Sales Closing Techniques – Oren Klaff

Today’s guest is Oren Klaff of Pitch Anything. He’s world-renowned for his ability to close multimillion-dollar sales and do so very quickly utilizing sales closing techniques. He is the guy that Fortune 500 companies call when they’re stuck or when they need to make big mergers and Oren Klaff joins us today to talk about pitching.

All right, Thriving Launchers, let’s get Oren on the call. Oren, are you ready to launch?

I’m here and ready to launch like a tesla rocket with a dead battery.

All right! Let’s do this!

One of the things I want to talk about today and it’s something that I know a lot of people especially coaches that are tuning in. They want to hear about you meet somebody in a networking event or you meet somebody online and they’re a perfect candidate for your services. They basically check off the list and you’re having a conversation somehow. You know you could help them so you want to set up that call so you can have that pitch conversation. A lot of coaches and consultants are doing these discovery calls.

One of the things I want to talk to you about Oren is how do you position that conversation? You and I are chatting and I’m like “Man, Oren is a perfect man.  There are things he could have a podcast or some things on his website I could improve.”

How do I position that conversation so that I can get you on that discovery call that will then close the deal and get you to pull out your credit card?

Yes! This is such a great topic.

There are three things here.  The first one is internal and the internal is you the salesman or the business development or the business owner, entrepreneur, whatever it is.

The internal things are the hardest for me because I’m not a motivational coach. I don’t do much motivation. Just “Wake, sack up, let’s roll.” I don’t do a lot of Shavasana.

The internal motivation comes naturally but the thing to look internally is triggered by something you said. When you know you can help someone, you want to take shortcuts in the process. Why go through all of this steps?

You have a problem. I have a solution. It doesn’t cost that much. I do it better than anyone else. Sign up and let’s go.

If you don’t like it, I’ll give your money back. That’s the narrative that’s in your head.

Persuasion is a process. In your mind, you’ve already gone through that whole process of the sales closing techniques and you know your solution fits.

Not adhering to a rigorous process because you know it’s a fit, you now they can get value actually cause you to roll into neediness because you’re skipping all the steps.

You got to get it in your mind that the client needs you that’s why it’s worth investing the time. You’re the best in the world that does this. You’re going to give them an offer. If they say yes, it’s a yes. If they say no, then it’s a no but you have to run the process. You can’t just go “I know it’s a perfect fit.”  That’s one.

What’s two?

Number one had so much value packed into it. What’s the next thing?

Number two is discovery calls.

This is going to be a difficult pill to swallow. To who the degree that you are giving some help on a discovery call starting to show off your talent, your ability, giving them answers, taking them to the solution, partially solving the solution, showing them what they’re doing wrong in really meaningful ways in suggesting valuable fixes? You’ll be moving away from the sale.

Okay. I want to capture that one more time, Thriving Launchers.

If you start jumping education, fixing, showing them, educating. and teaching them, you lose the state. You’re completely changing the conversation and you’re actually not being seen as the very thing you think you’re being seen. You think you’re being seen as the teacher, the educator, the leader but something’s happening.

What’s happening?

You’re giving away your services.  People, are you training people to get it for free?

The fundamental mechanics of the social environment that you’re working in is this; people want what they can’t have, people chase that which moves away from them, people may value that which they pay for.

If you’re giving it away for free, they won’t value it and don’t want to pay for it. When they do come around to pay for it because they finally really need it, they won’t want to pay much.

When you have professional services, we’ve been through this a million times, when you help people, they will appreciate it. They’ll understand how good you are but you’ll be moving away from the sale.

They way to do it and it feels uncomfortable is to build familiarity with the problem they’re having. Show them that you really understand this problem better than anyone else. Resonate with the problem, explain the problem, be familiar with the problem, and show that you dealt with the problem. From 360 degrees, discuss the problem.

I want to know sometimes the process of identifying the problem can take a while to unpack that. You have to ask a lot of questions. People don’t always know what the problem is.

What are some shortcut ways that you can really identify what the big and major problem is with the person?

Sure! We’re doing a lot of material fast but absolutely I don’t like these spin selling, exploratory questions right? Most of the time when I look at somebody’s exploratory question, you know the answer to it.

Real Life Scenario Using Sales Closing Techniques

Let’s take a scenario. We are talking about the real world, right? Marketing services, give me a real-world scenario.

Definitely! Hop on a call with a company that clearly can benefit from our services. We’ve seen what they’re doing. This is for a lot of you internet marketers, a lot of you guys that are online.

I’m just going to give a real-life experience or something that might happen to me.

I meet a CEO. I‘m familiar with their website. I’m familiar with their services. I’ve signed up to their email list. I’ve read their magazine. I’ve watched their videos. I know their stuff and I know that I can help them.

Guys, this isn’t certainly something that I’m doing but I’m giving you an example of what I think a lot is happening for a lot of people is I may go “You know you guys are missing out on a lot of things. Let me show you what we could fix.”

Oren is saying don’t do that. Don’t go into education too much. Find out about their problems. How do you do that? Explore it a lot of times. Do we tend to want to go “How do guys get leads? What’s the problem with your online website? Are your emails converting?” That’s kind of the more traditional kind of ask a lot of questions to try to lead to a sale.

Yes. What I think most of these questions do are you’re leading people to the knowledge you already have in some kind of annoying and Socratic method.

Instead of playing that game of asking them questions that you basically know the answers to, I think the job of a great professional salesperson or business development or entrepreneur is really to take some risks in terms of projecting what you think is going on. Even if you get it wrong, they will deeply appreciate the context.

“Hey, Oren! As I’m looking at your funnel, you’re sending out two emails, at some weeks zero emails. It’s not consistent.”

In my experience, when you have an inconsistent publishing funnel, I respect how the other stuff is good. You’re sort of in 2% conversion rate, maybe doing great at 3 and a half. My sense is and I could be wrong but you are not doing 5.

I’ll tell you what the pros are doing. They have 2 pieces of content a week and then all of the social channels. That will move them up into 3 and a half percent. When they move to a campaign and a real focused launch, they’re getting 6, 7, 8 percent conversion on the list.

Am I not seeing something or you really are just putting out inconsistent content in getting those kinds 2 and a half, 3 percent click-throughs?

I love that. It sounds so much more effective and straightforward because as a business owner, we can all look at what our client is doing and have an idea of what the problem is just by looking at what they’re doing.

I really like that where you just identify and you call it out for them.

Thank you!

I got a couple of things I want to say and we’re short on time but let me know when the stroke of midnight is about to hit but there are a couple of things here.

I don’t do this for most people because this is one of my signature education lines but for you, guys, let me walk you through it.

“Luis, I’m looking at your website and I’m reading the copy. This is not good.”

By not good, what I mean is there are a lot of things we can’t do. We can’t cook pizza. We don’t code Ajax. We don’t run marathons. We only do one thing which is to write copy. I’m looking at this and it is not good.

If you look at it and you go “It’s great! We love it! This is the best thing since canned beer.” We’re not going to do anything different. We would never be able to work together.

When I say it’s not good, it’s not a judgment call on my side. We do this for hundreds of companies. This is not at a minimum standard of quality. In fact, I’d like to know who told you to do this way. Give me their number because I’m going to call them and tell them never to talk to you again. This is not good enough for today’s world.”

If that’s true, just come out and say it “This is not at a minimum standard for success, survival, and quality versus the other people in your industry in the business who are just doing this kind of work.”

If that’s true, you shouldn’t go and ask them 15 Socratic method questions that loosely leads them around to understanding their copies aren’t the greatest in the world.

If it’s not good, call it out.

Are you guys comfortable with that?

You know what’s interesting about that is I’m sure that a lot of people who are business owners would feel uncomfortable calling someone out.  I know that I’ve definitely done it and it’s funny, Thriving Launchers, because that’s something that I did through a messenger conversation with a guy who runs an Inc. 500 company. It’s actually in the Inc. Top 10 company list for 2 years.

I told him “Your website, it’s not good. It’s definitely not getting the conversions you want. It’s not getting the leads that you want. I’m not sure who built it but I can tell you that it’s not up to par and we can do a way better job and really fix a lot of holes.”

When I think about that, it’s a very bold statement, Oren. Should people feel comfortable being that bold?

Yes, if you truly understand the problem.

The compulsion is for somebody then they’ll say “What would you do?” “The answer is we would do it right so you would get 4% conversion. You’d get cost per order under $20. That’s what we would do.”

“Let’s focus on what I feel like is going on here. When I click on this page, half of the information is below the fold. The color schemes are reversed.”

“Going back to 1950 when Ogilvy published the initial research on what draws people’s eyes, the reverse copy doesn’t work. These font systems are completely out of date. I’m looking at a thing, they’re almost half comic sans. All of the photos of the staff seemed to be taken with a different camera in a different decade. There’s just not alignment between the pieces and if you go to direct to the consumer site, these things are all ironed out.”

The problem is it’s not that it’s not great. It’s not at a minimum standard of acceptability. That’s what we got to fix first, to just get it up to good enough to compete then we can sit down and really say “Let’s plot a path to greatness.”

If you’re looking at something and you know fundamentally that it’s flawed and you know how to talk through the flaws in a meaningful way without giving the fixes but really identifying the flaws, then you can go down there right now. To the degree, you are not familiar with exactly what their problem is you’re still hunting around, then you can’t be as bold or aggressive or whatever it is you want to call it.

Today, especially in these services, buyers have some many options. You have to be differentiated. What is the differentiation? The differentiation is a signal that I need you and your particular point of view. What particular point of view is valuable? That I have seen this problem a million times and I’ve solved it so many times it’s almost boring.

Hey, Oren, I want to say something to you too to Thriving Launchers as you are tuning in because this topic about sales closing techniques is reminiscent in one of the sales coaches that I had and he asked me about three different kinds of salespeople. One of them was like a fixer, another one was a challenger and there was another kind of sales personality.

He asked which one gets paid the best, which one is most valued by companies. Hardly, anybody guessed the challenger but in the end, it is actually the challenger, the person that’s willing to challenge and come with new ideas and challenge concepts that maybe are kind of broken but they’re just getting by. Challenging is really important.

I want to ask this last question as we wrap up here, Oren. It’s really an important one because now you guys have a complete experience with this interview. Somebody asks “What should I do, Oren? You’re right, the Comic Sans is off and our conversions aren’t exactly the way we want them. If you’re saying that’s the industry standard or this is what I should be doing and having in my life and it’s not happening, I am curious then what should I do?”

I am asking this, Thriving Launchers because a lot of you will want to say “Well, do this. Do that.” And you want to go into teaching. What do you do so that you don’t go into teaching and maybe you can steer towards the close?

Yes. You don’t have to say this way but what you fundamentally have to say is “Look, we have the fix. In 3 weeks, within bookends between $5,000 and $15,000, we can correct this and fix a lot of problems that we talked about today. Is it 5? Is it 15? I don’t know that technology you’re based on or is it Ajax or HTML5? Those are the bookends. We have it. We have the fix and you don’t. In order to get it, you have to give us money.  I’ll outline the services.  If those numbers sound crazy to you, we’ve really don’t have much to talk about because those are the bookends. You can dial it up and down a little bit depending on what you need and stay in control or you could just fix it yourself.”

Women have babies in fields all over the world. You don’t need a hospital with medical staff and equipment and drugs and expertise and nurses and doctors and admins and all that kind of stuff to have the baby but it’s a damn good idea.

At this point, we know how to fix this. All we do is fix this kind of problem. We’re definitely not the cheapest. We’re not in McKinsey and charge the most very reasonable. The main thing is here we do this better than anyone else for a company of your size.

I think it’s important to tell me what you would like to have happened. If I can make that happen, I will.

That’s a fantastic way to lead people to the sale using the sales closing techniques. Notice Thriving Launchers, there wasn’t any teaching.

If you got anything from this interview and hopefully you have. If there’s anything that you have gotten other than what I’m about to say, fantastic keep that, hold it.

The other thing I really want you to get is that teaching is not the way that you hold control, the way that you hold the frame and the way that you maintain that sense of value and have that gatekeeper saying money needs to be exchanged before the teaching happens, before the knowledge begins to transform you. Until then, we’re just kind of dialing in the pain, showing our confidence that we know how to fix it, showing that we’re the best at it and we can do it but don’t teach. Really, I hope that’s the biggest walkaway that you have gotten.

Oren has a couple of books. One of them is Pitch Anything. It’s a fantastic book. You guys can grab that. We’ll have the link on the website. As he comes out with other books, we’ll keep updating the page.

Oren, thank you so much for joining us today. Thriving Launchers, we’ll catch you on the next episode. Keep thriving you all.