Sell For Scale - The Sales Playbook for Growth

The Psychology Behind Why Buyers Don’t Trust You

• Dylan Starr • Season 1 • Episode 5

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If your sales strategy is built around the One Call Close... you're probably bleeding trust.

In this episode of Sell for Scale, I break down why the one call close model is dead—and what’s replacing it in today’s trust-based economy.

Here’s what I cover:
✅ Why one call closes are killing your conversion rates
✅ The simple shift to a two-call close that boosted one closer's rate to 53%
✅ Real stats and case studies proving buyers want trust, not pressure
✅ The 3-step framework for trust-based selling that works across industries

🚫 No more churning reps.
🚫 No more pushing cold leads into fast decisions.

It's time to slow down so you can close more—and keep clients longer.

📲 DM me on Instagram (@dylanstarrofficial) or connect on LinkedIn to share how the two-call process is working for you.

🎧 If this challenged your thinking, hit subscribe and share it with someone still stuck in the old model.

#SellForScale #TwoCallClose #SalesStrategy #HighTicketSales #TrustBasedSelling #SalesLeadership #B2BSales #SalesProcess

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🎯 Want to Close More Deals with Less Resistance?
Download my Ultimate Agenda Formula—the same framework that helped Malick close $54K in his first week and Jason Capital scale to $1.3M in 4 months.

If this episode hit home, subscribe and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

🧠 PS: If you're ready to build a sales machine without relying on superstar closers, DM me and let's talk frameworks.

If your entire sales strategy is closing cold prospects in 60 minutes or less, then your business is probably already bleeding Trust. The one call close model has been pushed heavily in the past few years in the high ticket space. Push hard, go for a deposit, close or die. But today it's completely broken. We are actually living in a trust economy and people don't buy when they don't trust you. In this episode, I'm going to explain why the one call close model is dead, and how you can replace it with something smarter, more scalable, and actually aligned with how people buy today. a friend of mine recently came to me and wanted me to take a look at the sales process of an offer that he's actually the head of sales for. This is for real estate. They are spending money on ads. Actually spending money on ads every single day. And the main issue they're running into is they're turning and burning sales reps. They can't get reps to stick. They're, they're not sticking around and just leaving the offer, or they're not hitting KPI and are being let go from the offer. When I looked under the hood, I can tell instantly what the problem was. They're using the same outdated old school model that everybody talks about today, and that is run paid ads to cold traffic. Have them watch a short video, get them on a call. And no matter what, go for some form of deposit, regardless of whether they seen the video or not. Go for the jur and try to close them. No trust, no process, and even worse, no problem Awareness. Just a hard push to try to get money from people who don't even know what it is that they're looking at. And the worst part, the sales reps and my friend who's the head of sales is being blamed because nobody is closing at Today I'm going to show you three things. Number one. Why One Call closing fails in today's buyer landscape. Number two, the core reason that trust is now more important than urgency. And number three, how? One simple shift moving to a two call close. Increased one. Closers offered a close rate to 53% If you're still chasing cold leads with aggressive closes, then this episode might save your brand and your bottom line. My name is Dylan Star, and this is Sell For Scale. Okay, so I am very passionate about today's episode. Um, this has been a long time coming. I see this issue going on in the space. Over and over again in so many industries, B2C and B2B included. And it is just not only ruining branding reputation, but is hurting so many possible deals that could have turned into revenue just because they weren't willing to be patient and earned the trust of a prospect. I went to see what was going on with this offer and take a look at their sales process and everything that they were doing in their defense, they were doing everything that they were being told to do by another organization that they had hired. So they were following the process in the system literally to a t. And the beliefs that were being instilled into this organization were more calls equals more offers and more offers equals more closes. This statement could not be further from the truth. Reason being is because. When you spend all your time making offers to anyone and everyone, regardless of whether or not they're qualified. Then you not only kill trust, create uncertainty, but you also run the risk of getting terrible clients into your organization. And the moment I went through and saw the objections that was going on from reviewing calls, it was the same things that kept coming up over and over and over again. Now, if you've been following along with this podcast, you know from previous episodes, what my favorite frame is to use. If you guys have been up to date and you've been listening to the episodes, you know it's the qualify frame. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please go back to previous episodes and listen to these episodes in order. So you are caught up now when you are running cold ads to cold traffic and you're getting people who have never heard of you before. Know nothing about your methodology, nothing about you or your process. They are just absolutely cold. They saw an ad, a headline kind of hooked them in and they're like, oh, I'm someone in interested in this. And they go and book a call. Well, when they show up and they literally don't know anything, it's really hard to use a qualify frame. I mean, think about it. How can you dangle a carrot in front of somebody and make them qualify themselves to you when literally the words coming outta their mouth is. I don't even know what this is, or even worse, they don't even remember why they booked the call in the first place. They were just so distracted that they saw an ad and they didn't even watch the video. Now, if you put yourself in the shoes of a sales rep, and maybe you're watching this and you've been in this situation, but if you're literally talking to somebody who has no idea what's going on, they don't know anything about your methodology, and they're really just there for information and they're saying it over and over again, like, I don't know. I'm here for information. What do you think would happen in your mind if you were to go through the normal process and then just being forced to pitch no matter what, pitch them. What are the odds that you think that they're going to be interested? I mean, listen, I understand there's psychology. I understand tonality. I understand there's skills when it comes to sales, but even the best salespeople in the world. It will struggle with trying to force a one call close with somebody who has no trust, no branding awareness whatsoever, and they're literally telling you that they are there to learn more and get more information, right? Meaning that their buyer persona is not even at the part where they're looking for a solution yet they're just trying to learn more and see what ways you can even help the problem, or is there even a problem to be solved? So the result of this naturally was close rates were dropping, and the main KPI that they want is just a very simple 20% close rate. Right. That's all the business owner wants is, Hey, out of all the calls that are booked and that show up, they want a minimum of a 20% closure rate, two out of 10, that is KPI. But because customer trust was so non-existent, people could not hit that on a consistent basis. So here's what's interesting. I have another guy who I am training. Funny enough, sales rep who recently got picked up for a B2C offer, and lo and behold, the organization that is helping the business he's in is the same organization telling this real estate offer that more offers equals more closes. And guess what they're telling them to do? If you guessed, run cold traffic to an audience and go for a one call close. Ding, ding, ding. You guess correctly. Here's what's interesting. He came to me and he said, listen, I keep hopping on all these calls, and the first thing they say is, I'm just here for more information. He's like, what do I do? And I said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to treat that first call almost as if you're trying to build rapport, build trust, understand their needs, and think of it as if you are the VSL. Because what was happening was a lot of people were coming through and they really weren't watching the video anyways, and they had like so many questions and they were just cold. So I put him in the mindset of like, why don't you just become the VSL and here's one rule. Do not pitch them on the first call period. He's like, okay, cool. So then what do I do? I said, awesome. Once you're done and you understand their pain points and you feel like they are qualified for this offer, I want you to then send them videos. And homework and give them stuff to watch and nurture that will address whatever it is their concern was. Right? You have unlimited content. Send them whatever the heck you think is relevant. If it has to be the normal webinar, VSL, then whatever. Send it to them. So that's what he did. He switched to a two call process. First call, connect, qualify, understand needs and set expectations. Then homework in between. Give them videos to watch, and finally hop on the second call. On the second call. Then, and only then do you make the offer. That change alone got him to a 53% offer to close closing ratio, 53%. His total close rate of live calls. That means even, even if he's not making offer to people, they show up to a call. His overall show rate to close rate. Offers aside was 33%. He's not only the number one closer on the team now, but he has the most cash collected. He's taking less calls than every single other person on the team who is forced doing one call closes. So he's doing less volume than them, collecting more cash and has the lowest churn rate out of any other rep. On the team, meaning everyone he is signing up when it comes to cancellations, if they're paying monthly or refunds, et cetera, he has the least amount than everybody else. So just to put that into perspective, every other rep on his team is working more hours than him trying to force one call closes or getting burnt out. Just handling all these objections and going for the jugular. And even if they get lucky and close the deal, they still have more people who are asking for a refund, which they don't get paid on that deal afterwards. So all that effort completely wasted. Now he's not the only one. This is actually working across multiple industries. Let's look at the stats. Forrester research reports that 77%. Of buyers now expect salespeople to act as advisors and not closers. A study by trust radius found that 71% of B2B buyers. Say they rely heavily on self-education and research before ever buying, meaning cold leads need time to warm up and according to Salesforce. Companies with multi-step sales cycles are seeing higher conversion rates and lower refund rates across the entire board. People don't buy when they feel pushed. They buy when they feel seen, heard and understood. So listen, the data tells a very clear story. Buyers want more control, more context, and more trust. The old pressure close into a one call situation just creates buyer remorse, churn, and frustrated sales reps. And here's what will happen. If you do not adjust, your prospects will feel like they're ambushed. Your reps are going to be completely frustrated and ready to leave, and you're going to burn through your ad budget without getting any results. But when you slow down and actually build trust first, your pipeline warms up naturally. Prospects feel like buyers and not targets. And reps actually start enjoying being on sales calls again. Now, does this mean that there's never a time and a place for putting in a one call close? Of course not. I actually did a post about this on Facebook and somebody commented and was saying that they're closing over 30%. Um, and I think 70% of the, the people coming through are actually very qualified. And, um, they're doing one call closes. And I was like, Hey man, listen, that's, that's great. If you ever process that's working and they're coming through and. And the key here is that there's actually a process. Like they already know you. They like you, they trust you, they understand the brand and understand what it is you offer. Of course, you should go for one call close and you actually responded and goes, oh yeah, now that you think about it, we do have a really, really good process. Like they've already seen about three to four hours of content before they even gotten to that stage, which again, makes complete sense. If you have a good process in place and you're not just going cold traffic to a cold audience and they've seen nothing. You've built no trust and you're just going for the jugular, then it's completely different scenario. But I wanna give you a simple, modern framework for trust-based selling in a high ticket environment. Step one, discovery always comes first. Use the first call to ask smart questions, build rapport, and clearly frame the offer as a mutually fit conversation, not a pitch. Step two, trust Bridge. Send a few short videos between calls, case studies, client testimonials. And a short explainer video on whatever your unique mechanism actually is. Let the prospect self-educate and pre-frame the next call. Step three, second call close. Now they've actually had time to reflect and absorb the information. This is when you finally present the offer. Of course, based on their needs and make it easy for them to say yes. It's not a slower process. It's more strategic. And it works because it respects the buyer's timeline while maintaining control the entire time. If you're caught up on these episodes, you may remember in a previous one I talked about a friend of mine that has an agency and we went through and we did an entire sales audit. After doing the audit and refining some of the process, he's actually now doing a two call close. And guess what? Out of the first three calls that he has had, he has closed 100% of them. All three calls were super qualified prospects and every single one of them wanted to work with him. He didn't even go into deep into their needs, their desires, their goals, any of that stuff. He literally just built so much trust and rapport and did such a good job on auditing their ads and their process and showing them a solution in his actual proposal that it fit their needs perfectly. And some of them didn't even need to hop onto the next call. They actually just emailed him back and were like, Hey, how do we sign up? We're ready to go. That's the power of a good process, building trust, and also not burning the lead by just trying to go for the jugular immediately. So here's what I want you to do. Look at your current sales calls? Are you forcing the close too soon? I. Next, I want you to try moving one of your next calls into a two call process. Just as a test. See what happens. Use the first call to listen and then use the second call to lead. Test it and watch what happens. Have you experimented with a two call process yet? I'd love to hear about it and know what actually happened, so just shoot me dm, tag me or message me directly. And if this episode challenge your thinking, then hit subscribe and share it with somebody that you know is still stuck in the old model of doing One Call closes. So next week we're taking this a step further. If you've ever wondered how to compensate your sales reps in a way that drives performance, but also doesn't risk burnout. Then you're gonna wanna tune in to the next episode. I am gonna be breaking down my favorite compensation model that is designed to keep reps motivated, consistent, and loyal to the brand. See you on the next one.