Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling: Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success

by Jordan Belfort

At the heart of the system are five core elements. To this very day, they’re exactly the same as the day I created them, and they serve as the backbone of the entire system. As you may have guessed, I’ve already touched on the first three elements, namely, the all-important Three Tens: 1 The prospect must love your product. 2 The prospect must trust and connect with you. 3 The prospect must trust and connect with your company. In essence, as you move your prospect down the straight line, everything you say should be specifically designed to increase your prospect’s level of certainty for at least one of the three elements—with your ultimate goal being to move all three of them to as close to a 10 as possible, at which point you’re going to ask for the order and hopefully close the deal. However, that being said, what you need to remember here is that this is not the type of process that happens all at once. In fact, in the vast majority of cases, you’re going to have to ask for the order at least two or three times before you have any chance of your prospect saying yes. Now, when you finish the main body of your sales presentation, you’ve reached a point on the Straight Line where you are going to ask for the order for the first time and wait for a response—and then the back half of the sale begins, which gets triggered when the prospect hits you with the first objection. Alternatively, this is the point in the sale where you’ll find out if you have a lay-down on your hand...