Jedi Mind Trick To Overcome “I Want To Think About It!”

Dealing with clients can be quite confusing at times, especially when they seem so guarded around us and hold their cards close to their chest. Sam Wakefield shares a sales Jedi mind trick that will give your clients the comfort they need to trust you – mirroring. Going deep into the psychology of how mirroring works, Sam provides great examples on how you can unlock closed clients. Learn this very easy technique and immediately see actionable results.

We’re going to talk about Jedi mind tricks. These are not the droids you seek. We’re going to dive deeper into a technique that will open up any. When you come across the clients, it seems like they’re really holding their cards close to their chest, you’re going through your investigation process, you’ve got your questionnaire out, you’re asking all the questions and it’s like the answers are super short. They’re giving you yes and no answers to open–ended questions, which is bizarre but people do it. That’s like, “I’m here to help you, you called me to come help you and now I’m asking you questions about what your experience is here in the house. You can open up and tell me that because I can’t help you fix it otherwise.”

It’s like they think that we’re trying to drag this information out of them, who knows why, because the more information that they give us, the more stuff that we’re going to try to sell them which is exactly the truth. However, that’s not the way to go about not paying a bigger price. The way to go about it is choosing a less expensive system but they don’t get that. What people think is whatever information we’re trying to get from them, we’re going to use against them. It’s completely understandable because of traditional sales techniques and sales strategies and the used car salesmen. Even especially there are some shysters in the HVAC world, there are some people out there who make the sale no matter what to close the deal. Lie, cheat, and steal to just do it and it’s completely horrible. It gives the rest of us a black eye when we’re trying to serve and sell from a very severance and consultant type of focus.

This is a really fantastic technique to overcome it. I want to set the context of this training or this episode with a cool study that I heard about. There was a psychologist that was comparing the difference in so it’s called mirroring is what we’re talking about but not exactly. This context has nothing to do with tone of voice, has nothing to do with body language, has nothing to do with all that other stuff that we’ve talked about in the past. This has everything to do with just words. In fact, it’s so simple it’s almost laughable. There was a psychologist who wanted to study the difference in positive affirmation and mirroring and find out which one was more effective, which one people connect to, they feel that even subconsciously, completely unintentional. Where is the best place to study this? With waiters at restaurants.

They had their study group. They had half the waiters used positive affirmation when they’re taking people’s orders. “Great, good choice, awesome, that’s fantastic, that’s my favorite. I’m glad you picked that,” that type of positive affirmation throughout the visit. The other group, the only difference was they didn’t do that, they just read the customer’s order back to them, repeat it back to them exactly the way they said it and the results were astounding. The group that would, what we call mirroring, that read the order back to the customer, they got a 70% bigger tip on average than the group that used positive affirmation with, “Great choice, that’s awesome, they’re one of my favorites,” all of that. It blew my mind.

Can you imagine strictly that, these was some of the same people, they didn’t change anything, they just had a handful of days they did one thing and a handful of days they did the other. They got a 70% bigger tip because they used mirroring. People buy from people they know, like, and trust and they like people like themselves. This is like reaching in and flipping the switch to activate that subconsciously in the brain and be like, “I like this person because they’re saying the same things back to me that I said.” It’s like they want to hear. People don’t really want to hear your opinion. They want to hear their opinion come out of your mouth. That’s exactly what this does and it’s awesome.

It is repeating back the one to three keywords, the last three words that this person said or the one to three key critical words, just repeating it back to them, staying calm, nice and cool, and repeat it back to them. This is the way to unlock, to uncover a lot of things and we’ve talked in the past about using those clarifying questions of how so, tell me more, this is even better. People will start to literally vomit information all over you the second you start using this mirroring technique. Let’s have an example. You’re asking about temperatures in the house. You’re sitting down at your visit and the question sounds something like, “When some rooms are cool, are there other rooms in the houses that are warmer than the rest? Which rooms in the house are warmer than the rest?”

They’re like, “Not really,” and so you repeat back “Not really?” and it forces them. Try this with anybody in any type of conversation and they cannot resist but to tell you more information. This works with your partner, this works with your kids, this works with somebody at work that you like or don’t like. They literally work with every single person. Try this the next time you get to a family meal and sit down at the table and you want to practice. Somebody asks, “Would you pass the salt?” You’ll be like, “The salt?” and there is going to be a string of words. It’s not just, “Yes, the salt.” It’s so powerful.

Repeating back the last word or a handful of words will completely unlock that client that is being really closed. Their arms are folded, they’re sitting there cross-legged and you know they do not want to give up much information in the visit. It doesn’t have to just be in the initial investigation phase. It could be when you’re talking about how many people live in the house, the temperatures. This is effective when it gets towards the end of the presentation and you start asking closing questions, and especially to get them to clarify on what is holding them back and what is keeping them from moving forward right now.

Restate it back to them and with that, you don’t even have to use a lot of inflection but there are two different ways that you can use it for your tonality and tone of voice. In fact, I’m going to do an entire episode on different types of tonality and different types of tone of voice and what each one is used for, and how to accomplish certain things with each tone of voice. There’s some really fun psychology to study about that but for now, there are two ways that you want to use these types of questions. By restating this back, you’re not asking the question necessarily but you are. You’re restating back the words. If you go with your tonality, if you restate it back and your voice rises, that turns it into a question. Whatever you’re saying when your voice rises, it makes it a question.

Sales Jedi Mind Trick: Listening is not a passive sport. It’s the most important and active thing that you could possibly do when you’re visiting a homeowner.

Hear that? It makes it a question, and so it sounds like a question. If you go down with your voice, it makes it a question. That was a statement. That’s how to use it, take the exact same words and make it a question so it’s very definite. Especially when somebody asks you for things that you don’t do or your company doesn’t do or they’re trying to nibble on you. Trying to get free stuff out of your package, that kind of thing, you can just give them the, “No, I’m sorry, that’s something we don’t do.” When you take your voice down that way, it’s very definite and you don’t offer anything else. They know that’s a non-negotiable and so they won’t ask about that. It’s a very powerful way to control that type of conversation especially if it’s a non-negotiable.

I’m bouncing around because these are all intertwined techniques and concepts that work together. The nibble is if you’ve ever sat down when you’re buying a new car and right before your pen hits the paper, you say, “That includes a free full tank of gas too, right?” That’s the nibble. That very last-second question to get that last little bit out of the person selling. People will try that with you all the time. If it’s something you want to do, that’s fine but to avoid the nibble, probably one of the most common ones I hear is, “That includes a year’s worth of free filters, right?” My response is if I’ve got plenty of room in the project, sometimes I include it if I like them. If they’ve really not been fun to work with, usually it’s much more of a, “No, that’s something we don’t do.” Another way to say that would be like, “No, but I can give you the link to the best place online to buy them at a discount.” That’s a good way to handle that one, to buy it as a discount, but more importantly, use your tone of voice.

Deflect it down and so they get this definite statement of, “That’s non-negotiable for them. Going back to mirroring, to open people up, it’s so powerful to restate those final two or three words especially if there are critical words that they’re asking about and it’s mind–boggling how quickly someone will open up. Also in this process, which you’ll find, this is the way to shortcut the silly rapport game that people think they have to spend 20 or 30 minutes on. You ask the right questions. Make it a habit even if they’re not somebody who’s withholding information. Make it a habit to do this in your conversation with the people or with your clients. You’re going to find that the rapport goes up dramatically every single time because it’s a rapport-building technique, without having to spend this ridiculous amount of time talking about the weather and talking about the golf game they just played.

Let them talk about themselves but you don’t have to waste time because goodness knows, we don’t have enough time in the day to hit all the appointments and spend 30 minutes building rapport at each visit. If you’re like us, there are some days you’ll hit three, four, five, six, seven, eight calls in a day. If you hit six calls and you spend 30 minutes of needless rapport building in each one, that’s three full hours in the day that’s wasted because they know you’re not there to be their friend. You’re there to be friendly and be professional. This is a much more effective way to build rapport while you’re getting the information from them that you need to work together to build the proposal that is going to work for them.

Just this mirroring technique, restating those words. Right now, it will be like, “Those words?” Restating those words. The words that I’m talking about. Do you see how this works? It doesn’t matter what it is. You literally can say the last one to three words of the last thing they said and they will expound on it. Even fun stuff, like here’s a fun example. We’re going to go back to the dog. Like, “What’s your dog’s name?” “The dog’s name is Jupiter.” “Jupiter?” They’ll tell you why they named the dog that and it’s super powerful. It’s one of those techniques that there’s really no practice involved and something you can implement immediately and see immediately actionable results.

There are a lot of concepts that I love to talk about that is literally just a matter of once you recognize something and you make the change in your brain that it instantly goes into effect and there’s no learning curve involved. This is one of those. It’s super powerful. That’s the message. It’s a little bit shorter than usual. It’s a very quick, powerful, easy technique to implement that’s going to change everything in your rapport building. It’s going to change everything in your investigation process. It’s going to change day and night, the difference with all of that. Once it gets close to the end, when you’re asking them for the sale, this is a fantastic way to handle the, “I want to think about it,” to get them to expound more. They’ll tell me, “Sam, this project sounds great. We really like it and your company. We’re probably going to have to think about it.” At that point, be like, “Think about it?” and then be quiet.

That’s the key with any of these, anywhere you use this, is when you restate those words, you have to be quiet and listen. Listening is not a passive sport. Listening is the most important and the most active thing that you could possibly do when you’re visiting with a homeowner. I’m going to do an episode about active listening and what that means with what we do. Use that to overcome the “I want to think about it” technique. “Think about it?” and then shut up and let them tell you what part of it they’re thinking about. When you hear that, then you can handle whatever comes up. It’s a great way to handle it. Mirroring, restate the last two or three words they just said. Ask it as a question and shut up and listen and they’re going to open up the world to you.

Thank you for reading. I’m so glad you joined us. We hit a thousand listens, a thousand plays on the podcast. We hit over 1,100 plays on the podcast. We’re in nine countries around the world. Welcome onboard, New Zealand. I’m glad you joined us. If you got some value from this, share it with somebody. I was talking to one of our Close It Now group family and she was telling me she implemented one of the techniques in the “How to get people to respond when you’re being ghosted” episode. She immediately got a response and these were people that ghosted her for a couple of weeks. Also, they immediately filled out their financing information. I was super stoked to hear about that.

These techniques work. These are just skills. It’s no mystery anymore how to be a top–end closer in the HVAC industry. It’s something that every single one of you can do. You have to believe that you can and then start using the right words. In order to get results you’ve never had, sometimes you have to use words you’ve never said. You have to do things you’ve never done to get different results and this is exactly how to do that. I’m excited to see all of the plans. I’ve got some humungous plans for this podcast. Join the Close It Now Facebook group, join the community, and join the conversation because these conversations keep going. This is an ongoing conversation. I will talk to you soon.