Persuasive Presentations That Close Deals with Dave Dee

In This Episode

• [00:30] – Stephan introduces Dave Dee, the author of Sales Stampede, which teaches business owners how to sell more of their products or services through the art and science of virtual selling. 
• [06:59] – Dave shares how acquired $333,000 in sales in just 75 minutes of speaking.
• [13:58] – Dave demonstrates how you can get audiences engaged and have them comply with what you’re asking for while speaking.
• [21:05] – The impact of telling your personal story to the audience. What’s the best way to start a presentation?
• [27:53] – Stephan talks about Chris Voss’s concept of the three types of yeses.
• [35:06] – Dave and Stephan discuss Neil Strauss’ Cat-string theory that’s about keeping the audience engaged, entertained, and interested.
• [43:01] – Stephan shares how he uses reverse psychology as a powerful way to let people realize they’re interested in working with him.
• [49:27] – How to incorporate bonuses for booking consultations, strategy sessions, webinars, materials, etc. in doing presentations?
• [57:53] – Dave shares how he strategically closes his presentation then adds an extra fast action bonus that creates a stampede.
• [63:45] – Visit Dave Dee’s website at davedee.com to get a copy of his book, Sales Stampede, and learn more about his secrets for increasing sales.

Jump to Links and Resources

Transcript

Dave, thank you for joining us today. 

Hey, Stephan, thanks for inviting me, man. I took notes like crazy when you were talking at Kurtz’s event. I’m excited to be here. 

Awesome. First of all, I’d love to have a start off with the book, Sales Stampede is such an important book because many marketers kind of loathe to sell and to hit that closing point where now they need to ask for the money or make the offer. Then the pitch of their voice gets higher, the speed changes, they seem awkward on stage or in front of the camera on Zoom. What’s up with that? 

Well, it’s interesting because most folks like the teaching part of it, right? So they think that and I used to think this too if you just deliver great content if you just overwhelm the audience, whether it’s a virtual audience, or an in-person audience doesn’t matter. If you just overwhelm them with content, their product, in fact, you mentioned Dan Kennedy earlier, and Dan invited me to speak on one of his stages about 15 years ago because I had great success. I used to be a professional magician. That’s what I used to do for a living. And following some of Dan’s principles, I went from doing three shows a month to 25 shows a month in less than 90 days. So Dan said, “Hey, you got to come to tell your story about how you’re selling your professional service,” which was entertainment at that time, “and tell the story.” He said, “The only caveat is that you have to sell a product at the end.” And so for your listeners who don’t know, the way a lot of those seminars work is the speaker goes up on stage, does a presentation, sells something at the end, and then splits the sales with the promoter. So that’s how it works, and that’s how a lot of the promoters make their money. It’s not on ticket sales. It’s on the person who’s speaking. 

Stephan, I was so cocky about this because I was an entertainer and I was on stage all of the time. So I’m like, “This is gonna be easy.” I saw other speakers who were making like $50,000 even $100,000 from one presentation. So I went up there with my presentation, and I entertained the audience. They were laughing and clapping. They were doing everything right. And then I do my “close,” and I’m doing the quotation marks, the air quotes because it wasn’t even a close, right? I thought if I just said, “Hey, I’ve got this thing.” I was expecting this sales stampede, the stampede of people rushed to the back of the room like I saw other speakers do. What happened was people did go to the back of the room, but they were going to the back of the room to leave to go to the bathroom. Honestly, it was ugly. I barely sold anything, and I couldn’t figure it out. I just knew I was upset. I let my mentor down because he didn’t make any money from it. I let myself down because I pictured all of this money coming in. So I had to make a decision: Was I gonna learn how to do this speaking to sell, or was I just going to continue to be an entertainer? And I knew that I could make an impact on people’s lives and make more money from learning really to teach and sell. 

Selling is not convincing someone to buy something. It has people conclude an idea themselves that this is what they need to do. Share on X

So I dove headfirst into it. I developed my system through trial and error and coaching and using a lot of different, some esoteric strategies to come up with my system. Fast forward two years later, I’ve been working on smaller events and getting some great results and doing teleseminars or even webinars back then, because this is how long I’ve been doing this, this was teleseminars. But using the same system on teleseminars, and getting results for myself and clients. Then Dan invited me back to speak at the same event two years later because it was an annual event. And he said, “This time, though, Dave, we’re not going to put you on the mainstage.” Because Stephan, when you screw up, when you don’t sell well, they don’t put you back on the mainstage right away. They put me in a breakout session, literally like in the basement of this hotel room at eight o’clock in the morning, it was ugly. But I had an audience of about maybe 100, a little over 100, and I knew now how to structure a presentation that closed. And when the dust cleared from that one, I went from almost no sales to doing $330,000 in sales in just 75 minutes. Remember I got to split that with the promoter. But still, I don’t know what other people’s hourly rate is. But 150K for 75 minutes is good. And I got hooked on it, so I wanted to start teaching other people how to do it as well. 

That’s impressive. And I know the keynoters who are the big-name celebrities, somebody like Malcolm Gladwell or Arianna Huffington, they might be charging 50 grand, 75 grand hundred grand for a keynote. And they’re not selling anything at the end. You made more than most of those celebrities would make in an hour and a half presentation. And you had the opportunity to have lifelong fans and so much more customer lifetime value than just the first initial sale. 

When you speak to sell, and it doesn’t matter what you’re selling.

A hundred percent. Because when you speak to sell, and it doesn’t matter what you’re selling. By the way, most of the folks that I work with are not selling like an information product like I was. They’re professional service providers, so they’re doing webinars or in-person presentations to get their prospects, their audience members to schedule a consultation with them, which they’ll then close during the consultation. But it’s the same structure. You’re selling something. The truth is, what you just said is even more important than the money; the best customer or client or patient that you get is from speaking. If I look at the lifetime value of the clients that I get, who I acquired from speaking, it’s infinitely higher than from Facebook or any other form of marketing. The reason is that there’s a bond that is created when they see you speak, whether it’s again, virtually, or it’s in-person. I don’t even think I answered your question because I get excited. I get excited about this stuff because this stuff can change your life if you get it. 

So the question was, why do people get scared? First of all, they don’t know how to structure their presentation, so it leads naturally to people wanting to buy, to create the desire inside of people to want to buy what you’re selling, wanting to schedule a consultation with you. Then the second thing is they’ve got a hang-up about selling. They just don’t feel good about it because they think it’s manipulative, or they’ve got the wrong impression of it. By the way, you can be manipulative, but one of my favorite sayings is, “The difference between manipulation and persuasion is intent.” So if it is someone’s intent to sell something to a certain audience that doesn’t work, that’s not right for them, then that’s manipulation, right? And that person is a snake oil salesman. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of snake oil salesmen, especially in the world that we’re involved in. But if your intent is to help somebody and you’ve got a product, you’ve got a service that can help someone get the outcome that they desire, then as Jay Abraham says, “I think you’ve got a moral obligation to do everything that you can to make that sale.” It’s just a shift in the mindset. But if you structure the entire presentation right, and it doesn’t matter if you’re selling one-to-one or if you’re selling one-to-many, the close is just a natural part of the entire process. It’s not an event; it’s just part of the entire process. 

The difference between manipulation and persuasion is intent.

It’s a non-event, right? The more you make it an event, then the more pressure you put on yourself, the more awkward the transition, and the more you sabotage yourself from that moral obligation is, as Jay Abraham says.

Yeah, you’re 100% right. It’s not an event, and it’s just a natural part of the process. But what people don’t understand is that, when you’re developing one too many presentations, whether you’re doing it on a webinar, or video, or in-person doesn’t make any difference. The entire presentations are close. So everything that you say, every word, every slide that you show, if you’re using slides, needs to lead to the outcome that you desire, whether that’s to get somebody to take out their credit card, or whether it’s to get somebody to schedule time on the calendar to meet with you. So the entire presentation is a close. That means that where you start, by the way, in creating your presentation, is you start with the close. You start with the end. 

Everyone who I know who creates presentations, they’ve studied with me, starts at the beginning, right? And they do their opening and their content and all of that stuff. And then they do their close. No, just like great copywriters, I think it was Gary Halbert who said that a lot of times he would create the order form first, before even writing the sales letter, he’d create the order form first because that would tell him what he needs to put in the sales letter to create the desire in people. And so you want to start by developing your close first. You develop that, and that’s the very first thing you develop, then you loop around. Because now–I’m quoting everybody here, as late Stephen Covey said, “Begin with the end in mind.” What is the outcome that we want? It was cool, by the way, that’s what you asked me before we started recording this, you said, “Hey, what is the outcome that you want from this?” And so that’s exactly what you got to be focused on. What is the outcome? What is the offer? And then okay, now, what can I say? What can I talk about that is going to lead the audience to want to take advantage of the offer or the opportunity that I’m presenting to them? 

And it’s a storytelling process, right? It’s not just facts and figures and filling their heads with information. It’s about taking them on this hero’s journey. 

Yeah, that’s a hundred percent correct. Again, it’s not about delivering too much information. The biggest mistake that I see people make is that they delivered too much content. What happens is two bad things happen. They think that they’re doing the audience a service by giving them a ton of content, but they’re doing the audience a disservice. And here’s why. Number one, when you deliver so much content during your presentation, your audience gets overwhelmed, right? There’s just too much that they can’t process it. An overwhelmed and confused audience doesn’t take action. The second bad thing that happens is you give your audience members the false impression that they have the information that they need to get the outcome that they desire to solve the problem that they have. And truly, unless you’re selling the simplest thing on the planet, there’s no possible way that you can deliver all the information that somebody needs in 75 minutes, or 90 minutes or two hours, to get them the result that they desire. And so my big rule of thumb is that you want to have three pieces of content, three major things. Now under each one of those three major headings, you can talk about multiple things. But as you said, it’s not just facts and figures. It’s storytelling; it’s using case studies, right? It’s using a demonstration. By the way, you did it beautifully with your presentation at Kurtz’s event. 

Begin with the end in mind.

Now we were both doing teaching presentations, we weren’t there to sell anything overtly, but obviously, there was an outcome that both of us desired from speaking at that event. And what you did brilliantly was to use demonstration. You said, “Okay, everybody go put your website into this particular tool,” and it came up with the results. And they’re like, “Woah. So my website sucks! It’s got such a low score.” So the beautiful thing about that is through that demonstration, it’s way better than you telling me that–I’m just making up numbers–”now 75% of websites are doing this wrong and this wrong and this wrong.” When I go, and I put my website in, I get the results. They’re like, “wow,” right? And so that’s a form of engagement, you got to get your audience engaged through stories, you got to get your audience engaged through different devices. We can talk about that because it’s one of the most powerful pieces of the persuasion puzzle. It is something I call compliance, which is getting the audience to do what you asked them to do. So all of that is important, and it’s got to be entertaining. I often ask my audiences, who makes more money: an entertainer or a teacher? 

Exactly.

Right? It’s an entertainer. So you’ve got to be entertaining, it doesn’t mean you need to tell jokes. Now, it is great to make the audience laugh, but even if you’re not funny, you can do that with images on your slides and things like that, but you’ve got to be entertaining. So just facts and figures aren’t going to do it. They’re just not going to do it, they’re not going to engage the audience on an emotional level. Selling is an emotion; selling is getting someone emotional about taking action. 

Yeah, for sure. And it’s like “edutainment” really because you’re giving them educational content in an entertaining and engaging way, ideally through things like demonstrations. A little nuance on the demonstration point is that if you can get them to put their website into the tool, then you’ve empowered them, and you’ve given them the opportunity to connect the dots themselves. And it’s almost like then it’s their idea, instead of you showing them some insight or some tool that they then will go on and check on their own at some point in the future, if it can be a dynamic kind of workshop type of presentation, where they’re in front of their computers, or they have their phone with them, and they can use a simple tool themselves and put their own website in, then you’re leading them to that conclusion that they make on their own. 

An overwhelmed and confused audience doesn’t take action.

You just drop some gold bombs on people. And that’s what selling is. Selling is not convincing someone to do something. That’s what everyone thinks selling is. It’s not what it is. Selling is exactly what you just said it is. It’s having them conclude themselves that this is what they need to do. And that’s how you structure your presentation. If you want, we can go through, I mean, and it’s really up to you. But I mean, we can go through presentation structure if you think that would be helpful for folks, we can do that quickly.

I think that’d be great. Let’s do that. 

Okay. So we’re going to start at the beginning. Now, when you’re developing your presentation, what you want to do is start at the end, but we’re going to start at the beginning and work our way through it. So there are three major pieces to your presentation; the first is the opening, the second is the middle, the content that sells, and then the final piece is to close. Now notice, by the way, I’m drinking my own Kool-Aid here, right? So there’s a bunch of nuances, and there are more than three different things, but I broke it apart just in this teaching, so it’s very easy to understand. Because there’s a beginning, there’s a middle, and there’s an end. 

Here’s what needs to happen in the beginning; the first thing is the first 30 seconds, our mission-critical. The first things that come out of your mouth in the first 30 seconds, you must grab the audience by the throat and pull them in. If you don’t grab them by the throat in that first 30 to 45 seconds, they’re gone. Now online, they’re gone, right? They’re checking the internet, they’re clicking off, if it’s in person, they’re mentally checking out, or they are checking their phones and things like that. So we’ve got to grab them with a big promise about “Hey, here’s what you’re going to discover here.” The second thing in the opening is to let the audience know that they’re in the right place. So that is where you talk about them and their situation, about the pain, the problems that they’re going through. Number one, it lets them know that you understand them. But number two, it lets them know, “Hey, this is absolutely for me, he or she is describing me.” And so now that is further engagement, then we’ll do some tweaks to this as well. 

The difference between manipulation and persuasion is intent. If someone intends to sell something to someone that's not right for them, that's manipulation. Share on X

So we’ve got our opening which grabs our attention, we then let them know why that is for them, the next thing we want to do is we want to future pace. And so future pacing means creating a vivid picture in their mind of how great things are going to be, their ideal scenario if they do what you asked them to do. If they listen to you carefully and do–and that’s a line that I always use, if you do what I asked you to do? Well, what I’m saying right from the very beginning is when you do what I asked you to do, which at the end is going to be a course to buy my product. Then the second type of future pacing is negative. So we want to use both pain and pleasure to motivate people. And so what we do is that we paint a bleaker picture, “Hey, this is how things are going to be if you don’t listen to me if you don’t follow through, and here are the reasons why.” So number one, we’ve got our opening, where we grab their attention. Number two, we let them know that this is for them by talking about them. Number three, we future pace both how great things can be or how dismal they can be and dark they can be if they don’t listen to us. 

The next thing that you want to do, which is one of the most important things, is to tell your core story, as you said, the hero’s journey. And it doesn’t have to be a before and after story. Like I said, I worked with a lot of attorneys and financial advisors and those kinds of folks, and I’m like, I don’t have a before and after story like you do, where you said you went from doing three shows a month to 25 shows a month, I don’t have to tell that story. That’s just one form of the core story, the before and after. But the reason to tell your story is to let the audience know who you are. And this is where you develop a real bond with the audience. You get them to understand why you do what you do, why you’re so passionate about helping them. So even though your story is about yourself, it’s tying into “Hey, this is why I’m doing this,” “This is how I can help you.” And so the story is so important, and people gloss over this. They always say to me, and no one wants to hear my story. They do want to hear your story. And the story is what’s going to bond them. I did a very brief 30 seconds of my story. If I was selling something, which I’m not, I’ve got a longer core story, right? But again, the story is really important. So all of that’s in the opening, that’s the opening chunk, as I like to call it. 

The reason to tell your story is to let the audience know who you are.

Yeah. That’s what positions you as relatable as human as somebody that they want to do business with, even if they’re even to the point of thinking about that, but at least that’s now a possibility because people do business with people, not with faceless companies. 

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. And that’s why you should be writing your emails too, and all of that kind of stuff. It’s a whole other topic. It’s a personality; they’re buying you. So just a couple of tweaks to the opening that will help people, and I alluded to it earlier, which is something I call compliance. So if I can get my audience to do what I asked them to do when I asked them to do it throughout the entire presentation. Well, what happens is that it carries over to the close. If I can get them to type things into the chat, or raise their hand or answer a poll, or go and put their website address into a tool, and I keep doing that throughout the presentation, what happens is more that when I tell people to go ahead and buy, they’ve been trained to listen to do what I’ve asked them to do. So you want to have these compliance strategies like, “hey, type, the word ‘yes,'” “type the letter ‘Y’ into the chatbox,” “take this poll,” “answer this question,” and you have them do it. 

The first thing that it does is what I just mentioned; this compliance throughout is very, very powerful. And if people want to see just how powerful this is, there’s a Netflix special called The Push. And The Push is produced by Derren Brown. Derren Brown is a mentalist out of the UK, and he’s the number one star in the UK, not just a mentalist or magician. This isn’t about him doing his mentalist show; this is about compliance. The whole thing is, if we can get somebody, a stranger, off the street to start taking these little actions, which are slightly immoral, I mean, you wouldn’t even think of it as immoral. Can we get them to take a bigger action, a bigger action, a bigger action until we finally get that person to kill somebody? You’ve got to watch it, I’m not going to tell you how it ends, but I will tell you that everybody in the show except for one person is an actor, that one person doesn’t know it. It will show you the power of compliance. 

You got to deliver valuable content to the audience. However, we don’t want to over-deliver content.

There were studies about this where people were getting shocked in some sort of research study, and the person was shocking people, and they kept turning up the voltage and stuff, and it was crazy what they were willing to do to another person. 

Yeah. We’re not using this in a negative way. But again, it’s a very powerful strategy. But overall, though, the other thing is, it keeps your audience engaged, if they’ve engaged with you, so that’s why for some of my webinars, and I really should do it for all of them, I’m just lazy about it is they have a handout that somebody prints out where there’s fill in the blanks, and there are diagrams that they’ve got to complete because I’m keeping them engaged. And if I can keep them engaged, and not surfing the internet, not checking their email, not texting with people, well, what happens is they pay more attention, which they stand to the presentation a lot longer. So again, there are many different reasons. Right in the very beginning, you want to get people to comply with you and carry that throughout the entire presentation.

Now, there’s a couple of things about this that I want to mention that I think are really good examples of this. One is Taki Moore, in his webinars, he has this kind of preliminary get to know you kind of networking portion. He always shows up 15 minutes early, instead of just starting the webinar right at the top of the hour. He’ll come, and he’ll start at 15 minutes early, and then as people arrive, he’ll greet them by name, he’ll ask where in the world are you and what’s the weather like, and he’ll unmute people to be able to give answers, and he’ll tell people to put these answers into the chatbox and everything. So that engagement is already primed and ready before he even starts the presentation, which is quite clever. 

And then another example is Jeremy Schoemaker. Both Taki Moore and Jeremy Schoemaker were past guests of this podcast. Listeners, I highly recommend that you check out both of those episodes. They’re excellent. So Jeremy Schoemaker talks about “Netflixing” and getting his prospect on a one-to-one basis as somebody goes through his appointment funnel, they then get some homework to do before the first meeting, which is to watch all these videos of me. So they’re going to hopefully be so primed, when they show up for that strategy call, they’re ready to sign because they’re just floored by all the value that you’ve delivered in the presentations that they’ve watched and the various archived or replays of past webinars, or whatever the homework was. So both of those strategies, and both of those examples, I think, are fabulous. 

Yeah, they sure are. And that’s my entire, and I call it a virtual event selling machine, which is doing exactly what you just said, including after the person has booked the consultation or the strategy session, having them watch a series of videos, because now, as you said, they come almost pre-sold, or at the very least pre-framed to buy, which is so important. Those are great examples, Stephan.

Now one other distinction I want to make is that I’d love your input. I learned this from Chris Voss, who wrote, Never Split the Difference–one of my favorite business books and the best book on negotiating. Have you read it, by the way? 

I have. It’s fantastic. 

Yeah, it is fantastic. I know him personally from the METAL mastermind that I’m in. And he also was a past guest on this show. That is one of the best episodes ever. He has this distinction that if you try to get people up on this yes ladder of like seven yeses in the presentation or whatever, like for an audience member or in a one-on-one sales negotiation. There are these three types of yeses, and you have to distinguish between the three because you can’t treat them all the same. They might say yes seven times, but they’re the wrong yeses, so it doesn’t move them up a ladder. It just doesn’t help you at all. If anything, it might derail the whole thing. So the three types of yeses are confirmation yeses, commitment yeses, and counterfeit yeses. 

So if somebody says yes in terms of can I send you some information, can I email you the tech sheet or spec or whatever, and they say yes. They don’t mean it necessarily as a commitment. Yes, they might mean it as a counterfeit yes. Like, “Yes, do that, so I can get you off the phone, and I’ll never read your email.” So that’s a counterfeit, yes. And the commitment yes, of course, as it sounds, they’re making a commitment no matter how small, and it might be as small as just committing to take one thing they learned from your presentation and apply it in their business in the next few days or week. A confirmation yes is where people get stuck, and they think it’s a commitment yes, but it’s not. So that’s where they’re saying yes, the prospect or the audience member saying yes, but they’re only confirming or giving, like an informational type of yes. Like, “Who here’s having a great day?” Yeah. Okay. How is that helping you sail? So how is that moving the conversation forward? It’s not. 

I do agree. The example that I give, the same thing that you just said, which I can’t stand is the speaker. And we’ve all seen the speaker, right? This guy goes up there, “How many of you guys want to make some more money? Raise your hand if you want more money?” Right? You’re like, “Oh, my god. Really?” 

The ultimate confirmation yes and trap. 

Right, exactly. So don’t ever do that. So that’s important. Now getting someone to agree that this is the problem that they’re having that they want to have solved is a great yes. That’s an excellent yes. You have this specific problem, and you want to solve this problem? That’s a yes that moves the sale forward. While some of the other yeses that you talked about, what Chris talks about, is spot on for sure. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t use a confirmation yes type of question in your presentation. I do it. 

Oh, I do it too. But that’s more to keep the audience engaged. 

And also to give me some information that I can use to tailor the presentation. Like, “Who here considers themselves an expert in SEO?” and I’m trying to get people to say no to themselves, to not raise their hand because then I position myself as the expert, and they’re positioning themselves to learn. 

Tell them what to do, but not how to do it.

Yeah, I mean, for sure. All of that’s super important. And you’re the only person I’ve ever, I mean, I’ve done a bazillion of these podcasts that was just so insightful. Stephan, it was. I hope people are taking notes like crazy on that because it was great.

Unless you’re driving, please don’t take notes when you’re driving.

No, but you could pull over, though.

Yeah. That’s the smart thing to do you. 

You can pull over, open up your Evernote app, speak into it, and get it done. So I’m acting like I’m Mr. Technology, by the way, with that, like I’m all cool. I don’t know anything about any of that stuff. It just sounded good. I know you can do it. So the next. So okay, we’ve got our opening. Now we’ve got to transition to the centerpiece of the presentation, and I used to call this the teaching portion of the presentation. But that gave that completely wrong idea of what we’re supposed to be doing here. So I changed it to, “this is the content that sells section.” Now, this does not mean that you don’t deliver good content. You got to deliver valuable content to the audience. However, as we talked about, we don’t want to over-deliver content. The way to deliver content that sells is to, number one, there are many ways, but I’ll give you two. One is to tell people what to do, not how to do it. And by the way, that is extremely valuable information, because most people don’t know what to do. So if I tell you what to do, the truth is you could go and try to figure it all out on your own, right? If I give you, “Here’s what you need to do,” now go and Google it, you could probably figure it out on your own. And when I get to my transition to the close, we’ll talk about how I use that.

Selling is all about emotions. Selling is getting someone emotional, so they’re compelled to take action. Share on X

By the way, this is such a great example, and I got to share this. I just learned this from Evan Carmichael, who is one of the best YouTubers out there. And he explains that if you do an Instagram Live for your podcast interview. So if we were doing this, instead of on Skype, we were doing it as an Instagram Live. I would bring my audience, you would bring your audience, and we’d both be exposed to each other’s audiences, and we would get new followers from that process. And it’s genius. And then you take the recording of that, and you post that to YouTube, you post that to the podcatcher apps or to your RSS feed and all that. That’s genius, that’s an example of what to do. But how the heck do I do it if I’ve never gone live on Instagram if I’ve never done a collab on Instagram? I have no clue how to execute that. So it’s a great strategy that leaves an open loop that Evan or somebody who’s teaching you the strategies and the process and all that and you’re signing up for his course, that’s where all the magic happens. 

That’s the perfect example. And by the way, that is great information because now if somebody wants to, they can go figure it out. But if that’s a module in the course, it is a lot easier to buy Evan’s course than to try to figure it out on your own. That’s the truth. So the second thing to do, and by the way, I’ve done it here with everybody. So I said the first 30 seconds are really important, though what you say in those first 30 to 45 seconds used to grab the audience’s attention. I gave you all of the reasons why it’s important. I even talked about the bad stuff that will happen, they’ll turn off, they’ll be searching the internet, there’ll be all of that kind of stuff, they’ll mentally be checking out. But what did I didn’t tell you? Well, I didn’t tell you what to say or how to structure it. Now, when I’m doing this to sell my course on this, one of the modules, one of the bullet points for the first module is, I give you the exact word for word script, all you gotta do is fill in the blanks for your opening statement. And so I’ve created like you said, an open-loop in their mind, “Well, what do I say?” And I can’t do that unless I develop my close first. So if I don’t know that this is my offer, how do I know what content to put in that creates the open loops and the desire for the stuff I have in my offer. That’s why you create your offer and your close first, right? 

Open loops also have this great thing of keeping people engaged.

And open loops also have this great thing of keeping people engaged. It’s something that Neil Strauss refers to as cat-string theory, like you’re playing with these strings, essentially, with your audience as the cat, and it keeps them entertained and engaged and interested. And then you can occasionally close a loop or two, but you are keeping more loops open than your closing so that you revisit something like you revisited the first question I asked, but it took you a little while. And I’m sure it was purposeful, it’s genius, like keeping people playfully engaged. 

Playfully engaged. That’s it, yeah. And again, it’s entertaining for the audience as well. It’s way more entertaining mentally for them. So the second way is useful but incomplete information. So, for example–I’m just making this up–so there are five things that you need to do to make sure your website is SEO friendly. Now we don’t have time to go through all five but let me tell you two things that you can do immediately. Okay, then you do teach two things that they can do. So I did this with my very first private client who we developed a teleseminar for. She was an attorney selling a program to other attorneys. And so one of her things was, “I have seven different things I have in my office that I purposely put there, they’re almost subliminal, but when someone walks into my office, they instantly feel like they liked me, trust me and know me. We don’t have time to go through all seven but let me tell you two of them.” And so she went and described two of them, and they were the two coolest ones, right? When we get to the close, she says, “Oh, we have a bonus DVD that we’re going to send you, and this bonus DVD, I walk you through the office, my office, and I show you the placement of all seven objects.” So if I tell you to cool things, and then I tell you that there are seven, what do you want to know? You want to know what the other five are, right? 

Right. 

The only way to figure out what those are is to get the package. So useful but incomplete or tell them what to do, but not how to do it. As you mentioned earlier, be entertaining and tell stories. That’s really where the power in this is. So now, we’ve got our opening, we’ve got our three middle pieces, we’ve done a whole bunch here where we’ve done the content that sells, now we’ve got the close. Before we get to the close, though, let’s talk about transitions. What makes someone good at this and someone who is choppy? It goes back to the very first question you asked me, why are some people nervous when they get to the close? Well, they don’t know how to transition into it smoothly. 

So there’s got to transition through each part of your presentation is what makes it flow beautifully. So here I am going to give everybody the exact transition that they should use. It’s the exact one that I use. So you’ve done the three pieces of content, and then you’re going to do a review. And here’s the word you say, “So far, you’ve discovered,” or “So far, we’ve talked about,” by the way, those words “so far” are really important. Because “so far” indicates that there’s going to be more teaching to come, more content to come. So “So far, you’ve discovered this, this, this and this,” then you say, “but I hope you just get this one thing,” and then it’s whatever the big concept is that they’ve got to embrace, and believe in order for them to buy the thing that you’re selling. So for you–again, I’m making this up because I’m so not an SEO expert, but it could be something like, “but I hope you get this one thing, regardless of how your website is set up right now, regardless of what your score is, you can take it, you can correct it, you can get higher rankings, you can get more traffic, you can get more conversions.” Right?

Yep. 

Okay, great. So the next piece after that is, so the question you’re probably asking is, how do I make that happen? Now the beautiful thing about that is even if they’re not asking that question when you say the question you’re probably asking, or you might be wondering, how do you make that happen is, they automatically have to start wondering that because you planted it in their head.

Yeah. Don’t think about pink elephants. Just don’t.

Exactly. And so you say you have two choices; the first choice is to try to figure it on your own, the trial and error method. And again, this goes back to what to do, not how to do it. And by the way, this is a legitimate choice for them, but then I add, that’s the slow, painful way, and honestly, the more expensive way full of just trial and error and pain and trying to figure it out.

And lost time.

Do not reinvent the wheel, follow a proven process.

And lost time, that’s 100% true. Then the second way is to not reinvent the wheel. Now, your wording would change here depending upon what you’re selling, but it’s to work with somebody who’s already figured it out, who’s already figured out where all the landmines are. Or to not reinvent the wheel, to follow a proven process, a proven system. And since you’re still watching this, my guess is that you want to get this done fast so you can see results in your bank account as quickly as possible. Now, there’s a whole bunch there, but the major piece is giving them the two choices, and then a sub piece of that is, since you’re still watching this, it means, right? Well, it doesn’t necessarily mean that at all, but it sounds very logical.

You’re framing it like this is NLP at its finest.

It’s NLP. Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming, not Natural Language Processing. If you’re listening, wondering which NLP I’m referring to.

Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. And then you introduce whatever your solution is. So whatever your solution is, let me show you that whatever it is. Now, it could be your personal solution. We’re going to schedule a call, whatever it is. But here’s, you’re gonna like this, this is again, as you would call Neil Strauss’ cat-string theory, is you introduce this solution, but then you take it away. In my case, I would say, “I’ve got a program that will show you exactly how this is called a virtual event Selling Machine,” and I show a picture of it. Then I say, “But before we talk about that, let me tell you who this is not for.” And so remember, we’ve had this summarizing statement. I hope you get this one thing, which we’re all excited about. “You’ve done the two choices since you’re here, you want the fast choice, you can get the result that you want as quickly as possible. Here it is.” You get excited about hearing about it, and then I pull it away.

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Yeah, it’s the takeaway.

It’s the takeaway, right? So you’re keeping the audience, and they’re like moving with it. 

Or reverse psychology, that’s another way of thinking. Like I have a whole page on my site on stephanspencer.com is, Who I’m Not a Fit For. And that’s reverse psychology. Like if it’s your way or the highway, if you like trial and error, if you’re not nimble if you’re stuck in bureaucracy and red tape, and nothing ever gets done, and this is just going to be yet another example of that. I’m just riffing about it. I don’t remember what I said on that webpage, but it’s all about the kind of clients I don’t want to have, but it’s also about like, “No, I’m not like that. I am somebody who pays on time and doesn’t play mind games with my vendors and so forth.”

Right? Well, it’s kind of going exactly if we want to go back to what Chris Voss talks about. He talks about when a no is actually a yes. And so that’s kind of what’s happening here. And what you just named is exactly like what you could put in this section, right? And so when they say “No, I don’t like that.” What they’re saying is, “Yes, I am a good fit for this thing.” 

Correct.

It’s very powerful. And so I would say this is not for you if you’re someone who wants to reinvent the wheel, right? This system is perfected, it’s been tested, you’ve seen the results, we’ve gone through the case study. So if you’re the kind of person that’s going to screw around with it, then this isn’t for you. Well, that’s a benefit, right? That the system is proven and step-by-step, you don’t have to screw around with it. And again, that’s where you put this, and then you go into your closet, that’s your transitional segment. And when you have that, it’s not teaching, “Here’s what I have to sell.”

Yeah. And another thing too, a little distinction I’ve learned is that if you teach and you’re selling through teaching with these micro-moments of selling through seating. An example of this is, so Pedro Adao, The Challenge Guy, has this approach that he does with all his challenges, his five-day, 30-day, whatever the challenges are, to make one of the primary prizes be the program he’s going to sell so that he can introduce it so early on, that everybody’s aware of it from the beginning. Instead of him waiting till it’s 80% into the end of the program, in a five-day challenge, that would be day four, and he’s already introduced it on day one because he made it a prize. And when he gave it away well before his offer, four days in as well, so nobody holds off. 

It doesn’t seem forced. 

Yeah, exactly. But another distinction, you have to give the prize away before you make the offer because otherwise, people are holding out hoping that they’ll win instead of buying it. 

That’s brilliant, man. That’s brilliant. I’m gonna use that. That’s awesome. And so now we go into the close, now you introduce whatever it is. A couple of little things about the actual offer. The first thing is, and again, it’s like selling one-on-one. And I hesitate to mention it, but in reviewing people’s webinars and working with clients, I still see even fairly sophisticated people not know the difference between features and benefits. So they’ll say, “Well, there are six video modules, you get PDFs, you get this, you get handouts.” Okay?

Nobody cares.

Yeah, nobody cares. You do have to tell them what the thing is, but you want to talk about the benefits of it. But more importantly, I call it the hierarchy of persuasion. At the lowest level, we have features, I’m not saying don’t tell them what the features are, but that’s not the offer. The feature is just a piece of it. Then you’ve got benefits. So here are the benefits of those features. Then you’ve got outcomes, and here are the outcomes of these benefits.

Or the benefits of the benefits.

Or the benefits of the benefits. But then you’ve got the highest level, which almost nobody gets to, which is transformation. Transformation is how I’m going to be different, how my life is going to be different from this program.

How your identity will shift.

How your identity will shift. 

If you’re trying to teach somebody to stop smoking, their identity will be as a non-smoker. They won’t have to stop smoking. They are a non-smoker as their identity from that point forward. 

Yeah. And that’s different from the outcome of not smoking, right? 

Right. 

It’s different. And it’s more powerful, by the way.

And it sticks.

So that’s what moves people. A mistake that I see people, especially when they are selling even if it’s a free strategy session or a consultation, is that they’re not selling the value of the strategy session. They’re talking about the value of working with them, the end result of working with them, as opposed to just the value of the strategy session. So we’re selling the value of the strategy session. And then in the strategy session, we sell them on actually working with us, hiring us. So again, I work with a lot of attorneys, I work with a lot of estate planning attorneys, and so I see their presentation, they’re talking about, “Well, once you get the estate plan, here’s everything that’s.” No, we’re not selling the estate plan quite yet. We’re selling them on just meeting with us. So we’ve got to sell the value of that. 

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The other mistake that I see, especially professional services providers, is not having bonuses. Bonuses are really important even if you’re selling a consultation, and so information is a great bonus. I had a client who does websites, and the guy’s super smart. He does a great job with dentists in specific. And I was asking him, and he had hired me to do a consultation with him about his presentation. And his whole thing was, “My offer is they get a free strategy session.” That’s it, that’s what he offers. I said, “Well, tell me more about that,” and he says, “Well, the first thing that we do is we go and analyze their current website, and we come up with a 25-page report. Then we give them the 25-page report, and then we get on a call with them. One of my team members gets on a call with them and goes through the reports to show them where the hole is. And we talked about the different ways that they can fix it.” He wasn’t describing any of that in his thing. He was just like, “we’re gonna have this consultation call.” No, you’ve got to describe all of it. I said, “So the bonus could be that they’re getting the 25 page PDF. That could be a bonus.”

I’ve got another client who’s an attorney, and she created an information product that she gives to people when they show up for the strategy session, which further positions her as an expert. Bonuses are super important. And this is a pet peeve of mine, even if you’re offering something for free, it has a value. You’re not offering a free consultation, you’re offering a consultation that has a value of x, and you’re offering it on a complimentary basis for the first ten people or whatever. It’s not a free consultation. Your time is valuable. It’s not free. There’s a value to it. So if you charge $1,000 or $2,000 an hour, and you’re doing an hour consultation, that’s a $2,000 consultation. Now I don’t believe in using what they call a marketing license, which is also lying. If you don’t sell it, don’t say I normally sell those for $2,000.

Yeah. I hate that.

Right? You don’t need to do that. You could say this has a $2,000 value, but you get it for free. And then the final thing about this is especially if you’re selling a strategy session is to make sure that you are against selling the value of the strategy session, what’s going to happen on it and the outcome of that strategy session whether the person decides to work with you or not. If you do that, then what happens is you book a lot more strategy sessions. Then if you follow up with, “Hey, you’ve got this homework you’ve got to do before we have the strategy session,” you’re in really good shape when it comes to closing one on one. 

Oftentimes people will buy just to get the bonus.

Oh, that’s fabulous. Yeah. I’ve never thought about offering a bonus or multiple bonuses for booking a strategy session with me. That is genius. I have offered bonuses on webinars for programs that I’ve sold, online courses, and so forth, but for consultation calls or strategy sessions, that is genius. 

It works great. And you probably are already doing it, right? So do you analyze a person’s site ahead of time or something like that? You can give them a peek. That’s a bonus. So it doesn’t have to necessarily be something that you need to create. A lot of it is like what the guy was talking about, brilliant guy. He was already doing all of this. He just wasn’t framing it right. So you might already be doing it. 

Or he wasn’t packaging it So like I could package something that I just normally do as part of my strategy session or part of my initial consult, where I’ll pull up with, let’s say, Majestic, I’ll pull up their trust score, their important score, it’s called Citation Flow, and their trust score is Trust Flow. And I’ll just compare the two, and I’ll say, “Look, you’re more important than you are trusted, and that’s a problem because bla bla bla bla,” I could position that and package it as a deliverable, where maybe I print that out, that one screen as a PDF. They probably don’t have a paid account with Majestic, so that’s a lot of information they’re going to get for free that they wouldn’t normally have access to.

There you go. Done. And you’re already doing it. That’s what everybody has to think about. When I say create bonuses, sometimes people are thinking, crap, I gotta create something else, but oftentimes, you don’t have to create something as you’re already doing it. You’re just not framing it correctly.

Right. And one of the key things that you want to achieve through bonuses is to amp up the urgency and the scarcity. And like, “You’re not going to get these things if you don’t take immediate massive action, and sign on the dotted line or buy this program now.” “You can certainly buy it next week or next month, but these bonuses are for right now.” 

One of the key things that you want to achieve through bonuses is to amp up the urgency and the scarcity.

Yeah, and especially if it’s again, true. So it’s interesting, and I’ve got to clean this up in my course because I’ve gotten the same question twice, once from a financial advisor and once from an attorney. I talked about scarcity, just like you talked about, and the person says, “Well, I don’t feel right about saying that I only have seven openings if that’s not true,” and I just use that as an example. I don’t say that you have seven openings if you have more than seven openings. That feels creepy and wrong, right? But you do have limited openings, for sure. I have limited openings, or you can say I’ve opened up 14 slots on my calendar once those 14 slots are taken. That’s it. So you can make it legitimate, or you can simply say, “I have limited spots to do these strategy sessions for free because I’m working with clients all of the time.” And I use the word “obviously,” which is another very powerful word. Anytime you use the word “obviously” or “naturally,” people will tend to agree with whatever you say after it. It’s just built-in. So if I say, “Obviously, because I’m working with clients, I only have a limited amount of spots.” “So if you want one of them, so you can solve this problem that you’re having right now, you want to take advantage of it.”

That’s great. Another example of NLP at work. Now, bonuses are also great for sweetening the deal with, let’s say, an online course or a group coaching program or something that you’re pitching in the middle or towards the end of a webinar or a stage presentation. And that’s where you get that urgency and scarcity kind of maxed out so that they don’t sit on it and think, “Yeah, actually, maybe I’ll wait to the end of this three-day event before I make my decision,” or maybe, “I’ll make a decision about this next week after I’m back in the office, and I’ve kind of settled in,” because that’s just going to turn into nothing.

It is. And again, you just said a mouthful, Stephan. Let me just give you one distinction here. So you have a fast action bonus, what you’re talking about, right? So something that’s going to get people to take immediate action. One of the keys to making that fast action bonus work is to make it something great that they want. If the bonus is good enough, oftentimes people will buy just to get the bonus. However, here’s a big distinction. You want to anchor it, and you want to get that audience to believe before you introduce the fast action bonus that the deal that you’ve just described is the final deal. It’s a slight distinction, but it shouldn’t just roll. It should be like, so you’ve got your final price drops, or whatever it is, this is the final thing you’ve already added in bonuses. So they think that that’s it and people should already start buying. Then you lay the bomb on them of the other fast action bonus, of the real final fast action buttons. 

The way that I do it is in this virtual event Selling Machine program that I have. That program does sell for $19.97, but I have alluded to it. Well, now you’re going to have all of these strategy sessions scheduled, how do you close them? I’ve alluded to that throughout my presentation. So my fast action bonus is if you order today, or if you order within the next 15 minutes, depending upon the scenario where I’m presenting, you get not only this course at a discount for $19.97, I’m going to give you my consultations that closed course, which is also $19.97 for free. And that creates a stampede because number one, I’ve created the desire for the bonus during the present, unbeknownst to them that there’s even going to be this bonus. I planted in their head that, “Oh, man, I got to close all of these strategy sessions.” And then I say, boom, you get this extra thing, and it just goes crazy. By the way, you’ll appreciate this because I’ve tested this, I used to have it, so it was a two for one special. Meaning you buy the virtual event Selling Machine, and you get consultations that close for free. And I packaged it like that, and it did okay. But when I made the little tweak of exactly what I just said is, “Hey, here’s the final offer,” and then adding this, now it’s not a two for one, it’s now a bonus, “by the way, it’s the same price, it’s the same package, the same everything. No changes to the membership, nothing. It’s the same thing.” But the framing of it made a huge, huge difference. So I closed, and then I added this extra fast action bonus. So I recently did one. The program is $2,000. What did I close on that one? It was like, I’m gonna fudge the numbers a little bit, but it was like 60% closing on a $2,000 webinar. 

Wow.

Again, it was just those little tweaks. 

Those little tweaks, those little nuances, are so important. Like I am a detective when it comes to figuring these things out. Like I have given a lot of presentations on stages at conferences, and I always treat it as a learning opportunity to try and figure out what to tweak next. And one thing I found out was if I bring a bunch of books with me to give away like the big one, The Art of SEO, this one here, the intimidating one that’s 1000 pages. If I keep that to myself that I have a big bunch of books, if I give away a copy, if I say, “oh, I’m the co-author of this book, and who wants a copy of it?” And then, people raise their hand, and I’m like, “Who wants it enough to come and get it?” I learned this one from Dave VanHoose, how to get people storming the stage be first to get the book. And then I say, “Well, I have one more, and who wants this one?” and by then, everybody’s trained to go run to the front of the stage to get the book. That’s all I do for that piece. But then I say, “Oh, and I can’t give you all a free copy of The Art of SEO but what I can do is I can give you all a free digital copy of Google Power Search, which is my smaller book. Who wants that?” And everybody goes crazy. It’s like an Oprah moment, right? And you get a car, and you get a car, and you all get a car. 

And so then I figured out that if I offer to give my PowerPoint as well, but I offer it a little bit into the presentation where they’re already starting to take notes and like, wow, this is like value bomb central. This is amazing. Like, “You don’t have to take as much as copious notes, you don’t have to take pictures of every slide, I’ll give you my PowerPoint deck.” And there’s another nuance is, “if you text 33444 with the keyword Googled,” and then I put that on the screen, and I whip out my phone, it’s all NLP, and I’m like showing the phone like, “whip out your phone,” I’m commanding them, or whatever the compliance thing, right? And I’m showing them the phone, and they’re pulling their phone out, and they’re texting instead of emailing, instead of going to a website address using that short shortcode just seems to do the best. And then combining the PowerPoint with the digital copy of the Google Power Search. And then at the end, this is another nuance that just like blew the doors off, like this was just incredible, I got a hundred percent compliance in the entire room opting in giving me their email address where I said, “Alright, I’ve got a couple of hundred pounds of books to give away,” which is probably about 30, “and I maxed out my luggage and all that too, to bring these with me, you just need to show me that you have texted 33444 with the keyword googled,” or whatever the keyword was for that presentation. And so I don’t ask for it at the end like people are ready to show me, but I don’t need it at that point because I know they’ve already complied. So all those little nuances added together, stacked on top of each other and get the entire audience’s email address, and can then put them into drip campaigns and provide follow up, it’s awesome.

Yeah, it was really interesting because you kind of did what I just described, which was making them believe that the final thing that you did like, “Oh, I got one more book to give away,” then that’s it. And that makes a difference. It makes a huge difference in the results that you get for sure. 

Yeah. So I know we’re on time here. And this was just value bomb after the value bomb. Thank you so much, Dave. So if somebody wants to work with you, or they want to buy your courses or be part of your masterminds or whatever you have, and they want to learn from you and apply your principles, where should we send them and what should they do?

First of all, Stephan, thank you so much for having me on. I can’t believe the time went by that fast. I just looked at the clock, I’m like, “wow, we already did.” That’s crazy. So thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it. I think the easiest thing to do, and I do have the book, Sales Stampede, if people are interested in that, it’s a hardcover book that we send you. It’s just shipping and handling and go to davedeesalesmagic.com. If you’re not interested in the book, the best thing to do is just go to davedee.com, and I’ve got a killer free report on virtual selling. And it’s again, and it’s 100% free. And that’s the best way to get involved and see if I’m a good fit for you. 

That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dave, this was so fun. And you’re such a genius. This is great stuff. So I hope listeners that you take this, and you apply some of this in your business or your career because this could make you so much money. And as I learned from Anil Gupta, that if you aren’t showing up powerfully in the world to share your gift, people are dying because you’re not doing that. So that’s something that Anil told my wife, Orion, one time when she was talking to him about like, “Well, I know I should be doing my podcast” or whatever it was that she was talking about. And wow, what a powerful positioning. So people are suffering because you aren’t showing up powerfully in the world sharing your gift. So get out there, and we’ll catch you on the next episode of marketing speak. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

Important Links

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

Create a bond with my audience even in a virtual setting. Get to know who they are and what makes them tick. Gauge their level of interest while I’m presenting, so I can be aware we’re on the same page.
Intend on helping others. Selling doesn’t mean convincing others to buy what I offer. It’s helping them realize I have the solution they’re looking for. 
Develop a compelling story. Make sure it’s authentic. I’m not trying to fool my prospects. It doesn’t have to be the typical rags to riches or hero story; it just has to be relatable. 
Begin with the end in mind. Envision where I want to take my audience and develop a step-by-step plan that will guide everyone to my goal.
Make a great first impression. Always remember that the first 30 seconds is the most critical part of any speech. If I don’t get my audience hooked initially, I will lose their interest right away.
Avoid overwhelming my audience with too much information. Limit my talk to three major topics. Ensure the transitions between the phases are smoothly done, so my audience doesn’t lose track of the core message.
Demonstrate, don’t tell. Incorporate visual aids, animation, and live demos during my talk to keep my audience engaged and entertained. 
Become familiar with the word “edutainment” and make sure I incorporate the style of speaking into my next talk. Adding humor, entertainment, and a little bit of pizzazz will make my speech more remarkable.
Implement different types of closing strategies. Make sure I don’t only use one card in my deck. If one strategy isn’t working, I need to quickly move on to my next approach.
Grab a copy of Dave Dee’s book, Sales Stampede: How To Sell More Of Your Products Or Services In 75 Minutes Than You Now Do All Year.

About Dave Dee

Dave Dee is the author of the book Sales Stampede, which teaches business owners how to sell more of their products or services or get their very best prospects to schedule appointments, through the art and science of virtual selling.