Me And The Travel Club Lady

I received a call last month saying I “won” a contest from a form that filled out at a boat show.
What I had “won” was a free trip for 2 including airfare to Las Vegas or Orlando and hotel accommodations.
All they asked me to do was go to their office and sit in on a 60 min presentation about their vacation club.

I smelled a rat, but in my line of work I actually attend these types of things very often. Why? Because I want to hear their sales pitch.

They were very friendly when I got to their office, offered me water or a cup of coffee. Then Francine my sales person introduced herself and walked me into another room.

The room was set up with round tables with vacation brochures spread out on them.
We sat down. Francine started her pitch...
She showed me all the nice vacation spots that I could go to and all the great things that I could do while I was there if I only signed up with them.
Then Francine went straight into the numbers...
Saying that the average vacation costs X amount of dollars and if I joined there membership it would only cost me half. She was doing the old reduce to the ridiculous sales gimmick.
Once she was done she asked me what I thought. I told her I was not sold yet.

Francine said she was going to go get her closing manager to see if there was anything they could do on the price.
(I didn’t object to the price so this was kind of weird).
The closing manager came over and gave me her pitch.
It was the same that Francine gave me, just with lower numbers.
I told the manager that I was not interested, she tried 3 more times. Then left our table.

Francine asked me what I did for a living and I explained to her that I help people.
She asked me how.
I asked Francine if she was open to some coaching.
She said "Yes"

I said to Francine “I’m not going to tell you that your approach to selling vacations could be greatly improved because you already know that, what I would like to suggest is that you change your opening statement using my Magic Words.
She said,” What is Magic Words?”

I explained to her that her greatest opportunity to improve her ratio of sales is to use words that caused people to be five times more interested in what she is saying” I asked her out of ten people she sat down with each week now how many would actually buy the vacation packages?
She said 1 or 2.

I said, " I’m curious, can you imagine what would it would feel like if you had the exact words that caused 4 or 5 people out of 10 to buy from you.” She said, "That would be great"!

I asked, "What’s important about improving your sales by 100% to you?”
She said, “I could go home earlier and study for college so I can finish school.”

I said, “ I won’t tell you that you will feel better when your home studying for college so you can finish school instead of out here selling vacations because you already know that, but I will tell you that until you change your approach you won’t be studying and finishing.”
She said, “ What should I say?”

I felt the shift from me giving her advice to her asking me for help.
This is a critical step if you want to influence people.

So I suggested that she use the following Magic Words on her next sales presentation.

I was wondering, if you can imagine how happy you would feel to know you could go on a fabulous vacation any time you wanted to just by picking up the phone?

She said, “Say that again.” So I took my pen out and wrote her script on the same page she was writing all those numbers on.

I was wondering, if you can imagine how happy you would feel to know you could go on a fabulous vacation any time you wanted, just by picking up the phone?

I asked her to role-play it with me a few times to get the right tone and cadence.

She was really a terrific student.

We practiced it a half dozen times then I said, "Go get'em".

I gave Francine my number and asked her to let me know how the Magic Words worked for her.

Francine called me 3 days later and told me that she already had 4 sales for the week. She asked me if I had any other tips.

I gave her my second tip
"The Question Game"
When speaking with customers always ask the question behind the question.
“What about ___ is important to you?”

She thanked me for my help and for my magic words.

I told Francine that they were her magic words now.