Jordan Belfort Quotes

The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it.

When you live your life by poor standards, you inflict damage on everyone who crosses your path, especially those you love.

Act as if! Act as if you're a wealthy man, rich already, and then you'll surely become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence and then people will surely have confidence in you. Act as if you have unmatched experience and then people will follow your advice. And act as if you are already a tremendous success, and as sure as I stand here today - you will become successful.

Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions.

Successful people are 100% convinced that they are masters of their own destiny , they’re not creatures of circumstance, they create circumstance, if the circumstances around them suck they change them.

There’s no nobility in poverty.

No matter what happened to you in your past, you are not your past, you are the resources and the capabilities you glean from it. And that is the basis for all change.

You don’t choose who you fall in love with, do you? And once you do fall in love—that obsessive sort of love, that all-consuming love, where two people can’t stand to be apart from each other for even a moment—how are you supposed to let a love like that pass you by?

I want you to back yourself into a corner. Give yourself no choice but to succeed. Let the consequences of failure become so dire and so unthinkable that you’ll have no choice but to do whatever it takes to succeed.

Winners use words that say ‘must’ and ‘will’.

The easiest way to make money is -create something of such value that everybody wants and go out and give and create value, the money comes automatically.

If you want to be rich, never give up. People tend to give up. If you have persistence, you will come out ahead of most people. More importantly, you will learn. When you do something, you might fail. But that’s not because you’re a failure. It’s because you have not learnt enough. Do it differently each time. One day, you will do it right. Failure is your friend.

I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?

They were drunk on youth, fueled by greed, and higher than kites.

And my wife…well, I guess she’d earned her scene with me, but still; did she really have that much reason to be angry? I mean, when she married me she knew what she was getting into, didn’t she? She had been my mistress, for Chrissake! That spoke volumes, didn’t it”?

Act as if! Act as if you're a wealthy man, rich already, and then you'll surely become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence and then people will surely have confidence in you. Act as if you have unmatched experience and then people will follow your advice. And act as if you are already a tremendous success, and as sure as I stand here today - you will become successful.” ― Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street

Act as if you’re a wealthy man, rich already, and you will become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence, and people will have confidence in you. Act as if you have all the answers, and the answers will come to you.

If I earn a million dollars a week and the average American earns a thousand dollars a week, then when I spend twenty thousand dollars on something it’s the equivalent of the average American spending twenty dollars on something, right?

And from the time I was a kid, I've had this internal monologue roaring through my head, which doesn't stop - unless I'm asleep. I'm sure every person has this; it's just that my monologue is particularly loud. And particularly troublesome. I'm constantly asking myself questions. And the problem with that is that your brain is like a computer: If you ask a question, it's programmed to respond, whether there's an answer or not. I'm constantly weighing everything in my mind and trying to predict how my actions will influence events. Or maybe manipulate events are the more appropriate words. It's like playing a game of chess with your own life. And I hate fucking chess!

inside the restaurant young Strattonites carried on their time-honored tradition of acting like packs of untamed wolves.

Victor was Chinese by birth and Jewish by injection, having been raised amid the most savage young Jews anywhere on Long Island: the towns of Jericho and Syosset.

I had considered changing my phone number, but I was so far behind on my phone bill that NYNEX was after me too.

the logical mind serves as a human bullshit detector.

You do not want to try to resolve their pain at this point. In fact, if anything, you want to amplify that pain.

[Aunt] Patricia smiled, and we walked in silence for a while. But it wasn't a poisonous silence. It was the sort of silence shared by two people who're comfortable enough not to force a conversation ahead of its logical progression. I found this woman's company to be incredibly soothing.

But what I sincerely hope is that my life serves as a cautionary tale to the rich and poor alike; to anyone who’s living with a spoon up their nose and a bunch of pills dissolving in their stomach sac; or to any person who’s considering taking a God-given gift and misusing it; to anyone who decides to go to the dark side of the force and live a life of unbridled hedonism. And to anyone who thinks there’s anything glamorous about being known as a Wolf of Wall Street. BOOK I

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People don’t buy stock; it gets sold to them. Don’t ever forget that.

Everyone does this shit.’” I paused, letting Elliot's words hang in the air. Then I said, “There's no denying that he had a point. You see it in jewelry stores all the time: They inflate their price tags and then mark things down right in front of you so you think you're getting a good deal.” I paused again, then: “And all this business about an overorder isn't much different than all those stores you see advertising ‘ going-out-of-business sales.’ Most of them have been advertising the same going-out-of-business sale for the last ten years, and in ten more years they'll still be going out of business!

I don’t think you’re cut out for this job. You look like a kid, and Wall Street’s no place for kids. It’s a place for killers. A place for mercenaries. So in that sense you’re lucky I’m not the one who does the hiring around here.

The three of us exchanged glances but said nothing. After all, what was there to say? The truth was that hookers did take credit cards—or at least ours did! In fact, hookers were so much a part of the Stratton subculture that we classified them like publicly traded stocks: Blue Chips were considered the top-of-the-line hooker, zee crème de la crème. They were usually struggling young models or exceptionally beautiful college girls in desperate need of tuition or designer clothing, and for a few thousand dollars they would do almost anything imaginable, either to you or to each other. Next came the NASDAQs, who were one step down from the Blue Chips. They were priced between three and five hundred dollars and made you wear a condom unless you gave them a hefty tip, which I always did. Then came the Pink Sheet hookers, who were the lowest form of all, usually a streetwalker or the sort of low-class hooker who showed up in response to a desperate late-night phone call to a number in Screw magazine or the yellow pages. They usually cost a hundred dollars or less, and if you didn’t wear a condom, you’d get a penicillin shot the next day and then pray that your dick didn’t fall off. Anyway, the Blue Chips took credit cards, so what was wrong with writing them off on your taxes? After all, the IRS knew about this sort of stuff, didn’t they? In fact, back in the good old days, when getting blasted over lunch was considered normal corporate behavior, the IRS referred to these types of expenses as three-martini lunches! They even had an accounting term for it: It was called T and E, which stood for Travel and Entertainment. All I’d done was taken the small liberty of moving things to their logical conclusion, changing T and E to T and A: Tits and Ass!

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.

In terms of the split between logic and emotion, you’re always going to build airtight logical cases first and airtight emotional cases second. Why? Quite simply, by making the airtight logical case first, you satisfy your prospect’s bullshit detector, which then frees them up to be moved emotionally.

He never addressed it as infidelity. To Jordan Belfort and his men, sex with a Blue Chip was a reflex of sorts – a kind of spasm or procedure or 'niche-service', useful as a form of stress relief; as the girls were never regarded as fully human, there were no problems. There were, the brokers felt, certain liberties to which men of power were entitled.

But what was wrong with that? They were drunk on youth, fueled by greed, and higher than kites.

Use power words, like “dramatically,” “explosive,” “fastest growing,” “most well respected.” Power words go a very long way to capturing someone’s attention and establishing yourself as an expert.

Listen, guys, fucking around with midgets ain’t no joke. Pound for pound they’re stronger than grizzly bears, and, if you want to know the truth, they happen to scare the living shit out of me. So before I approve this midget-tossing business, you need to find me a game warden who can rein in the little critter if he should go off the deep end. Then we’re gonna need some tranq darts, a pair a handcuffs, a can of Mace—” Wigwam

amplify that pain by asking the following questions: “How long has this been going on?” “Do you see this getting better or worse?” “How do you see yourself in two years?” “How has it affected your health or your family?” In essence, you want to make sure that you make your prospect talk about their pain. These types of questions will have a powerful impact on opening the prospect’s mind to receiving information, which they will now measure against their pain.

I laughed right along with her, but inside I was dying. There were certain things that you just didn’t joke about; it was simply bad luck. It was like pissing in the fate god’s eye. If you did it long enough, he was certain to piss right back at you. And his urine stream was like a fucking fire hose. But

Corruption,' Jordan Belfort believes, 'is endemic to human being. I mean, even men in monasteries - where enticement is hard to come by – even men in those circumstances have sex with other men and abuse children. Look at the Catholic Church! Man is an imperfect animal and he is corruptible, okay? And in finance, the liquid nature of the market makes corruption very easy. On Wall Street, this liquidity is so in your face -' he suddenly grits his teeth - 'that if you have even the slightest predisposition to the dark side, you become corrupted. In addition to which, those attracted to Wall Street have a predisposition to greed.

communications to your “almost” new client come from a position of strength—meaning that, as far as you’re concerned, the deal is already closed and the communication you’re sending is from the perspective of building a long-term relationship and doing more business in the future. Otherwise, you’ll come off as being desperate, and it will end up having the reverse effect.

contrary to previous assumptions, young men and women who possess the collective social graces of a herd of sex-crazed water buffalo and have an intelligence quotient in the range of Forrest Gump on three hits of acid, can be taught to sound like Wall Street wizards, as long as you write every last word down for them and then keep drilling it into their heads again and again—every day, twice a day—for a year straight.

In other words, when you reach the end of the Forrest Gump pattern, rather than asking your prospect a question (like you’ve done with your previous patterns), you’re going to move straight into your new pattern for reselling the company—using the following seven words as your transition: “And as far as my company goes …” For example, let’s say that the last point you were trying to get across to Bill with your Forrest Gump pattern was that not only are you going to tell him when to buy but you’re also going to tell him when to sell.

In addition, I want you to notice how I use the word “so” in the second half of each of the three examples. In this context, we refer to the word “so” as a justifier, because it justifies your need to ask the prospect questions, as opposed to doing it out of curiosity or nosiness. In essence, in order to do your job correctly, there are certain things that you need to know in your capacity as an expert. By using a justifier, you can get that point across to your prospect loud and clear, and it paves the way for an even more productive intelligence-gathering session.

One of the key reasons why you want to always use a script for prospecting is that each industry has its own unique set of questions that need to be asked in a certain order. If you try to wing it—as opposed to having all your questions mapped out in advance, in precisely the right order—then the chances of you remembering all the questions, or asking them all in the right order, is slim to none, and each mistake you make will have a negative impact on your ability to gather intelligence. Another major benefit of using a prospecting script is that since you already know what words you’re going to say, your conscious mind is freed up to focus on applying the right tonality to your words, as well as on what your prospect is communicating back to you.

It sounds great, let me think about it …” or “Let me do a bit more research and I’ll call you back.

Remember, it’s not the job of salespeople to turn nos into yeses; it’s simply not what they do. Instead, we turn “Let me think about it” into a yes, and “Let me call you back” into a yes, and “I need to speak to my wife” into a yes, and “It’s a bad time of year” into a yes.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

said, “Act as if you’re a wealthy man, rich already, and you will become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence, and you will become confident. Act as if you have all the answers and the answers will come to you!

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.

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

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.

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.

Of all the factors that we have just spoken about, what is the most important to you? You definitely want to find out your prospect’s highest need, as this is the one that you’ll typically have to fill to push the prospect over the top. Have I asked about everything that’s important to you? Your customer will think more of you, not less of you, if you ask this, so long as you have done a professional job up to that point. You could also say, “Is there anything that I have missed? Is there any way that I can tailor this solution for you?

The last part of your open is always a transition. “Based on everything you said to me, this is a perfect fit for you.” This should be an anchor for you; you should know it by heart.

information or had a chance to review it, as there’s an excellent possibility that he’ll say “no” to at least one of those questions, which gives him an easy exit ramp out of the encounter. The way to avoid this is to simply ask him if the conversation “rings a bell,” to which he will almost always reply with a yes.

case, when you ask him for the order for the second time, you would step him down from ten thousand shares to five thousand shares, which reduces the energy-in aspect of the closing equation by 50 percent, after you just increased the benefits-out side of the equation during your follow-up presentation. This creates an extremely powerful one-two punch that will significantly increase your closing rate. And, of course, on your third closing attempt, you would step down to a thousand shares … and then down to five hundred shares on your fourth attempt, going all the way down to whatever the firm’s minimum is for opening up a new account.

To that, you’ll answer with the standard Straight Line response to an initial objection, which is: “I hear what you’re saying, Bill, but let me ask you a question: Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?” Similarly, if Bill had said, “I need to speak to my accountant,” then you would’ve said, “I hear what you’re saying, Bill, but let me ask you a question: Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?” And, once again, if he had said, “It’s a bad time of year,” then you would’ve said, “I hear what you’re saying, Bill, but let me just ask you a question: Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?” In other words, no matter which of the twelve to fourteen common objections your prospect initially hits you with, you are always going to answer in exactly the same way. You’re going to say: “I hear what you’re saying, Bill, but let me ask you a question: Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?

Well, quite simply, while a basic yes is enough to move forward during the front half of the sale, you need an enthusiastic yes to move forward during the back half of the sale. The reason for this is that the level of enthusiasm of your prospect’s yes is going to serve as your primary means for measuring his level of certainty for each of the Three Tens.

hands above waist level, where she can see them.

Speaking of eye contact, here’s an interesting fact: if you don’t make eye contact at least 72 percent of the time, people won’t trust you. There have been detailed studies on this stuff, and 72 percent is the number. You can look it up online. Anything more, and you risk getting into a stare-off with somebody.

One more thing about body language: watch the position of your arms. Someone who crosses their arms can be communicating that they are closed to new ideas. Arm positioning is one of the most basic elements of body language—being open versus being closed—and it’s obviously very easy to spot. Now, just because someone’s arms are crossed doesn’t mean that they’re definitely closed to new ideas. They might just be cold, for all you know. Of course, if I had a choice, I’d want my prospect’s arms in an open position versus closed. All things being equal, it does usually mean that someone’s more open to your ideas. But I definitely wouldn’t take it as the ultimate sign.

So, instead, I matched him. I walked in acting as pissed off and angry as he was. In fact, I acted even angrier. I said, my voice booming, “What the hell is going on, Carter? I know that bastard of a kid is a ball hog! We’ve got to do something about it right now! Should we call the coach and get him thrown off the team?” Then he matched me, just like I knew he would. He became just as angry as he thought I was, and he said, “Yeah, let’s call the coach! Let’s get him thrown off the team! That kid’s a menace!” To which I said, “Yeah, let’s do that, buddy!” And, just like that, I began lowering my voice and taking on a more sympathetic tone. Then I shook my head sadly and said, “I don’t know, buddy. I wonder what causes him to

Now, before we move on, let’s quickly go through the process of how to handle buy signals when they arise in the back half of the sale. In other words, as your prospect starts to become more and more certain about the Three Tens, they will start sending you signals that they are interested in buying, in the form of leading questions about the closing process. For example, the prospect might say, “How much did you say it would run me?” or “How long will it take until I receive the product?” or “How long until I start to see results?” Those are just a few examples of the more common buy signals.

again?” To which you reply, “Oh, it’s only three thousand dollars,” and you say no more. Alas, you just committed sales hara-kiri. Why? Simply put, you’ve just created a scenario where there’s $3,000 worth of energy going in and zero benefits coming out, not because those benefits don’t exist—in point of fact, they do—but because you simply forgot to remind the prospect of them at the same time you asked them to tap into their energy reserves. In other words, the fact that you laid out the benefits three or four minutes ago when you asked for the order for the first time has no bearing on the energy in, benefits out equation a few minutes later, when your prospect gave you a buy signal.

but you still need to state them every time you bring up the expenditure of energy.

that again?” is as follows: “It’s a cash outlay of only three thousand dollars, and let me quickly tell you exactly what you’re going to get for that: you’re going to get [benefit #1] and [benefit #2] and [benefit #3], and again, like I said before, getting started is very, very simple, so believe me, if you do even half as well as the rest of my clients in this program, then the only problem you’ll have is that I didn’t call you six months ago and get you started then. Sound fair enough?

For example, you’ll have a script that starts with those all-important first four seconds, and then includes your qualifying questions and your transition. Second, you’ll have a script that starts with the main body of your presentation and ends with you asking for the order for the first time. Third, you’ll have a series of rebuttal scripts that include the well-thought-out answers you’ve prepared to the various common objections you’re going to hear. And fourth, you’ll have a series of looping scripts that will include the various language patterns that will allow you to loop back into the sale, in order to move your prospect to higher and higher levels of certainty.

A 9, on the other hand, is almost always doable. In fact, with only a few exceptions, you can always get a prospect to a 9 on the certainty scale, which is more than sufficient to close 99 percent of the prospects you’ll speak to. And as far as the remaining 1 percent go, you can actually close those prospects too, although I’ll circle back to them in a few minutes when we

Given that you just raised Bill’s level of logical certainty to at least a 9 and his emotional certainty to at least a 7, does it make sense for you to take a shot and ask for the order again? After all, if it turns out that Bill has a low action threshold, isn’t there a shot that you could slide in under the wire, as the phrase goes, and close him? The answer is no, absolutely not.

Exactly!” you shot back, finishing your last pattern. “The stock really is a screaming buy down here!” Then you pause for a brief instant and switch to your mystery and intrigue tonality, and you say, “Now, Bill, let me ask you another question.” And now you switch to your money-aside tonality. “If I’d been your broker for the last three or four years, making you money on a consistent basis”—and now you switch to your implied obviousness—“then you probably wouldn’t be saying, ‘Let me think about it right now, [your first name].’ You’d be saying, ‘Pick me up a block of at least a few thousand shares.’” And then you switch to the reasonable man tone and you add, “Am I right?

Now, for that annoying 5 percent of prospects who reject your hypothesis—that it’s actually a lack of trust that’s holding them back, not some bogus objection—you’re going to come at them with everything you’ve got.

Wait a second, Bill: you mean to tell me that if I put you into Union Carbide at 7 and took you out at 32, and I put you into U.S. Steel at 16 and took you out at 41, and I put you into Facebook at 70 and took you out at 130, then you wouldn’t be saying, ‘Pick me up at least a few thousand shares of Microsoft right now, on the spot, come on’?

that doesn’t take away from how profound it was. In fact, not only do those five simple words mark a major turning point in the sale but they also mark the point where you’re going to begin your next pattern. You’re going to say, in a sympathetic tone: “Now, that I can understand. You don’t know me, and I don’t have the luxury of a track record; so let me take a moment to reintroduce myself. “My name is [your first and last name], and I’m a [your title] at [the name of your company], and I’ve been there for [actual number] years, and I pride myself on …” And now you’re going to tell your prospect a little bit about yourself—citing any degrees you have, any licenses you have, any special talents you have, any awards you’ve won, what your goals are at the company, what you stand for as a person in terms of ethics and integrity and customer service, and how you can be an asset to him and his family over the long term.

In addition, in the same way that you took as much time as you needed to write out the best possible version of yourself, you also wrote out a secondary and a tertiary version as well. This will ensure that you can keep talking about yourself intelligently if the sale drags on, forcing you to execute additional loops.

terms of the specifics, you’re going to be saying things like: “We’re the number-one this … we’re the fastest-growing that … we’re the foremost experts in this … The chairman of the board, a man named so‑and-so, is one of the most astute minds in the entire XYZ industry … He’s accomplished X … he’s accomplished Y … and he’s built this company around one thing above all: [whatever that is].

saying something along the lines of: “So, Bill, why don’t we do this …” or “So, all I’m asking for is this …” and then transitioning directly into your close, which will end with you asking for the order a second time.

Here are a few quick examples of language patterns that work very well with this type of step-down approach: “If you give me 1 percent of your trust, I’ll earn the other 99 percent.” “Frankly, on such a small sale like this, after I split my commission with the firm and the government, I can’t put puppy chow in my dog’s bowl.” “I’m obviously not getting rich here, but, again, this will serve as a benchmark for future business.

The rest of them, however, are going to require a bit more persuading, in the form of running additional loops that address one of the following three areas: Increasing their level of certainty for one or more of the Three Tens Lowering their action threshold Increasing their pain threshold

just answer it and ask for the order again; instead, you’re going to loop back into the sale once more and move your prospect to an even higher level of certainty for each of the Three Tens, using the secondary language patterns that you created for this exact purpose. Now, from here, rather than going straight to the close (like you did with your first loop), you’re first going to run an extremely powerful language pattern that will allow you to crack the fourth number in your prospect’s buying combination—namely, their action threshold.

The third way is to use certain key phrases that paint a picture that runs counter to the worries and concerns that a typical high–action-threshold prospect ruminates on. Some examples of this are: “I’ll hold your hand every step of the way” … “We pride ourselves on long-term relationships” … “We have blue-chip customer service.

Bill, let me ask you an honest question: what’s the worst that can possibly happen here? I mean, let’s say I’m wrong and the stock actually goes down a few points, and you lose two thousand bucks. Is that gonna put you in the poorhouse?” “No,” Bill replies a bit grudgingly. “Exactly,” you continue. “Of course it won’t! And, on the upside, let’s say I’m right—like we both think I am—and the stock goes up fifteen or twenty points, like we both think it will, and you make fifteen or twenty grand. I mean, it’ll feel good and everything, but it’s not gonna make you the richest man in town, now will it?

No, definitely not,” replies Bill. “Exactly! Of course it won’t. It’s not gonna make you rich, and it’s not gonna make you poor, but what this trade will do is serve as a benchmark for future business. It’ll show you that I can put you into the market at the right time, and take you out as well. So why don’t we do this: “Since this is our first time working together, why don’t we start off a bit smaller this time. Instead of picking up a block of ten thousand shares, let’s pick up a block of a thousand shares, which is now a cash outlay of only thirty thousand dollars. Of course, you’ll make a bit less money as the stock trades higher, but your percentage gain remains the same, and you can judge me on that alone; and believe me, Bill, if you do even half as well as the rest of my clients in this program, the only problem you’re going to have is that you didn’t buy more. Sound fair enough?” And then you shut up and wait for a response.

This is why you introduce pain in two spots: first, during the intelligence-gathering phase, you want to identify where your prospect’s pain lies and, if necessary, amplify it to ensure that your prospect listens to your presentation from that perspective; and second, you’re going to reintroduce that pain right now, at the beginning of your third loop, using a language pattern that sounds something like this: “Now, Bill, I know you said before that you’re worried about your retirement in terms of Social Security not …” and so forth, and then you’re going to raise the level of pain by asking your prospect what they think is going to happen with the situation if they fail to take action to fix it. Using an

And that’s your chance to say, in the I care and I feel your pain tonality: “I get it, Bill. I’ve been around the block a couple of thousand times now, and I know that these things typically don’t resolve themselves unless you take serious action to resolve them. “In fact, let me say this: one of the true beauties here is that …,” and now you’re going to quickly resell the Three Tens, using a concise yet very powerful consolidation of the tertiary language patterns that you created for each of the Three Tens, which will focus almost exclusively on the emotional side of the equation—using the technique of future pacing to paint your prospect that all-important pain-free picture of the future, where he can actually see himself using your product and getting the exact benefits he was promised and feeling great as a result of that; and, from there, you’re going to transition directly into a soft close and ask for the order again.

Jim, please don’t misconstrue my enthusiasm for pressure; it’s just that I know that this truly is a perfect fit for you …,” and now you have two options. Option one is to use this as an opportunity to loop back into the sale, yet again, and give it one more shot—paying very close attention to your tonality and body language as well as the tonality and body language of your prospect. In your case, you want steer clear of any unconscious communication that speaks of either absolute certainty or bottled enthusiasm, and focus on utter sincerity and “I feel your pain.” In the case of your prospect, you want to focus on both their conscious and unconscious communication, and if either one signals that they’re feeling pressured or perturbed in the slightest way, then I would immediately transition to option number two. Option two is to use this as an opportunity to get back into rapport with your prospect so you can end the encounter on a high note, while also setting up the possibility for a callback. In this case, you would say something like: “Jim, please don’t misconstrue my enthusiasm for pressure; it’s just that I know that this truly is a perfect fit for you.” Then you’d change your tonality to one of utter sincerity, and add: “So, why don’t we do this: let me email you the information you’re looking for”—or whatever the prospect’s last objection was—“and then give you a few days to look through everything and also to discuss it with your wife”—or whatever their secondary objection was; if there was none, then you’d just omit this—“and

Just one final point with this—and that’s to never forget the ethical side of the equation, which is that you do not want to use pain to disempower people; you want to use it to empower people by helping them make good buying decisions, so they can have the things that they truly need.

Then, after he’s finally done orbiting Pluto, all you need to say is something along the lines of ‘Wow, that’s totally cool. It sounds really interesting. I can see why you feel that way. Now as far as your goal for learning how to trade currencies goes …’ And then you lead him back to the Straight Line and pick up right where you left off by asking him the next question on your list. That’s how you maintain control of the sale and build massive rapport at the same time. Make sense, everyone? Raise you hands and say ‘yes’ if it does.

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.

To that end, if he feels positively about the last thing you said, then the level of rapport increases; and if he feels negatively about it, then the level of rapport decreases. Likewise, if he believes that you are on the same page with him, then the level of rapport increases; and if he believes that you are not on the same page with him, then the level of rapport decreases.

So, if at any moment you sense that you’re falling out of rapport with your prospect, then you need to stop, regroup, and make a conscious effort to get back into rapport, using the active listening protocol I laid out for you, along with two specific tonalities I went through this morning—‘I care (I really want to know)’ and ‘I feel your pain.

At the end of the day, it’s these three distinctions—he cares about me, he understands me, and he feels my pain—that serve as the very foundation on which all rapport is built, and they come naturally to those who possess massive charisma. In fact, the power of charisma is so vital to a salesperson’s success that it’s almost impossible to find even a single top producer who doesn’t possess it in massive quantities.

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.

It’s like framing out a new house: you have to do it in stages. First you put up the actual frame, then the drywall, then the paint. It’s the same thing with a sale. You can’t expect to close so soon. There are going to be objections, so be prepared for a prolonged battle. You have to get your foundation in place first. In essence, human beings are not built in a way where we go from zero to 100 mph in one shot. There have to be these little stopping-off points, where we can take a deep breath and consolidate our thoughts. In other words, the way you raise someone’s level of certainty is bit by bit; you can’t do it all at once.

If you make a powerful statement, and then another powerful statement, and then yet another powerful statement, by the time you’ve made the third powerful statement, they’ve all started to blend in with one another, and they lose their power. This is why a well-written script has an abundance of stopping-off points, where the prospect will interact with you and affirm that you’re still on the same page. In other words, after you make a powerful statement, you want to lock it down by asking the prospect a simple yes-or-no question, such as: “You follow me so far?” or “Make sense?” or “Are you with me?” By doing this, not only do you keep the prospect engaged in the conversation but you also get them into the habit of saying yes, which creates consistency.