How to Sell to Sophisticated, Cautious, and Skeptical Buyers with Jeremy Miner: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to sell to sophisticated, cautious, and skeptical buyers. To drop these value bombs, I brought Jeremy Miner into EO Fire Studios. During Jeremy's 17-year sales career, he was recognized by Direct Selling Association as the 45th highest earning producer out of more than 100 million salespeople. And Fire Nation, today we'll talk about how having the right skill level will lead to success.

0:35The salesperson triggers the fight or flight mode. And as an entrepreneur, you have to start to be the problem finder and problem solver and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Jeremy and our sponsors. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Today, get 20 % off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com slash EOfire. and use promo code EOFire at checkout. Want to learn how to get booked and paid to speak? Great news, I've arranged direct access to my good friend Graham Baldwin's proven speaking business system from the Speaker Lab.

1:19Go to eofire.com slash speaker to grab your spot for our live training on May 28th and learn how to get booked and paid to speak. Jeremy, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. John, first of all, thanks for having me on here. And I'm going to tell you, there was a bunch of things that I could have, I probably could say for this, but here's one big one. When it comes to salespeople and entrepreneurs that they get hammered in their head, like it's the gospel that just according to behavioral science is completely the opposite way.

2:02So a you to be successful in sales, for you to have success. You just have to work hard. You have to read a lot of personal development. You've got to meditate. You've got to journal. You've got to do all this stuff. And I always look at them and I'm like, where is that coming from? I've hardly ever read any personal development. I've never journaled. I've never meditated because it's all about your skill level that matters the most. When I'm at events and I ask the audience, It's like, hey, you know, who in here salespeople works hard? Everybody raises their hand. And then I'm like, OK, out of all of you, who in here is making all the money they want to as a salesperson?

2:42Nobody raises their hand. OK, hard work without the right skills does not mean you're going to have successful. How many broke salespeople do we all know that work their butts off or have average income? So it's all about your skill level, because if you don't have the right skills, when the prospect answers the phone and you don't know what to say and you don't know what to ask that triggers them to want to engage with you. Well, you can throw out every single personal development book or video you've ever watched because they're going to smack you in the face. So just like Michael Jordan says in his new biography, you can take a thousand jump shots a day, but if your technique is wrong, if it's off, if it's the wrong technique, you're still not going to be very good at basketball no matter how much you practice.

3:26So in our mind, it's all about your skill level, having the right skills that are actually going to take you to really have that success. Fire Nation, are you putting in the reps? Are you putting in the reps, honing your skills? And by the way, the answer is yes, if you're listening to this podcast, because that's exactly what Jeremy's going to be helping you do as we chat here today. Because let's be honest, a lot of people shy away from selling. I mean, you've seen it, Jeremy. So why is it important to have the ability, the skill set to sell in today's world? It's a must. It doesn't matter if you're in sales, if you're not in sales.

4:03Even if you don't get paid a commission, everyone in the world is out there every day doing what? They're trying to persuade. They're trying to influence. They're trying to convince. They're trying to actually move others, right? We even call that non-sales selling. So I'll give you a few examples. A lot of your listeners here. If you're a business owner and you're trying to get your employees to follow your vision of where you want to take your company, what are you doing? You're persuading, you're influencing, you're moving others. If you're an employee who's trying to convince your boss to give you a pay raise, what are you doing?

4:37Trying to persuade, you're trying to convince. If you're, I mean, hell, if you're an attorney who's trying to convince the jury that your client is innocent, you are trying to convince, you're trying to persuade, you're trying to influence. I mean, politics. If you're a politician who is trying to get people to vote for you, you're out there trying to persuade your influence. And it's been around. I mean, it's been around since the beginning of time, like even before man. Like if you read, you know, in the in the book of Revelations, like in the Bible, it talks about, you know, there was a war in heaven.

5:07Everybody heard this in Sunday school. There's a war in heaven and a third of God's children were cast out of heaven and two thirds accepted God's plan. Well, when you think about the war in heaven, what was that war fought with? Was it fought with guns? Was it fought with tanks? Was it fought with bullets? No, it was a war of persuasion. It was a war of influence. It was a war of moving others, right? So persuasion, I mean, it's been around for millions of years, like long before mankind was ever put on the earth. So in our day and age, if you want to be successful with anything, you have to learn the right communication skills, 100%.

5:45Now, Fire Nation, I think you can already tell why Jeremy's had multiple seven-figure years being a commission-only salesperson. I mean, this guy can definitely talk the talk. And my listeners, Jeremy, are entrepreneurs. So what are the biggest mistakes that you see entrepreneurs make while trying to sell to others? One of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make or salespeople, or if you're managing a sales team is they come across way too enthusiastic about what they're selling when they're talking to their prospects and they talk about their solution way too early in the conversations. Now, when I say that at events, people are like, oh my gosh, no, Jeremy, I've always been taught that I have to be enthusiastic and I have to show them how excited I am and that somehow if I show them I'm excited about my product, that somehow magically they're just going to be excited about it.

6:36And I agree with you somewhat, but you have to keep your excitement to yourself. You have to keep it internal. Hashtag get rid of the commission breath, right? So you have to get rid of the commission breath. Here's one thing we all have to understand. You know, behavioral science is my background in college. In the first 7 to 12 seconds of every single sales call or interaction you were on with your prospects, they are subconsciously, they can't even help it, picking up. social cues from you, verbal and nonverbal cues from your tonality and what you are saying and or asking that triggers their brain to do one of two things.

7:17Now, if you don't know what you're doing, if you come across aggressive, if you come across like needy and nervous, if you come across attached, that's the key word, and you don't know the right questions to ask, well, guess what? It triggers what we call fight or flight mode. Everybody's heard of fight or flight mode. I'm I'm not sure everybody understands why it's triggered. It's triggered by the salesperson, not the prospect. And that's where your prospect tries to get rid of you. And they say things like, you know, I'm just straight shooter. Just get to the point. Or, you know, how much is this going to cost me?

7:44I don't have time. Or I'm too busy. Can you call me back later? Or, you know, we don't need it. Or we already have that. You know, does that ever happen to anybody listening in? Of course. Now, if you know what you're doing, if you know how to work with human behavior, if you come across more neutral, if you come across more calm and relaxed, and especially detached. That's the keyword detached. And you know, the right questions, it triggers their brain, they can't help it to become curious enough where they feel like they want to engage with you. They want to open up to you as you might have something that could be very important.

8:18So the key thing here to understand is as an entrepreneur, when you're not selling your products, whether you're a small business owner or large, you've got a big team, you have to come across detached detached from the expectations of making the sale and really focus on whether there's something there in the first place, whether or not you can actually solve their problems. Okay. Now, do I mean that when you get on a sale call, you shouldn't make the sale? Well, hell no. Your goal is to make a sale on every call and every interaction, but you have to keep that to yourself. The moment your prospect feels like they are being sold is the moment they do what?

8:51They start to emotionally tune off and shut down from you a hundred percent. I mean, whatever you're selling right now, Jeremy, I'm buying just because of your tonality, your diction, your energy, your vibe and Fire Nation. This is what you've got to bring to the conversations that you're having. Now, one thing that my audience, Jeremy, loves acronyms. They love acronyms. You have a methodology called NEPQ. Break that down for us. Yeah. You know, just the boring nerd over here. But NEPQ stands for neuroemotional persuasion questioning. Okay. When I was in college, my background was behavioral science and human psychology.

9:29When you break it down, it's really the study of the brain and how human beings make decisions. Not only how, but why a person is persuaded and or not persuaded to do something. Check this out. Everybody write this down. It's so important. According to behavioral science, just the data, there are three forms of communication. Once you understand the differences in persuasion and where you are now in your sales ability, compared to where you actually could be, completely will change everything for you. So the first mode of communication, it's more known as like boiler room selling. We call that era, ERA, one type of sales.

10:04According to behavioral science, we are, get ready for this, you're gonna be like, oh, Jeremy, that's not true. We are, according to the data, not myths, data, the least persuasive when we tell people things or we attempt to dominate them, posture them, manipulate them, push them into doing something we want them to do. Think boiler room selling like, you know, everybody watches, you know, the Wolf of Wall Street show. And I'm sure Jordan's portrayed differently than maybe how he is. But they're on the phone. They're like, hey, I've got a great opportunity for you. And then we talk about the features and benefits and we push and we tell them why they need to buy or why they need to go with you.

10:40It's just like if you tell your spouse that they need to do something for you and they and you push them, what do they typically do? Well, they push back. That's just human behavior. That's how we're wired. So let me give you a few examples of the least persuasive way to sell. Presenting. Oh my God, no, Jeremy, I have to have a 60-page slide deck when I talk about my products. See, we're all taught that we have to have these great presentations and show them how great we are and the best products and here's our corporate office and we've got seven awards from the BBB and all this jazz, but nobody cares, okay?

11:12We've got the best this, we've got the best that, which by the way, doesn't every salesperson say they have the best product or service? How many salespeople do you know that sell to you, that come to you and say, you know what, John, we've got the fifth best product in the market. No one does. They all say they have the best. So when you say things like this, your prospects actually trust you less or when you talk down your competitors because they're used to every salesperson saying the same thing. So according to the data, it's not very persuasive if your presentation is more than 10 % of your sales conversations.

11:48What about telling your story? Well, I hate to tell you this. Nobody cares about your story when you're selling one-to-one. Whose story do they care about? They care about their story, right? What about giving a sales pitch? We've all been taught you've got to give a great pitch. According to the science, not very persuasive. What about putting sales pressure on them? Do you do that? Or let's say the big one, assuming the sale. According to the data, very low on the persuasion poll. Hence the term sales is a number game. That's where it comes from, especially if in a more complex selling environment that requires multiple calls or touches to actually close the deal.

12:22Now, second form of communication. That was the first one. What's the second one? That's known as consultative selling. It's called ERA, E-R-A, two type of sales. Now, we are the more persuasive when we attempt to actually have a human discussion. Okay. Consultative selling came out in the early 80s with a book called Spin Selling. All right. We won't go into where that came from. It was a professor who studied thousands of sales calls. They taught that you had to ask logical-based questions about the needs of the client. Well, revolutionary, right? Back in the day. But here's what's a potential downfall of that approach when you only ask logical-based questions.

12:57We call those surface-level questions. Well, your prospect is just going to give you logical-based answers in return. And do human beings buy on logic or emotion? We all know it's emotion, right? Brain studies prove that. So let me give you a few examples of questions that you never want to ask because everybody asks them. John, what's keeping you awake at night? Or Sally, can you tell me two problems that you're having? Or who besides you would be involved in this decision? Or what are you looking for in a solution? See, these are just boring surface level questions. There's nothing in those questions that create any type of urgency or go deep and actually help the prospect relive the pain of what's going on.

13:38Okay, now that's the second mode. What's the third mode, all right? Because in the second mode, you're starting to play the numbers game because you're just not bringing out enough emotion. Now, the third mode is called dialogue. That's era three type of sales. So we're the most persuasive when we allow others to persuade themselves. Now, that's where neuroemotional persuasion questions come from, NEPQ. Now, the key here is where we use certain questions and techniques that work with human behavior to get the prospect to pull us in rather than you trying to push them forward. It's all about getting them to pull you in rather than you trying to push.

14:14Now, how do we do that? How do we get somebody to persuade themselves? Do we, can we show up and say, you know what, go ahead and persuade yourself and here's the bank wire. No, you have to learn skilled, very specific skilled questions and when and how to ask them in a step-by-step structure that will get your prospects to sell themselves rather than you trying to do it. You know, and if they ever want that kind of step-by-step structure, John, they can go to one of our Facebook groups. You were asking me about it. It's www.salesrevolution.group, and we will actually send them a free copy of that structure if they want.

14:53But those are the three modes. Salesrevolution.group. Check it out, Fire Nation. A lot of answers happening there, and we have a lot more value bombs being dropped by Jeremy when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Speaking from stage is one of the most impactful ways I found to share my message and grow my business. But if you've never done it before, it can seem intimidating. How do you get booked and paid to speak if you've never done it before? Great question. And to answer it, I've arranged direct access to my good friend, Grant Baldwin's proven speaking business system from the Speaker Lab.

15:29This is a live training where you'll learn the proven five-step process that led Grant to over 500 paid gigs, current paid speaking opportunities you can pursue right now, plus the number one marketing tool that's working for his students in 2025. The Speaker Lab is committed to helping 1 ,000 new speakers land paid gigs this year, and I'd love for you to be one of them. This live training is going down May 28th, and there are limited spots available, so head over to eofire.com slash speaker to grab your spot on this live training where you can ask questions and get them answered, plus learn how to get booked and paid to speak.

16:05That's eofire.com slash speaker. Online safety and security is more important than ever, and as business owners who market and promote online, we need to be hyper aware. Unfortunately, our personal information is being compiled by data brokers and sold online every single day. That's why I personally recommend Delete Me, a subscription service that removes your personal information from hundreds of data brokers. What I appreciate about Delete Me is how simple the process is. All you have to do is sign up, provide Delete.me with exactly what info you want deleted, and their experts will get straight to work.

16:36Get personalized privacy reports and rest assured, Delete.me is always working for you. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete.me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Today, get 20 % off your Delete.me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com slash EOfire and use promo code EOfire at checkout. The only way to get 20 % off is to go to joindeliteme.com slash EOfire and enter code EOfire at checkout. That's joindeliteme.com slash EOfire, code EOfire. So Jeremy, we're back and there's a lot that I could ask you because as you were going through that whole process, there were some things that were coming up for me over and over again.

17:18But one thing that I really do wanna hone in on is the fact that so many people's buying decisions stall. They just stall out. They're there, they're on the fence, they want to make a decision, and then it's just stall. So why does that happen, and what can we do? One thing that just drives me insane when companies have us come in and audit their salespeople, and they're like, well, I just think it's the bad leads, or it's the error, the water quality's not good, they're not eating healthy, they're not journaling enough. I'm like, it has nothing to do with any of that. Buying decisions only stall because your sales teams are using sales techniques that work against human behavior that trigger sales resistance from your prospects.

18:02You see, here's what we have to understand. All selling is, and one word is this, write this down, it's change. That's all selling is, is change. It's about that only change. It's about how good you are at helping your prospect view in their mind that by changing their situation, which means paying for your product or service is far less risky for them than them doing nothing at all, staying in the status quo, problems stay the same, and nothing ever changes for them. Like, which is actually more risky? So whether your prospect wants something better or they're trying to get away from that pain, it's about what?

18:38It's about change. Now, here's your problem, though. Human beings don't like change, even though they say they do. Okay? Why do we not like change? because it makes us feel uncomfortable, like unsettled, especially when it's initiated by some pushy salesperson who's ready to pitch their products or services right when we meet them. You see, human behavior shows that we actually value something that's familiar, something that's more traditional, maybe more consistent over something that is more new to us or something that's unknown. Here's one thing we have to understand. It doesn't matter what you sell, products or services.

19:13You are not selling the thing. You're not selling the thing. You're selling the results of what that thing does. Like if you're a real estate agent, you're not selling the home. You're selling them the results of what that home is going to do for them. Maybe they want to be in a safer neighborhood. That's what you're selling. You're not selling the car. You're not selling the Lambo, right? You're selling of how that Lamborghini makes them have the status in their neighborhood that that is what they want. You're not selling the life insurance policy. You're actually selling the money that's going to happen when you die and your wife and children are financially protected.

19:46That's what you're selling. You're not selling the thing. So a couple of good consequence questions, and I'm just going to give you a few things here. People can go to the Facebook group to get all this. But a couple of good consequence questions that you can ask that really help them, your prospects, see what their future is going to look like. What is their future going to look like? So when we start off a conversation, we're trying to help them see what their current situation is. We call that their current state. Now, we also want to help them see what their future is going to look like once their problems are actually solved.

20:21We call that their objective state. So once we get them to see what their future is going to look like and how it's going to make them feel, we can't tell them that. We ask questions that allow them to tell themselves that. Once they see that we want to rip that away with what's called a consequence question where we basically get them to defend themselves on why they have to change their situation now. So here's a generic version. Okay, but what if you don't do anything about this and you repeat back their problem for the next three, six or even 12 months from now? And I'll give you a kind of an industry specific example.

20:53Let's say I was just working on this script for a client right before this. Let's say if you sell lead generation services, you help companies get leads for their business. And you've taken them through the current state, their objective state. They see what it's going to look like once they have these better leads. I'm going to rip that away from them and I'm going to say something like this. Okay, but hold on though. What if you don't do anything about this and you keep getting these lower quality leads to your sales team and your sales keep stagnating another three, six, or even 12 months from now?

21:26Do you hear that skepticism in my voice, right? Or how about this? Here's a generic version. Okay, but what are the possible ramifications if you guys don't do anything about solving this? So when we ask those type of consequence question, it allows them to question their way of thinking that's allowed the problem to keep happening. And it triggers them to want to take urgency about doing something about solving it. Does that make sense? Yes, because what I really love about how you do that is you're not telling people what their problems are specifically. You're having them think about a situation in the future that if they don't take an action to solve it, what problems will be occurring at that point.

22:05So they are actually coming up with that. They're coming up with the consequences of not taking action themselves instead of you just sitting there like, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Now they get defensive. They're like, no, that's not. You know, people love getting defensive and you just don't want to give them that opportunity. So that was really interesting how you gave us that really specific example, then a generic example. You know, it's all about preventing those objections versus overcoming those objections. And this is something that you've really mastered over the years. So, you know, kind of maybe finish talking that through and then also take the microphone and really bring this home for us with what you really want to make sure our audience gets from our entire conversation today.

22:46Yeah, it's all about disarming the prospect. You read in every single sales book. Like right behind me, I've got like seven bookshelves. There's like 3 ,000 some books on these bookshelves. I love to read. Every single sales book you will ever read on planet Earth will talk about, you got to follow the ABCs of closing. Always be closing. No, no, no, no, no. You need to follow the ABDs of closing, and that's always be disarming. disarming? What questions are you asking in that conversation that is continually disarming the prospect where they feel comfortable enough to open up to you and tell you what's really going on?

23:25And not only what their real problems are, because most of our prospects, when we first start talking to them, one thing we have to understand is that most of them don't even know they have a problem. Or maybe they know they have a problem, but maybe they don't know how bad the problem really is. Or maybe they don't understand what the consequences are, like you said, of what will happen if they don't do anything about the solving the problem. Now, once you learn advanced questioning that, you know, we obviously train companies and salespeople with your questions, allow them to not only see they have one problem, but it might help them to see they have two problems or three or four problems.

23:55And when they start, when you help them see how many problems they have, not by telling them, like you said, because that goes in one ear at the other, but by asking certain questions that allow them to see what their problems are, then you become extremely valuable in their mind where they look at you as the expert, like the trusted authority who's going to get them the results we want right now so let's talk about you disarm how do you prevent objections from even happening and here's one thing i think most people don't even understand especially small business owners sometimes most of the objections that you get are actually triggered by you and what you are saying to your prospects gasp you know like i thought it was all the prospects fault no it's what you're saying that's triggering that So let me give you an example of one thing you never want to do.