Upselling and Getting People All In: Find the Core Desire First
You get someone on the phone. They’re ready. You tell them to join, they join, you hang up, you move to the next call. Clean, efficient, and you just left most of the money in that conversation sitting on the table, because you never found out what they actually wanted or what they could actually invest. You defaulted them into the smallest package because that’s the path of least resistance for both of you.
Here’s the uncomfortable part: the call you just had and the call that closes someone into a much bigger package take almost the same amount of time. The difference isn’t effort. It’s three extra minutes of asking the right questions before you ever mention a price.
This lesson is about those three minutes, specifically what to ask and in what order, so the package you recommend actually matches what the person in front of you wants and what they can genuinely put toward it.
Why do the same calls stay stuck at the smallest package?
Picture a closer who’s good at getting people to say yes. He’s fast, direct, confident, and it works, people join. But there’s a leak in the process: he never asks what they actually want or how much they have to invest, he just tells them to get in and hangs up. If someone on that call had real money to put behind their business and never got asked, that’s not a small miss. It’s the entire difference between a minimum-package signup and a full commitment, missed because of one skipped question.
The training doesn’t treat this as a minor tweak. It treats finding out what somebody wants, and how much they have to work with, as the whole game. As Dave Wood puts it in the Top Producer Formula, describing exactly this gap, “he’s just telling people to join and getting off the phone, right? Without finding out what they want, why they want it, and how much money they have.”
That’s the gap. Not attitude, not closing skill, just missing information that was sitting right there in a normal conversation.
What is a “core desire,” and why does it matter more than their stated goal?
Ask someone on the phone what they want and you’ll almost always get a number. Some amount of money per month, usually a figure they invent on the spot because you asked and they needed to say something. That number is real in the sense that they said it, but it’s rarely the actual reason they picked up the phone.
The lesson calls the real reason the core desire, and the instruction for getting there is specific:
The goal is, is rapidly as possible to cut into people’s core desire. That make sense? So as you got the surface desires, right? The surface desires, which is what? I want to make money.
You get there by staying one to two steps behind the surface answer instead of accepting it and moving on. In practice that means when someone tells you a dollar figure, you don’t say “great” and move to the order form. You ask what that number is actually for. Usually it’s not abstract. It’s a specific person, a specific situation: a daughter they want to provide for, a spouse they want to bring home from a job, a retirement that isn’t coming otherwise. Once you’re talking about that instead of an arbitrary number, the whole conversation changes tone, and so does what they’re willing to commit to. As Dave Wood frames the shift in the Top Producer Formula, “When you realize people are doing this because of what they want, not what you want, everything changes.”
How do you actually find that in under three minutes?
The process is a short chain of direct questions, not a script you read word for word. It runs roughly like this:
- Ask what they want. Take the number they give you at face value for now.
- Ask what that number is for. Push past the first answer if it’s still vague.
- Ask how hard they’re willing to work for that reason, specifically, not for the money in the abstract.
- Ask how much money they can actually make available to get started and to keep marketing on an ongoing basis.
- Only then recommend a package, one that matches both the size of what they said they want and the size of what they said they can invest.
The tell that you’ve hit something real is a shift in how they sound, not what they say. A sigh. A pause. Their voice picking up energy or dropping into something quieter and more serious. That’s the signal you’re past the made-up number and into the actual reason they called, and it usually shows up within two or three minutes if you keep asking instead of settling for the first answer.
None of this works if you skip the money question out of politeness. Most people are uncomfortable asking directly how much someone can invest, so they guess low, or they don’t ask at all and let the prospect self-select into the cheapest option. Asking directly isn’t rude here. It’s the only way to know whether you’re about to recommend something that’s actually undersized for what this person is capable of committing to. Get past that discomfort once and it stops feeling like an awkward money conversation and starts feeling like you’re actually doing your job: matching someone with what they need to get a real result instead of whatever’s easiest to say out loud.
Where’s the line between a bigger sale and pushing someone past their means?
This is the part worth being honest about, because it’s easy to hear all of this and assume the goal is to squeeze the biggest number out of everyone regardless of circumstances. That’s explicitly not the approach here. As Dave Wood states it plainly in the lesson, “I want people to commit within their means, though, and take it seriously is what I want” when he’s talking to a prospect. Asking somebody to overextend financially for information products isn’t the goal, and stretching someone past a real budget isn’t the same as helping them find their core desire.
The whole method only works because it’s built on honesty running both directions. You’re direct about expecting a straight answer on budget and motivation, and in exchange you’re recommending a package sized to what’s real for that person, not the biggest number you can extract. A $25 signup that matches someone’s actual capacity is a better outcome than a stretch commitment that collapses in thirty days because it was never sustainable in the first place.
Get this sequence right and the difference in outcome from the exact same lead, the exact same three-minute window, can be significant. In a live example walked through in the Top Producer Formula, Dave Wood closes a call this way: “If you listen, it’s not going to be free. It’s not going to be easy. But if you listen, and you do exactly what I tell you to do, I will help you give your daughter the life she deserves. Is that fair? That’s fair. That’s the difference between a $25 sign up and an all-in from a three-minute conversation.”
Not a different lead. Not a different product. The same conversation, asked in a different order, aimed at what the person actually wants instead of what’s easiest to close. That difference compounds across every call you take, because a team built on properly-sized commitments duplicates faster than one built on minimum sign-ups nobody can afford to grow.
Where this goes next
What’s covered here is the framework: ask, push behind the surface answer, ask about money directly, then match the offer. The full lesson runs through several live phone role-plays showing the full question sequence in real time, how to handle it when someone won’t open up, and how this same approach applies to leading a team once people are already in. That full video, plus the complete transcript, is part of the Top Producer Formula course.
If you’re new to it, get the full course, every lesson, every transcript, for $99 at the Top Producer Formula course. Go get the role-plays and run this sequence on your next call.
Full lesson transcript
Lightly edited from the original recording — fillers removed, nothing added. Income disclaimer.
So if you are on the phone and you're not finding out what people want, this is why I want to talk to you, because I'm going to help you, right? Here's what's going to happen. If you're good and you've got authority, you'll still get people in. Because if you're like a Haas, right, and you've got a vision and you're speaking it, and you're marketing, and you're selling, and you're doing webinars, you're going to sell anyways.
But here's what you're going to be missing. Here, Paul, let's talk for a second. I'm going to put this down, right? Now you heard how Paul's talking to people, right? Now he's talking to people, and why I'm giving him coaching on this, is because I've been listening to his energy response.
I already talked about him a minute ago, right? But where are the problems in the way he's talking to people, right? The same conversations can average a thousand dollars rather than 25, right? Since he's doing it anyways, it makes sense, right? Does that make sense to you guys?
Now here's why. Because he's just telling people to join and getting off the phone, right, without finding out what they want, why they want it, and how much money they have. So what if they have $1,500 and he just tells them to join and hangs up the phone? Well, he just missed $1,500 in commissions, right?
From three extra minutes, which is super easy to do. That make sense to you guys? Really, really easy. So let me give you an example. So he's doing what he's doing, right?
Which is working for getting people in. And most of you are like, my God, that's so easy. It's the most unreal thing in the universe. I'm doing that tomorrow, right? And it's kind of cool because he's just so brutal with people.
I actually like listening to it because it's so badass, you know? It's like if you punch somebody, but they punch you faster and hit you in the face before your hand extends, that's almost how cool it is. But the reality is that he doesn't have any information. So he has no leverage with people, okay, when it really comes down to making decisions.
And you can get people to make a lot bigger decisions in your business, right? So with Paul, right, let's just take what he's doing. And if he just refocuses a little bit, now what's the goal? The goal is to as rapidly as possible cut into people's core desire.
That make sense? So as you got the surface desires, right, the surface desires, which is what? I want to make money. I mean, usually they're just making it up.
You know what I mean? How much money you want to make up? Why'd they say that? Because you asked them a question that they didn't have an answer to, and made something up. It's what people do.
It's why they throw objections at you too. They're just making stuff up, right? So he says something, right? But then in three minutes you can get to somebody's core desire. You have somebody's core desire, they'll tell you everything.
Everything, right, Chris? That's how you make all your upsells, right? That's why you have like 20% all-ins in your team. He has 20% all-ins, right? So core desire is what?
It's the desire behind what they say. That make sense? Desire behind what they say. So let's do a quick role play here, and I'll take you through an example of how to do that, but still really fast, but you're seeking, right? Because this is the way to avoid just getting a low package sign up.
Because if you just tell people to get in, generally they'll just go by the low package, right? Now you're still getting them to upgrade because you're doing good upgrade stuff, right?
Paul is. He's doing really good stuff to get people to upgrade his teams and stuff like that, but you could get a lot bigger upgrades like this. So you should probably talk to Chris. He's bringing in eight people a day, 20% all-ins is like an all-in and a half a day, plus his other income, plus duplication increase from his team upselling more, right? It's a massive difference in income, right?
Let me give you an example of how to do that. So, call me. "Hello, is this Dave?" "Yeah, who's this?" "Oh, hey, this is Paul, and I'm..."
"Paul, what can I do for you?" "Hey, I'm actually looking at your website right now and I'm thinking about joining." "Okay, I got it. Which website are you looking at, Paul?" "The one with the..."
I said that because then it looks like I have lots and I don't even know why he's calling, which makes me look more important. That's why I do that actually. "So what website is it, Paul?" "I think, I don't know if it's you or not, but the guy with the crazy hair on the website in the jungle."
"Yeah, okay. What's the link? What's the link you're on? Are you on right now?" "Yeah, I'm right in front of the..."
"I'm in front of the link. There's a photo and then there's just like an order form or something like that." "Yeah, I got it. I got it. Okay, that's me."
"All right. Hey, can I ask you a couple questions, Paul?" "Yeah, shoot." "Okay, you obviously called me for a reason. What can I do for you?"
"What are you looking for?" "Yes." "What for?" "Well, I want to be able to provide for my daughter." "Want to provide for your daughter?"
"Okay. How old's your daughter?" "She's one and a half." "One and a half. What do you do right now?"
"I am a cell phone sales rep." "Uh-huh. You're not providing for your daughter right now?" "No." "Really?"
"That's got to be rough. Let me ask you a question. How hard are you willing to work to provide for your daughter?" "I'll do everything it takes." "Yeah."
I cut to people's core desire that fast. "Can I ask you a question, Paul? You know, you obviously called me. You'll do whatever it takes, and I'm hearing you, because, you know, I've got a son, and I understand that. I'd do anything for my son."
"Anything. So let me ask you a question, Paul. Obviously you're ready to get started in your business, but I want to find out a little bit more detail. How many hours are you willing to work in your business to be able to provide for your daughter?"
"27 hours a day." "Okay. And if I tell you what to do, are you actually going to do it? Or are you going to fiddle around with me?"
"Because it sounds like you're serious, but I don't want to even mess around, even though you've got good motivations, if you're not willing to listen to everything I say. Willing to listen?" "Yes." "Now, Paul, how much money can you make available in order to get started in your business the right way, to be able to provide for your daughter and give her the life that she really deserves? How much money could you make available to get started?"
"Whatever I need to do that." "Whatever you need to do that. Yeah. Right. So I'm going to give you a package and some products to order, okay, to get started in your business."
"And what I'm going to tell you to do is to buy everything that I send over to you. Okay? And I just shot you a link. And here's the deal."
"If you listen, it's not going to be free. It's not going to be easy. But if you listen, and you do exactly what I tell you to do, I will help you give your daughter the life she deserves. Is that fair?" "That's fair."
That's the difference between a $25 sign up and an all-in from a three-minute conversation. When you realize people are doing this because of what they want, not what you want, everything changes, right? Everything changes. People are here.
You're here because of not what I want. You're here because of what you want. Some of you are surprised that I'm doing closing training, but I figure we don't have any on it. And all of you could probably bring in like five times the people if you do it, right?
How many of you think that this is at least simple, right? Yeah. Yeah. Now, so what's the formula?
The formula is a formulaic approach to cutting into people's core desire. Remember, we're talking about people who are inbound connections. I'm not talking about prospecting, right? Because it's valuable for most of you to do.
Right? At least for a long time, you know. Paul did it until he sponsored 900 people. We're not talking about a million phone calls and being on the phone all day.
I used to have six phone calls a day and sponsor six. Back-to-back scheduled, you know. And I'd just get on the phone and call people. I'd close them and sponsor everyone.
It's unbelievably simple. Didn't say it's easy because, you know, you'd probably be nervous the first few times you do it, right? But again, it's simple, right?
And it's only a few conversations. You get the hang of it and it's super easy if you know what you're looking for. So, principles. What are you looking for? You're looking for what they want.
Okay? Number one. Number two, you're looking for one to two steps behind what they want until you get to some side of core desire. Need. Because there's a reason why people are calling you to get in a business.
And it ain't because they want to make a thousand a month or whatever they say, right? It's because of whatever it is that they think that will do for them, right? But gosh dang, all of a sudden, now I'm talking about his daughter.
And helping him give his daughter the life that she wants. Much different conversation. Much different place of authority. This isn't true just for sponsoring. It's also true for leading your team.
If you don't know what your team wants, you can't help them get it, right? You can't influence them, right? Because it's just, you know, they're going to do this with their own motivation and they're going to kind of do what they think.
Right? It's about tapping into people's hearts, right? And what's behind the surface is what they're going to do. And there's an unconscious response people will actually produce whenever you get right behind the conscious surface, right? Whatever answer they give you, when you get right behind it, it'll fire off some kind of emotion. And you'll hear it in people's voices.
Yep. Yep. You don't always need the deeper level. That's the truth. It's just if somebody's taking forever, you know, sometimes you don't want to bother continuing to go and go and go.
Most people, though, you'll get better, right? If you are looking for a specific thing, you're going to get better. And what you're looking for is a change in an emotional response, right?
That's what you're looking for. You're hearing people's voices. People will sigh. Their voice will change a little. You know, their voice will sound pumped up or motivated or something like that.
Their emotional response will change. That's what you're looking for. Okay? You'll get better. When you get better, almost everybody will get to that within two or three minutes.
It's rare that it will take longer. The people that take longer, it's because they dodge all around what's on the inside. And people do that. But people who dodge all around, you can't really get to it anyways. So you have a choice to either just take what they tell you and try to close them or to just drop it.
Right? And I know people who will actually just drop it if people won't tell them. And you can do that too. So, an example, you can treat that like an objection if you want and you want to bother with it. And if you treat it like an objection and challenge it, right, it's a lot likelier that you'll get there faster.
That's part of kind of skill and learning how to communicate with people. So let me give you an example of that, right? If I'm giving you bullshit and, you know, you say, well, why do you want that? And they repeat themselves or whatever.
Right? Well, that might be what they want and you could just close them, right? So you kind of got to play that as an art. And you'll run into some issues here and there as you're playing with it.
Right? And after a while, you'll stop caring whether they tell you the truth or not. And then it's just a game to figure out how good you can do, right? And then it doesn't matter.
But here's what you do. You challenge it, like you challenge the other person, right? And then you challenge the other person again, and again, and again.
When somebody gives you a spouse objection, there's a couple ways of responding. What most people do is they try to book an appointment with that person and the spouse, which is the most god-awful thing ever. "Well, let me talk to you and your spouse together and show you both the plan." Right? God, she just sits there like with her vampire fangs wanting to kill you.
You know, it's a great, great idea, right? Well, a better idea is just to challenge it, right? Because people respond to challenges almost all the time.
So if somebody is not talking to you, here's what I do. Let me give you a role play real quick. So, you know, you're not answering me. Let me give you an example, and then I'll answer another question. I know what you're talking about.
Let me give you an example. And then if I still need clarification, I'll do that. Is that fair? Okay. That's another example of what I'm talking about.
I stop the continuous questions, right? No, no. So let me do this.
So the person's not telling me what they want. I'm going to pause for a second. And then here's what I'm going to do. "What's your name?" "Lori."
"Can I ask you a question? Okay. Now here's my promise to you. And I'm going to make you a promise before I ask anything. My promise to you, Lori, is I am going to be completely honest with you."
"If you're in business with me for the rest of my life, I'll be completely honest with you our entire lives together in business. Is that fair? Now here's the request that I have from you. My request from you in return for that, because I can't work with everyone, is: if you want to work with me, I'm going to require that you be honest with me."
"Okay? I don't want to know the fluff. I don't want you to impress me. And I don't want you to give me bullshit either. And I'm asking you a question."
"You're not answering it, right? So here's my question for you. Are you going to be giving me bullshit when I ask you questions? Can you be honest?"
"Okay. I want to stop you again. Okay? And that's fine. You want nice vacations."
"You want nice purpose. And I got that. And you're calling me. And maybe that's what you want. But you're calling me."
"And the reason you're calling me is because obviously you see me as some kind of authority. You believe that by calling me, I can help you make the money that you want and hit your goals in life. So when you hit $10,000 — and here's, I'm going to ask you one more time — if you bullshit me, okay, I will not talk to you anymore. Okay?"
"And here's my promise in exchange for you telling me the truth. I will only tell you what I believe."
"That's something you feel good about?" "Better lifestyle for yourself and your family." "Your family's not living the lifestyle they want now? Okay. I think your family deserves that."
"So if I could show you how to get your family's lifestyle to the next level, you'll listen to everything I tell you to do. Okay? And you're not going to bullshit me? And you're going to follow advice? If I tell you to buy a product, you'll buy it as long as you can?"
"Okay. I'll send you a link. I want you to click that and open it up. Okay?" You challenge bullshit.
That's what you do. Does that make sense? Okay. So here's what we're going to do. I'm taking lots of time on this, but I wanted to give you guys this.
So how do you do this? Well, number one, right? Number one, you want to challenge what people tell you every time something comes up that's bullshit. And notice I'm not calling it an objection, because it's not an objection. It's bullshit.
Okay? An objection is like, I physically have no money left on my credit cards and I can't buy. That's an objection to me, right? An objection is not, I need to talk to my wife.
That's stupid, right? Look, do you want to, 10 years from now, be married to somebody that completely controls every decision you make? Right? Do you want to be in a place five years from now where — she was just looking at me like...
That was great. That was a great look. I can't believe he said that, right? Do you want to be in a place five years from now where you want to buy something and it's only $500 or $1,000?
Right? And you still are struggling right? And you still are struggling to make money.
The decision because you don't have the money? How old are you now? My God, that's awful, right? Don't give me bullshit, right? "Well, I don't have the money," or, "I don't know if I'd spend money on something like that."
So what you're really saying is you don't have the money and you're broke. Can I ask you a question? You're 25 now and broke. You want to be 35 and broke. You want to be 45 and broke.
You want to be 55 and broke. You want to be struggling to make a decision for every little thing you want to buy for the rest of your life, because probably what happened last year will happen more next year if you don't change something. Isn't that right? You cut through people's bullshit, they respond differently, right? That make sense already?
That's how you close a lot of people. I close, I mean, if I talked to, when I was doing that, I talked to 100 people, I closed 97 of them. Every time. And they'd buy whatever I told them to buy. It wasn't just the lowest thing, right?
That's the difference, Paul. Since you're doing this anyway, they don't just buy the lowest thing if you find out what they want, what their desire is, and how much money they have to invest in it, right? Because then you're not asking them to do something that's outside their means, right? Sometimes people think that we want people to get all in or whatever, and it's not, obviously. That's dumb.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah, get all in. You don't have the money anywhere, right? I mean, you could go find it or come up with it or something, but I'm not going to sit there and ask somebody to put their mortgage on their house to buy a bunch of info products. I mean, that's the most retarded thing ever, right?
I want people to commit within their means, though, and take it seriously, is what I want, right, when I'm talking to somebody. Because if they're not willing to take it seriously, how can they expect anybody else to take it seriously? They can't. If you're not going to get in at the top package you can in your business, right, whatever it is, how can you expect anyone to take you seriously? I'm not going to take you seriously.
How do you expect your prospects to take you seriously? Yeah, you should do it, but I'm not going to, you know? You should make a decision, but not me, right? That's why I speak with authority about this stuff, because I always go in for the decisions at least at what I tell other people to make, right? If not way more, right?
And usually way more. That make sense to everybody in here? Is this a little too intense for you? You guys getting familiar from this? You guys going to sponsor some more people from this shit?
Way more badass than three-way calls, ain't it? Passing out DVDs and bullshit, right? You know what I'm saying? Folks, obviously the income examples discussed are extraordinary. The income claims presented are not intended to serve as a guarantee of income.
Instead, they're designed to give you an idea of what's possible. Success in this business requires leadership, hard work, and dedication. Since we want to help you make an informed decision, we've gone above and beyond with our income disclosure document. If you want to see the average earnings, please visit the page at www.empowernetwork.com forward slash income dot php.
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