The D.E.L.T.A. Process: How To Sell Your Product In 5 Simple Steps

If you’re like every other human being I’ve met in my almost 55 years of life, you have one big problem. It has prevented you from the lifestyle you deserve. It’s prevented you from giving your family, and loved ones the life they deserve.

And it has held you back from the wealth and financial freedom you’ve worked hard for as an entrepreneur. And in 30 years of teaching this is what almost 750,000 students have told me.

Why do most entrepreneurs avoid the most important part of their business?

What keeps a salesperson from asking for a commitment?

What stops someone from trading on their knowledge or expertise?

What prevents a business owner from trading on a product or service that they know is superior?

What are they afraid of?

This one thing has gotten in your way. You’ve always known it. You thought it was a secret, but everyone else knows it too. And that one thing is…anticipated rejection.

Now, ‘anticipated’ is the keyword here because that’s what causes fear. The fear that you might lose the sale. The fear of being rejected.

Anticipated rejection is why entrepreneurs HATE to sell. 

But…

“Nothing happens until something moves.” -Albert Einstein

What is movement in your business? Movement is sales. Sales move your products and services. No sales, no business.

Anticipating rejection kills sales. 

This article teaches you a process that obliterates objections. If you learn and follow all the steps you will create more sales and will move the needle in your business.

This process is the D.E.L.T.A. Sales Process. Jerry Acuff describes it in his book,  Stop Acting Like A Seller And Start Thinking Like A Buyer: Improve Sales Effectiveness By Helping Customers Buy. But I’ve been using this process without knowing it for years and I want to teach it to you.

D.E.L.T.A. is an acronym for a system of five steps for a unique sales process. This process takes the ‘sales’ out of sales. I’m going to lay out the steps for you through my interpretation. But first…Principle #2: Develop Your Own Culture

What Is A Sales Process and Why Is It Important?

A sales process is something that is both duplicable and repeatable. Meaning you can teach someone else to do it and it works again and again and again.

But a sales process doesn’t guarantee that it’s going to create a profit every time. That depends on the type of process you use. The D.E.L.T.A. process takes the awkwardness out of enrolling and engaging your clients and customers. Using this process you will have conversations that create trust. No more ‘selling.

Your Customer Is Your Ally

What you’re after is certainty. Certainty is the prospect’s core buying motivator. Every buyer has hidden motivators and certainty is the most important one. How do you create certainty? Through addressing each objection the customer has. How do address objections? By starting a conversation.

Your customer is not your enemy. Your customer is your ally. You are on the same team. You want to collaborate with them in a safe environment to obliterate objections together.

Key Point: If your customer hasn’t objected to anything you’ve said, then the sale has not started. The sale starts when you get your first objection.

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What do most entrepreneurs say at the first objection? “Oh, no! What am I going to say to this objection?” Rather than doing the right thing, they do the wrong thing, and they argue or debate the objection. When you see your prospect as your ally you engage in their objections. You jump in with them.

You start a conversation about it. You ask why they have that objection. You’re interested in their dilemma. This is what the D.E.L.T.A. Sales Process teaches you, how to engage with your prospect like an ally.

You do this by creating a buying atmosphere.

You don’t want to create a selling environment. You want to create a buying environment. Jeffrey Gitomer likes to say, “People hate to be sold, but they love to buy.” Think about that.

When you’re a customer, you hate to be sold to, right? It feels manipulative. It feels controlling. It feels dirty, yucky. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel natural, it doesn’t feel organic.

But if you want to buy something you’ll look for the environment that collaborates with your desire. As in the case of Amazon, right? Amazon has created an environment for buying whatever you want. It offers suggestions, and answers questions. It uses customer ratings and offer equivalents at a lesser price. Amazon does everything it can to expect and obliterate every single objection.

We don’t want to create a sales environment because there’s nothing safe about selling. Selling is about winning someone over. A buying environment is safe and fun and addresses objections head on. Simple, but rarely talked about.

So your customer is your ally and you must create a buying environment not a selling environment. Let’s look at how to do that.

The D.E.L.T.A. Sales Process

Step One

The first part of the D.E.L.T.A Sales Process is to ‘develop.’ Develop a safe environment so your customer is willing to engage with you. Develop a meaningful dialogue, like you’re getting to know a new friend.

The customer shouldn’t feel manipulated, or threatened. A safe buying environment means you’re not selling the prospect. You’re setting a context for them to be willing to engage with you. You get their attention without pressuring them in any way.

There are effective ways to develop a buying environment. Click Here If you want more info on how to develop a buying environment and become an expert in this crucial step.

Step Two

After you’ve developed a safe environment, you want to ‘engage’ with them. Again, you do this through meaningful dialogue. You have their attention. They feel safe. You’re not selling. You’re getting to know them, so you want to find out about their interest in your product or service.

“What about this__________ interests you?”

“Are you in the market for_____________ right now?”

Keep in mind, It’s not a monologue, it’s a dialogue. I’m sure you’ve been sold something in your life by a monologuer. They talk at you about their product or service then they ask, “Do you want it?” Then, you give some kind of stupid objection that you know is not true. You say, “I gotta talk to my spouse.”

That’s not a real objection. That is an objection that is hiding the true objection, which is, “I don’t trust you because you’re a fast-talking salesperson. You’re a pimp. I don’t trust you.”

Some other false objections are, “I’ll have to check my bank account,” or, “I can’t make that decision right now.” Then the response is, “Why not?”, and you get a bunch of other verbal gymnastics because they don’t feel safe. You’re not engaging in meaningful dialogue, or an authentic give and take.

It doesn’t even have to be a 50/50 exchange. As the salesperson, you should be talking 60 to 70% of the time, because you’re driving the conversation. But even though it’s not 50/50, it still needs to be a dialogue. You need to ask questions and then you need to listen.

Jordan Belfort, the author of The Wolf of Wall Street, has a unique approach to teaching dialogue in sales. During his conferences he takes out a pen and walks into the audience. He hands the pen to someone and says, “Sell me this pen,” and the person says, “Oh, that’s a beautiful pen. It has an eraser,” and he takes it away.

Then he hands it to someone else and says, “Sell me this pen.” The person says, “Well, this is a very unique pen. I mean, it has a unique shaft. It has this clip so that you can put it in your pocket and it won’t fall out.” And he takes the pen away.

What he’s trying to do is get them to start a dialogue with him about the pen. He wants them to talk with the customer, not focus on the pen. Make sense?

If it was me I’d first ask, “Jordan, how long have you been in the market for a pen?” So the first thing I do is ask a question. If he says, “Well, I’m not in the market for a pen.” Then that conversation is over. That’s an unsafe environment. Now, there’s no meaningful dialogue. If I continue the conversation then I’m forcing, manipulating.

But if he says, “I’ve been in the market for a pen for at least a month.” Then I have the permission to continue the dialogue, “Oh yeah? Tell me what type of pens you’ve been looking at.” He describes to me different types.

Then I ask, “If you were to give me a price range for your investment, what would be the range?” He might say, “Oh, $50 to $250.” I’d say, Jordan, you could buy a writing instrument for less than $2. Why would you want to spend $250 for a pen?”

You see where I’m going with this? That’s called a meaningful dialogue. Find out if they even need your product or service. Then start asking questions that get them engaged in dialogue about what they’re looking for and why.

Step Three

The third step stands for ‘learn.’ Learn about your prospect’s wants and the predicaments they face. You need to focus on your buyer’s predicament, why they are in the position of needing what you’re offering.

“How long have you been looking for…?” or

“What puts you in the market for…?”

Now, there’s a difference between a want and a need. A lot of people want things that they don’t need. I don’t need to have $100,000 BMW M4 Convertible. Made in Germany, sent on a ship. Took three months, dodged a few hurricanes. There’s no other car like it with the combination of what I have. I don’t need to spend $100,000 on a car.

What I need is transportation, but that’s not why I bought that car. I bought the car because I love to drive a BMW. I will not drive any other car. For me they really are the ultimate driving machine. I love to drive, so I’m overspending for transportation on what I want, not what I need.

You may think you know what your customer needs, but that’s irrelevant to what they want. So know and understand the difference. After learning about their wants and needs you want to learn about their predicament.

A want is what they’re moving toward, their point B. To figure out how to get to point B you have to define point A. Point A in this case is their predicament, why they don’t have the thing they want. We need to learn about both A and B: where they are and where they want to go.

Step Four

’T’ is tell stories to activate your prospect’s emotions and logical decision signals. What does that mean? People make decisions emotionally as well as logically. Emotion is the accelerator. It’s the heart, and the car doesn’t move unless you press on the accelerator.

Logic is the steering wheel. You will crash without a steering wheel, so you need rational, cascading logic to make the decision. To get people to say ‘yes’ you need to end with emotion. I like to tell a story at this point.

Tell a story about how you got out of a similar predicament with the very product or service you’re offering. Illustrate how the person can resolve their predicament with a story,

“You know, I had a very similar situation arise in my business…”

Very simple, very elegant and very effective.

Step Five

Final step: ‘A’ Ask your prospect for their commitment. So you’ve established a level of intimacy with your buyer. You’ve done this through developing, engaging, learning and telling your story. With that you’ve established trust. The next logical step is to ask for a commitment from your buyer.

“Would you be willing to try this product or service out? For how long?”

What we want in the buying process is to establish trust through intimacy. Getting to know your prospect and their predicament. Then showing them you’re interested in solutions for them.

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For that they need to trust three things. They need to trust your product or service. They need to trust you as the trainer, the teacher, the doctor, etc. Then they need to trust that your team will support them while using your product or service.

If they have absolute certainty in those three areas, you have a sale. But you’ve got to get there. That means obliterating their objections.

Always Be Closing. That’s an ineffective and outdated lie that sounded good in a movie. Let’s change that to Always Be Connecting. If you’re always connecting, you’re creating a buying environment, not a selling environment. Wouldn’t you agree?

First you develop a safe environment. Next, you engage in meaningful dialogue. Then you learn about their predicaments. Tell your own story of how you overcame your predicaments. And illustrate how their desires will met through telling your own story. Finally, you ask for an appropriate commitment.

The Wrap Up

Movement in business is sales, but selling is not the issue. It’s the anticipated rejection is the issue. But a rejection is just an objection. Obliterate objections using the D.E.L.T.A. process and you will create movement in your business.

If you can obliterate objections you will get more sales. Your customers will move with certainty.

They will have trust in you, in your product and service, and in your team. Trust is certainty. And when they have certainty you have a sale. You have created a buying environment.

Don’t make the offer unless you are at that level of certainty. This is how you avoid rejection. And you will no longer need to expect it. You will actually look forward to selling because it will be fun. You will be moving the needle in your business. And you will be doing it with integrity and intimacy.

Over the next 4 weeks we’re going to delve into how to use the D.E.L.T.A. formula. You’ll learn it for every day use as well as high-end sales conversions and premium clients. I’ll also teach you about the mistakes to avoid with this process. We’ll get into 4 specific ways to talk to each personality type you’ll meet as a marketer. And so much more.

Do you want to become an expert in Step One? Click Here and learn how to Develop a buying environment for ANY buyer. Learn how to develop intimacy quickly and create a safe, buying environment for all your clients and customers. Your new life will thank you.