Quotes from Jordan Belfort

You see, at the end of the day, objections are merely smoke screens for uncertainty for one or all of the Three Tens.

Front-loading is when you disclose all your major benefits right up front, which leaves you with nothing powerful to say to change your prospect's mind when they hit you with the first objection. This is one of the biggest mistakes salespeople make: they think they have to mention every single benefit when they make their initial sales presentation.

If they're not, then it will serve as a major red flag that the person who's asking them is not an expert in their field. For example, imagine being on the receiving end of the following series of intelligence-gathering questions, asked in exactly this order:

First, you're identifying their needs—and not just their core need but also any secondary needs or 'problems' they might have.

Comprised of the sum of all the possible ways that you can move and hold your body—your posture, your facial expressions, how you move your appendages, your rate of breathing, your overall level of motion—physiology of human beings as it relates to each emotional state is nearly identical across all cultures.

people don't buy on logic; they buy on emotion, and then justify their decision with logic.

Practically speaking, the implications of this are staggering. After all, if you can lower a person's action threshold, then you can turn some of the toughest buyers into easy buyers—which is something that we do with great effect in the latter stages of the sale, and that sets up the possibility of being able to close anyone who is closeable.

become linked together in this way is referred to as setting an anchor. The most common state that salespeople will try to set an anchor for is a state of absolute certainty, and the most common anchor they'll choose to try to link it to is a combination of shouting the word "yes" and simultaneously clapping their hands.

In essence, pain creates urgency, which makes it the perfect vehicle for closing these tougher sales.

Now, there are some exceptions to this, which I'll get to a bit later, but my point is that, more than 95 percent of the time, the common objections are merely ploys on the part of the prospect, who would rather bow out of the sale gracefully than have to look the salesperson in the eye and confront them about their lack of certainty concerning the Three Tens.

The first number is a prospect's level of certainty about your product; the second number is their level of certainty about you; the third number is their level of certainty about your company; the fourth number addresses their action threshold; and the fifth number addresses their pain threshold.

They tend to ask lots of questions that they seem to already know the answers to. They make it a point to kick the tires of whatever it is you're selling, almost to the point of over-kicking them. They let out a large number of ooos and aahs and yups, to reinforce the sense that they're genuinely interested. When asked about their finances, they either become boisterously overconfident or unnecessarily vague.

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.

we don't leave a crucial outcome like honest communication up to chance. We ensure it by making it the sole responsibility of the salesperson, and then providing him or her with a bulletproof formula to achieve that outcome every time.

However, as powerful as the Straight Line System is, it completely breaks down in the absence of one crucial element, which is: You need to take immediate control of the sale.

So, all Bill has to do now is lay out a closing scenario, explaining the various steps that Mr. Smith needs to take to get the ball rolling, and then ask him for the order.

Just how you go about doing that turned out to be elegantly simple, albeit with one complication: You have only four seconds to do it. Otherwise, you're toast.

Identify the lookie-loos and the mistakes and remove them from your sales funnel as quickly as possible. Gather the necessary intelligence from the buyers in heat and the buyers in power, and then continue moving them down the Straight Line towards the close. Begin the process of turning the buyers in power into buyers in heat by amplifying their pain.

Well, I've got a news flash for you," I continued sarcastically. "You're wrong. People see through that shit in two seconds flat, especially rich people, who are constantly on guard for that. To them, it's actually repulsive, not attractive, which is the opposite of what building rapport is all about." I shrugged.

return. In essence, you want to crystallize the fact that once they say yes they're going to receive a massive number of valuable benefits, and the amount of energy they'll have to expend will be considerably lower. By the way, one company that does this just about as well as a company can possibly do it is Amazon.

So, again, that's what's happening when you're directly on the straight line. You're the one doing all the talking, and your client is listening. And when you're off the straight line, but still inside the boundaries, right here and here"—I point to the spaces—"it's the prospect who's doing the talking, and you're doing the listening.

that actually future pace it—forcing them to experience the reality of being in even greater pain at some point down the road if they don't take action now to resolve it. This will ensure that your prospect not only understands the ramifications of not taking action to resolve their pain, but also feels those ramifications in their gut.

everything you'll need to create a practical blueprint for gathering intelligence in your industry. Now, as you go through each rule, you should keep relating it back to your own situation—making whatever changes are needed to your current method of prospecting. To that end, if you have a prospecting script or a list of intelligence-gathering questions, then you should have those in front of you before we begin. So, grab those now, and let's get started.

Okay, great," I continued. "The key here is that you always remember that rapport is not a constant; it goes up and down throughout the sale, depending on the following two things: "One, how your prospect thinks and feels about the last point you made; and two, his belief as to whether or not you are on the same page with him, in regards to that point.