Ep 24: The Four Pillars of Closing: With Alex "King Kong" Cromie

Most salespeople wait for objections to show up before they try to handle them. King Kong Cromie says that's already too late.

In this episode, Alex Cromie breaks down the King Kong Closing Table, a four-pillar framework built from years of studying his own wins and losses in the field. The idea is straightforward: a table needs four legs to stand. Pull one out and the whole thing falls. The same goes for your close.

The four pillars are Value, Urgency, Likability, and Trust.

Cromie walks through each one, what they look like in a real conversation, how to know when you have them and when you don't, and how to use the framework as a diagnostic tool before you ever attempt to close. If "that's too expensive" or "let me think about it" keeps coming up at the end of your presentations, this episode will tell you exactly which leg is missing.

We also get into how to stack value so the price always looks small, why likability and trust are not the same thing, and how to create urgency without feeling pushy.

Cromie closes with a rapid-fire round of principles that have shaped his career, including "care more, close more," "learn more, earn more," and "be a savage, never accept average."

Practical, honest, and straight from someone who has been in the homes and figured out what actually works.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You know, we often talk about how the difference between a loser and a closer is one letter, C. Well, I went and found a gentleman with the last name that started with a letter C. It's Cromie, and he's going to talk about closing tips today on the drive. All right, welcome back to the drive. We've got the King Kong closer in the house, Cromie himself. You know why I don't call you Alex, don't you, Alex? Of course. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's weird. Like my wife is named Alex, and he's one of my best buddies and longtime sales friends. It just feels weird, man. It feels weird. When I mix it up. My guy friends named Alex, and now I married an Alex. I don't know. It's my own uh my own issues. But uh, you know, you have your issues, and that's why you've tuned in today, hopefully. Listen, closing is an art, it's also a science. Uh, and and look, there's a little bit of of of science and great art if if you've studied that, and I have. Um, but when when we look at our subject today, uh, you wrote a talk again, cromie, that I just absolutely love. You you've named it King Kong's Closing Table. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

What the hell is that about? That's right. That's uh that's the result of missing many, many, many closes. Looking back and figuring out why and starting to look at the patterns. And I and I noticed that my strong closes had had four four different pillars to it, right? Like a strong table's got four legs. Um, you know, some of my good closes had had these had three of the four pillars. Pillars are ingredients, these these topics were pressed. We're gonna hit, yep, yep. And then, you know, I realized when I missed sales, it was because maybe I had two for one of these four ingredients, and you've never seen a a two-legged or a one-legged table.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

I was I was telling you when you told me about this, you know, Brian Adams, the the great uh leader and and founder of integrity, uh, sent us this, those of us managing partners, and they actually they actually come unscrewed. It does it stand with two legs? It doesn't stand with two legs. That's gonna show you. So, you know, obviously, I'll do this and you know, I'll drop it, and yeah, it obviously folds. So it's funny, Brian needed only three legs. Live leave it to you, Chromie, to go to four legs. Yep, okay, to have to one up the man there. Shout out to you, uh, BA. But uh again, integrity built on these three pillars. It's life, it's health, it's wealth. We're talking about leading a client to a yes and getting as as minimal objections as possible. And I like the way you kind of frame this because you're like, Harvey, if these four ingredients, if these four qualities, if these four attributes are in your presentation, if they're in your communication, your dialogue, and the client feels these four things, it's gonna be a stable, solid jump up and down. You know, nine times out of ten, maybe ten times out of ten, according to you, you're leaving with a sale. You're leaving with a yes. Talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Yeah. So these four things are my green light to close, right? It's like my checklist right before I close. If I don't have one of these, I know that's what I need to hit on before closing. If I'm missing a couple, I need to do a better job before I get to this point. But it's like a diagnostic tool before my close to help me know if I'm ready, if I've got what's required.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

I think also when you say diagnostic, you know, when your check engine light comes on in your car, you don't know what the hell's wrong. Isn't that a terrible feeling? No, it's the word. When that thing comes on, you're like, okay, what the hell is it? What has happened? Did I change the oil? You know, is it um is it is it something that that's deeper than that? But when you go and you run that diagnostic check, they're able to identify where it is that something is deficient, where it is that that, you know, matter of fact, if they don't fix that, it's gonna lead to a a bigger problem. And I I like the fact that we can we can put a title on these, and these are these are verifiable, they're identifiable. And I I would just offer for suggestion to our watching, listening, uh viewing audience, dude, make sure that that the optics of these are in your presentation. If you're a coach, make sure you're teaching these because this is going to make it so much easier to acquire more yeses, get less no's. Let's get into it. What are the legs of this table? Talk to me.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

So uh you want to go one by one? One by one, man. All right. So uh the first leg of the closing table is value. All right. Value is one of the required components of a strong closing table. Value is basically what's in it for the client, right? Price is what you pay, value is what you get. So if we were to think about, like it's funny enough, I was a terrible server, but you know, when we go to the nice restaurant and the server comes up and uh he goes over the special, he sells a dozen of these specials. And then maybe another server struggles to sell one. Same dish. What's the difference? Well, one is communicating the value, right? This fish was caught here, and then they did this to it, and then we did that to it, right? Versus the one that's missing the deals. They're communicating value, right? Finding what's important to the client and then uh accentuating that because it's very simple. If the price exceeds, so the price exceeds the value, it's a bad deal. It's a bad deal. Right right off the bat, you just look at it, bad deal. But if the price is below and the value exceeds the price, right, there's a clear indicator there's gonna be a good deal.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Look, the higher the price, the more the salesperson that's paid on the transaction has to create value. I've bought several luxury cars. This business has allowed me to do that. Um, I remember buying a couple of Bentleys in my life, and you look at the price tag on those things, you know, they exceed 300 grand. Well, you're not just gonna that was more expensive than the first two homes I ever owned. So he didn't talk, he talked to me about the V12 engine, he talked to me about the heated seats, he talked to me about uh just where exactly in England uh the silver on parts of that vehicle uh came from. He talked about the the the 28 different color combinations that would come on at night. Uh he talked about the the various celebrities that owned that I mean, look, you're you're starting to think, holy shit. We've both been to restaurants where someone, again, describes a menu, monotone, right, very boring, not excited. But when somebody talks about those uh Brussels sprouts, extra crispy with the honey glaze, with the bacon laced over, all of a sudden, dude, you're starting to get hungry. You you feel your stomach growling. What is someone doing there? They're differentiating the value in the product, regardless of the price. Right. I mean, hell, we've gone to places before where it's been market price. When you go to a restaurant, it says market price. You don't know what it costs. So the the server, in that case, better do a damn good job at explaining the value of what it is you're about to purchase. I love value.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

The second one real quick, here's what it means for for our agents in the field is if you do not have value, like I said, it's a diagnostic tool. Do I have this, this, this, and this? I don't have value, and you continue to go to the close, I know exactly what they're going to tell you. Sure. Oh, that's too expensive. I can't afford that. Right. So if you want to beat that objection ahead of time before you get to the close, you're making sure the value is present.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

I love it. I love it. We're going to come back to that in a minute, but let's just hit the four so that our viewing audience sees. One is value, two, you you say is urgency.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Speak to that so that there's no miscommunication. Right. So urgency, very simply, is there needs to be a reason for the deal to be done now. Very plain and simple. Without urgency, what are they going to say? I want to think about it. Think about it, wait, delay.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Just talk to someone, totally agree. I, you know, look, we dealt in uh is it more morbidity? Is it morbidity? How do you say that word? When more yeah. That's a word. Yeah, yeah. People asked uh often how did COVID affect your business? We freaking tripled.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Yeah, went up.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

People people started to talk about death. It was okay to talk about, look, somebody's going to bed tonight, they're not waking up tomorrow. Right. Somebody went to bed last night, didn't wake up today. That's why we're here to solve a problem before a medication gets you know prescribed, before an ailment gets diagnosed. And so from an urgency standpoint, in our business, it was a one-call close. I would say 98% of the time. Um, and urgency's massive. Let's go to number three, which God, I love this. Trust. Trust is your third leg on this table. Why is trust so important?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Well, trust is the professional component in there, right? If they're going to give you their banking information, their social security number, the names of the most important people in their lives, their signature, if they're going to give you all this stuff, I think it's pretty safe to assume trust is required. Sure. Right. And so it's kind of like that white coat effect is if you don't have that perceived sense of authority, it's hard for the client to trust you. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Before they trust you, though, the fourth leg comes into play, which is likability. Like ability. So I think you've got to, in my opinion, you've got to like somebody kind of before you trust them potentially. Uh at the same time, that's interchangeable, but creating likability, that's the fourth leg. Again, self-explanatory to some, maybe not to others.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Why is that so crucial? Well, I mean, what is every salesperson in any industry ever said since the beginning of time? Builder poor, build a poor. I mean, it's again, it's always been step one, connect, right? You got to have the personal likability because people buy people. And so if they don't like you, they're probably not gonna want to buy buy it from you.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Sure. I think people sometimes mis uhunderstand the difference between likeability and trust. Speak to that.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Yeah, so there's people I like but don't trust. That's right. And there's people I trust, but maybe don't like. Like I got some buddies that I really like. I do not trust them. Stop talking about Andrew Everhart. Stop talking about my boy Lionheart like that, damn it. But there's uh there's people I like, but I wouldn't trust them to watch my kids or hold my money, right? Um, and then there's people that I trust, like maybe my bank or my CPA, but I don't really like. You know, so that there is a difference there, but they are also kind of connected.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Sure. You know, I think of of dentistry, uh, my wife being being a dentist, uh, I like the hell out of her. But buddy, when she's drilling, I die, you know what I trust her, excuse me. I trust her, but I don't like her. I reversed it. Shout out to you, mama. Okay. It's uh it's such a reality. So, you know, why why do I do this? Let's talk about this because you've you've implemented this into this talk. I really like it. It's the points on uh the the four legs of the table kind of really broken down, and this is where I think you're gonna get some great value.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Take us away, Chris. Yeah, so it's taken away again the four main objections you're gonna get at the close, right? Which is it's too expensive. I want to think about it. Or you get shut down on banking, you get shut down on social security number, or they don't like you, so they don't even pick an option to begin with, right? These are the most common problems we face in the close. So if I can remove these before I get there, I'm gonna close more deals with less resistance than someone who is effectively waiting for those objections to come up.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

So when we talk no value, it's because the price, again, as we mentioned, was too high. No urgency is generally they want to think about it. Uh likability, uh, you you won't get information uh and you're gonna get the runaround largely rapport. There's been no common ground. Uh man, when I used to go into these homes, I would find, dude, I would go from Catholic to Baptist to Mormon to agnostic. Miss Johnson, whatever you are, I I can I can kind of fake it till we make it. And you know, who knows? I I may be a religious free agent. Okay. That's still looking. You'd be shocked at the times I would go to uh homes and and you I was a big Braves fan, but buddy, you don't think if I went in that house and let's just say they were were uh pick a team, Houston Astros, which I hate the Astros, uh cheating bastards. Uh I wasn't an Astros fan during that pre- Oh, them Astros, Lord have mercy, didn't they just do a hell of a job? You're finding something common. I don't like NASCAR. You don't like, you know that. They drive fast and turn left. They drive fast and turn left. I'm I don't like watching Rex. I don't understand that. I don't like horror movies, okay? But if if they had a Freddie Krueger poster in their home for whatever reason, guess who's a Krueger fan? So this is likability, man. And then again, trust, it it comes down to at the end, this person is giving you pertinent information. Vital Social Security number, banking information. Right. You'd better be able to do what it is we're gonna break down. Now, I want to kind of segue because we're gonna get specific into insurance right now. Yeah, okay. We're gonna do what we used to do. It's what I did for a living. This is why I get to live like this. So I want us to kind of go old school. You and I have done it for years together. Let's see if the old man still got it. Uh, let's set this up, let's break down these points, let's get specific. Let's peel this onion, let's leave nothing to chance. Uh, let's go for broke. Let's start with value. Okay. What does it look like? How does it sound for somebody that's watching at NASBY at NESP or or at another organization, insurance-wise, it's important. Explain why and how.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Right. So, so the how really is, I mean, it's a handful of ways. It's not like it's done with one sexy sales line, right? All of these are done in bite-sized portions. Like every step along the way, you're hitting on these a little bit. So, for value, for example, early on in the sale, I like to ask why they sent the lead card in to diagnose a need. This gives me customer specific value. I'm looking for value, right? So, customer specific value is what I'm seeking here. I now know what is important to them. That's a good place to start when it comes to value. Uh, I like to really accentuate our trifold. We go over a series of benefits, discount programs, help to kind of free up the budget for our senior a little bit, maybe to put some money uh towards the life insurance. But what it also does is it gives me a chance to give before I ask.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Dude, I, you know, I loved also tremendous getting into that step seven reminded me of being a great waiter versus being a good waiter. What I mean by that, if you tell me, Mr. Harvey, it's $150 a month. And when you go to heaven, your wife Alex gets $15,000. Now, is what he said accurate? Yes. But what did he leave out? The value. A lot. He left out all the riders. He left out, you know, it's $15,000, but should you die of an accident, it automatically becomes $30,000. And my God, there's a lot of people slipping in the shower these days. There's a lot of people walking off piers and God forbid drowning these days. Hope that doesn't happen to you. But if it does, guess what? Alex gets $30,000. Going through, if it's a waiver of premium, should they go into a nursing home? Going into what what kind of terminal illness uh aspects come with the policy? Again, we're talking about being a pro here, not an amateur. Explaining it's not just 105 for 15,000 upon expiration and leaving this earth. What do they get? What's the entirety of the benefit value for the price 105?

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Talk to me. All right. So well, that's why our step seven is summarize value. We do a summary flows. We want to go over everything the client's getting. You want to go over all of the value, right? Same thing. What they're getting is the value. We want to hit all of these points. So then when we show price in the very next step, that number looks small. Sure. Right. If we don't hit all these value points, and like you said, we just maybe say 10,000 or we minimum, we just we kind of we don't do our due diligence here. That number, same number, is gonna look a whole lot bigger. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

I'm gonna stack the value before the price, but then I'm gonna come right back to it. Every time I mention the price, you know what I'm mentioning? The value so that they see the totality of what it is they're investing in each and every month. I love it. Let's go to urgency, speak to it. How do I set it up? What does it sound like? A lot of people may think they're building urgency, maybe not the way King Kong does it. Beat your chest a little bit here.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Right. So when it comes to urgency, what I'm really thinking of here is where can I find some sort of time constraint, like a hard stop? It could be the end of the year, right? Hey, we got to get you approved for these programs before next year. We don't know what's coming out. We don't know what changes are gonna be made, right? You just created that hard stop. It could be a birthday, right? Those are easy, low-hanging fruits. Um, urgency. I like to see if they've got one, Mr. Harvey. You've got one high blood pressure medicine. You gotta get approved for this before you get too.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Don't be telling everybody look, you see me take one damn pill this morning. Now you go putting my business out there.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

No, no, but listen, you can do this with anything, right? Mr. Harvey. 25 milligrams, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Relax.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

But it's like it's like say, oh, you okay, Mr. Harvey, you got a cholesterol pill. We got to get your approved of this program before you get a second. So you've got one inhaler, you got to get approved before you get two. You have one diabetic medicine, you got to get approved before you can get two. You got two, you got to get approved before you can get three. So there's always some sort of constraint that I'm using there that now it takes the pressure off me and puts the pressure on something else. So why we have to do this deal right now.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

The truth is, people's health change all the time. I don't know anybody that loves their family, that wants to leave a bill. I also don't know anybody that's worked their ass off, which most of our clients have, that don't want to die and be remembered with dignity. The dignity that they lived with, that they worked with. And look, I'm telling you, I genuinely believe uh the way you say I love you is through insurance. It is. It's the greatest transfer, the greatest ability to transfer wealth is through insurance. And so again, we have a great opportunity not to push the client necessarily to a place that that they don't want to be, but to present the facts. And dude, sometimes the facts are scary. Sometimes the facts are fearful. You're damn right. But I look, I've got a huge life insurance policy on me. I don't know when. Uh, you know, I'm going up. I pray it's up, right? Uh, but when it when it happens, I'm confident that that through the the decisions I made, that I'm I'm telling you, the guy used urgency when when he sold me. I'm glad he did. Uh, and I'm glad that my my family's protected. Let's talk about number three, which is likability. Give me some optics. What does it sound like? What does it smell like?

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Right. So it's it's being a real person, right? Like what I like to tell the new agents is take that customer service mask off. Right. And what I mean by that is they they get up to the client's house and all of a sudden now they start talking like this and they straighten up and they're they're totally different persons. Right. It's no, take that customer service mask off, talk in your regular tone, be you, be who you are. And it's amazing how people buy people, and if you're trying to build likability, that's gonna be very difficult to create genuine, a genuine likability, like a genuine connection if you're being fake.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

So if you want to talk to the real client and get the real information that's below just skin depth on, you know, why is this important and all these things? Well, I gotta be a real person myself, number one, ditch the customer service mask.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

You know, I I genuinely uh like people. I know that sounds weird when you hear that, but I do. I know a lot of folks, I've got a one of one of my my great friends, uh uh partners in life. He's like, Harvey, I just don't like people the way you do. You just like folks, man. You you like to hang out with them, you like to get to know them, you like to talk about shit. He's like, I'm more private, I'm an introvert. I don't know that I'm an extrovert, I'm just me. But I I genuinely, when I was in the homes that for those of you that work at NESB are in, I didn't look at myself as any better. I grew up in a trailer. Uh, I grew up in a trailer park. Um prior to that, by the way, when we moved into the trailer park, I thought we were in Hog Heaven, buddy, because we used to live in a trailer that my dad pulled as he would travel around state to state uh in serving the vocation that he was in. But when I sat with these people, I took genuine interest. Hey, what did you do before you retired? You were a lunch lady. I used to love the lunch ladies. I used to love them. They were precious. What got you into that field when you transitioned out? What did you when you learn these things about who they are, about where they grew up, it it does create common ground, right? It creates that bridge that leads to that promised land of trust, which is fourth. Yep. Talk about it because trust is everything.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Right. Trust again, this is life insurance. This is an exchange of vital information, of money, of post-death expectations, right? This is a very, very heavy topic to uh to consider, discuss, and finalize. And so you got to be a professional about it, right? Nobody wants to to handle this stuff with just someone who isn't taking this at the most serious level. And so trust is what's going to get you, man, I would say with life insurance, more deals than all the others. With enough trust, price doesn't even matter. That's right. Right? If you're talking to somebody and you trust that no matter what, they're gonna get what you want done the way you want it done, these other things like price start to become irrelevant. You know, I I I I would agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

I'd also add that there have been times I've overpaid. I remember watching uh Robert Kraft recently talk about he went over budget for Bill Belichick because Bill Parcells made such a huge deal out of who he would become. Kraft had no idea that it wasn't gonna be Parcells that would lead them to that ultimate uh championship, Lombardi trophy promised land. It would be Belichick. Years later, there was great trust there. We're gonna get you out of here rapid fire. I love what you did. I'm gonna leave you with this. Seven, seven comments that you made when you gave this talk. I'm gonna throw them out there. I want to see what you've got. I may have just a little bit of fat on the meat that you give us. Care more, close more. What do you mean by that? Care more, close more.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Look out for your client more, you're gonna close more deals. It's it's very straightforward. Put them first and watch them sign.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Learn more, earn more.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

I love that one. The great Josh Thomas. Great Josh Thomas taught me that. Yeah, this is this is a learner's game, right? There's so much information out there that that's your one of your many competitive edges to make more money. You can learn your carriers better. You can learn your process better, you can learn yourself better. There's a lot of things to learn in this business. It's almost a never-ending book. That's gonna bring you more earnings.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

My assistant just asked for a raise. Literally, I said, you got to meet more needs. You want you want to make more money? Meet more needs, answer more questions, solve more problems. I agree. You want to earn more, learn more. Sacrifice more, grow more.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Yeah, you you give what you you get what you give, right? So the things you give up for the short term now come back tenfold later. Right. So I've always said a few seasons of sacrifice lead to years of abundance in this industry. Damn right. Provide value, receive dollars. Right. Again, you got to give something to get something. So you got to give something good if you want to get money back. So you better give a lot of value out. It can be you, your presentation, the information, how you make people feel, the actual policies you get them. But you provide more value, you will receive more dollars. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

King Kong Chromie beating his chest here on the drive.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Two more. Be a savage, never accept average. What does that mean? Well, it's exactly what it says, right? If you want to go far, you got to be exceptional. If you want to be a top 1% person, you got to do what the 99% won. And so you gotta be an you gotta be a savage. If you're willing to accept average, then the shoe's not for you.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Did you ever think in a million years when you first joined NASBY, when you came out of trying to be a professional wakeboarder, uh uh was that what it was, wakeboarder? Like like sea surfers, what the hell was it? Both. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Never get it.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Yeah. Uh here this surfer boy uh comes in, and I'll never forget first time I met you. Give us this and we'll get out of here for those that care. I care. Um, you meet people and you I I always put a number on them. I probably shouldn't do it, but I do. Probably shouldn't admit it, but I am. Um because I I I have I've been a reader of people my whole life. I'm 50 years young, and I still pray that God gives me the ability to meet people with high potential, with a high ability when they go all in with us and themselves, that they're able to do things that others aren't willing to do. I saw it in you, maybe before you even saw it in yourself. That's why I always drafted you to do our conversations. And uh what a journey it's been. What a difference you've made in my life and so many others. Ladies and gentlemen, King Kong Chromey on the drive.