How do you start your conversations with the people you serve?

You are an experienced salesperson. You have had your success, yet you feel stuck. You kick out decent results but have hit a ceiling. You see opportunity slip through your fingers. Frustrated and discouraged, you find yourself wondering what is wrong. 

Now in my 26th year as a face-to-face sales professional in the life insurance industry, I’ve been there too.

Let’s start by agreeing that you do not have to stay stuck. Staying stuck is certainly an option. However, getting unstuck is too. So, here is the first lesson, changing one small thing can lead to one big result – breaking through that ceiling above you. 

Wilbur Shaw is given credit for being the first to say, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” before the start of the 1953 Indianapolis 500 race. Every year since, some variation of this famous statement has been used, including today’s standard call, “Drivers, start your engines!” 

How do you start your conversations with the people you serve? 

Some of you will say, “It depends, Dean.” While others will say, “Dean, I don’t know, I guess I just start talking about something.” 

Here’s the little thing. You should start your conversations with the same words every single time. The Indianapolis 500 race does, so, why wouldn’t you? 

On page 65 of my book, Stop Pitching!: The Role of Conversations in the World of Sales, is where the chapter titled, “Ready! Set! Go!” begins. This phrase is perhaps most often used by kids to start a footrace on the school playground. One kid scratches a line in the dirt before a few kids step behind that line. Then, someone yells, “Ready!”, then pauses for a second or two, then yells, “Set!”, then another short pause before yelling, “Go!”. And the kids take off sprinting. 

In most every interaction with someone in a sales setting, you will start with some small talk. Small talk is like scratching a line in the dirt. This is good, as small talk is an awesome way to establish a connection and rapport with someone. Yet, you are not together in this setting because you want to just small talk. No. You are together because you mutually agreed to chat about something business-related. Whatever that something is, let’s simply call it the “BIG TALK”. The BIG TALK is why you are getting together. 

And here is where Ready! Set! Go! comes to life. 

Any sales conversation should be designed to flow through four S’s: Start – Sync – Story – Stop. This is another framework you can use to design every conversation you have. 

The Start is simply moving from small talk to BIG TALK. This is the READY part of the Ready! Set! Go! framework detailed in Stop Pitching. The exact words spoken are, “Hey, Tracy, do you mind if we jump in?” 

That’s it! Nine words, including their first name. “Hey, (first name), do you mind if we jump in?” Their natural response is always, “Sure.” Congrats, you just learned how to START the BIG TALK.

So, hopefully you are wondering what the Set! part of the framework is.

Once again, the flow of the conversation is Start – Sync – Story – Stop. The SET part of Ready! Set! Go! is how you Sync up with the person(s) you are interacting with. Here is how you simply sync up: 

The Ready! part – “Hey, Lynn, do you mind if we jump in?” Lynn replies, “Sure.” 

The Set! part – “Before we jump in, what were you expecting today?” 

(Again, these are the exact words you say every single time.) 

They say what they say.

Their response is either correct or not. You should be wondering to yourself, “How can there be a correct response?” The reason is because you would have set an expectation for this conversation when you were arranging a time and place to chat. In our work with the people we serve, our very first conversation is based on a single expectation – showing you how we help people spend and enjoy their money.

So, the only correct response to the question, “Before we jump in, what were you expecting today?” is “I thought you were going to show me how you help people spend and enjoy their money.”

When they say something close to this, my reply is simply, “That’s spot on. That’s exactly what I was expecting too.”

Should their response be anything other than something close to the response above, then my reply is equally simple. “I appreciate you don’t really have any expectations today. As you may recall from our conversation the other day, you and I agreed it would be great to connect on the basis of showing you how we help people spend and enjoy their money. Are you still cool if we chat about that?” Their response every single time is, “Sure. Sounds good.” 

We will leave the Go! part for another day and not include it in this article. You will find the full explanation of the Go! part beginning on page 70 in Stop Pitching. 

Remember “Drivers, start your engines!” These four words transition the Indianapolis 500 Racing experience from the pre-race events to the race. The pre-race is the small talk in the world of sales, while the race is the BIG TALK.

So, another question I hope is burning a hole in your head is, “Dean! How does using the Ready! and Set! part of this framework help me break through the ceiling I have above me?” The short answer is because you are focusing on them and earning the right to proceed. You are making sure you are on the same page. The longer answer? Reading Stop Pitching is a good way to find the longer answer. 

Can you think of any reason why you wouldn’t use Ready! and Set! the next time you have a conversation with someone YOU serve?