I met Todd Herman on a bus full of entrepreneurs in Austin, Texas. Todd would later write the hit book The Alter Ego Effect, but he was a stud long before that.
Todd told the group he once won an award from the legendary Olgilivy Mathers advertising agency for salesperson of the year. Then he turned to me and said, "But I'm nothing of a salesman compared to you, Jason."
I was dumbstruck. I didn't even know Todd then, so I was surprised he knew me. Out of all the sales compliments I've gotten, this is my favorite.
When I first got into selling, I was terrible. I'd go down to the Iowa City public library and thumb through all the books on selling. The most helpful was Zig Ziglar's Secrets of Closing the Sale. Each time Zig would give a word-for-word close, I'd write it on a 3x5 notecard. I'd carry that notecard with me until I memorized the close. Soon I became a walking, talking, closing dictionary.
When I started doing webinars, I got my hands on a recording of Dan Kennedy's Magnetic Marketing presentation. As I fell asleep at night, I'd listen to Dan until I could recite his presentation word for word, right down to the ums and ahs.
I gobbled it all up: the vocal intonation, inflection, cadence, timbre, tone, and rhythm. For entertainment, I'd deliver the words differently and experiment with substituting phrases and words.
I've urged salespeople for years to memorize closes, word for word. Almost no one does it because it's tedious.
The controversial guru Bikram Chowdry, whose Bikram Yoga was once the most practiced yoga in the world, spread his yoga through instructors, most of whom were novices to the practice. Only two requirements were needed to be an instructor (1) Do a lot of Bikram Yoga classes in a short time, and (2) memorize the entire dialogue for a 90-minute class - a 32-page long word document.
Perhaps memorization gets a bad rep because it seems caveman-like. You want sophisticated methods, not something an 8-year-old could do. Or maybe memorization feels like it cheapens the subject matter. Perhaps it triggers flashbacks to cramming for history tests. Whatever.
My friend Chris Voss (author of Never Split the Difference) says, "When the pressure is on, you don't rise to the occasion—you fall to your highest level of preparation."
How many closes have you prepared? If I broke into your house at 2 AM, awoke you from slumber, and said: "It cost too much," could you reflexively say: "how much too much?" Or "How do you know it costs too much?" or "Are we talking cost or price?" or "Maybe it doesn't cost too much" or "yes, it does cost too much, but is it worth it?" or a dozen other openers to a price objection.
Give me a good product, a right fit prospect, and an average salesperson, and as long as that salesperson is willing to memorize 100 closes, I'll turn him into a top earner in no time.