Way of the Wolf: Straight line selling: Master the art of persuasion, influence, and success

by Jordan Belfort

Selling is everything in life. In fact, either you’re selling or you’re failing.

For example, if you were to ask this prospect what they thought about your product, a dead-honest answer would sound something like: “Oh my god, it’s literally the best thing since sliced bread! Not only does it fill all my needs but it’s also a great value for the money! I can only imagine how great I’m going to feel when I get to use it in the future. It’ll be like having a huge weight lifted off my shoulders!” That’s a 10 on the certainty scale: your prospect absolutely loves your product, and they’re damn sure of it.

For example, do they think you’re a likable, trustworthy person, who is not only an expert in your field but also prides yourself on putting your customer’s needs first and making sure that if any problems arise you’ll be right there on the spot to resolve them? That would be a 10 on the certainty scale.

Unlike logical certainty, emotional certainty has to do with painting your prospect a picture of the future where they’ve bought your product and can see themselves using the product and feeling good as a result of it. We call this technique future pacing, and it serves as the very backbone of how we move someone emotionally. When you future pace someone, you’re essentially playing out the post-buying movie in the best fashion possible—allowing that person to experience your product’s amazing benefits right now, along with the positive feelings they create. The prospect’s needs have been filled; their pain has been resolved; any itch that they had has been scratched, and they are feeling wonderful as a result of it.

Remember, it’s not the job of salespeople to turn nos into yeses; it’s simply not what they do. Instead, we turn “Let me think about it” into a yes, and “Let me call you back” into a yes, and “I need to speak to my wife” into a yes, and “It’s a bad time of year” into a yes.

it serves both the prospect and the salesperson to be honest and forthright with each other during a sales encounter, and that anything else is a complete waste of time.

“Every word, every phrase, every question you ask, every tonality you use; every single one of them should have the same ultimate goal in mind, which is to increase the prospect’s level of certainty as much as humanly possible, so that by the time you get to the close, he’s feeling so incredibly certain that he almost has to say yes. That’s your goal.

“Act as if you’re a wealthy man, rich already, and you will become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence, and you will become confident. Act as if you have all the answers and the answers will come to you!”

THE FIVE CORE ELEMENTS OF THE STRAIGHT LINE SYSTEM The prospect must love your product. The prospect must trust and connect with you. The prospect must trust and connect with your company. Lower the action threshold. Raise the pain threshold.

there are three things that you need to establish in those first four seconds of an encounter, if you want to be perceived in just the right way: Sharp as a tack Enthusiastic as hell An expert in your field Those three things absolutely must come across in the first four seconds of a conversation; otherwise, you set yourself up for a major uphill battle.

The bottom line is that you have four seconds until someone rips you apart, compartmentalizes you, judges each piece, and then puts you back together again based on how you were perceived. And if those three aforementioned things—being sharp as a tack, enthusiastic as hell, and an expert in your field—haven’t been established firmly in your prospect’s mind, then you have basically no chance of closing them.

First, you’re sharp as a tack. If they don’t think that you’re sharp as a tack, you’re wasting their time. You must come across as someone who’s totally on the ball, a born problem-solver who is definitely worth listening to because you can help them achieve their goals. In essence, you have to sound and act like someone who can help the prospect fulfill their needs and desires. You can accomplish this by demonstrating mental speed and agility, fast decision-making, and a unique pace of delivery that immediately impresses the prospect and builds trust.

Second, you’re enthusiastic as hell. This sends a subliminal message to your prospect, telling them that you must have something great to offer. You must sound upbeat, enthusiastic, and full of energy, and be a positive influence in their lives. One of things that I had to learn the hard way was that just because you can sell someone something doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. Today, I have a strong belief in sales as an honorable profession, and I’ll only operate in sales situations where I have an unyielding and passionate belief in the value of the product or service I’m offering to prospects. I need to genuinely believe in that value before I sell a product or service, and then I’ll describe it passionately. I also have to have a firm belief in the company that the product and I represent. This is what allows me to act enthusiastically in any sales situation.

Third, you’re an expert in your field—an authority figure and a force to be reckoned with. From the time they’re old enough to walk, people are taught to respect and listen to authority figures. In sales situations, I convince the prospect that I am a highly competent, ultraknowledgeable professional by coming off as a world-class expert in my field, right out of the gate. Not only does this allow me to instantly gain the prospect’s respect, but it also causes them to defer to me and basically hand over control of the sale.

In terms of achieving success in sales, there are four key states that you need to learn how to trigger at will within state management. We call them the four Cs: Certainty, clarity, confidence, and courage. These are your linchpin states for achieving wealth and success.

what I eventually came to realize was that the only surefire way for me to be truly at that ultra-intense level of absolute certainty that’s required to set a legitimate anchor was to wait until I was actually in that state organically and set my anchor then. In other words, why try to manufacture an ultrapeak state of absolute certainty through a series of powerful yet entirely subjective NLP techniques and never really know if I ever got there? All I had to do was wait until I closed a really big sale, in the real world, which caused me to pop me into a peak state of absolute certainty organically, and then, right then—and I mean right then, in that very instant—when I was basking in the afterglow of closing an awesome sale, and I knew in every cell of my body that I truly was in an organic state of absolute certainty, as opposed to an artificially manufactured imitation, I would bring out my BoomBoom and take a giant whiff up each nostril—boom! boom!—and just like that, I’d have set myself one powerful anchor.

First, verbal scarcity is used to convey the logic: “We only have one black-on-black 750iL left, and once it’s gone, it’s going to be three months until our next shipment comes in.” Second, you add on tonal scarcity by using a power whisper, which greatly intensifies the prospect’s sense of scarcity. And third, you add on informational scarcity by explaining that even the information itself is in short supply.

don’t just start pitching your prospect an idea, without first saying something along the lines of “If you have sixty seconds, I’d like to share an idea with you. You got a minute?” Those last three words—“got a minute?”—are when you apply the reasonable man tone, which entails you raising your voice up at the end of the sentence,* to imply the reasonableness of your statement.

First, we start with the tone of absolute certainty, which is applied to the words “You give me just one shot, Bill, and believe me …” Next, we smoothly transition from the tonality of absolute certainty to the tonality of utter sincerity, which is applied to the words “… you’re going to be very, very impressed …” And then lastly, we transition from the tonality of utter sincerity to the tonality of the reasonable man, which is applied to the words “… sound fair enough?” And this implies that you’re a reasonable man making a reasonable statement.

So let’s say in response to you asking for the order, your prospect says, “It sounds good. Let me think about it.” Your reply would be: “I hear what you’re saying, but let me ask you a question. Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?”* Now, the key here is that the tone you use—starting with “I hear what you’re saying …” and going all the way to the end, when you say, “… do you like the idea?”—is going to be your hypothetical, money-aside tone.* The additional words that your prospect hears in this case are “Hypothetically speaking, putting money aside, does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?”

Next, we have the tonality of implied obviousness.* In essence, this is an advanced form of future pacing, because you’re creating the impression in the prospect’s mind that the benefits of what you’re selling are a given. If you’re in finance, for example, you might say, “Now, John, you’ll make money with this, but more importantly, what I can do for you over the long term in the way of new issues and arbitrage plays …” In other words, you’re using tonality to infer the notion that it’s beyond obvious that your product or service is a winner.

body language is not going to get you the sale, but the wrong body language will destroy the opportunity to make a sale.

But I am a fan of matching, which means that if your prospect leans back in their seat, then you lean back in your seat too, but you do it slowly, casually, after a five- or ten-second lag. In the end, it all goes back to likability—meaning that people want to do business with people who are basically like them—not different. You start that process by entering a prospect’s world where they are, which sets you up to slide into rapport. Then you want to pace them, pace them, and then lead them in the direction that you want them to go. This is a really powerful tool when you use it right.

In other words, after you make a powerful statement, you want to lock it down by asking the prospect a simple yes-or-no question, such as: “You follow me so far?” or “Make sense?” or “Are you with me?” By doing this, not only do you keep the prospect engaged in the conversation but you also get them into the habit of saying yes, which creates consistency. In addition, these little stopping-off points serve as periodic rapport checks. For example, if you say to your prospect “Make sense so far?” and they reply “Yes,” then you’re in rapport; however, if they reply, “No,” then you’re out of rapport, and you can’t move forward in the script until you’ve gotten to the bottom of things. If you do, then your prospect will be thinking: “This guy couldn’t care less about what I’m saying; he’s just looking to make a commission.”

To that end, the proper way to have responded to the buy signal “What was the price on that again?” is as follows: “It’s a cash outlay of only three thousand dollars, and let me quickly tell you exactly what you’re going to get for that: you’re going to get [benefit #1] and [benefit #2] and [benefit #3], and again, like I said before, getting started is very, very simple, so believe me, if you do even half as well as the rest of my clients in this program, then the only problem you’ll have is that I didn’t call you six months ago and get you started then. Sound fair enough?” And that’s how you close.

The most important thing to remember throughout this entire process is that until a definitive agreement gets signed and money changes hands, the deal is not closed, which means you need to keep in touch with the prospect and do whatever you can to keep the Three Tens at the highest level possible. This includes sending your prospect testimonials from other satisfied clients; articles from trade journals, newspapers, and magazines that reinforce the idea that the prospect made the right decision; and occasional emails and regular schmooze calls to make sure that you stay in tight rapport as the process drags on.

More importantly, though, you need to make sure that during the waiting period all your communications to your “almost” new client come from a position of strength—meaning that, as far as you’re concerned, the deal is already closed and the communication you’re sending is from the perspective of building a long-term relationship and doing more business in the future. Otherwise, you’ll come off as being desperate, and it will end up having the reverse effect.

Like I said, I want to know my scripts so well that I move past the point of the actual words. Remember, 10 percent of human communication is words; the other 90 percent is tonality and body language. By memorizing my script, I free up my conscious mind to focus on the 90 percent. So I urge you to keep reading your scripts back to yourself, to make sure all the language patterns and transitions are absolutely seamless. It takes a bit of time, but I promise you that it’s well worth it.

For example, let’s say Bill replies, “It sounds interesting. Let me think about it.” To that, you’ll answer with the standard Straight Line response to an initial objection, which is: “I hear what you’re saying, Bill, but let me ask you a question: Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?” Similarly, if Bill had said, “I need to speak to my accountant,” then you would’ve said, “I hear what you’re saying, Bill, but let me ask you a question: Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?”

This is why we often find ourselves in situations where we’re trying to close someone whose responses indicate that they’re in a state of absolutely certainty (for all three of the Three Tens), yet we still can’t get them over the line. Instead, they keep hopping from objection to objection, saying things like: “Let me think about it” or “Let me call you back” or “Send me some information,” and so on. So, what do you do in those cases? The answer is, you lower your prospect’s action threshold, right on the spot. In total, there are four ways to do this. The first way is to offer your prospect a money-back guarantee. This is a very simple, very common strategy that’s used in countless different industries. It’s especially prevalent on the Internet, where the chance of not getting what you thought you were paying for is significantly higher than in the offline marketplace, due to the presence of a large number of overseas vendors and unlicensed resellers. The second way is to offer your prospect a cooling off or rescission period. This is a contractual feature that allows a prospect to make a binding decision now, but then reverse that decision for up to five business days. This is common in certain regulated industries, like real estate and vacation sales. While rescission periods are typically mandated by either a state or federal regulatory agency, that doesn’t change the fact that they can still be used as a very powerful closing tool. The third way is to use certain key...

“Now, Bill, I know you said before that you’re worried about your retirement in terms of Social Security not …” and so forth, and then you’re going to raise the level of pain by asking your prospect what they think is going to happen with the situation if they fail to take action to fix it. Using an empathetic tone, you would say: “Bill, let me ask you a question. Given how things have been deteriorating over the last twelve months, where do you see yourself in a year from now? Or, even worse, five years from now? Are things going to be even more intense, in terms of all the sleepless nights and the worrying?” And make sure that you maintain a very sympathetic tone throughout the entire pattern. If you do, nine times out of ten, your prospect will say something like: “At best, I’ll be in the same spot I’m in right now, but it’ll probably be a lot worse.” And that’s your chance to say, in the I care and I feel your pain tonality: “I get it, Bill. I’ve been around the block a couple of thousand times now, and I know that these things typically don’t resolve themselves unless you take serious action to resolve them. “In fact, let me say this: one of the true beauties here is that …,” and now you’re going to quickly resell the Three Tens, using a concise yet very powerful consolidation of the tertiary language patterns that you created for each of the Three Tens, which will focus almost exclusively on the emotional side of the equation—using the technique of future pacing to p...