It’s getting quiet on Earth. People are talking with their mouths less, and communicating with their fingers via technology more and more. Instead of talking heads, we have rambling fingers. If you don’t get proficient at selling via writing, you’re going to miss out on a lot of sales. 

According to an AT&T report published in 2012, 86% of all phone calls went unanswered in 2011. That was 2011, the number is even higher now. People are using the phone less and less. It’s more convenient to text or email than it is to sit on the phone.

Text also removes tone and emotion from the equation. This allows people to communicate without the other person seeing their facial expressions or reactions. In some cases it keeps the peace. In others words and tones can get confused and cause accidental issues. 

The art of selling is one thing, the art of selling via writing is another. Much like face to face and phone sales, sales writing takes daily practice. Like anything else, the more you practice writing, the better you’ll get at it. 

In my opinion, anything above one thousand dollars in price is a high ticket item. Damn near anyone can charge a few hundred dollars for their service or product. Nobody really misses a few hundo if they blow it. However, a thousand bucks starts to enter a territory of pain of loss if not invested properly.

With email list, social media and text capture communication methods, it’s easy for prospects to reach out to you and ask you a question or say thanks. Some people simply let those opportunities pass. I use them as an excuse to have a sales conversation. 

Most of the time, I close!!!

I’m one of those dudes who’s always ahead of the learning curve. I’m scared that if I’m not on top of what’s to come, I’ll be left behind. When I say ‘scared’ I mean, like, I have nightmares about being left broke and out of date. 

That being said, I’ve been closing sales up to twenty thousand dollars at a time via Facebook chat, emails and text messages since 2008. In my mortgage days I’d close entire loans via the internet application site I rented and email. Seriously I’d do ENTIRE mortgage transactions without ever picking up the phone.

When I got into consulting and selling high ticket products I continued to use my writing to close prospects. From writing blog posts like this, to writing on my Facebook wall, I’ve learned how to attract and close prospects for big money without ever picking up the phone.

To make things easier on me, the writer of this post, let’s call chat, text and email ‘text’. When I say I close via text it means one of those three methods. There’s no need for me to keep writing all three down. You get it. Right?

When you conduct a sales call via text, the best part is that you’re in control of the speed of the conversation. While you’ve got to respond quickly to the initial text, you can take your time and reply with calculated, proactive sales skills. 

In face to face or phone selling, you have to stay talking. It’s a reactive selling process. You give a pitch. The prospect gives you an objection. You come back with rebuttal. You’ve got to be fast on your feet too. No one is impressed with a salesman who needs to think about his answer. When you’re on text, they don’t know if you are thinking about it. They don’t see you scratch your head. They damn sure don’t see you google the answer!

When you sell via text, you’re mostly selling proactively. This means you have to know your prospect’s objections BEFORE they give them to you. The more you can give them objections then solve the objections for them the more sales you’ll close. I call this selling via distraction. If I can give them objections to think about, chances are they won’t create their own set of new ones. 

Selling via text also allows you to control the pace of the conversation. You’re not under immense pressure to reply immediately. The prospect doesn’t know if you’re at work, on the phone or googling the answer to their questions, they just read your reply when you send it to them.

I’ve got a pretty simple formula that I use, that works, that my clients also use, that works for them too, that I’ll share with you. As cheesy as it’s gonna sound, I call it my TEXT method. Yep, watch out, we gettin fancy ova hurr.

My TEXT selling method is four simple steps. You can’t move on the to next step without completing the current step or it won’t work. You cant skip the ‘E’ and go right to the second ‘T’ or you will blow the sale. Stick to the formula, don’t move on to the next step until you’re sure you got the one you’re on done.

Lemme break it down fo ya

  Take the timeto find out why they reached out to you

Enter a sales conversation with them

eXtract their problem from the conversation

  Tell them how you can fix that problem with what you sell

Let’s talk about that first T. Before you can just start spouting off what you sell and the cost of it, you need to find out what they hit you up for. My favorite reply to text questions is “Cool, what made you decide to reach out?” this is a powerful way to start figuring out what it is they want from you.

Also when they tell you why they reached out, they’ve already made their first decision with you involved in it. You’re on your way to building a bond and closing. 

The only catch is, they will usually only give you half the real reason they reached out. Very few will get straight to it. Most will give you a “I’m just looking for information.” type excuse. It’s your job to get them to expand on that.

The next step is the E. To enter a sales conversation via text, with them. Many salesmen want to flip a prospect from a text conversation to the phone. I think this is a bad idea. Since they are already comfortable reaching out to you via text, you need to sell to them in their comfort zone. This tests your sales skills way better than the phone.

Also, let’s define a sales conversation. A sales conversation is a buying conversation between a person with a product for sale and a prospect with interest and the means to make a purchase.  Not every conversation is a sales conversation but it’s your job to attempt to make the person enter one, every chance you get. 

The best part about selling via text is that you can have multiple sales conversations at once. You can literally be chatting and making multiple offers at once. You can’t do that on the phone or face to face unless your really good at conferencing and group speaking. Hell, you can even be closing on multiple chats while on the phone! 

After you’ve completed that step you can move on to X and really get down to business. The old saying “no one wants a drill, what they want is a hole” is so, so, true. Many salesmen are trying to sell drills when what needs to be sold is hole capability. 

How can you sell someone a solution to a problem you don’t know exists? You can’t. You won’t. You can assume objections, but you can’t assume problems. Especially because everyone thinks their problem and situation is unique. 

By asking questions, you can get flip the conversation and get the prospect telling you what they want, what they need, and what they’ve done about it. First of all, this gives you an idea if you can even help them, second of all, it gets them to confess they have a problem they need help with.

At this point you’ve got them to make a decision and admit they have a problem. These are two of the hardest things to get prospects to do. There’s just something about text that brings it out of them.

Lastly, the second T is to tell them how you can help. Once you know and understand their problem, you can clearly see if and how your products or services can fix their issue. Basically this is the part where you make an offer. 

The key to remember when making offers is that they don’t care what all ‘stuff’ you have for them, they care about the end result of their problem being solved. The less you talk about what you have for them and the more you talk about what the end result of buying from you is, the more sales you will close. Trust me, I’m really f@cking good at this!

If you’re looking to close more sales via text, I’ve got a way for you to learn more and get on the wave of the future of selling. My sales training program Show Up and Close is packed full of wordtracks, chat videos and ways to make sales via text. You can literally learn how to make sells without ever meeting someone or using the phone. Simply go to www.showupandclose.com for a free video to get started.

Don’t forget to share this with a fellow salesman on social media.