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In this video, we dive into the art of “High-Level Selling” with Torrin and Calum. Whether you’re a business owner struggling with sales or simply looking to improve customer connections, this video will help you master sales with a human touch and achieve greater success through meaningful connections.
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by traditional sales tactics or unsure about how to connect authentically with clients, you’re not alone. Studies show that 68% of consumers value trust and emotional connections over price when making purchasing decisions. This highlights just how crucial it is to integrate human behaviour into your sales strategy for sustainable success.
The Interview with Torrin Minutillo
Key Takeaways
- Discover how focusing on “human success” rather than financial outcomes transforms your sales process.
- Understand the role of trust and safety in building genuine relationships with your clients.
- Learn actionable techniques, like asking probing and curious questions, to uncover your customers’ core motivators and solve their true pain points.
The Script from the Video
[Intro]
Torrin Minutillo
Sales success is human success. It’s not financial success. I actually made more sales, want to let go of the outcome,
Calum Maxwell
Selling becomes easy and it becomes fun.
[Intro Ends]
Calum Maxwell
Torrin. Thank you very much for having me here today. It’s exciting to share your story with viewers. Can you tell us a bit about your background? What led you to start your business High Level Selling?
Torrin Minutillo
Thanks. Good to be here. It’s been a bit of a journey. I’m now approaching 35 years in business in general, and, been in the real estate business for the last 24 years. And that’s where I really got stuck into, selling and sort of trying to hone my sales skill.
So fast forward all through that career, real estate to what I’m doing now or focusing my attention on is around high level selling. And how do we help business owners who are not traditional salespeople to be able to get higher conversion rates with higher value clients?
The other part of my journey is about human behaviour, how do we bring the human experience to the business experience? And for me, the more I’ve done that over my sales career and particularly in the real estate, the more I’ve found I’ve connected with people and been able to get, you know, really, really good results.
And now my passion as I’m getting into my senior years of business is how do I help other business owners who are facing similar challenges that I did sort of 20, 25 years ago. And then really integrating that with the human experience. How do we bring the human experience to the business experience?
My observation over a period of time has been that most business owners tend to separate that but I found what works for me and the study that I’ve done around human behaviour is when you bring these together, you get a much better outcome and much better results.
So now I’m putting that all into a program, which I’m calling high level selling and building a brand around that. It’s really suiting a lot of business owners who traditionally didn’t get into their business because they were good at sales, that wasn’t their natural pathway. Their natural pathway is they’ll go down whatever they were passionate about, whatever their technical expertise was and they know how important sales conversion is, but they’ve never been trained around that and around that human experience.
So I’m really focusing on helping those people overcome the challenges that they face around the sales arena in business. And we all know that you need to have sales success to have business success. So that’s how I’ve evolved into it. That’s a quick snapshot of 25, 30 years.
Calum Maxwell
Mate that’s a big nutshell.
Torrin Minutillo
A big nutshell.
Calum Maxwell
I love that it’s not transactional. It is very much about understanding the customer’s pains, pressures, wants, needs and desires and how do you serve that? That’s what creates the opportunity for real connection in sales. I feel that it means that you’re solving problems, not trying to sell something. So, yeah, I relate to that and what you’re doing there in a big way.
Let’s just build on that. That sales is not financial, and it’s about success. It’s about human success. What philosophy led you to that?
Torrin Minutillo
That’s a good question. And I think this is one of the pivotal things that shifted my overall sales success is when I came to understand that when you shift your focus away from the monetary benefit or the financial success that sales can bring and shift it back to what are the needs of the human that you’re trying to serve, then the financial side looks after itself.
What happens with us in our human behaviour is that when we allow the financial bit to get in our life from a mindset perspective, it shifts and changes the way we show up and how we serve our customer, because we’ve ultimately got our aim on the prize, on what are we going to achieve. That automatically shifts you away from being able to serve the person that you have in front of you the best thing that suits that person for the situation that they’re in.
When you shift it to human success and go, okay, how can I help this person achieve what they want? And you stay purely focussed on that which is the human side. That’s why I say that sales success is human success. It’s not financial success.
The irony is that what you ultimately want, which is the financial success from selling and helping people achieve what they want, that will come by default. I actually made more sales when I let go of the outcome, and started purely focusing on the human element of where this person is at.
Calum Maxwell
Something so simple. When we don’t focus on the financial outcome, we actually listen to our customer.
Torrin Minutillo
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it for me is just that mindset shift that it’s the best way to act in service is that if you want to add truly act in service of your client and you’re there to help their needs and you put theirs at the forefront, which leads into one of the whole philosophies around high level selling is that when you attuned to that, that person feels understood, which is one of the human addictions. When they feel understood, they are more connected to you and they’re more likely to build trust with you.
Calum Maxwell
How do you integrate the trust principles into your training? Your sales training?
Torrin Minutillo
Trust is one of the foundational elements of any sales process. In fact it’s a foundational process of building a relationship with anybody. What I’ve come to understand, you know, my extensive training around human behaviour is that really trust is a word we use which represents the person feeling safe.
So what we need to do is build into the conversation that we’re creating with our relationship building with our client to make them feel safe before you get to whatever your value proposition is, or however you’re going to help them potentially with a solution for a problem they have.
If we focus on how do we make them feel safe, and that is to make them feel understood, approve them, get them accepted in who they are, getting them comfortable with you, that positions them to become more compliant. Whatever it is I suggest you should do to solve your problem. But until you feel safe with me, you’re always going to set up a little bit of an a barrier to whether this is a good place for me to go.
Calum Maxwell
Can you explain what the invisible barrier is in sales and how do we identify and overcome it?
Torrin Minutillo
I think the best way to identify this is to firstly understand as humans our first priority of our nervous system is to keep us safe. It’s always going to say what’s the danger versus the good. This creates an invisible barrier where we need to get past that before the person feels safe.
How we approach our prospect and how we are talking to them when we know that they’re going to arrive in this negative emotional state that prepares us to be able to ask some questions, to validate them, to make them feel significant, and once they feel that way, they start to shift into this positive emotional state.
Now, the interesting thing is that unless we are there ourselves in this positive emotional state and feeling safe ourselves, we won’t bring another human across to that side. So if we’re in a negative emotional state and we don’t believe in what we’re talking about, or we don’t believe in the solution that we have in how we can act in service, we’re never going to push someone into that positive emotional state and build that trust.
Calum Maxwell
I’ve seen many invisible barriers. For me, it’s more of, just putting myself at ease and being in a positive state and, looking at the, the current state that’s being presented to me and identifying what is the real pain, what is the real, you know, want or need.
Often customers will say one thing, but it’s through questioning that will actually lead or get to the true problem, the true want, the true desire. And that barrier that we put up ourselves when we’re engaging someone for something. It really is to protect ourselves because we don’t want to be led astray. We want the right solution.
Torrin Minutillo
Most people will present in a surface level. They’ll never present what’s really driving them and part of moving them into that safe place is where they’re more likely to go below the surface to what is really their pain point that you can actually tap into.
How we do that is through some curious questioning, some probing encourage questions to get them to open up. But if they’re not feeling safe, they’re never going to open up to where you want to do. And the skill of a salesperson is to be able to understand this, shift their emotional state, and get them to open up about what is really bothering them. And now you can address the real problem, which is more likely to be connected to you. And that’s where trust really gets cultivated.
Calum Maxwell
When I got to the true problem or true want of a customer he said, “Calum, I just want you to solve all of our marketing problems so that I can get back surfing.” That’s it.
Torrin Minutillo
So that was his real core motive.
Calum Maxwell
That was his core motivator.
Torrin Minutillo
Correct.
Calum Maxwell
Yeah. It was, very cool.
Torrin Minutillo
Excellent. That’s good. That shows that he was safe and felt trusted with you.
Calum Maxwell
Can you tell me what are some high quality questions that we can ask our prospects to have them self sell?
Torrin Minutillo
It’s all very situational, of course, but the way I’d like to teach and help people understand is it’s actually ask what I would frame as curious and probing questions. So you literally start your question with, “Hey, I’m curious to know….” And then you’d follow up with whatever that is, because what you’re doing is inviting them to open up because you’re curious about their needs and their wants.
When you ask someone what we would classify as a curious questions, I’m really getting intrigued in what’s making you tick, what is the real challenge here? What’s important to them is what’s bothering them. What’s the thing that is most likely keeping them awake at night that you may be overlooking, unless you ask a probing and curious question.
Now by asking the curious and probing question and then going deeper on that, “So tell me a little bit more about this challenge that you just said is something that I hadn’t really thought about in our sales process.” So you can see what I’m doing now is on probing on something that you’ve said, which leads you in more leads me and more in a conversation more likely to get to that safe place where you’re going to reveal what is really your core driver.
Because when I know what your core driver is, I can now adapt my solution to that core driver and not this surface problem, which most people get stuck on.
Calum Maxwell
So how can we get ourselves into a positive state to influence someone that we’re looking to serve effectively?
Torrin Minutillo
There’s a couple of key ones which are quite, not earth shattering and that is just be present, be fully present to their needs. That’s number one. And actually be grateful for the opportunity of actually helping this other human being resolve whatever that is. And when you arrive in that state and you stay calm to it, let go of the outcome and find out how you can be fully of service. And sometimes that means that you can’t help that person, right. And you should be open to that.
Calum Maxwell
Open to let go.
Torrin Minutillo
Open to let go. Right. And if you’ve let go of the outcome already and you can identify with your prospect, how potentially someone else better qualified, better positioned and can help them, and you take that to it, you most likely find that that person will trust you more and refer you to someone else because you’re being honest with what is their priority, what is their needs.
Calum Maxwell
You’ve looked after quite a few customers now, and one of them I even know, we share a mutual client. What’s some of the feedback that you’ve gotten from customers that has influenced or helped you identify strategies in your training?
Torrin Minutillo
The obvious answer is they’re getting better results, but it’s deeper than that. The ideal client that I’m looking to serve and help are people that potentially have an identity crisis around selling, right, because they’re fearful of it.
Calum Maxwell
We hate to sell.
Torrin Minutillo
Right. We’ve hate to sell because we think it’s a reflection on our value system, that we’re trying to convince someone else to do something that they potentially don’t want to do.
The biggest feedback that I get is that we shift the process away from actually selling anything and to becoming the trusted advisor to help that person resolve the problem and how do you get them to see that you are the obvious choice to help them?
So the feedback that I get from a lot of the clients that I’m working with is that this feels a lot smoother now. I don’t feel like I’m selling. I’m actually enjoying the conversations because there’s a structured process that you can take them through, and when you start recognising your clients respond to you differently, it energises you to go deeper into the conversations you need to have,
Calum Maxwell
When you have fun in the process and you’re sharing your knowledge, selling becomes easy and it becomes fun.
Torrin Minutillo
When I get that feedback, that’s when I know that the person is now moving forward. There’s lots of, things that you need to implement; systems, process a game plan, all that. That’s all part of the structure. But you need to understand whether you got the right person in front of you in the first place by asking them probing and curious questions before you even get to your solution.
When you take it through this process, it becomes a natural process. It’s not a selling process. And so people who are not, comfortable with selling, they find this much more of a natural process because it’s more of a conversation. How can help you rather than, I need to sell you my product or service, I can make a dollar.
Calum Maxwell
How can interested people get in touch with you to learn more about your High Level Selling services training?
Torrin Minutillo
Just reach out. Like at the end of the day, everything starts with a conversation. The process that I take people through is really have like an exploration call first, just sort of see where they’re at on their business journey.
I would then invite them if they are interested into doing what I would call a diagnostic audit process, which is two sessions to deconstruct what they’re doing in their business life at the moment, in their sales process, and then come back with some solution solutions on a pathway forward of what that could look like for them.
If they resonate with the high level selling methodology and the blueprint, because that’ll be unfolded in those two sessions, then we potentially could work together for 90 days to be able to shift that person from the way they’re doing, selling now to the way they would rather do selling to be able to get the results they’re looking for.
And then there’s nine weeks of situational selling, which is you tell me the situations you’re in and we’ll apply the blueprint to what you’re doing so that you can evolve your own conversations that are specific to your needs, your market, your niche, so that when you come out of the end of the 90 days, you don’t need me anymore because you now transform to the salesperson that feels much at ease, enjoying the sales process and connecting better with the high quality client that you’re actually looking for.
Calum Maxwell
Thank you so much and thank you for your time. Really appreciate you sharing some insights and depth into sales strategies and the psychology of sales, and how that we can go about better serving our clients by just simply listening, working with them, understanding their pains and pressures, what they desire.
Torrin Minutillo
Thanks Calum, appreciate the opportunity. You know, I think the last thing I wanna say is that the main point of difference is the depth of understanding human behaviour and remembering to bring that human experience to the business experience.
The more we do that, the better we understand the people around us and the customers we’re trying to serve, and the better we’re going to be able to connect with them and get the business that we really want in our business life.
So thanks for the opportunity.
