Sales
The Secret Psychology of Sales: How to Stop Chasing and Make Them Come to You
When I look at how difficult selling seems for so many entrepreneurs, it honestly blows my mind. But then I remember: it shouldn’t. Because when I first started selling, I was absolutely terrible.
I started selling financial products in October of 1985. I didn’t make my first sale until April of 1987. That is a painfully long dry spell. Yet, within a very short period after that first closed deal, I became the top salesperson in our office, month after month.
What I’m going to share with you is exactly how I made that shift. It doesn’t matter if you sell real estate, cars, coaching, SaaS, or agency services. The psychology of selling is universal. Today, selling is easier for me than taking a nap (and I’m a professional at taking naps).
Here is the unfiltered truth about why selling feels so hard, and the exact psychological shifts required to make it effortless.
The Number One Reason Selling is Hard
The primary reason selling feels impossible is simple: You want them to buy.
This is the biggest mistake new salespeople make. They are desperate for the prospect to say yes.
One of the reasons sales is easy for me now is that I am completely unvested in the outcome. I don’t pretend I don’t care—I actually do not care if they buy.
How can a salesperson say they don’t care if someone buys? Because I understand a mathematical certainty called the Law of Averages.
The Law of Averages dictates that out of every X number of presentations you do, you are going to make Y number of sales. For every person, that average is different. For one person, it might be one sale for every ten presentations. For someone else, it might be one in twenty. For a master, it might be one in four.
When you internalize this law, every “no” is just moving dirt to find the gold. You don’t need this person to buy; you just need to keep moving through the numbers.
The Power of Pre-Indoctrination
While you have a baseline average, you can dramatically increase your closing rate through a concept called pre-indoctrination.
“Indoctrination” sounds intense, but the root word, doctrine, simply means teaching.
If you can teach a prospect something valuable about the result they desire—not pitching your product, not explaining your features, but genuinely teaching them about the transformation they seek—the likelihood of them saying “yes” to your eventual offer increases exponentially.
Consider this: A business can generate eight figures in revenue with zero ad spend simply by utilizing a free content channel like YouTube. Why? Because of pre-indoctrination.
Before anyone gives you money, three things must happen:
- They must believe you are credible.
- They must believe you have their best interests in mind.
- They must believe you are better at getting the result they lack than they are.
This is why constantly pitching is a failing strategy. Research suggests a person needs to spend about seven hours with you before they feel like they know, like, and trust you enough to buy.
Unfortunately, most salespeople try to close the prospect the moment they meet. It’s like walking up to a stranger and saying, “Hi, will you marry me?”
You have to date before you marry. By providing immense, free value upfront—what I call “community service content”… you allow prospects to spend thousands of aggregate hours with you. They begin to feel like they know you.
When a farmer plants a seed, he doesn’t go out every day and yell at the dirt, “Are you going to grow or not?” He trusts the soil, the sun, and the water. Plant good seeds through valuable content, and eventually, people will say, “I can’t believe they are teaching this for free. If they help me this much for free, I can only imagine what paying them looks like.”
The 3 Rules of the Sales Psychology Framework
If you want to master the secret psychology of sales success, you must internalize these three rules.
1. Don’t Be Greedy
My definition of “greedy” in sales is desiring your outcome more than you desire their outcome. It is attempting to extract more value than you deserve based on the work you’ve done. This usually manifests as either overcharging or underperforming.
Let me be clear: Having premium, high-ticket offers is not the same as overcharging. You can charge $50,000 or $100,000 for a service—if you can legitimately help that client 10x their investment. If someone pays you $50,000, and your system helps them generate $500,000, you have not overcharged them.
You are overcharging when you cannot deliver the transformation commensurate with the price. Don’t be greedy. Ensure your fulfillment is worth infinitely more than your fee.
2. Don’t Be Needy
Never sell because you need the money. Even if you do need the money, you cannot allow that energy to enter the sales conversation.
Selling is not convincing. When you try to convince people, you come across as needy. And nobody wants to buy from someone out of pity. They don’t care that you need to feed your kids; they only care if you can solve their problem.
Divorce yourself from the need for a “yes.” Adopt the mindset of “SW, SW, SW, N” — Some Will, Some Won’t, So What, Next.
When you stop coming across as desperate, your closing rate will climb. It’s the classic dating dynamic: the person playing hard to get is infinitely more attractive than the person begging for a date. Be the hard-to-get salesperson. You are leading them to a solution, not begging them for a transaction.
3. Be “Seedy” (Sow Good Seeds)
Instead of being greedy or needy, be “seedy.” Recognize that every word you speak, every piece of content you post, and every result you deliver for a client is a seed you are sowing into the garden of your future reputation.
If you prove to people you can help them by actually helping them for free upfront, you are planting seeds of immense goodwill.
The law of the harvest dictates three things:
- You reap what you sow (plant good value, reap good revenue).
- You reap later than you sow (the payoff is rarely immediate).
- You reap more than you sow (one seed creates a tree full of fruit).
The Poverty Programming Holding You Back
If you struggle to implement these concepts, it is likely because you are fighting against deep-seated “poverty programming.”
Your mind is a supercomputer. Most of us are operating on a “failure operating system” installed by society, media, and our upbringing. You cannot run a “success software program” (like high-ticket sales or wealth creation) on a failure operating system; you will only get an error message.
Society programs us to associate wealth with greed. Look at pop culture: the villains are almost always wealthy billionaires, while the heroes are scrappy and poor. We are conditioned to believe that asking for money is somehow immoral.
Business schools will teach you for eight years how to practice law or medicine, but they won’t spend ten minutes teaching you how to acquire the clients or patients needed to run the practice. We are programmed to be laborers, not wealth creators.
To become exceptional at sales, you must uninstall this poverty programming.
The Ultimate Sales Close
When you finally get on a sales call, remember that groups are better than one-on-one. Do your heavy presenting via webinars, video sales letters, or content. Save the one-on-one calls for the final close, especially for high-ticket offers.
When you do get on that call, do not launch into a pitch. Ask them: “What did you like best about what you saw in the presentation?”
Let them answer. Then ask: “What questions do you have?”
Answer it, and immediately ask: “What other questions do you have?”
Keep answering until they run out of questions. Do not let questions fester into objections. When they are finally out of questions, use the law of reciprocity: “Great. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” (They will always say no).
“What appeals to you most about this? Result A or Result B?” (They will usually say both).
Then, deliver the final question: “If you had an opportunity to start benefiting from both sooner rather than later, would you choose later, or would you choose sooner?”
They will say “sooner.”
“Great. How do you spell your first name?”
You don’t need to send them a link to “think about it.” You close them on the spot, collect the details, and process the payment.
Stop trying to force people to buy. Plant your seeds, divorce yourself from the outcome, and let the law of averages build your empire.