They Can Hear It

You think you're hiding it.

You're not.

Need travels down a phone line better than anything else you'll ever say.

A guy I work with started recording his own calls and playing them back.

Not to study the pitch, just to listen.

And within a few he could hear it plainly.

Right here I sound needy.

Right here I sound good.

Same script.

Same product.

Same guy.

Two completely different men on the line depending on what was going on inside him that hour.

You're not just transmitting words.

You're transmitting your state, and the prospect picks it up before he's consciously registered a thing you said.

And when what you're transmitting is need, here's what happens on his end.

He doesn't think: this guy needs the money.

He thinks something's off.

Something feels desperate.

And he backs away without ever being able to tell you why.

You've felt it yourself.

Somebody's trying too hard and everything in you pulls back.

Picture it as a pen on a table.

You can push the pen into a man's hand.

Press it at him, close his fingers around it, tell him why he should sign.

That's what need does,it shoves.

Or you can make him want to pick it up.

Same pen.

Same deal.

Completely different transaction, and completely different man on your end of it.

Shoving reads as anxious.

Hesitant.

Approval-seeking.

And it quietly destroys the only thing that actually sells anything, which is your authority, his sense that you know what you're doing and don't require him to validate it.

The moment he feels you need his yes more than he needs your product, you're finished.

Not because he's cruel.

Because nobody wants to be rescued by someone who's drowning.

So the fix isn't a better line.

There's no phrase that covers a state.

The fix is the state itself,walking in grounded, actually caring whether you can help, and being fine either way.

Then you're not a guy chasing a commission.

You're the guy who might solve this.

Those two sound nothing alike.

And you find out which one you've been by recording yourself and listening back.

That's it.

That's the whole diagnostic, and it costs nothing.

Most people never will.

They'd rather believe it's the market, the leads, the price.

Anything but hearing what they actually sound like at four o'clock on a bad Thursday.

So go pull one of your own calls.

One you thought went fine.

Then answer honestly whether you'd have bought from him.