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Sales training
talks presentations closes|Frameworks and Tracking to improve your sales skills
You are on the pier with a box of candy and a cooler. Here is the whole script.
“Hi, how are you?”
What matters more than the words?
“Quick question—”
“Are you guys thirsty?”or“Are you hungry?”
Then wait.
“Great, I've got or —”
in the basket juice · water · snickers · chips · an apple
No “what do you want?” — the dash runs you straight into the close.
“—what's better for you, cash or Venmo?”
Same breath as the presentation. They answered “do you want one?” back in step 2.
“Got any friends who are thirsty? Want to grab something for them?”
* Hover one — or tap, on a phone.
Every asterisk is a line I would not hand over. I ask it instead, and let the answer come back before the script does. A rule you worked out is a rule you keep; a rule you were told is a rule you forget by the second conversation.
Done right it should feel like they are building this with me, not taking it from me. It is closer to motivational interviewing than teaching.
More behind the script — has FUGI, the objections, the impulse curve and the rest.
The five steps are the frame. This is everything that makes them land — read one, go run it, come back.
How a shift gets logged on paper: one mark beside each conversation, written the second it ends. The tracker is this legend with the arithmetic done for you.
Why it matters: a tally of sales tells you how you did. A tally of how each one ended tells you what to change. Five X's is a different shift from five Q's, and they need opposite fixes.
Four levers. You do not pull all four — you read the person in front of you and pick the one they are already leaning towards.
Because wanting it too much is the thing people can smell, and it is the thing that makes them back away. Indifference is the takeaway:
“Honestly, this might not be for you — do you even like juice?”
You just gave them permission to say no, which is the only reason their yes means anything. It is the hardest of the four to run without sounding rude, and the strongest when it works.
Pulling all four at once reads as desperate. One lever, chosen because you watched them, is the tailoring from step 3 applied to emotion instead of product.
Step 2 said a no is a no and to move on. That is true while you are learning the frame. Once the frame is automatic, most nos are not nos — they are one specific thing in the way.
“No worries — takes thirty seconds!”
You did not argue with them. You agreed, then made the cost of hearing you out smaller than the cost of getting away from you.
“Great, nobody does — we've got a QR code. Do you have your phone?”
“Great” is doing the work. The objection they thought would end it turns out to be the most normal thing you have heard all day, so it stops being an exit.
“Yeah, it's not free — that's why it's two for five instead of three each. Which two do you want?”
Never defend the price and never drop it. Agree that it costs money, then give them a version of the deal that is better than the one they were refusing.
“Same — I'll be quick. You hungry?”
Match their speed instead of asking them to slow down, and go straight back to the qualifying question. Busy people will answer one question. They will not stand through a pitch.
Same three moves every time. Read the reply, not just the objection — each one agrees, shrinks it, and ends on a question.
| “I'm not interested.” | “All good — you're not thirsty at all?” |
| “Maybe later.” | “For sure, I'm here till four. Want me to hold you a cold one?” |
| “I have to ask my friend.” | “Of course — is she thirsty too?” |
| “I already have one.” | “Nice. Is it still cold?” |
| “I'm just walking through.” | “So is everyone — takes ten seconds. You hungry?” |
| “Is this a scam?” | “Fair. It's candy, it's three dollars. Want one?” |
Notice none of them argue, and none of them are longer than the objection was. If your reply is longer than their complaint, you have started defending yourself.
Three moves, every time:
That third one is the rule from Learn, still running. Every reply ends in a question mark, or you have handed them a statement and a silence.
Worth knowing: “no cash” is exactly what an N is in the tracker. Every N you log is a conversation this card would have turned into a $.
Their willingness to buy is not flat. It climbs while you talk, peaks, and then falls.
At the peak. The intro raises it a little, the short story raises it more, the presentation takes it to the top — and that is the moment you ask for the money.
Below the buying line nobody buys, however good the product is. Above it, they will. Everything before the close is you getting them over that line, and the close is you spending it before it drains.
The moment they agree — not when the money moves. Between the yes and the cash actually leaving their hand is the most fragile stretch of the whole conversation, and that fall is buyer's remorse.
So you keep talking. Not more pitch — CPR: create personal relationship. Just be a person and chat. That is what carries them from agreeing, to actually paying, to walking off feeling good about it rather than wondering what just happened.
On the curve it is the only thing between the dip and pay — and notice pay sits level with the close. You are not selling them again. You are holding them where they already were.
Long enough for them to hand it over and leave happy. Not longer.
Hanging around after the sale is not building the relationship, it is giving them time to start re-deciding — and there are three thousand other people on the pier. The rehash is the natural end of it: you are already standing there talking, so ask who else is thirsty, then go.
Three inputs. Your numbers at the end of a shift tell you which one was off.
Your pitch. The pace is there — you are talking to everyone — and it is not converting, which means the words are wrong, or they are not tailored to what people told you.
Your pace. You are standing still between people, picking who looks friendly, and spending too long on the ones who already said no.
Your attitude. It is the one you cannot see from inside, and the one that shows up first — in the two E's of SEE, and in the shape of the impulse curve. Fix it and the same words start working.
These three are not a checklist you tick off one at a time. They are a ratio, which is the next card.
the same drawing, with what it is actually about
The last card told you which of the three is short. This one is why you cannot fix it by doing more of whichever one you are already good at.
Three ingredients, one drink. Nobody drinks an ingredient.
Only if mix is what is short. Adding mix to bitter water does not fix bitter water — it makes powder. Talking to fewer people with a better pitch is how a slow day becomes a dead one.
This is the mistake almost everybody makes: they get bad numbers and do more of the ingredient they are already best at, because it is the comfortable one. Find the one that is short, and add that.
Nobody's problem is that they don't know the five steps. It is that they run them like a script with no sugar in it, or they run their personality and skip the process. The ratio is the whole job.
Reading your marks: a pile of / is usually sugar — they did not turn down your words, they never heard them. A pile of Q is usually mix. Barely any marks at all is water.
“Best chance statistically is to put all of your quarters in one machine.”
The green one is a sale. You are not trying to visit machines, you are trying to pull as many greens as you can.
And here is the part people get wrong: every machine holds the same four out of twelve. They only look different — one drops the gumball down a spiral, one a zigzag, one straight. Different path, identical odds.
So walking to another machine buys you nothing and costs you the walk. Ten quarters in one machine is ten pulls. Ten quarters across ten machines is ten pulls and nine walks.
Your pitch. Same words, same order, every time — each conversation is another quarter into the same machine.
Change your words every conversation and you have not run one experiment forty times, you have run forty experiments once each. Then you cannot tell whether the pitch is bad or whether that one guy was just in a hurry.
Change it eventually, yes — but on purpose, one thing at a time, after enough quarters to know. Two nos in a row feels like evidence. It is two quarters.
This is why the tracker exists. A close rate only means something if the pitch stayed still underneath it. Hold the pitch, log the marks, then change one thing on purpose.