I love to use analogies and stories when I’m coaching.
And recently, I was sharing my experience as an Army PTI, and how we used to scale as a fireteam of four men, a 12 foot wall as an analogy is to the person we need to be in relation to helping our prospect, from our own certainty and conviction in helping them to their onto the next level in their journey.
As a fire team, you would have what’s called a stirrup man, who would be in a seated position with his back against the wall with his two hands, palms up on his right leg, and, in turn, the next two soldiers would step on his hands and lift and propel themselves up , lying prone on the 12 foot wall.
One would branch and off to the right one branch and off to the left, with their hands dangling down. The third man would then use the stirrup man to be straight up and over the wall. Then the two men with their arms dangling. Would you take the stirrup man and pull him up over the wall?
As a result, the fire team would all pass over the 12 foot or using each other for support.
Now the stirrup man is you as the closer, simply because you are helping a person over their wall. So here is the thing …, we don’t know, know what is over that wall. We don’t know whether they’re going to embrace the training programme. Take the coaching and run with it, whether they’re going to go over that wall and going to land in the mud, and just squirm about and not make any progress. But they could just land perfectly, and just run and make amazing progress…. The bottom line is, we can’t second guess what’s going to happen.
All we can be is that stirrup man. That is their rock solid lifter giving them the opportunity to cross from being on the wrong side of the world to being on the right side of the wall, so they can make that transition.
What I’ve noticed is that many closers, coming from a place of care and compassion, sometimes don’t want to go there with a prospect. Just in case the prospect doesn’t get the result that they want.
But this is completely the wrong attitude in my opinion, because sales is a game of certainty. And if you are not certain. Then you’re going to buy into the fears of the person of the prospect at the end of the call, and you’re going to allow them to miss their opportunity to change.
So what we need to do is be in the stirrup man, if we need to be resolutely 100% sturdy and confident, and certain that what lies behind that wall is nothing but a perfect Landing and a quick transition into the new life.
Anything else is just going to deteriorate your certainty just when that person needs your certainty at the end of the call when they’re gripped by their own fears.
You need to support them and guide them.
So just contemplate on this. Are you allowing your mindset, and your perceptions of what could happen on the other side of the wall from detracting you from your certainty that’s needed by that prospect, as they face their own fears, and if so, what do you need to do to make sure that you are the stirrup man that gets that person over the wall onto their new life.