WIBUL stands for:
Welcome to my house
Identify heaven and hell
Build a bridge to heaven (and away from hell)
Unblock the bridge so they can confidently walk across
Land them safely on the other side
1—Welcome To My House
The first five minutes of the call have two goals; build rapport and gain explicit agreement from the prospect on the agenda for the call.
I call this “Welcome to my house” because I want you to imagine yourself sitting behind a mahogany desk with the prospect walking in to talk to you.
This puts the conversation on your terms. It allows you to set the frame.
After our intros and rapport building, we want to…
1. Tell the prospect exactly how the conversation will work
2. Gain their explicit agreement to the process
I like to put it this way:
“Here’s how these calls work. I’m going to ask you a number of questions about what you do and where you want to go. Then, if it sounds like we can help you, I’m going to give you a description of what that might look like.
From there, if it makes sense for you to move forward, I’ll tell you about payment, logistics, and all the other pieces you may be wondering about throughout the call. Are you good with that agenda or is there anything you’d like to change?”
We’re looking for an explicit “yes” from them.
Agreeing to the call agenda means the prospect won’t interrupt you by interjecting with unwanted questions on price or logistics…
If we don’t do this, they will interrupt and the call will break down.
2—Identify Heaven and Hell
This part makes up the majority of the call and is conventionally called “discovery.”
Every client has a “heaven” they desperately want to attain and a “hell” they desperately want to move away from.
The problem is — they often can’t see this clearly.
Identifying heaven and hell is about helping the client clearly see the pain they’re in and repelled by and the desired future state they’re attracted to.
The goal is that these two states become clearly delineated in the prospect’s mind.
I always tell my sales teams that this part of the call is most crucial — with 99% accuracy, I can tell if a call will result in a sale or not just by listening to this discovery portion.
Here’s why:
If you don’t effectively delineate the heaven they’re trying to attain and the hell they’re trying to avoid there is NO REASON to buy because your product/service becomes purposeless.
There are three pieces to nailing this portion:
1. Ask the right questions (about the heaven they want and the hell they want to avoid)
2. Actively listen (use silent pauses after they finish talking along with “Mm hmms” to encourage them to keep sharing)
3. Summarize what they’re telling you and ask “Is that right?” to ensure you’re tracking
This means the prospect should be talking about 90% of the time. The remaining 10% is for your question-asking and active listening.
Here’s a format you can use to dive into the prospects of Heaven and Hell (simply adapt it to the specifics of what you offer — business outcomes, fitness outcomes, relationship outcomes, etc):
• Heaven – What’s your biggest professional GOAL right now?
• Probe Deeper – Why is that important to you? What will that unlock for you in your life?
• Agitate Pain – What is the biggest obstacle for you in achieving that goal right now? How is that obstacle holding you back and what will happen if you don’t resolve it?
• Summarize – Okay, great. So it sounds like you’re currently struggling with [INSERT HELL] and if you solve that, you’ll get [INSERT HEAVEN]. Is that right? (confirm) Awesome.
Again — you want to use silent pauses to get them to speak more.
You’re aiming to have them share in vivid detail the most heavenly future imaginable.
We want to get them salivating about their future heaven.
Now, time for hell.
Continue asking questions, but address the negative side too — having them share about the pain they’re currently in, how that pain could worsen if they don’t address it, all of the downstream consequences of it worsening.
We want to get them shuddering about the current and potential hell.
Depth is the dealbreaker here. Vivid detail and the emotional sense of both heaven and hell are a must.
For example:
A weak explanation of heaven and hell is “I’d like to communicate better with my partner”.
A strong explanation of heaven and hell is “I need to learn to communicate better to my partner — otherwise, our entire relationship is in jeopardy and there’s nothing that would pain me more than my kids witnessing me be a subpar husband and father, however, I know that if we turn this around our business will continue to thrive and we’ll be able to finally buy that dream house in Hawaii we’ve been dreaming of for decades”.
Here’s the key:
→ The pain of hell and the appeal of heaven the prospect feels the need to exceed the cost of what you’re selling. If it doesn’t, you won’t close.
3—Build A Bridge To Heaven (And Away From Hell)
This portion is conventionally called the “pitch.”
This isn’t a time to feature dump or talk about the intricacies of your product.
Rather you want to do the following:
1. Describe your offering with an incredibly simple 1-3 sentence analogy
2. Describe each additional detail about your offering in the context of their heaven and hell (the bridge-building)
An example if you’re selling a fitness solution:
You’ll have weekly calls with your coach [so you don’t keep falling off the wagon and binge-eating as you have for the last 12 years].
You’ll have an accountability group [so that you don’t feel alone in your weight-loss journey and intimidated going into a gym].
It lasts 12 weeks [which is enough time for you to make the changes permanent so this doesn’t get added to the scrap heap of brief attempts you’ve made to change such as X, Y, and Z].
If it isn’t clear, what’s in brackets is prospect-specific detail they’ve shared about their heaven/hell.
Failing to constantly link every mention of your offering back to heaven and hell in every sentence causes glaze over.
Ultimately, your prospect will fail to see your offer as their bridge away from hell toward heaven.
Whereas, we want our offer to be the obvious bridge away from hell toward heaven:
This requires you to be great at listening and improv — as you’re adapting your explanation of your offering in real time around the heaven/hell they’ve just shared.
4—Unblock the bridge so they can confidently walk across it
Conventionally, we call this objection handling.
At this point, you’ve built a bridge with your offer as the path away from their hell toward their heaven.
However, there may be some remaining obstacles preventing them from feeling like they can walk across the bridge and pay.
So here, you want to dismantle three kinds of objections:
2. Objections that you predict this prospect will uniquely have even if they haven’t mentioned them (objection forecasting)
3. Any objections the prospect explicitly mentions
For the common objections that the majority of prospects have, you should have killer ways to dismantle these already rehearsed, so you can nip them in the bud rapidly.
For the objections that you predict this prospect will uniquely have but that hasn’t been mentioned, dismantle these rapidly (again, even if they haven’t mentioned them).
Your ability to forecast which objections a given prospect will have and dismantle them BEFORE they’ve even surfaced in the prospect’s head is a key lever on the close rate.
Example: If you get a feeling they’re strapped on time — “By the way, 90% of our clients are incredibly busy execs with multiple responsibilities and families so we’ve designed the program to take less than an hour per week.”
Example: If they told you during heaven and hell they have lots of travel coming up — “Side note; we have lots of clients who travel during the program and find they actually get better results because they’re applying what they’re learning in a novel environment.”
Finally, you want to pull out any other objections you’re yet to nail.
To recap, at this point, you’ve set the frame, made them explicitly aware of their heaven and hell, positioned your offer as the bridge to heaven and away from hell and have handled common objections and objections you predict they’ll have…
To nip any remaining ones before going for the close, simply ask; “Besides logistics and investment which we’ll talk about in a moment, do you have any remaining questions or concernings about moving forward?”
Then knock each of these objections down to successfully clear all obstacles so they can walk across the bridge!
5—Land them safely on the other side
This is the Close.
I always start this section with: “Ok great, so I’m going to run you through pricing, how it works and how you can move forward sound good?”
1. Value recap
2. Price anchor
3. Assumptive close
Value recap — Before you reveal the price, you want to recap ALL of the value they’ll be getting by moving forward. This involves a quick summary of the bridge building from your offer to their heaven and away from their hell. This reminds them of the magnitude of benefit they’re going to experience by moving forward which is critical before they hear the price.
Price anchor — A price anchor involves stating a higher investment for a similar offer before stating the exact price of the actual offer. This powerfully alters value perception making the expensive feel cheap. An example may be; “To have Ed work with you 1:1 for a day to get you these results would be $45,000, however, the group program, which gets even better results is an investment of just $7500”.
Assumptive close — Here, we assume the deal is done. We don’t ever ask if they want to buy. We skip that and go straight to asking for payment. For example; “So, would you like to pay by a card or wire transfer?”. This reduces the risk of a crack of doubt creeping in and killing the deal at the last moment.
So that’s the WIBUL sales format. If executed with integrity and excellence this will CRUSH both sales conversion and relationship building.
And that’s because all we’re doing here is helping people see what they want and what they don’t, in vivid detail. And then offering a way for them to get it.
What are your thoughts on this sales process?
