The Ryan Hanley Show
The Hidden Psychology Behind Closing 80% of Your Deals in One Call
Thu, 23 Jan 2025
🚀 This episode explores the six key psychological principles that can transform your sales approach. Learn how to leverage active listening, trust-building, strategic silence, future pacing, transparency, and exclusivity to increase your close rate and build stronger relationships with clients. 🎯 Takeaways: Most sales die because you’re focusing on the wrong thing—your pitch. It’s not about the pitch. It’s about psychology. Strategic silence (pausing during conversations) improves engagement and helps clients self-persuade, boosting close rates by up to 26%. Future pacing increases commitment by 33%—helping prospects visualize success with your solution creates a stronger connection and drives decision-making. 💬 Sound Bites: "Sales don’t start with talking; they start with listening. Active listening alone can boost your close rate by 19%!" "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said. Strategic silence is a weapon for top salespeople." "Forget the pitch. Sales success comes from understanding the buyer’s psychology and tailoring your process to their needs." 🔗 Special Offer: Get $50 off the Master of the Close course today! Visit MasterOfTheClose.com and use code SHOW50 at checkout. 📖 Chapters: 00:00 - Fired to Founder: The Psychology Behind Closing Deals 01:22 - Common Sales Missteps & A New Approach 05:07 - Forget the Pitch: Adapting to Buyer Psychology 07:05 - Active Listening: The Foundation of Sales Success 10:09 - Paraphrasing for Trust and Connection 13:09 - Silence Sells: The Power of the Pause 16:35 - Future Pacing for Long-Term Commitment 20:17 - Building Trust Through Transparency 24:08 - The Red Velvet Rope Effect: Creating Exclusivity 30:38 - Why These Principles Work Across Industries 33:10 - Closing Segment 📌 𝗙𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗢𝗪 𝗠𝗘 𝗢𝗡: Website: https://go.ryanhanley.com/ Course Page: https://masteroftheclose.com/ Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ryan-hanley-show/id1480262657 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5AZFuTiQsgS9hMQDDdtlOr?si=98432b7806534486 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_hanley
Chapter 1: What psychological principles can transform my sales approach?
I didn't realize how terrible I was at sales until at 27 years old, I was sitting in my father-in-law's office listening to him fire me. Selling him on why I should keep my job and why it was in the best interest of him, the company, and myself to do so was one of the all-time best sells of my career.
Chapter 2: What are common sales missteps to avoid?
Now, what we're going to talk about today are the psychological principles that came out of that conversation that I've implemented over multiple sales teams throughout my career and led to 12 years later when I founded my own company, writing 1,200 commercial insurance accounts in less than three years during COVID on an 80% plus close ratio across the board from every sales rep in the company.
today we are going to discuss those psychological principles what they are their impact and how you can implement them into your business let's go in a crude laboratory in the basement of his home
what is up guys and welcome back to the show we have a phenomenal conversation for you today where i'm going to break down six psychological concepts that you can implement into your sales process today these are simple easy concepts however most sales people are not taught these. It's not that you can't do them. It's not that you're not able or that I have any kind of superpowers.
I promise you there is not a natural sales bone in my body. Every bit of my sales success over a 20-year career, not only personally, but also teaching this to the teams that I was either an executive over or were part of companies that I have founded and sold, I have had to learn the hard way through business.
Chapter 3: How should I adapt my sales process to buyer psychology?
boots on the ground, battle tested, putting words out into the market, using different phrases, using different timing, using different psychological tactics in order to figure out what worked best. What were the set of tumblers that you needed to use in order to unlock more sales? This is really great stuff. Number six is one that is going to blow you away.
It is one that so many sales professionals don't actually think that they can provide. And we're going to talk about how you can use that six psychological principle, regardless of what business you're in, regardless of what type of product or service you are selling. Before we get there, I also want to make a big announcement. My Master of the Clothes sales course is now officially available.
Chapter 4: Why is active listening crucial for sales success?
If you go to masteroftheclothes.com, this is the inbound process, step by step. broken out with a downloadable script with breakdowns of all the psychological principles used that you can print out and have on your desk. This is literally a template, a guide, a word for word, step by step process that you can have right in front of you on every single call to make sure that you are
going through the process in the right order, that you are hitting what I call kill shots, phrases that lock your customers in, gathering the right information, and ultimately delivering back to them a proposal that they can't say no to. Go to masteroftheclothes.com, and as a listener to this show, if you put in... the show 50, the show 50.
I'll have a link in the show notes, whether you're listening or watching on YouTube, you go to master of the clothes.com type in the show 50 for a $50 discount on the course. I give that to you guys because I love you for being listeners to this show.
Chapter 5: How can paraphrasing build trust with clients?
all right so let's get into what we're going to talk about today these six psychological concepts so what i have found over the course of my career is that most sales die because we are focusing on the wrong things specifically we're trying to come up with a pitch and no one wants to be pitched nobody
There's no one in the world who is like, you know, I just can't wait to have someone pitch me something today. Now, granted, if you're a VC investor or maybe being pitched by startups is part of your job, but that's different than being pitched to buy something.
Now, in order to maximize our close ratio, we have to forget about the pitch and go to the psychology of the person who is buying from you. We have to dig into what they need to hear, what they're trying to solve, what they're trying to get out of a conversation with you in order to close the deal.
Chapter 6: How does strategic silence improve sales engagement?
If we just hit them with some standard pitch that you get out of some antiquated sales process or playbook,
you're going to lose sales you're never going to maximize your close ratio because every individual is different so we need to develop a process that is malleable to each different type of customer or buying persona that we may interact with day to day week to week month to month throughout our career in order to do this
So when I say we got to get rid of the pitch, it means we also have to get rid of all the other sales shiny object syndrome issues that I come across and that we all have to deal with in our own lives, right?
Chapter 7: What is future pacing and how does it drive commitment?
Which is, you know, the next email drip campaign with the perfect subject hooks or, you know, DM sales strategy or the wedge in and make them feel terrible about their previous buying decisions or some standard, ordinary, generic set of discovery questions. These things are never going to get you there. We have to sculpt our process to the unique psychology of the buyer that we're talking to.
And we're never going to truly know that until we get on the phone with them. So we need to have a process that is malleable to their buying persona, to their buying process, a process that we can adopt over and over. how we interact with that customer based on the feedback that we are getting in real time. And that's what I teach at the Master of Clothes.
Now, the six psychological principles we're going to talk about today, you can use them. We do go deeper in the course into how these actually apply, but I want to make sure I get these in front of you because even if you do not understand
decide to go through the master of the close course, implementing these psychological principles into your current sales process will immediately increase your close ratio immediately. I absolutely guarantee that if you start to implement these, you will sell more business. So let's get into the meat and potatoes here. Our first psychological principle actually encompasses two.
Chapter 8: How can transparency foster trust in sales?
That is active listening and emotional labeling. Sales do not start with talking. They start with listening. Frankly, the entire process should be listening, particularly the beginning and the end, but especially the beginning. We need to listen. We need to be quiet and a simple conversational opening like what's going on? How can I help?
And then going silent and letting them fill that void with all the things that got them to reach out to you or fill out a form or whatever. However, you began your interaction with them. There's a quote from Stephen Covey. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply. And this is where the psychological principle of active listening comes in.
It means you are not listening to what they're saying so that you can then just barf your benefits on top of them. You're listening to hear what their problems actually are. Salespeople who actively listen during calls see a 19% increase in closing rates. 19%. One out of five. You're going to close one more deal for every five that you talk to if you just implement active listening. That's it.
That's all you need to do. Just actively listen. Just make sure that you are not interrupting them, you're not barfing benefits on them, and you will see a 19% increase in your closing ratio. One of the largest accounts that I ever wrote in my commercial insurance agency happened because this was something that was standard in our process.
We had a customer fill out a form on our website and they were requesting what is a relatively simple, straightforward and relatively low cost insurance product that they were looking for. And instead of reaching out to them and immediately trying to solve the problem that they had filled out the form for.
i reached out to them introduced myself and i asked what's going on how can i help and they then barfed seven different problems that they were having on me seven which is way beyond the norm normally we find you get two to three problems that the customer will will give you that are pertinent and high priority on their brain they had seven and to my sales benefit i had a product that could solve all seven of those benefits
And over the course of that conversation, listening and digging in, and we'll get to some of the other psychological principles that we use in a second. I was able to sell that person seven different products and it was an enormous sale and it came out of a form fill. And the only reason I knew that they had seven problems and not one problem was
was because I asked them a very simple open-ended question. What's going on? How can I help? And then I just listened to them explain all the issues that they were having day to day with their insurance program. I lead with this principle because it is so incredibly powerful. It's probably the most powerful psychological principle that you can use in sales. Active listening, open-ended questions.
Listen, not with the intent to reply, but with the intent to understand. Principle number two, paraphrase and confirm for trust. This, again, is bringing in two different psychological principles, tactical empathy and cognitive dissidence reduction, which is a mouthful. And this is a very, very simple principle to follow.
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