

Once you have their choice of the product or the program, only then do you move to the payment method choices. Now, this is contrary to a lot of people. They start blabbing away with this program and that much, and... No, no, no. We're taking it in little bite sizes. So, if they said they want a monthly program and chose two times a week at an option, you know, the price that you've already discussed, you then give them the choice of how to pay for it. "Did you want to do that with a credit card or out of a checking account?"

I know I said it before, but I want to reemphasize this. What we're doing here is we're not dumping a ton of information on them and then saying, "What do you think?" No, we're breaking things down into small choices that ultimately add up to the buy, and this makes it so much easier for the brain to process. Remember, a confused mind needs to think about it. And we don't want them to go think about it. We want them to make a decision right now

So that includes the RAP-RAP part of the process. Recap, affirm, present choices, recommend, ask, and payment choices. Now we move to the IQ, invite and be quiet. Yes, I know I added a B on front of that quiet, but when I was coming up with the acronym, it was just easier to leave it out and insert it as a little b here when we discussed it.

So, invite is exactly what it sounds like. You invite the guest to move forward. Now, your personality is going to influence how you invite. For me, I'm a highly confident type A personality, and I use an assumptive invitation. 'Great, let's get you started.' Or, 'Great, let's get you set up for your first appointment.' Or, 'Great, let's go ahead and get that order.'  Whatever is appropriate to what I'm selling. That's assumptive, but not everyone is comfortable with that.

But you don't have to have my personality to make a confident invitation. You might take a more collaborative approach. 'John, let's take the next step to getting you towards a faster recovery, and we'll start by scheduling your first session.' Or maybe offer a choice about the next step. 'Let's get your first schedule, uh, session scheduled. Is Tuesday or Thursday better for you?' So, your delivery can be softer and still be clear, right? And it should establish that the program fits their needs and that invitation forward is going to basically be the next step in buying, right?

Now, at this point- The most important thing is not to finish vaguely. What do I mean by that? "Oh, what do you think?" No. You've already explored their thoughts throughout the conversation. You've been taking these little, tiny yeses or choices along the way. Now you're helping them make that final specific decision. Which option fits, how they'll pay, and how they're going to get started.

Finally is quiet, or should I say be quiet, and that's exactly what it sounds like. After you've invited them, stop talking. Just take a deep breath, right? Relax and stay attentive. Don't start getting on the bicycle and talking or discounting, "Oh, well, we could do this," or, uh, "Oh, I forgot to tell you about that," or start projecting an objection before they've even said anything, right? Your job here is just to listen. And this, remember we talked about it in our last episode, this is where you've got to get comfortable with the discomfort of silence.

And remember, if they do give you an objection, don't worry about it. You're speaking to that high school friend. You're going to be curious, you're going to be empathetic, and you're going to walk through the six steps to overcoming any objection, and we're going to talk about that in episode 13.

Your move this week is choose one wellness product or program that you sell on a common or regular basis. Write out your RAP-RAP-IQ conversation. Then say it out loud. Script it out. Practice it. Notice where you hesitate, where your recommendation gets vague, or maybe where you start talking too much. Role-play it with your significant other or someone at work. By getting that conversation outlined and making it sound natural, you are going to put yourself in the best possible position

And you know what? We're going to practice that. We're going to practice those moments in an upcoming workshop. And to get that workshop details, those workshop details, uh, you just need to go to kaseyconrad.com/wellnessmeansbusiness so you can get the WMB Brief

So, look, the next time you look at your prospect and they're staring back at you, you now have a process to follow. Recap what matters to them, guide them through the relevant choices, and invite the next step. You can make clear recommendations and ask confidently in your own voice.

And I hope, I hope that you have kind of stepped back now and seen how s- episodes 10, 11, and 12 have really dug deep down into this, this closing, right? This end of the sales process that so many people are lacking the confidence in. And this, this information, review those episodes. It should be giving you a tremendous amount of confidence.

Until next time, make a difference, make a profit, and remember, wellness means business. This is Casey Conrad. Ciao.