A sales meeting is built from four things to achieve in a fixed order, and the words you use to achieve them are yours. Of the four, the third takes the longest, and many people skip it because it feels like wasted time. According to the booklet, it is the whole sale.
Why an order works better than a script
According to the source, nothing in the meeting is scripted: no set patter and no set words to say to the person. There are four things to achieve, and an order in which they must be done.
That frees you, because the order is the technique and the wording stays yours. You do not have to become somebody else in the meeting to sell, and you do not have to remember a text.
Suppose an owner who memorised a whole script and froze the moment the client answered something unexpected. He knew the words and did not know where he was. The same person, holding an order of steps in mind instead of sentences, knew at every moment which step he was on, even when the client left the track.
This links to what the booklet says in its introduction. The moment when the client buys, or says they will think about it, is settled long before you reach it. The order is how you make sure that everything which needed to happen before that moment did happen.
A script falls apart when the conversation moves. An order keeps working, because it tells you what has to happen now, instead of what to say.
Not every step is needed every time
The order starts with making contact with the person, and ends with them realising there is a solution to what is troubling them. One of the steps in between applies only when there is something to handle, for example when the client is suspicious, hostile or spoiling for an argument. If the person is open and looking, you skip it. If not, you handle that first and only then go on.
Suppose a consultant whose client opens by saying he does not believe in consultants. The consultant spends three minutes on that, then carries on, and the meeting ends in a deal. Now take the same situation with a consultant who ignores the remark and goes straight to the deck. The client listens politely and does not come back.
Both clients opened with the same sentence. The difference lay with the consultant. The second one skipped a step that had to happen.
The third step is the whole sale
The third step is to locate what is ruining the person, and to make them see that this is it. It carries a clear condition. According to the source, what you located must be real to the person as something unwanted, or must be something you can make real to them as unwanted.
That makes two requirements. The client must agree that the thing exists, and must also agree that it is not all right. Suppose someone who readily admits answering messages until midnight and is sure that is a normal part of the job. The first requirement is met, and the second is not.
So, according to the source, your role goes beyond locating it. You also point out that it is destructive, and get the person to see that.
Suppose a garage owner who agrees he works six days a week and argues that this is normal in the trade. It becomes unwanted for him only once a simple sum shows what the jobs he turns away cost him. Or a shop owner who knows she orders stock at night and has never thought of it as a problem, until somebody asks when she last planned anything ahead.
One distinction is worth keeping from all this. Knowing you have a problem and wanting to solve it are two different things, and the third step, the longest of the four, ends only when the second one happens.
When the form comes out
The fourth step has a defined moment. According to the source, at the right instant within this step you give the person the sheet or the professional card and point them onward. In other words, the form comes out only after the person has seen what is ruining them and understood that there is a solution to it.
Most failing meetings bring the form out too early, during the first or second step, with nothing yet to close. Suppose an owner who lays the price list on the table at the start of every meeting. The client sees a price before understanding what it is for, and the whole conversation turns into an argument about price. He is asked to weigh the cost of something he does not yet see a need for.
By contrast, suppose a consultant who brings the proposal printed and keeps it in her bag until the client understands there is a solution. It is the same proposal, and her closing rate doubled. The form did not change. The moment it came out did.
The booklet gives this chapter a diagram of the meeting's order, two exercises, one for building and one for analysis, and a self-check.
Your words in a meeting can change from client to client. The order stays the same, and the third step is the one you must not shorten.