Mo Bunnell breaks down the perfect buy-in process and how you can create a magnetic and enjoyable buying process that clients love. Learn about the key components of a successful buy-in process, the four big "yeses" you need to get to make closing deals easier, how to use curiosity as a purchasing accelerator, and how to make it 34 times more likely your prospect will say yes. Closing Deals by Understanding the Major Steps of the Perfect Buy-in Process There is an optimal order for how we like to buy. Step one is listening and learning. Break the ice, then quickly flip the conversation to the other person. As a buyer, you want to feel heard, and like the person on the other side of the table, understand the unique needs in your situation. You want to avoid beginning by talking about yourself because that triggers the fight-or-flight response most people have when being sold to. Step two is create curiosity. Find a way to be helpful that creates curiosity around going deeper. Step three is build everything together. People buy into what they help create. Talk about the basic steps of what it would be like were they to hire you to solve their problem. By engaging them in the process of solving their problem, you get the advantage of incremental buy-in. If you create a proposal without the prospect's feedback, the only feedback they can give you is negative. Step four is gain approval and get the final yes to the project. You want to avoid selling and skipping straight to yourself and your presentation. If you can construct a buying experience that starts with the other side, you will have far more success. Why Listening and Learning is Key for Closing Deals There is a triple-win when asking good questions. A person's pleasure center in the brain lights up when people offer self-disclosing information. You learn your prospect's priorities in their words. This would be impossible if you didn't begin by listening to them talk. Sharing self-disclosed information is highly correlated to likeability. Asking great questions gives the other person more opportunity to talk. Great questions could look like: "If you could wave a magic wand and change your organization, what kinds of changes would happen?," "If one of your metrics could meaningfully move, which would it be?," or "If you could have a broken process fixed, what would the outcome look like?" Well-designed questions give the other person the opportunity to share something that only they know. With the bulk of your conversations, your prospect or client should be doing most of the talking. Closing Deals is Easier When Creating Curiosity Through the Perfect Buy-in Process Curiosity is an intrinsic motivator. You should try to create curiosity for your services as soon as you can in a conversation. People are highly motivated to experience curiosity and it's one of the key elements of a great buy-in process. Consider your favorite serialized show. It probably ends each episode with an irresistible cliffhanger. This is a great metaphor for what you can do within and between meetings. At the end of your next meeting, talk about the impacts of the next step and how you can't wait to go over the results. If you move too quickly, you squash curiosity. You want things unresolved to give people something to look forward to in the next meeting. Think about what you can leave unresolved at the end of your next meeting. Why You Need the Four Key Incremental "Yeses" for Closing Deals Building a project with the prospect taps into the Ikea Effect; we buy into what we help create. Making incremental decisions and blending your ideas with a potential client allows you to arrive at the best solution to their problem. There are four incremental yeses you need to obtain to secure a project. The first is clarifying the outcome of the project and giving the prospect the opportunity to modify the goals. The second is getting agreement on the process timeline.. The third is the team. At what level does the client want to interact with your team? The fourth is all about the numbers. Understanding this element is the only way the prospect can finally understand the value of the outcome. Depending on the project, you can get those answered all in one meeting or conversation. Even in a really formal situation involving RFPs, there is usually opportunity to engage with the prospect. If you can make some of the building-things-together decisions simple, people will engage. We all want to add value, so give your prospect a way to engage with the work. Speeding Up the Perfect Buy-in Process and Closing Deals Like a Champ The fastest way to get to the next step is to ask for it. A face-to-face ask is 34x more likely to get a yes than a request over email. The key point is being able to see each other, whether that's in person or on Zoom. Make the ask in person and in a manner with which everybody wins. When things go wrong, or you hear an objection, you have to be flexible, act with grace, then ask a follow up question to pin down the issue. Keep asking questions until you are certain of the underlying issue. Once you know that with true specificity, that's when you can address the issue. There are four major objections that people present: not seeing the return on investment, not believing the process is safe, not trusting the team, and failing to understand the strategic value at that moment. Almost everything will boil down to one of those four. Ask for next steps in person, if possible, and make sure you dig into any objections before jumping into a resolution. You're in control of the process and how fast things go. You can create a buy-in process that is enjoyable and magnetic. Mentioned in this Episode: teachthought.com/critical-thinking/the-cognitive-bias-codex-a-visual-of-180-cognitive-biases/ ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3361411/ The Snowball System by Mo Bunnell - amazon.com/Snowball-System-Business-Clients-Raving/dp/1610399609 wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/11-091.pdf hbr.org/2017/04/a-face-to-face-request-is-34-times-more-successful-than-an-email