The Doctor - Diagnose First, Prescribe Later

Just like a doctor, your role is to uncover the truth about your prospect’s challenges before offering solutions. 

I’ll explain how to ask the right questions, listen deeply, and create a safe space for prospects to open up. This approach not only builds trust but also positions you as the authority they need.

In this month’s Stump The Guru show, I will focus on a cornerstone of Trust-Based Selling: Diagnose first, prescribe later.

I've made it my life’s mission to create the clarity that is missing in the traditional sales process, through decades of working with thousands of business owners all over the world, refining Trust-Based Selling into a true art form:

· Stop "chasing" ghosts (leads that never call you back!)
· Make the sale in ONE conversation, without pressure
· Stop selling, create deep trust instead

I’ve taken my mission one step further and created a livestream show called “Stump The Guru’” -- where you get the opportunity to jump on live and ask me your toughest sales questions that you’d love an answer for.

Get Ari's latest best-selling book "Trust In A Split Second!" for FREE along with a Complimentary Lead & Sales Growth Consultation (Value $995.00) at http://www.UnlockTheGame.com/FreeConsult, and join him as a guest on his podcast "Stump The Guru" and get your chance to ask Ari one-on-one questions, fill in the form to be clickable to this link: https://links.arigalper.com/widget/form/rh5YanDqzZqPHVBCKlKG 

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome to Stump the Guru Podcast with your host, Ari Galpa, the world's number one authority on trust-based selling and the creator of Unlock the Game. This monthly podcast will bring you guests from virtually every industry unrehearsed to try and stump Ari with their most difficult sales challenges. This podcast is for business owners, financial advisers, entrepreneurs and sales executives. The guests in this show have only one goal in mind: to stump Ari. And Ari has one goal in mind: to overturn the notion of selling as we know it today by building trust between buyers and sellers.

SPEAKER_04 0:44

Hi everybody, it's Ari Galper here, and welcome to the Stump the Guru Show. If you're new, I appreciate you being here. Um we specialize in trust-based selling. This is a chance to come on live, ask me a question. Uh, our whole philosophy and approach is very different than we might be used to. Uh, we're very contrarian in terms of our uh thought process. But as for 20 years now, doing trust-based selling, helping a lot of business owners, people in the field who are struggling with chasing opportunities. And uh this is a live show we do once a month. It gets converted to our podcast. You can listen to on Spotify. So welcome those who are listening but can't be here live. Uh, this is a show where people can jump on uh and ask me a question, challenge me, give me their toughest issues they might have, and I'll help get through it with a different perspective to give them insights to solve their problems in terms of how they're trying to trying to work on getting people back on the phone or closing a big opportunity, but from a trust perspective only, not selling perspective, which is we'll talk about a theme about that today. But I want to first mention if you don't know, we launched our new Soling with Trust app only a month and a half ago, and it's growing very quickly. It's for free. You can get the app at regalper.com forward slash app or the app store. And inside there is my learning hub where you for free you can access my Master in the Mindset course. Uh, you'll be able to communicate and post up to our other members, introduce yourself. We have a contest for people who are referring members inside the app to win a free trip to Australia to have lunch and meet with me and do this work with me over here near the opera house where I live. And so it's exciting times right now. And hopefully, if you like this podcast, but you haven't downloaded the app yet, you're missing out because inside the app, this members sharing case studies, stories. I'm providing insights, new ideas, languaging not provided the outside world, only inside the membership program. So it's free to join. Again, download the app at regalper.com forward slash app. Soon, probably mid-year, we'll be launching the community out to the offline real world. We're gonna have chapter leaders in every city around the world, what I call trust-based leaders, where you can uh have your own chapter uh group, networking group come in and business owners, and you can facilitate have helping them build trust in their businesses using our structured materials. So it's quite easy to follow, but it gives you a chance to build your own network, give you exposure, positioning in your own local community. So to get that spot, you have to apply to become a trust-based leader, which is inside the app itself. So again, uh, if you don't have it, it takes two minutes to download it, get it on your phone. There's also a desktop version. You get to it from arigalper.com. Just click on login, it'll take you right inside there once you get it signed your phone. You can see it on the computer as well. So thank you for being here today. Our theme today is this whole notion around the idea of being the doctor, not the pharmacist in your sales process. Now, what does that mean? I did actually do a keynote yesterday and I and I told the audience, I said, many of you in this room, without even knowing it right now, are wearing two hats. You're wearing the doctor hat and the pharmacy hat, pharmacist hat, and someone said to me, Yeah, I'm also my the secretary or the admin hat also. Well, yeah, you're right, you have three hats. And I said, But inside your sales conversation with somebody, you have to take all the hats off and leave one on, and that is being the doctor. When the doctor talks to a patient, they don't work hard to build rapport with them. They don't try and become their best friend, they don't even try to be liked. Now they hopefully do have some bedside manner and they have some empathy and they care about you, which most hopefully do, but they don't add a social structure to initiate a conversation with you, right? They say to you, What does it hurt? But what do we do in sales the old way? We try, we work hard to be friendly. How are you doing today? Where you're from, how you hear about me? I love your shoes, uh, love your haircut. What we work really hard to rapport with people, and when you rapport with someone who doesn't know you yet, they think it's a that you have a hidden agenda. And I know it's hard to detach from this because we've been taught to believe relationship building equals trust, and it does. If you're willing to wait a long time to get the trust process, but what if you can remove the relationship piece from your process and only build trust with them? When I see when I say trust, I mean when someone says to themselves, wow, he gets me, she gets me. It's when someone respects you, not like you. Okay, we get confused about that because we think they have to like us and get to know us better for us to work together. Now, here's the thing if you invest energy in them becoming your friend and liking you, what happens is you position yourself as a peer. It's a peer-to-peer relationship, not an authority-to-peer relationship, right? So when you're equal to them, you have to work very hard to keep them happy. And it's hard to get to the truth with them and tell them things that they don't that they need to hear or to ask the tough questions, right? And if you can't clear your mind like that, what happens is you end up having a lot of assumptions in your mind, a lot of questions to ask yourself. Because what happens is we often have what I call the expert syndrome, where we have this sense of when we qualify somebody, our brain goes, Oh, I can help them. And you become the pharmacist so quickly, you don't go down the iceberg deep enough to really unpack their problem, help them with a business case around it called COI, cost of inaction, and have them ask you for help. So the big theme today and lesson today is to say to yourself, are you being the pharmacist too early in the process? Are you giving the medicine away? Are you talking about yourself too much? Are you being way too friendly? I'm not saying don't be yourself. Of course, be your natural self. But don't overextend yourself to the point where now you're a friend, you're trying to become their friend, and now they like you but don't respect you. Here's why. Because you'll end up chasing them to get a response back and they won't call you back. But if they respect you from the beginning and trust you with the structure that we teach, and you want to get if you want to learn more about that, just get my app. It's free, like I said earlier. Download it to your phone, something we trust, or get my free book at the trustbook.com. We'll pay for the post, we'll mail it to you in the mail. Uh, and we can read it yourself. If it resonates with you, great. But the concept here is we live in a commoditized economy right now. You are being shopped, okay? We're all being shopped. So if you're trying to deliver value to them and relationship building with them from the beginning of your process, you're gonna hear this. I want to think about it. Then you got to chase them. That's not how life should be. Instead, you should break that cycle, know how to build trust with them from hello, and go do the x-ray, build on the iceberg with them, but build trust along the way using our trust-based languaging and not get stuck having to chase people, don't call you back. That's the problem that we solve for low-volume, high-margin businesses that are struggling with long sales cycles. If that fits you, reach out to all these options that I gave to you earlier to start learning how to, I say, detox yourself from the act of selling in itself and instead learn how to build trust with someone else. That's the whole goal. That's the whole theme of our work that we do with clients. It's a part of our community that we're building now called the trust movement inside the app. And if you want to be part of that community, please join us. We're looking for business owners who believe trust is their core value, and the act of selling in itself is not liability, not a positive. Uh, and so on that note, we'll jump in the show. And here's where people have a chance to come and ask a question. Uh, and I see some questions coming in on the chat box here. Can I subscribe to you? You can download the app on the app store, regalper.com forward slash app on your phone and get into our our uh community there. Um, if you want to ask me a question live now, go to regalper.com forward slash live. It's a new page we have on our website, regalper.com forward slash live. Go inside there. You'll see a screen, you'll see me in there right now. And there's a button underneath that. There's three buttons actually. One button to ask me a question now, to go into the back of the room here and ask me a question live. The second button is to be notified of our next shows coming up. The third button is to get the app. So you cannot, you can't, there's no chance you'll miss something here. So if you have a question, come on now and hit hit that button to join the show. If not, I've got Sam back here, I believe, who will happily uh chat with me about the theme today. In many cases, people love our chats um because we share insights. Both of us are on the ground. We're uh at the ground level talking on new opportunities every single day. We see this happening every day in front of us. We're teaching this to people. So uh if no one's there, no problem. If there's someone there, come on in. Steve, how are we doing so far?

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Alrighty, right now it's pretty quiet. We had a gap with the live stream, but it's fixed. Apparently, something updated overnight. But this is what happens every time. But the beauty is for anybody, you can all go to arigalper.com slash live now. Whenever there's a live stream, uh, it'll always be synced up there, so it'll be an easy place for everybody to find. And it's working. Oh, nice, very cool. So I'll bring I'm gonna bring Sam on. It's uh let me bring Sam in here. Hey Sam, how are we doing?

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Hey Steve, good, don't you love technology? Yep, fantastic. Hey, Ari, good to see you again. How are you doing, Sam? Good, good. Uh this theme that you were talking about with the doctor patient, I love it. And and one of the things that you told me a long time ago that really resonates with the best way to understand this is that if a doctor starts to prescribe medicine or antibiotics or anything before they've actually diagnosed and or got their medical history or taken the time to really understand, I mean, that's a pretty serious offense. Okay, I mean, it's likely that some serious stuff's gonna happen, right? So, I mean, that's the best way to think about it. And and you know, we we all should be mindful to not be that pharmacist and start dispensing it because you're right, most people are very familiar with you know their expertise, they hear a problem, their instinct goes, I can solve that, I've done it before, no worries. And they instantly go to the wards of medicine. So, you know, that's that's a good thing um to think about it that way. But the other thing that uh I wanted to touch on what you said is that about the whole relationship thing, you know, and it's it's true. You go see a doctor, they don't start to say, Hey, look at my degrees on the wall. Uh, let me tell you what I've done, let me tell you about all my clients. It's they don't care, they don't start to tell you about how great they are, they don't care about their competition, they just hear, how can I help? Right? They want to solve the problem. And and the thing that really stood out from what you said is the fact that this whole notion of they don't want to be, they don't try to build a relationship, you know, they're not trying to be your friend. And and the truth is that if they do go down that path, it becomes a bit of a compromise. Because if they've got something serious to tell you, you know, it becomes awkward. They don't want to, it's hard to share, they feel sorry or whatever, you know. So that's another reason why there's a bit of a you know, a bit of a delineation in their approach. You know, they can't really be your friend because obviously that compromises their ability to give you the truth. You know, you're you're a truth teller. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_04 12:16

Look, it's unethical for them to prescribe anything prior to a non-assumptive diagnostic approach. That's why when you go to get a second opinion to a doctor, he doesn't ask you for the first opinion. Because he he has to start from the scratch and look at the evidence himself. But what do we do unconsciously? We have assumptions, we research the client first, we we start to uh analyze and then start and solve the problem. We we sort of mess everything up by trying to compress everything quicker and move them down the sales cycle. The difference here is there's no sales cycle. You strictly build that trust by pulling the onion back at a very deep level, asking trust-based selling questions that connect with them and have them open up to you. Things like, you know, is this a priority for you? How difficult is this? What's your timing on this? And you have to wait for this moment, and this is the magic moment when they say to you, How can you help me? You cannot prescribe or talk about yourself or your business or your solution, but it's gonna be hard until they say that to you. How can you help me? And you have permission to walk them through your roadmap process. So it's important to break this down for people to understand because yesterday I did a keynote talk to lots of business owners, and they all found themselves jumping in too early. Yeah, and try to become their friend. I I role-played from the from the stage, and I said, Let me ask you all a question. You do a live meeting with someone on Zoom, how do you start two meetings? And they all started saying, How are you doing? Nice to meet you. Where are you from? I I you know, would you play the game last night? They start they do the all the build rapport building thing, and everyone they respond with rapport building because it's a social structure, but everyone knows it's fake. Because how can you become a friend with someone who's you know who you don't have a relationship with yet? So especially in sales context. So that that's the key opening there.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yeah, I mean, real relationships take time, and and people know the gig, you know, they've read the sales books that know sales 101 is build rapport, right? So everybody's been conditioned to that. Um, you know, and the other thing too is I think it's controlling your environment. So, you know, you've mentioned many times about you know the power of Zoom and and being sort of a video call, something like that, as opposed to you know going to people's places or having them come to you. And yeah, sure, there's going to be a time where that sort of thing's necessary, but but you think about what happens, you know, if it's if they come to your office, then once again, it it's it's compelled to do this. Hey, let me show you around. Do you want a cup of coffee or or let me go down the road and get you something, you know, and all of a sudden it starts off on a very bad note. It's instantly into that same rapport-building scenario, plus not to mention all the driving around. So the thing I like about Zoom is you know, it's at a scheduled appointment. There's no room or capacity, technically, to do all the fluff. So it's very conducive. People know hey, it's an appointment, it's in my calendar, just like a doctor's appointment, I've got to show up. They know what to expect if you position it right, and then you've got actually permission to start that call with all about them and problem-focused and problematic. There's no need to say, hey, let me show you around all the bits and pieces. What do you think?

SPEAKER_04 15:30

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you, and I think the more we're talking about this, the more people start to shift their thinking around this. And the irony of all this is you don't you can still be your natural self, you can still be your self, but hold off on the energy that you're putting into the process to get them to like you. That's the hardest part. We're so conditioned to get people to like us first before they can trust us. And the irony of all this is they don't even have to like you to trust you or respect you, and that's the big shift here. Let's take a pause for a second. I think someone else is coming on for a question to see if someone out there for a question.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Yeah, I'm gonna let me close off Sam real quick. I'm gonna bring on Larry Wall. Uh, here we go. Hey Larry, how are you today? Hey, I'm doing good. All right, if you can let everybody know a little bit about yourself, your business, and then your question for Ari, please.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Yeah. Uh, I've been a longtime financial planner, uh worked um with groups as a solo practitioner, a little of everything uh over that uh span of a career. And I currently find myself working in a kind of more of a team environment. And uh my question that I've been really struggling with is um when you have that trust mindset and you know the process of you know how to go down the iceberg and everything, if you don't have those around you in your team who do not have that trust mindset and and are skeptical or wary of you know how it works, and and and I I've even tried to uh at times try to get them to you know to be quiet, quit quit throwing up on your shoes in front of the client, you know, like don't don't don't tell them that. Don't don't wait wait no. And so um I mean um short of uh getting them on a zoom call and have you shake them around a little bit, um, but you know what what is what is a good way when you're playing team in uh so when you say team, are you saying that for first meeting with a new opportunity you are on the with someone else or not?

SPEAKER_04 18:01

Oh why why are you doing that?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Well, that that's that's really what they're wanting to do. The uh the CPAs want to be involved because it's their client that they're bringing.

SPEAKER_04 18:14

Oh, it's referral, is that it?

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 18:17

Oh, I see. So if someone referred you, and the referral or the source referral source wants to be on the call, they ask you to be on there. Did they say I want to join? That's part of the the rules, or yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, I see. And and it's most likely it's it actually in person, it's not oh okay.

SPEAKER_04 18:39

So they come and meet the client with you at the office, yeah. Oh, that's unusual.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Okay, yeah, even though they've made the referral, um, like I said, because they think of it as their client, I see then um referring, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:56

I I get it. There's a couple things that you can do, Larry, and it's not easy working in an environment when someone else does not see the light. Um, and the funny thing is their client on top of that. So that's probably why they're comfortable to just talking over them. Yeah, but do you have a good relationship with these with these accountants, these guys, the accountants? Yeah, yeah. Maybe what you can do is just have a briefing with them in advance of your next before they refer you again. Yeah, just say, kind of say, look, we're we're taking a different approach now for our meetings that are trust-based and less education-based for the purpose of understanding their problem first, and maybe show them the roadmap. Here's our process that we use now. Yeah, and it requires us to be a bit more, you know, listen more and talk less. Are you okay if we adopt some of this approach when our next meeting coming up? Would that be okay with you? I'm sure they probably say it's okay. Now, if they get resistance, say, you know, I learned about this through our ecopper where they can download the app, obviously. They can get my book for free. We can send it to them. Yeah, but I would just start with you sharing with them the fact that you're making a bit of a pivot in terms of the approach you're using to make it more problem-centric and trust-centric than information-centric. Because he thinks his job is to provide information. That's why he's like that. Yes. That's what he feels like he's got to flex and prove to himself to the client that he knows the stuff.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, uh accountants uh obviously tend to have a lot of credibility with the truth. Yeah, they already have trust. It's it's built in, and so they think they can just kind of say whatever and it's okay. Um, but when they're trying to introduce me as a referred um source to work with them on, um then yes, it it's it gets where they're stepping all over my toes.

SPEAKER_04 20:56

Yeah, having you and them in the meeting together is hard for sure. When you're trying to listen and he's talking in between that. But I sound they're probably he's probably a reasonable guy. They're probably reasonable people. Oh, yeah. I think if you approach them prior to next referral and say, just FYI, we're adopting an approach. You're walking through the process, maybe reformed my work, whatever, to watch something or listen to one of these shows. Yeah, maybe it might help their business as well. Oh, yeah. And and and the thing, the emphasis is we're really trying to become better listeners and less and less talking oriented. That's what we're that approach. And I think people will kind of go, oh, that that that kind of makes sense. I think the way you approach it, Larry, yeah, it gets more adopted easier. Yeah. Not you're not attacking him for doing the wrong thing. You're just saying we're taking a different approach now. We're just listening based mostly and talking less to allow them to feel comfortable opening up to us everything the truth. Because we find ourselves when we give too much information away, they kind of go this just what we need in. That's it. So we're adopting a new approach called trust-based selling where we don't and just kind of educate them on the concept itself. It's hard to argue against the concept because it's it's kind of common sense.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

It's like that sounds pretty good. Yeah, but yeah, I understand that that I'm making almost like a pre-sale before the sale. I have to sell you on being this away. Yes. Because this is what I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_04 22:29

Correct. They have to be on the bus from the beginning. For their own benefit. It's for the client's benefit. Yeah. And you can you can admit to him, look, it's not easy. I've been following this for a while now. I still struggle with this, but it's good for us to learn how to become better listeners. Yeah. Because listening is what trust is. So I think when you do it from your heart and you care about him, you care about the client, I think people won't resist that.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Sure. It's hard to argue against that. Yeah. Yeah, really. It really is.

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Yeah, I love it. Give that a try, Larry. All right. All right, we'll do. I will see you in the app. I'll see you soon, okay? All right. Take care. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 23:16

We're back to the show here, Sunphoo. You're hearing insights, you're hearing a live question there from a financial advisor who's challenged with having folks around him who still live in the old mindset and believe their job is to prove themselves with all their education knowledge, which can actually intimidate people who don't know their knowledge. So we talked today about how he can approach him to or this these people to kind of lay off the heavy uh flexing process and just do more listening. And I think the world needs that now. The world needs less talkers and more listeners to people feel understood, you know, because I think that we're going through a phase right now where uh human respect has been degraded to a certain extent with technology, AI, and all kinds of stuff going on on our world right now. And I think we need to bring it alive, bring that back. That's what we call our movement, the trust movement, to bring trust back into business, back into communication, and back into business growth. Because a lot of companies have missed this uh and they have to catch up now given what's happening in the world. So we'll go back to Sam real quick and see if any Sam has any final thoughts before we be close for today. Come on in, Sam.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Yeah, just listening to Larry there. I mean, look, if you're having a meeting with two people or more, it can be a bit intimidating. That's always a bit tough. I mean, you're just you know a meeting and all of a sudden two people show up. You know, I don't know. I get that one's a client, but yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 24:40

Uh you know what's funny about that, Sam? Every once in a while, if you go to a doctor, they may have an intern with them, and I get uncomfortable. They go, It's okay if I have my intern with me. And I'm like, Okay, but I'm like, I kind of want like an intimate discussion between you and I about my problem. I really don't want this guy to hear this, but we just it's the same concept, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Exactly, yeah. One-to-one is always a more efficient because look, you know, some of these things, you know, that people are vulnerable, you know, you share some information that they wouldn't. If if trust is developed, you're gonna hear a lot that they wouldn't normally share with someone else. And if someone else, someone is there with you, that's gonna dampen that experience. So you won't, it's not effective. Um I feel for Larry because it's a tough situation, exactly. Um, but you know, your advice is gold, and and look, the other thing too is I don't know if the accountant's got some kind of financial incentive for uh for Larry to get that sale or not. But I think the other thing, once he realizes that some opportunities are not converting, then surely the penny will drop there and say, Look, you know, we're actually losing, you're losing money, I'm losing money. Why are we having these meetings if we're not converting? That sometimes gets more attention. And the ultimate trump card is that you know, I say this to people with teams to say, look, you be the expert, you do it your way, and when you start getting results, then people will say, What are you doing differently?

SPEAKER_04 26:12

So true, Sam. Look, I hope today you picked up some good ideas, you're it's you're chipping away at your mindset and slipping back the old ways of chasing people and over-educating and getting them to think about it and non-committal uh procrastination, procrastinated-oriented leads. Then learn about our approach. I mean, it can't hurt but help you. Just download the app for free at regalper.com forward slash app. It's in the app stores. Log in. Oh, put a picture of yourself in there. So you introduce yourself to the group, watch the Master of the Mindset course in there. Sam does a free live QA coaching call every week in the app. You can ask Sam a question. He's my senior coach. I do a call with the members every other week, the VIP members as well. And so there's a lot of help you can get in our learning center, a learning hub, we call it inside our community. So don't be shy. Get to know what we do. If you want to learn a different way, order my book for free at thetrustbook.com. We'll send it to you in the mail for free uh with a stamp and an envelope. You can schedule a time with us, chat with us as well, uh, and have a chat, see if we're fit or not with what you what your mindset is around this, and we'll go from there. So on that note, Sam, appreciate you showing up. And the fact you're showing up is means a lot to everybody here. And uh we'll sign up for now. Thanks for joining the Stump the Guru show.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Thanks, Ari. See you next time. All right.

SPEAKER_05 27:39

We hope you've enjoyed this month's segment of Stump the Guru and that you've discovered some new trust-based selling strategies that you can apply directly to your sales process. You can get access to Ari's trust-based selling 60-minute masterclass at www.unlockthegame.com forward slash video. And if you want to go one step further, you can order his latest book, Unlock the Sales Game, and get a free one-on-one sales growth consultation at www.unlockthame.com. Before we say goodbye for now, if you enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment to review this podcast. It's easy. Just scroll down to the bottom of Stump the Guru Podcast within Apple Podcasts until you reach ratings and reviews. Click one of the five stars under Tap to Rate to leave a rating. Thanks so much, and we'll see you on the next show.