Getting Clients Gets Easy Once You Stop Selling

Can I tell you a secret? The best salespeople don't sell at all. Maybe you're brand new and the thought of getting on a sales call is the one thing keeping you stuck. Or maybe you've done a few and you felt that moment that the client starts to lose interest. Still nodding, still saying, "Mhm." But they're already gone. Either way, this video is for you. Here's the psychology of what's actually happening. When a prospect goes quiet on a call, they're not reacting to you. They're reacting to being sold to. And if the whole idea of cold calling and sales pitches and chasing prospects is the reason that you haven't started your own business yet, or the reason you've only got one or two clients and can't figure out how to get more, this is going to be the best news you're going to hear all day. Because the people making the most money right now aren't the best salespeople. They're the ones who stopped selling altogether. I've built three different seven-figure agencies, worked with over 1500 small businesses, run thousands of campaigns, and today I do it all as a oneperson agency with zero employees. And back in 2014, I lost a deal I should have won in a way that I'll never forget. I was on a call with a dentist in Dallas. I'll tell you exactly what happened in just a minute. But that disaster is what taught me the three-part method I'm going to walk you through today that I call the question close. I'll show you the 35,000 call study from one of the most famous sales researchers on the planet that proves this works. I'll give you the exact scripts I use at every single step. And I'll give you the one question I ask at the end of every call that closes more deals than any pitch I've ever written. And no, before anyone says it, I'm obviously not a doctor, but I keep this around as a reminder that most sales calls would improve dramatically with just a little more diagnosis and a lot less pitching. See, here's what most people don't realize. When you pitch, you put yourself in the worst possible position. You become a salesperson. And sadly, nobody likes salespeople. I mean, think about the last time a salesperson called you. a time share guy, an insurance rep, someone hawking solar panels doortodoor. The second you realized they were selling, you started looking for the exit. Didn't matter what they were selling. Didn't matter how they were doing it or how good their offer was. Your brain just flipped into defensive mode. Well, that's exactly what your prospects are doing on your sales calls. You just don't see it because they're probably being polite about it. I mean, let's be honest for a second. Nobody has ever hung up a sales call and thought, "That was lovely. Hope I get more of those." Not once. Not ever in human history. So, why would we expect our prospects to be any different? Now, think about the last time that you went to the doctor. You didn't walk into the doctor's office hoping for a slide deck. You walked in and said, "Here's what's wrong. The doctor listened. They asked a few questions. Maybe they poked around a little bit. And eventually, they told you what was wrong and what would fix it." They didn't sell you. They diagnosed you. That's the entire shift that I want you to make. Stop being the salesperson. Start being the doctor. And this isn't just some nice metaphor. This is backed by one of the biggest studies ever done on sales behavior. Back in the 1970s and 80s, a researcher named Neil Rackom and his team analyzed over 35,000 sales calls. What they found was that the top performers didn't talk more than the average salesperson. They talked less, but they asked more questions. And the questions they asked weren't, "Do you want to buy this?" They were questions like, "What's not working right now?" and "How long has that been a problem?" Most people get this completely backwards. They think the way to get more clients is to get better at pitching and learn better hooks and build better slide decks and rehearse the pitch until it's perfectly smooth. But it's not that your pitch is bad. It's that pitching at all is the problem. And the more polished your pitch, the more the prospect senses that they're being sold to. And the second that they sense that, the call's over. They just haven't told you yet. You don't need a better pitch. You need to stop pitching. So, let me tell you about that dentist in Dallas. Now, I want you to picture this because it's exactly what happens to pretty much every beginner the first few times they ever get on a sales call. And it's exactly what happened to me back when I was figuring this out. It was 2014, some random weekday afternoon, let's say Tuesday. He'd reached out through my website. He told me before the call that he wanted to figure out how to get more patients through his door, which was great cuz at the time that's exactly what I helped local businesses do. So, we got on the call and I did what I always did back then. I pulled up my slide deck and I walked him through my services and my process and my pricing. basically a presentation that he never asked for. Now, to his credit, he was polite. He nodded. He said, "Sounds great." Then he said those words that you're going to hear on every call that you don't close. Let me think about it and get back to you. Well, he never got back to me. That was 12 years ago. I'm still waiting. And here's the worst part. I had no idea what I'd done wrong. I thought my presentation was good. I thought my offer was solid. I thought I was just unlucky. But about 2 weeks later, a different prospect got on a call with me and stopped me mid- pitch and he said something that I'll never forget. He said, "Adam, I told you what I need. can you just tell me if you can fix it? I remember freezing a little bit because this wasn't in my script. But it was also that moment that I realized that I'd been so busy pitching, I hadn't actually asked him what he needed. I was busy trying to sell him something when all he really wanted was for someone to tell him if they could help him or not. Now, fortunately, that call did end up closing, but it was also the last time that I ever opened a sales call with a pitch. So, here's the method. I called it the question close, and there are three parts: symptoms, diagnosis, prescription. How it works is that you spend about 80% of the call on symptoms, 15% on diagnosis, and 5% on prescription. Most people reverse that completely. 5% listening, 80% pitching, 15% wondering why nobody's hiring you. So, let me walk you through each part now, starting with step one, symptoms. This is the part where you ask questions. That's it. You're not pitching. You're not talking about your services. You're not describing your process. You're just asking questions and listening. Your job in the symptoms phase is to get your prospect to describe in their own words what's hurting in their business right now. And here's where most people mess this up. They ask the wrong questions. They ask things like, "What services are you looking for?" or "What's your budget?" or "What are you hoping to accomplish with marketing?" All of those are salespeople questions. They're questions about you. Doctor questions, on the other hand, are about the patient, the prospect. So, here's the exact question that I open with on pretty much every single call. You can feel free to write this down or screenshot it. What's the single biggest problem you're struggling with in your business right now? That's the opener. I say it, then I stop talking. I don't interrupt them. I don't jump in with solutions. I don't say, "Oh, yeah, we can help with that." I just listen. Then, after I think they've said all that they're going to say, I start asking follow-up questions to go deeper and to try to really understand their symptoms better. So, here are three follow-up questions I use all the time. Number one, how long has that been going on? That one's huge. It gets them to tell you how bad the pain actually is. Number two, what happens if it doesn't get fixed? that gets them to describe the cost of not solving their problem, which is far more powerful than you explaining the value of your services. Number three, what have you already tried to fix it? This one tells you what's failed, which saves you from suggesting something that they've already written off. You might be on this part of the call for 20 or 30 minutes before you move on to step two. That's okay. The longer they spend describing the problem, the more that they convince themselves that they need it solved. Basically, at this stage, they're selling themselves on the pain and the urgency of their problem. Now, here's where this gets powerful. Because you don't have to wait until you're on the call to start the symptoms phase. You can have it happening before they even show up. But let me show you what I mean. Inside High Level, which is the software I use to run my entire agency, I've got a simple automation that sends every prospect a short questionnaire the moment they book a call. Just a few questions. What's hurting in your business right now? How long's it been going on? What have you already tried? What happens if it doesn't get fixed? By the time they show up for the call, they've already written down their own pain. They've already done half of the diagnosis for you. They walk into the call already warmed up and you cut your call time in half. Okay, so that's part one, symptoms. Ask, listen, and then let them describe the problem in their own words. Ideally, automate it so it happens before they even get on the call. Now, step two, diagnosis. Only after they've fully described the symptoms, you tell them what's wrong. Not here's how we can help, not here's our process for solving this. Instead, you say this based on what you're telling me, here's what I think is actually happening. The reason X keeps happening is because Y. And if we don't fix Y, Z is going to keep getting worse. That's the diagnosis. You're not pitching. You're not even offering a solution yet. You're just telling them what's wrong. And something weird happens in the prospect's brain when you do this. They stop seeing you as a salesperson and start seeing you as an authority. Here's the psychological hack behind it. When you're the person who's accurately describing someone's problem, they automatically assume that you also know how to fix it. And here's the best part. You're not really diagnosing anything at this point. You're basically just saying their own words back to them. Same way you'd look at your doctor if they said, "The reason your knee hurts is because your hip is misaligned. And if you don't fix the hip, your knee is going to keep hurting." Well, you'd trust that person. You want their help. You wouldn't ask for the bronze, silver, or gold treatment plan. You just want the fix. But let me give you a real example. Let's say your potential client here is a security company, a business that installs alarm systems for homes and businesses. Well, you've asked them your symptoms questions and they've told you that leads are inconsistent. They're booked up in the summer when construction is booming but dead in winter and they keep losing jobs to competitors who rank higher on Google. Well, here's the diagnosis. Based on what you're telling me, the reason you keep losing jobs is because customers can't tell the difference between you and the other security companies in town. You've got fewer reviews, so you're ranking lower on Google, so fewer people ever see you in the first place. So until that gap closes, you're going to keep losing jobs to whoever's ranking above you. Now notice what I just did. I didn't pitch anything or didn't mention my services. And nine times out of 10, the prospect's response to a good diagnosis is something like, "Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. So what do we do about it?" Which means they just asked you for the pitch. You didn't have to give it. And just like with the symptoms phase, you can speed this up massively with automation inside High Level. I can pull a full audit on any business in under a minute. All I've got to do is log in, go to the prospecting tab, type in that business, and then the software does a complete and thorough audit for me. It shows me their Google listing score, their website performance, their follow-ups, it shows me their weak spots, and I can walk them through all of that live, or I can send that audit to the prospect before the call ever happens. So, by the time we get on together, well, they've already seen the diagnosis in writing right in front of them. The call isn't me convincing them then that something's wrong. It's both of us looking at the exact same report. That one move alone has doubled my close rate since I started doing it. So that's step two, diagnosis. Tell them exactly what's wrong based on the symptoms they described and back it up with a written audit they've already seen. Now step three, prescription. This is where most people expect a big sales move. The pricing packages, comeback lines for objections, the part where I tell you to close and close hard. But nope, it's not what we're doing. The prescription is the shortest part of the call. How it works is that you describe in plain English what would fix the problem. For a security company, sounds something like this. What would fix this is a system that automatically asks every one of your customers for a Google review after the job's done and follows up a few days later if they haven't left one yet. You'd go from getting one or two reviews a month to getting 10 or 15, which would get you ranking higher than the competitors that you keep losing jobs to. And then, this is the magic moment. You ask the one question that closes the entire deal. Here it goes. Would you like help with that? That's it. That's the close. Not a three- tiered pricing pitch. Not, can we schedule a follow-up to discuss next steps? Just would you like help with that? Here's why this question works so well. It sounds like help, not a close. It points back to the problem that they already agreed they have, and it gives them room to say yes without feeling pushed. And here's the piece that most people miss. The prescription doesn't mean anything if you can't actually deliver it. This is where most beginners freeze. They've got the diagnosis down. They've got the prescription ready. The client says yes, and then they have no idea how to actually build what they just sold. This is where the whole thing comes together inside High Lee. The review automation that I just described for the security company, it's already built and so is every other prescription you might end up needing. Missed call automations, lead follow-up sequences, website templates designed to convert visitors into customers. All of it is pre-wired inside of my agency OS. The templates are pre-built. The automations are already installed. You just copy and paste to load it into a new client's account in about 5 minutes, and the whole thing just runs. If you grab the link in the descriptions below this video, you'll get an extended 30-day free trial of High Level, plus my full agency OS. That's every template, snapshot, and automation I use with my own clients. The pre-all intake form, the audit reports, the reputation management system, the AI receptionist, word for word client getting scripts, all of it ready to go. It's linked right below. Grab the trial, load up the templates, and you'll have the prescription ready to deliver the next time a prospect says yes. Now, let me show you what this whole thing looks like when you run it end to end. Imagine that you're a landscaper in Phoenix and you're on a call with me. I open with, "What's the single biggest problem you're struggling with in your business right now?" You tell me your leads dried up over winter. You tell me your phone rings, but nobody's booking. You tell me your competitor down the street is stealing jobs because he shows up on Google first. I ask, "What have you already tried?" You tell me you hired a marketing agency last year that spent your money on Facebook ads that went nowhere. I ask, "What happens if it doesn't get fixed?" And you pause. Then you tell me that you're probably going to have to let one of your crew go by spring. Now I stop asking and I say, "Based on what you're telling me, here's what I think is actually happening. The reason you keep losing jobs is because your online reputation isn't matching the quality of your work. You're 12 reviews behind the top ranked landscaper in your area. Until that gap closes, the phone isn't going to ring no matter how much you spend on ads. You nod. You say, "Yeah, that's exactly it." I say, "What would fix this is a system that asks every one of your customers for a review the day after the job's done and follows up automatically if they don't leave one. Within 60 days, you could be ranking higher than that competitor. Would you like help with that?" You say yes. The whole call took, I don't know, 22 minutes and I didn't have to pitch once. That's the question close in action. So, here's exactly how you implement this on your next call. Step one, write out your three symptoms questions. Even if you don't have a single client yet, write them down today. The first time you get on a call with a prospect, you'll have them ready to go and you'll already be doing this better than 99% of people who've been at it for years. Your opener is, what's the with in your business right now. Your follow-ups are, how long has that been and what happens if it doesn't get fixed. Write them on a sticky note if you have to and put it next to your monitor. Step two, set up your pre-all intake. You want those questions going out the second someone books a call with you. Whether you use Highle or a Google form, get it automated. Step three, practice the diagnosis script that goes like this. Based on what you're telling me, here's what I think is actually happening. The reason X keeps happening is because of Y. And if you don't fix Y, Z is going to keep getting worse. You want to practice saying that out loud at least 10 times. Say it in the car. Say it in the shower. Say it until it sounds like something that you'd actually say and not a script that you're reading from. Step four, memorize the close. Remember, just a few words. Probably already got it down. It goes, "Would you like help with that?" That's the entire close. Don't add to it. Don't soften it. Don't stack it with a second sentence. Just say it like that with the attitude and the energy of someone who genuinely wants to help them. Step five, commit to the silence. After you ask that question, you want to count to 10 in your head before you say anything else. Most people kill their own clothes by filling the silence with nervous talk. All you did here was ask if they would like help with that. So, give them a chance to answer. Now, before you go run this on your next call, I've got three warnings for you. Warning one, the symptoms phase is going to feel really uncomfortable the first few times you do it. Your whole life, you've probably been taught that sales calls are where you talk and try to sell, but in the question close, you barely talk at all. Your instinct is going to scream at you to jump in and offer help and explain what you do. But don't. I mean, if they ask questions, by all means, feel free to answer them. But the person who asks the most questions wins. Warning two, if the prospect says no to would you like help with that. Do not pitch harder. I know that sounds counterintuitive. I mean, they said no. So, surely you should try to overcome that objection, right? Nope. If they say no, you go right back into diagnosis mode and you say this. No problem. I just want to make sure you're looked after. So, you're going to handle the reviews and the ranking drop yourself. You've already got the tools and systems in place to pull that off. That follow-up question does two things. The I just want to make sure you're looked after part takes the pressure off so they're not on defense anymore. Then the follow-up forces them to picture actually doing the work themselves, which almost nobody actually wants to do. Warning three, if you're talking more than your prospect, the method isn't working yet. The fixed is almost always going back to the symptoms phase and asking better questions. The best question calls that I run, well, they look like this. The prospect talks 70% of the time. I talk maybe 25% and the last 5% is me asking, "Would you like help with that?" and then scheduling the onboarding and kickoff, which if sales calls are the part of this whole thing that you've been dreading, it's honestly really good news. You don't need to be charismatic. You don't need to be a great talker. You just need to ask three good questions and then listen. You're not bad at sales. You were taught sales by people who haven't had to close their own calls in years. They built their thing. They hired salespeople and they wrote books about selling, but they don't actually sit on sales calls, at least not anymore. And every one of them will tell you the same thing. have a better pitch and work on your hooks and practice your scripts more. But the truth is, the people who get clients consistently today aren't doing any of that. They're asking questions, they're listening, they're diagnosing, and they're asking that one powerful question at the end. Would you like help with that? Now, if you want the full system I use to run my entire agency, every template, every automation, the pre-all intake, the audit reports, the reputation system, the AI receptionist, all of it, that's what you get when you grab your extended free trial to High Level through the link in the description below. It's free for 30 days, plus you'll get access to my full agency OS pre-installed and ready to go. So, make sure to do that now. And if you want to see the bigger picture of how I actually turn this into a real agency without any employees at all, I'll show you how to pick your niche and show you what services to deliver and show you how to deliver them without burning out. I broke that whole system down inside of a free master class that I've got linked up right here. So, tap or click that now. I'll see you in there just a