HOW TO “FLIP THE SCRIPT” ON YOUR WEBSITE

Maximize Sales Engagement via Oren Klaff’s latest book “Flip the Script”

By David Pfeiffer

As a Web strategist and UX professional, I am keenly interested in persuasion and influential techniques used in interpersonal selling and selling systems. I am always looking for ways to incorporate these techniques into website interactions and content.

In this article, I review the Oren Klaff’s “Flip the Script” selling system and discuss how it can be applied to web pages.

Flip the Script: Getting People to Think Your Idea Is Their Idea

Flip the Script: Getting People to Think Your Idea Is Their Idea [Klaff, Oren] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Flip the Script: Getting People to Think Your Idea Is Their Idea

Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal

Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal [Klaff, Oren] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal

I have been a fan of Oren Klaff since reading his “Pitch Anything” book that talked about stacking “selling frames” on top of each other for various sales situations. The idea of framing is a well-known psychological technique to prime and trigger compliance in advertising and other influential mediums.

A Selling Mashup

In his latest book, “Flip the Script,” Oren Klaff creates a kind-of mashup of the Spin and Challenger selling systems with Hollywood scriptwriting.

SPIN Selling

SPIN Selling [Neil Rackham] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. SPIN Selling

Challenger Selling System

The Challenger Sales Model is a sales approach in which the seller actively teaches their prospect, tailors their sales process, and takes control of the customer conversation.

The Tony Robbins team also highlights the book here.

The #1 sale script to land more deals

The goal of every sales presentation is to reduce the uncertainty gap in the buyer’s mind – improving the chance of getting to yes.

Of course, not all selling systems lend themselves to interactive web technologies in use today. But one can easily imagine a day when website users will interact with a form of website artificial intelligence the way a salesperson does today without the concern of brushing off the sales pitch.

But back to reality. Let’s quickly outline the “Flip the Script” principles and then talk about how to implement them in website interactions.

Flip the Script Guiding Principle

Flip the Script Basics
The primary principle from the book is outlined here:

“Nobody likes feeling like they have been pressured into making a purchase. We all hate boring sales pitches. Therefore, the best way to sell anything today is to guide the buyer to discover your idea or your product on their own. People naturally trust their own ideas, so if they believe it, they will get excited and basically sell themselves.”

Klaff is saying it’s time to “flip the script.” Forget trying to persuade people to buy what you sell. Instead, plant your idea in their mind, help them fall in love with it. The result is, they sell themselves!

Here are the basic steps to flipping the script:

Step #1: Status Alignment.

Job #1 in flipping the script is to get the other person to take you seriously. You can do that by providing them a status tip-off that you’re on the same level as them. Klaff talks a lot about this concept and how it sets the table for a conversation with a decision-maker. Status alignment will typically occur early in a new personal interaction. Just think how you might judge people at parties by the clothes they wear or don’t wear. Or the virtue signals on a social media post? These are primers for status alignment.

Of course, if you have read anything by Klaff, he tells some great stories about his various selling escapades where he used used his techniques to bring about the deal of a lifetime. Read the book for more on this.

This kind of thing happens in the first ten seconds in viewing of the website. We might even add a new principle to Steve Krug’s “Don’t make me think” list of things people think when they first arrive at a website.

What is this?
Where am I?
What can I do here?
Why be here and not somewhere else?
NEW: Is this site’s status aligned with me?

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition [Krug, Steve] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

Translation to Web Speak
The same techniques can be used on a website through the following “tip offs”

Overall design look and feel – Is the elegant, whimsical, etc. to match the status of the audience?
Language – Is the language formal or casual? It should be subtle, even obscure laced with insider knowledge cues (industry lingo) used to identify you as an in-group member.
Mention a real situation in the industry cares about (in-group concerns). Describe a recent action you have taken in line with that concern.
Psychology – is the message protect or grow, is status used in the framing of the message?
Show a list of your equal-status customers to set the table for pricing and level of service.

Imagine incorporating these ideas in the form of pictures, copy, and interactions on the website page designed for this user. Some of the interactions might be a test which points to a status increase when working with your company.

Step #2: Use a Flash Roll to Instill Certainty

In Step #2, you want to instill certainty in the other party. You need to establish your credentials as an expert with the ability to predict the future. The best way to do this is by using a “Flash Roll” — something you have seen in many movies. Here is an excerpt from Terminator (1984):

Scene: Here is an excerpt from Kyle Reese’s (Michael Biehn) description and warning about the unemotional, relentless cyborg killer Model 101 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) coming to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton).

“I’m Reese, sergeant, TechCom DN38416 assigned to protect you. You’ve been targeted for termination…It’s very important that you live….[The Terminator’s] not a man – a machine. A Terminator. A Cyberdyne Systems Model 101… Not a robot. A cyborg. A cybernetic organism…The Terminator’s an infiltration unit, part man, part machine. Underneath, it’s a hyper-alloy combat chassis – microprocessor-controlled, fully armored. Very tough. But outside, it’s living human tissue – flesh, skin, hair, blood, grown for the cyborgs…The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy. But these are new, they look human. Sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot…”

That monologue established his expertise on the subject, building a new level of trust in Sara Connor.

Translation to Web Speak
On a website, the flash roll might look something like this:

Have Web Discoveries left you wondering what you paid for?
If you have been in this industry as long as I have, you know that you can waste a ton of money on web discoveries without any clear results. How many times do you get a brand-aligned content solution that repositions your major competitor, all while addressing the pain point of your customer with an influence-based messaging with digital transformation-based website configurators? I have done a bunch of these sites where we took the conversion rate for the persona-designed landing page from 2% to 20%. We can do this for your market and customers in our discoveries, because this is the point of our personas and journey maps.

To make this work well, it should be placed on a page targeted for a user type that will understand some of the technical language. It can also be effective in an overview video.

Step #3: Explain your Big Idea

In Step #3, Klaff states it is time to explain your big idea to solve the pain point. He points out that the most effective way to flesh out your big idea is to do that in terms of the three W’s:

Why do I care? – Situational context
What’s in it for me?
Why you?

Klaff identifies a sequence of some pre-wired ideas that already exist in the prospect’s mind. (This is what I would call framing the big idea in existing narratives around Protect, Grow and Togetherness):

Winter is coming narrative – Threat is coming, things are changing, we have to change. Impact of status quo. Risk / Threats – there is approaching doom that threatens to dominate the current status hierarchy (Protect mindset).
2X, double reward is the minimum improvement – the new product has to be twice as good that what they have. Rewards – a big payoff that is valuable and easy to measure (Growth Mindset).
Skin in the game – Personal skin in the game, sacrifice time, money and reputation are what insures long term commitment to a project (Togetherness).

These “Idea receptors” are contextual and primed in most business people.

Translation into “Web Speak”
Consider the audience, speak their language, and talk about what they care about. You will note the storytelling concepts here:

Show not tell
Compact presentation
Efficiency

This translates to a visual presentation of your big idea. Mostly conceptual. Continuing with the web discovery ROI discussion of the previous step, here is a big idea in visual form (see image on right). Admittedly, this slide might only resonate with content strategists.

Step #4: Make the Buyer feel Safe

In step #4, we want the buyer to feel safe. The best way to make the buyer feel so safe they end up pitching your idea back to you is to find their novelty sweet-spot. Show them your idea is really just plain vanilla with one difference. But here we need further qualify our prospect –

What are the stakes for failure?
Are they updating a solution they already have or solving a new problem?
Is the solution a proven one or new?
What is the cost of the solution?

Normally these questions are asked in an interactive session and the salesperson would guide the conversation toward a solution he is selling or, if that doesn’t work, move on to the next lead.

So how is this implemented on a website?

Translation into “Web Speak”

If the prospect has bought into the previous steps, then we want to provide him an opportunity to guide themselves into one of company solutions. The solution: Guided Question survey (a.k.a. CPQ). This all fits in very well with digital transformation’s guided buying mantra.

On high-end selling sites, this might be implemented in a CPQ (Configure Price Quote) system where the customer can configure and access a pricing range for a product that fits their needs. The pricing of many B2B solutions tend to be very complex and the resultant price will usually scare the prospect away unless they see a competitor higher price that brings them back to the company (therefore range your pricing lower than any significant competitors).

On the low-end, this would be a survey with conditional built in to qualify the user or provide a price or price range for a product. It is normally touted as taking a test or get a price quote instantly. On an eCommerce site, this is basically what the product list and product details pages do for the online buyer in a standard way.

Here are some of the principles to follow when designing an automated qualifier.

Explore needs (approach and avoidance) to your solution set. This means assume they have a problem you can solve and ask questions that qualify their problem as a fit to your solution
Ask for success metrics – E.g., impact if you did nothing? Impact if successful implementation? Appetite for risk?
What is their implementation time frame?
What is their budget or target price?
When presenting solution:
- Start with table stakes features
- Chunk any novel or risky items into one category or line item to contain this
- Frame the market trend in favor of novelty
- Normalize table stakes as low risk
- Sell big idea benefits

If there is no budget or inclination for online CPQ or Surveys, then this is a great place for the “Call for a Quote” call-to-action.

Step #5: Leverage their Natural Pessimism

In step #5, Klaff points out that selling people using time, price, social pressure triggers offend their sense of autonomy. Also, if attempt to exercise sudden control over the sales process, resistance is inevitable. So, like other selling systems, you should let the buyer talk, Don’t try to close. Ask probing / guiding questions.

Klaff recommends we should leverage the natural pessimism of the buyers to enable self-selling process. My natural question when I first read this in his book was – Why is it important to activate buyers pessimism, isn’t that going to destroy the deal? Klaff states people tend to worry about features and functions that are not relevant to the solution. So we need to put a fence around their concerns.

Let them feel the pessimism, this makes them feel in control of process.
Impose boundaries before you grant them autonomy.
Don’t give buyer control of the end process. “We will talk about it and get back to you”

Put a Fence around it!
To contain the buyer’s natural pessimism, he would list the obvious ways to fail. This frames these possibilities as things not to worry about. Humans are slow to question boundaries – especially when standards or best practices exist, present these issues as settled; either they don’t matter, are time-wasters or distractions.

Here is Klaff’s frame to bound their areas of concern to things that make his solution better and different than other solutions. Think of it as an invisible boundaries contain buyer’s allowed questions. There are 2 categories of questions:

Inside Boundary Issues – what really matters – Facts accepted, topics open to discussion and issues happy to discuss. Inside boundary questions as useful to the process. Choose these issues that make your solution unique and a strong choice.
Outside Boundary Issues – settled features, best practices that don’t matter (time-wasters, distractions) to the process at hand. The outside boundaries should be addressed and dismissed as methods leading to failure.

To summarize this step: Build fences and then use a buyer’s formula (#6) to teach them how to buy and invite them through the buying gate.

Translation into “Web Speak”

You maybe thinking to yourself, how do you convert something like step #5 into a web interaction? It is probably good start a dialog with the customer, even if it is by email or chat to address his pessimism openly.

On the other hand we can use a common eCommerce website design pattern, the comparison chart. This will erect various outside boundary fences and prime them for the CTA (call-to-action).

Before-After Comparison

The chart on the right illustrates how the marketing-sales handoff was done in the past and how digital transformation has changed this dynamic:

Side-by-Side Feature Comparison

Comparisons are more typically shown as a side-by-side comparison table as illustrated here >>>

This is especially effective when items are stated as outcomes instead of products.

Summary: The Buyers Formula

Klaff summarizes the overall process in the Buyers Formula:

Not everything is worth talking about. E.g., price is one of them because there are a lot of things before the price negotiations
Reaffirm status – I have done this many times along the way.
Highlight the obvious ways to fail – e.g., price is not an indicator of value.
Counterintuitive ways (obvious to less obvious 5-6) to fail – e.g., latest technology.
Obvious metrics – obvious things to do.
Less obvious hacks – experience-based advice.
Hand over autonomy – this is what we would do.
Redirect out of bounds objections – listen to complete objections, then reassert expertise
If they continue to object on a particular point, they will not be a good customer
Embrace buyer’s pessimism

Conclusion

Some sales techniques map well to web page interactions. Flip the Script is more adaptive than some of the other techniques. I hope you enjoyed this article. Please comment below.

Here are some other Book Summaries of “Flip the Script”.

Flip The Script Book Summary - Oren Klaff - Wise Words

Flip The Script Book Summary is all about sales. Oren Klaff explains how you can implant ideas into others minds so that they believe it is there’s.

Summary of Flip the Script by Oren Klaff | Summaries.Com

Get an overview of Flip the Script by Oren Klaff

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