The Mental Reset High Performers Use to Close More Sales

We break down how top closers think about price, risk, and value so buyers feel safe making high-stakes decisions. We focus on detachment, permission-based leadership, and everyday habits that build trust and improve outcomes.

• why price triggers perceived risk and pressure
• projecting money beliefs onto clients
• loss aversion and value framing over cost
• desensitising to big numbers through practice
• confidence versus arrogance in sales conversations
• permission-based leadership and better questions
• detaching from outcomes to listen and lead
• reviewing calls, spotting patterns, staying neutral
• integrity, punctuality, and reliable follow-through
• reframing objections as information gaps

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Welcome to the podcast!

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Price Creates Pressure
• 2:21 Projecting Money Beliefs Hurts Deals
• 4:16 Risk, Loss Aversion, And Value Framing
• 6:16 Desensitising To Big Numbers
• 8:26 Confidence Without Arrogance
• 10:21 Lead With Permission And Clarity
• 12:06 Detach From Outcomes To Sell Better
• 14:06 Build Patterns, Review, And Improve
• 16:26 Integrity, Curiosity, And Objections
• 21:51 Closing Thoughts And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:14

Hello again and welcome to another podcast. My name is Graeme Elliott, and in this podcast, I'm going to be talking through a little bit more psychology, and it's about how top closers think. And this does apply to high-value sales, but these principles apply basically anywhere, anywhere you're selling. So the key thing is that this isn't about scripts. So getting better results, particularly with higher value sales, is not about having better scripts. It's about a different psychology. It's about thinking differently and speaking differently and handling pressure in a way that a lot of salespeople never actually get there. So that's what we're going to be uh looking at. And particularly when it comes to selling, let's call them expensive offers. Expensive is a relative term. So whatever that means to you, if that makes you feel uncomfortable or awkward, it's not be necessarily because you're unskilled, it's simply about mindset. And it's about how you approach making those sales. And I spoke about our relationship with money in the last podcast. I think it was the last one. And certainly if you have a relationship with money where you are very uncomfortable with the kind of, let's call them dollar values, but monetary values that you're selling, what we will tend to do is project those values and that relationship with money onto our clients. And that can really mess up a sale. So let's start with price. So why does price create psychological pressure? So price can trigger a perceived risk. So whenever we're looking to buy something, the risk, of course, is that we invest that money, and it might be a lot of money for us, and it doesn't pay off. And therefore, the higher the number, the higher the dollar value of that purchase, the higher the period, the perceived consequences of making a wrong decision. So this is worth bearing in mind that when you're having a conversation with clients, sometimes what might seem like objections or perhaps the client playing devil's advocate are actually much more about risk assessment. And certainly there is there are certain types of people who will tend to approach a sale that way or a purchase that way, and they're what they're doing is they're assessing how exposed they are if something goes wrong. The thing is, though, when both the buyer and the seller are feeling pressure, um, that can create problems. So top closers, let's call them that, the people who are really successful, the first thing they do is they don't internalize the buyer's anxiety. So if the buyer is clearly a little bit uncomfortable with the number because they're assessing the risk, and that is a significant risk to them, a top salesperson will not buy into that because they're gonna be looking at things in a slightly different way. Before I go into that, I'm gonna just remind you of something that I covered last time. But this is how a lot of salespeople sabotage themselves, and again, it's worth saying this just in case you recognize that you tend to do this because it's symptomatic of um those kind of issues. So the first one is over-explaining, second is rushing to justify the value, and the third one is talking faster, or basically just filling the silence, and that's because they're trying to keep control, because they don't want to get into that point where at some point you've got to bite the bullet, and that prospect is going to say yes or no, and they just because their own beliefs around the monetary value, they're pretty convinced they're gonna get a no and they don't want to go there, so and that's really, really common. So the cognitive bias is lots of version. So basically, people fear losing the money, or there might be secondary problems that happen if uh this investment goes wrong. That fear of pain is greater than the pleasure that they will anticipate getting once they go through with the purchase. So remember, people are more motivated by pain than they are by pleasure on the whole. So the important thing to recognize here is something else I've spoken about and focused on in another podcast, is you're what you're not you're not selling a price, okay? You're not selling$8,000. You are selling, on the one hand, the cost of staying the same, which could be much, much more. I mean, it could be$80,000. You know, that could be the size of the problem if they continue the way they are. So what you're actually selling them and what you're taking them away from is the saving that they will get by taking action. And remember that the reason that you're there is that something has prompted them to take action today, or whenever they made contact. And this again was in the last podcast. So these things sit together, and it's really important to understand that. So let's look at money. How do top salespeople view money? So the first thing is they tend to be desensitized to high numbers, they just don't attach motion to them. So that they're thinking in terms of value and not the dollar, so the ratio of the value over the investment, and this is really important. So um one system that I was selling at one stage was um uh a portable satellite healthcare system, and um essentially it was designed for companies that would have people in very remote locations who could not get ready access to medical facilities or personnel if something went badly wrong. And um one example that I would talk about there was if somebody was in a uh let's say you had a supervisor in uh a remote mining operation, let's call it that, and they were injured. So, what's going on there? First of all, they've got no immediate medical aid, they might have a first aider, but the issue that's happened is well beyond their capability to handle without any help. Um, so first of all, the risk is that that person might even die, it could be that serious. Secondly, you've got to get them evacuated. So there's the evacuation costs, which could be hundreds of dollars, to get an airlift out of um some locations. Then you've got the problem of finding someone to replace them in their work. So that would depend on the severity of the issue. And the system that we had basically allowed um this remote location to just set up a satellite link with a surgeon or medical personnel anywhere in the world, and they could see what was going on, they could talk through the local people, talk them through whatever process needed to happen to save that person. And if it wasn't too serious, it might be they could even keep that person on site for some sort of time. Now, let's say that that system cost$50,000. I'm just throwing a number out here, but the saving on just one use of the system could be half a million. So this is the thing that you need to keep in mind, and this is where you have conversations with clients. So ideally, you can start to put real monetary values around the benefits of investing in that purchase. So that's the value ratio. Top closers will see expensive offs as normal or what we might regard as expensive if we were buying ourselves, and that's because they're just consistently working with those numbers and in that environment. And the environment, the businesses, the networking they do, that's the kind of number that's spoken about. They just normalize it, you get used to it. Be aware of your own money beliefs and your own feelings around money bleeding into the conversation. It's really important that you understand your monetary beliefs, or at least where you have um, or your relationship with money, and you don't make that part of the conversation. Just speak about money in a calm tone. And I'm going to talk about this um more in a moment, how you how you do this. So one small exercise you can do is to just think of a number that makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable, makes you tense, and then have a visualization, just visualize yourself. So, in other words, imagine yourself confidently quoting double that number and feel good about it. Just do it over and over again, repetition. Um, it might feel fake at first, but if you keep re if you keep doing that again, you're basically rewiring, resetting the comfort threshold you have with money. And it's just one small exercise that may well work for you to help you get more comfortable with the kind of monies that you kind of amounts that you're working with. Uh, the next thing is confidence versus arrogance. So there are salespeople, I've definitely come across them who are quite arrogant, and that's a real turn off. This is where people um yeah, you're you're gonna kill a relationship. So, what's the difference? Confidence is basically about I can help you, and the reason I can help you is that I understand what I'm offering. I understand through working with you, and I'm open to understanding your problem, so that I can make sure that we're coming up with the correct solution for you, and I'm gonna work with you. But I'm coming from that place of knowledge, knowing that we've delivered these kinds of systems before, hopefully, and we've seen the results. So I'm confident that assuming that your situation is one that is applicable to my solution, we're gonna be good. Arrogance is basically saying I'm better than you, and it's about making often making the client wrong, talking down to the client, not listening. Arrogant people are really bad salespeople. So the important thing about closing is to regulate certainty without needing to dominate the conversation at all. So, um how do you recognize how do you build up confidence? Well, one is to just recognize patterns, and what I mean by that is to recognise patterns in the buyer. Um, so they might be to do with uncertainty, where they're feeling uncomfortable, all those kinds of things. These are things we build up over experience, and the the way to get experience is obviously to have as many meetings as possible and to just work with as many different clients as possible, and then there's a process you do afterwards that I'll talk about in a moment. So start to recognize patterns, and then you know what action to take to keep things going in the right direction. You use repetition, uh, you simply you start to see that the same things tend to come up, but also you you work on yourself. And the most important thing is to have a clear understanding of the offer's transformational value to that client. So, how will it transform that client's issue once they've got it? So, how do you project confidence, steady pacing, keep nice and steady, use direct simple language, be polite, but but don't dress things up, don't get over technical. Technical is great as a shorthand. If one if both parties completely understand it, then it's really useful. If one party doesn't understand it, then it's a way of it's a superiority thing, which is not going to help you say. Arrogance will um basically slam it shut in your face. So don't be arrogant. If you're if you tend to do that, it often it will come from insecurity. There's a tip for you. Okay, be detached from the outcome. So one of the most important things you can do as a salesperson is to let go of the need to make that sale. So before you start each call, and you might want to do this out loud if if you don't feel weird doing it, but it's really powerful, is simply to say, I don't need this sale. I'm here to see if I can help. So what you're doing in the meeting when you're with a client is you're you're evaluating and maybe deepening the evaluation you've already done. When you're emotionally detached from the outcome, you will be better at listening, your questions will be better, they'll be cleaner, they'll be clearer, and you'll have much more open and honest conversations with your clients. And that the paradox of all of this is that the more you let go of making the sale, of needing that sale, the more attractive you become to the prospect. Now, I don't mean walk in there like you don't want it at all, obviously you want to get it, but it allows you to step back and be detached, and you can even evaluate whether this is the good sale to have, because some sales will definitely uh be better than others, and one way they might be better is that your post-sales activity will be much lower with certain clients. So, in other words, the margin, the money that the business makes out of the sale is much higher, and obviously, you want um good value margins from your sales. So the mind shift here is simply to say, I'm not here to get a sale, I'm here to diagnose and determine if we're a fit and a good fit. We're basically looking for a win-win scenario here. You want both parties winning, both you and your client. So, how do you lead a conversation without forcing an outcome? How do you avoid being pushy? And this is where leadership comes in. And remember that as salespeople, we are leaders, we need leadership qualities because we're leading a client to a conclusion that if you're doing this correctly, it will benefit them, it will benefit you. So we get into that win-win. So leadership is not about pressure, it's about clarity, it's about structure, it's about certainty. So, how does that work in action? It's first of all about exploring the problem. So it's having simple and open conversations where you explore the problem. And this might involve asking hard questions without being confrontational. So, um, and this is where we're looking at permission-based leadership. So, in other words, we work with the client. So, if you want to dig deeper on a certain aspect of the issue you're trying to resolve, use phrases or a phrase like, Do you mind if I dig deeper here? Or if the prospect is coming back with an assumption that you know is incorrect, just simply say, Can I challenge that assumption? Don't make it confrontational, but or you might want to rephrase these so that you're comfortable with the phrase. But it's important that you do go in there, you remove assumptions that have been made which are wrong, and that you dig deep as as deep as you need to to make sure you've got a good match. So, what are you looking for? You're looking for goal alignment as well. So you've explored the problem, you've made sure that everything's aligned. What your client is trying to do sits with what your solution can deliver. You might also want to explore the impact of inaction. So remember that one of the things we're doing here, we need to build uh a certain urgency so that the client does take action. Because obviously, uh there are definitely times at the point of taking action, people will tend to hold back. It might be down to something like buyer's remorse or the anticipated buyer's remorse, I'll say, because they haven't actually bought anything at this point. But um do be aware that you do need to keep things moving forward. So we'll tend to stack on the pain a little bit. I've gone through all of this um in a previous podcast, but these are all things that work together. So essentially, as a leader, rather than being pushy and trying to push the client to a sale, which really doesn't work as well as often as you might think, just use phrases like let's figure out whether this is the right move for you, and we'll work on this together. And then you go through and you do it in a very open and consultative way, and that's why my course is called consultative selling, because that, in my opinion, is the best way to approach clients. Okay, so if you have found that there are certain things you're not doing, or some of the issues that I've raised here are things that you recognize in what you're doing, what are the sort of mental habits you can adopt to help you? So, one of them might be visualizing or mentally rehearsing quoting big numbers or discussing big numbers in the way I mentioned earlier, but basically just getting used to those numbers so you don't get an emotional reaction to them that maybe you're getting at the moment. So that's really important because you begin to detach emotionally from those numbers and they become just numbers, and then you can treat them objectively as part of that um that value scenario, the value um ratio that you're looking at. One of the really important things you can do, and you might want to have a book or journal, which is um also a really good way to do it, is to review each core. Now, if you're with someone, that can be really useful because you can get feedback about things you might not be aware of, and that can be really that is really valuable. But even on your own, you can just sit down. Um, I used to do this in the car sometimes, just sit down and run through okay, um, what went well, what didn't go so well, did I miss a pattern in there somewhere? So, this is not about self-flagellation or anything like this, it's not about making you wrong, it's about being objective and looking at where you can improve. And what we all of us can improve somewhere. So let's not get hung up on that. Work on your emotional neutrality, and um so what I mean by that is staying level, whether a call goes great or poorly, look, it might be a really good deal. And we've all had those sort of woo-woo moments, strumble, but anyway. So at the moment where things go really well, we might just have a big breakthrough, it might be a really big sale that we worked on for a long time. Yeah, we have those moments, but in the everyday, just detach and just stay level. Look at the good ones where they went well, look at the poor ones where they went wrong, and just evaluate all the time. And it's really good if you can surround yourself with peers who are good, and it may be that in your if you're working in a sales team, hopefully you've got some good sales team members there, people are really good at what they do that you can learn from. If you're an entrepreneur or working on your own, it might be you can involve yourself in networking groups or uh business groups with really good quality people who you can learn from. Keep your standards high and keep your personal routines high. And what I mean by that is um always operate from integrity, um, always under promise, over. Deliver, always be punctual. Basically, if you say you're going to do something, then do it. You know, make sure that your integrity is there because that will really build trust. And equally, if you're saying if you say you're going to do something and you don't do it, that's a great way of destroying trust. And once you've lost trust, it's really, really hard to build it back up again. Um, remember that you what you really need is curiosity, you don't need scripts. So if you are struggling a little bit, um I would suggest that the solution is not to look for a better script, but just to get more curious. Be genuinely curious. I've spoken about this in previous podcasts, and um it's really, really important. And I guess the final thing I want to just talk about here is that if you do get objections, and I've done a few podcasts on handling objections, and there's a whole section on it in the um in consultative selling, the online course, just reframe them. Remember, often an objection comes up because the client doesn't understand something. Maybe you've missed something, maybe they didn't understand something and you thought they had, uh, but something's gone wrong. It doesn't mean it's no to the deal, it often just means that you need some clarification somewhere along the way. And that is pretty much where I'm going to leave this podcast. So I hope there's been a few things in there that have been of value to you. And um, if they have, please give me a like and subscribe, and I'll speak to you in the next podcast. So bye for now.