 I want to jump to the straight line for a second. For those that don't know maybe what that is or what that means, can you break that down and explain that for a quick second? Sure. So the straight line, that's the actual sales training aspect to what I do. And I think it's probably the most well-known system in the world. It's been, you know, obviously I'm going to have the benefit of a movie where Leo DiCaprio is with my logo straight line in the background sell me this pen, right? But what the straight line really is. It's a backwards way of looking at selling, meaning rather than saying, you know, you know, it's like, okay, I'm standing at the front. What do I do here? I've got to close this question. Imagine a person that bought. What would they have to hear? What things would they need to know? What would they want to see before they said yes? So you say, what elements have to line up in another person's mind to get them to say yes? And when you have experience that you'll quickly find out, there are just a few things, not a million things. There are three things, core elements that must line up in every person's mind before they buy a product. And then there are a couple of ancillary things as well for the tougher closes. So that's one part is what are these five core elements that must line up? What are the things you have to say to essentially get them to line up? So the straight line essentially imagine it's the shortest distance to two points to straight line, right? So the philosophy is that at the beginning of the open, at the end you have the close and the straight line represents the perfect conversation. Imagine like an objectionless close when a person was a lay down, almost pre-sold before you ever open up your mouth speaking. As a salesperson, if you knock on enough doors or make enough calls, eventually you're going to find people just, oh yeah, great, oh my god, they're almost pre-sold to the easiest closes all. So that represents that perfect straight line sale, an objectionless close where the prospect agreed with everything you say. And the only problem is that those are few and far between. In the real world of sales, people have objections. They have questions. They interrupt you. They cut you off. They have concerns. So use the sales and want to keep them on the straight line. They want to go off the straight line. So what we have is this methodology that gives you boundaries above and below the line. How far the conversation can stray off of perfection before you lose control of the sale and start spiraling off to what I call the Pluto where you're talking about the price of tea in China or things that have no relation to the sale or down here to your anus, not a good place for salespeople to be. The point is, is that what I realized, there was this magic moment I had when I couldn't get my guys, this is 30 years ago, right, when I was trying to train my first 12 salespeople and I was already teaching an amazing system. It did not have a name, but I was a great sales trainer even then, but I had switched from selling average moms and pops to the richest 1% of Americans. And the sale was infinitely hard. So it was a really tough sale. So the system I was teaching, the old one, yeah, it was good enough to close average moms and pops, but take the same type of sale to super rich, uh-uh, the system broke down and collapsed. So I had to invent a new way of training salespeople because here's what was happening. I was calling the same, and I was closing 50% of the people I spoke to. My junior partner, Danny, was calling these people, he was closing 30%, yet my 12 average kids who had barely clawed their way to high school, they were closing zero. Same leaves, same script, same phone calls, selling the same product. I'm closing half, they're closing zero, I couldn't understand it, and that went on for a month. And I finally cracked the code in this one evening and I realized what it was was something very elemental. It was really simple, actually. What it was, and it's easy to learn, is that I had a certain way of talking, a certain way of looking, a certain way of the energy I exuded, that literally from the first few seconds of the conversation, when I get on the phone with the prospect, or face-to-face, they would perceive me in a certain way. And based on that perception, which was that I was sharp as a tack, enthusiastic as hell, and an expert, most importantly an expert in my field. They'd say, wow, this is not the average bear, not the average guy. And they'd say, this is an expert, and they would defer to me. They would let me control the flow of the encounter. Because what we do, we've been conditioned since Quayier Big, to defer to experts. We let experts guide us. We seek out experts to solve all problems. So by getting yourself into that position where you're perceived sharp, enthusiastic, an expert in your field, people defer to you. And once they do, they essentially hand you control the sale, you won't guess what. Now you can start lining up the elements in the same way every time. So I had this philosophy, I said to my guys, guys, don't you get it? Every sale is the same. And they were like, what? How could every sale be the same? And my guys, every sale is the same. To me, because I was taking control, I can move it down the same path every time. People have different needs, different values, different pain points. They say different things. But the same core elements must line up in a prospect's mind before they say yes. And with the straight line system, once you're in control, you can then line those elements up in the same order every time. It's almost like picking the lock of a safe. The way you crack, a safe crack, a crack's a safe. He puts his ear, spins it one way, click, and he has a number. Does he try to open the safe? No. He knows there's more numbers. He spins it the other way. He has the second click. He spins it the third way. He has the third click, and then he tests it. That's when you ask for the order. If he got all three numbers right, the safe opens. If it doesn't, he wants to do, oh, damn, it's uncrackable. No. He goes back to the beginning, and he tries the three numbers again. So with the straight line, we have a very similar tactic we call looping, we loop back and try again. And every time you essentially run these patterns, you're cracking these numbers of his buying combination, you're asked for the order is essentially seeing if the safe will open, and when it opens, victory. That's the shortest way to explain it. And it's so simple to learn that when I teach it to companies at the people, they have these 30% or 40% uptake in close rate in a matter of days. That's just in days and much more effort. It's a very simple system. And the reason it's simple is because it had to be, because my guys were basically morons. They were not NASA scientists. They were kids that barely graduated high school. They came from poor families. They could barely walk and shoot them at the same time. The movie was very accurate. They were that fucking dumb. So because of that, I had to invent a system that was so simple and so intuitive, so easy to learn that even a moron could learn it because pale morons. Bottom line. Yeah. Well, I mean, and I love how simple you make it, right? Getting in control earlier, following the straight line, if they give you an objection, obviously you're pivoting back. It makes a ton of sense. One of the things that I'm glad we're covering, because the theme of 8% nation is that 92% of entrance agents fail. Well, the 92% that fail, the most common thing that we hear from them that they have questions on is objections and being able to overcome objections and objections just startling them and scaring them. And so I love that you're addressing that. Remember, yeah. Remember this. One little point here is that objections are smoke screens for uncertainty. Someone says to you, let me think about it, or let me call you back. That's very different than saying, no, I'm not interested. See, no means no. And my mind says, no, I don't want it. I don't have enough. I don't see. As a sales person, there's one thing everyone here takes away from this outside the critical importance of being in control of the conversation is that as a salesperson, as a top producer, your job is not to take the word no and turn it into yes. That's not how sales will make their money. I don't turn nos into buyers. I turn, let me think about it, into buyers. I turn bedtime of year into buyers. I turn, let me speak to my wife into buyers. I take objections. It's very different than, no, I don't want it. I'd rather knock on the next door, make the next call. I'm not in trying to convince someone to buy so they don't want your need. I want people who need my product, want my product, convince my product, right? But they are skeptical and as they should be. So when someone hits me with an objection, what I'm saying to them is, ah, perfect. They're interested to smoke screen, they're not certain yet. So I will answer the objection. Whatever that objection might be, but by answering the objection, all I've done is given myself the right to speak more. So, you know, if someone says, I want to speak to my wife and I haven't answered why, well, you really don't have to speak to your wife for blah, blah, blah reason why. If I then try to close the sale, I have no shot. But because the wife was just a knee jerk reaction. Okay. Now in some industries, maybe they actually do. So I, you know, you can, so in some cases, try not the best ones, you better let me think about it. All right. Let me think about it means I need to think about it to become more certain. So let's just think about it. I will answer the objection, but I'll never ask for the order afterwards. I answer the objection and then loop back and create more certainty about the product, about myself, the salesperson that I'm trustworthy, dependable, you want me in your life for the long term, the company that stands behind, in this case, the insurance product, and then I will ask for the order. So when objection only gives me the right to speak more, but I add, if the answer to the objection, the rebuttal gives me the right to speak more. It's when I say after that, that's going to get the job done. That's good. That's really good. Now, transition now to one of the things that I'm always studying and wanting to learn from successful people, and I know agents that are part of our conference are the exact same way, is the daily habits, the routine of those successful people. What are some of your daily habits or routine or that you recommend for others? When it comes to selling, you know, to me, I never would sell, I'm going to go out and sell for an hour. I'm going to dial up over 30 minutes. It doesn't work. You need to have blocks of time dedicated to do this. The biggest thing, number one, is that I'm going to go out there and I'm going to call call. I'm doing it for two or three hours, a lot of time, I'm not going to do it for 20 minutes. You only got three, 20 minutes to make a few calls. If I'm going to go out to knock on doors, I'm going out for six hours, whatever that amount of time that I set of time. Number two, I don't ever, here's a big one. I don't ever take good days and use that as an opportunity to stop early. Wow, I made two sales today, done. No, if I made two sales and I'm hot, I'm going for six sales. I set time frames. I'm going to knock on doors till X time. Well, I'm going to make calls until X time and I am literally going to make every single call till that clock hits. I don't care how bad I'm doing, how negative people are towards me or how awesome I'm doing. I am unabated going through that time period and third, with every single call, every single pitch, every single knock on door, whichever way you're doing it, right? Every call I'm as excited as my first call. See, this is the problem a lot of salespeople have in terms of that intergame is what happens is throughout the day, you're saying the same thing over and over and over again, so you almost start feeling silly about that level of enthusiasm and excitement. So when you go into a difficult sales room, it's like, I'm going to dolly you, how you doing, Mr. Jones? And yet in the morning in those first, the first pitch day, like, hey, what are you doing? They're really upbeat. What you don't realize is that this person will be a calling on that moment, they're hearing it for the first time. Every pitch has got to be like your first pitch. So I've learned, I've gotten to this habit over the years of triggering this positive and powered state in the beginning of every sales call. So I treat every sales call like it's my first sales call. Those are three examples of habits I have when I'm selling. And also, I do massive preparation. I would never sell something without knowing what I have to say before I'm going to say it. I script out everything before it. I know my language patterns, the logical cases I'm making, how I'm going to make the emotional case. I wonder all about my product, the product knowledge, is it necessary, all the benefits, the features that are associated with those benefits? I'm going to have comparisons and metaphors and examples to use. I'm going to have all of that stuff memorized up here and in front of me, I'm on the phone. Obviously, when in person, I'm not like, look in your home, I'm not doing it in person. But the point is, is I prepare myself. I don't wing it. That's crucial. That's really good, yeah. And you embodied that, whether you're selling coolers on the beach or meat out of a freezer or stocks, all those things you said, you embodied. You just mentioned perfectly in line with the theme for this virtual conference, which is if you don't quit, you can't fail. And a lot of agents out there. I think that a lot of people really don't understand what rejection really means in terms of the very simple way of looking at it is like, oh, they're not rejecting me personally, they're rejecting blah, blah, blah, blah. And we've all read that in books. That doesn't really go very far with most people. They still feel terrible about it. They still feel like they still feel futile. It's an exercise of futility. Let me give you a better way of looking at this, OK? And that is keeping track of exactly how many co-calls you make in a day, how many presentations you make in a day, and how many of those openly lead to closures. Once you know those numbers, let's say you know you got to make 100 dials or knock on 100 doors to get one sale, and that sale's been making $5,000. And I'm just completely making up numbers here, right? Those numbers could be anything, right? So that means that I make $5,000 over 100 doorknocks. That means I'm making $20 for every time I knock on a door, not $5,000 for one close. So I don't look at it like I make $5,000 every time I close a sale. I make $20 every time I knock on the door. That means the no's are as good as the yeses. Someone says, haven't I said, I'm like, that's $20. So when I don't close the sale, I make $20. Every cost $20, $20, $20, $20. Rather than saying I'm making nothing and I only make money when I close, it's not true. Because it's just simply a numbers game. Once you know your numbers and you really keep track of it, you realize, hey, if I close, knock on 100s, I know I'm going to eventually close a sale. It might take me to the 98. Knock, call, might be the 50, might be 300, and I'll close three at once. But those averages work. So once you do that, you're sort of attributing a dollar value to the people who don't buy from you. And that's a really, really empowering way to look at things. You just heard it from the wolf himself. If you don't quit, you can't fail. Only 8% of insurance agents succeed in their first three years. What's your thoughts on that? What does 8% mean to you? And how can the 92% become part of the 8? The 8% means you're not being trained correctly or onboarded correctly. Listen, there's no doubt. I wear two hats. I recruit for companies and I help salespeople get jobs. So there's no doubt that if I test people, you have people with higher aptitudes or lower aptitudes. What I will tell you is that the great equalizer of all this is the straight line system. I could teach someone the straight line system was a very low sales IQ and scores very poorly on a test. And then I'll retest them. And they're actually will score the exact opposite. They will dramatically raise their competencies and change their beliefs. Because what very few people don't get is that your psychology and your skill sets, they play into each other. They're very much interrelated. Because when we think we're great at things, we actually work harder at them. We enjoy them more. For example, it's one thing to try to motivate people saying, your cable of greatness, you're going to achieve. Just work hard, like the problem most motivational speakers is they just motivate, they focus on the inner game of success. The problem is, is if you motivate people to work really hard, go out, they kick ass, but you don't give them the tools to succeed, they get negative results, those negative results reinforce limited beliefs. So what happens is, like when I had all these kids that come to me and they were never successful for me, they made a lot of money. But then they say, wait a second, I'm looking at all kids who are just like me all making over a million dollars a year because they learnt the system, they learnt the straight line. So they called the straight line system the great equalizer. It equalized you with people who were better educated, had more natural ability, but by learning the system of influence and persuasion, it equalized you. So if you're in that 92%, you don't have to be sales, there's a learnable skill. It takes work, dedication and mindset. But once you possess the skill, guess what happens? You start saying, wait a second. So my past results don't necessarily have to equal my future results. I didn't notice. You know when you learn this skill, it's powerful. It's, you know you sound better and people will walk saying, wow, you sound really good. And you start to gain that self confidence and it feeds on itself and it feeds on itself and actually changes your own belief systems about selling, about persuasion and that your ability to succeed in that landscape. So it's a huge plus. It's the first thing I do is I literally learn the straight line and master your craft. The rest of it is gonna become really easy once you do that. In fact, I'm giving it, and by the way, because of the corona, I know I'm gonna do this, but I'm giving everybody a free training here. So on the score, I'm giving you guys a free module. We have a very high level, robust corporate training program. So everyone here, this is free and it's not sort of free. We have to enter your credit card free. I mean, it's just fucking free. It's my gift to you, okay? There's no catches. Enter your credit card. I hope you forget about canceling. No, it's not that. It's just free. So if you go to my website, JordanBeltwork.com slash 8% Nation, you can get this training for free. It's powerful and it's life changing. Wow. Thank you for doing that buddy. That's huge. One last question for you. What's your, I'm big on goals. I write down my goals every day. What's JB's goal, man? What's your goal now? What's your in game? What's your big goal? My goal is to really build the largest recruiting agency in the world right now. And I believe that there is gonna be such massive, I'm sorry to say that I believe there's gonna be massive unemployment that's gonna stay for a while. I don't think it's gonna be this wild, instant de-shaping recovery. I believe one day we will achieve our past glory here, but I think there's gonna be some pain. The beauty is, is that salespeople, who know the straight line system, will always be able to get a job and always make a lot of money. Yes, everyone has lean times as well. There are no guarantees in life. But this is a skill set. It's a required skill and just to understand, the straight line was invented for distance selling. It specializes in distance selling, meaning over the phone. Or like this, it was invented as a phone-based, we didn't see someone. And by the way, even though we can see each other, it's not the same as in person where there's a certain energy exchange with body language. It's still not there yet with the technology. It's just not, okay? So you need to learn how to use your tonality, how to use certain facial expressions, even on a Zoom call like this, but the straight line is like built for distance persuasion. So right now, more than ever, it's a system that is like, I look at it as a required force. When you choose to take it, that's your choice. But until you do, you're gonna be feeling a lot of pain in this new economy. It's gonna emerge unless, of course, you're one of those lucky natural wall closers who hasn't all figured out. And even you could benefit because it'll show you why you do what you do so well and make you, that your best day is every day. Bottom line. Unbelievable, buddy. I know we're running out of time. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for being on the virtual Apercentation. Super excited to meet you at 8% Vegas, buddy. Thank you so much. I can put the link up so everyone can see the link here. So jordanbuffler.com, let's 8% nation. We will put it up, buddy. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time so much. See you soon. Thank you. If you watched this video you'll learn how to take a live call and transfer it from an opener to a closer. That video's for you. Click on it and I'll see you there. Again, I'm not sure what time you're watching this video, right? Intro, expert, control, qualify, transfer. This is how to effectively transfer a live call from an opener to a closer.