Your Analogies Don't Work Anymore (Use these 4 Instead)

One of the quickest and easiest ways to start to shift prospects' beliefs in closing more sales are going to be analogies. The issue is with most closers is they're using recycled analogies that every single closer is using. And if you're saying something that every single closer is saying, then you're going to be put in the salesperson box. So prospects aren't actually going to be listening to you. Analogies like the island analogy, the ice cream truck analogy, the Usain Bolt running toward a gold medal analogy. These analogies worked a few years ago, but since every single closer user and their mother uses these analogies. Now, if a prospect has hopped on other calls before, they've heard this before, so they're going to put you in the salesperson box if you use these analogies. So what I'm going to be doing today is to give you 4 unique analogies that you've never heard before that you can start using on your sales calls to shift prospects' beliefs and close more deals. And stay till the end because the very last one is my absolute favorite. Let's dive into it. All right, so what is an analogy and how do you use them? So analogy is a story or a comparison of two things, often especially when we're talking about in sales calls for the purpose of shifting somebody's belief. Because all an objection is is a limiting belief that is preventing them from going ahead and moving forward. So an analogy is used or a story is used to help shift the belief. A lot of these are going to be built on the structures of NLP, right? So a lot of them are going to be built on changing the meaning, changing the cause, or changing logical levels, right? These are NLP terms. And if you want me to go a lot more in-depth on those terms, I definitely can. But just to keep it very high level and why are using stories and analogies so, so, so powerful is because people think in stories. When you tell somebody a story, they put themselves as a protagonist in that story. They see themselves through that story. And because people think in stories, you can take complex ideas and put them in a story to make it much easier for prospects to understand. And when you do put it in a story, they're more likely to agree with the point that you're making if they agree with the story. So what analogies do is they make it, they make it very, very hard for them to disagree with you. For example, if you're just going to tell somebody that the belief that they're wanting, you're wanting them to believe, if you're just to tell them that, they might agree, they might not agree. But if you tell it in a story and they agree with the story because the story makes sense, they're much more likely to actually buy into the belief which you're trying to get them to buy into. So analogies are really, really easy way and a great way to get somebody to buy into a belief to make sure your discovery, your objection handling, whatever you're doing in the sales process, you're getting somebody to buy into certain beliefs to make it easier to make the sale. So let's dive into the 4 analogies that I use a lot on sales calls. So the first analogy that I use is called the success bias analogy. So why do I use this analogy? The belief that it's really there to attack is people thinking that they can figure it out on their own or that they can just, you know, it's, it's just going to happen. They're just going to succeed no matter what. Now, the reason why this is a problem is if they think that they're going to succeed no matter what, then they don't need your help as a salesperson. They don't need the program. They don't need whatever it is you're selling because no matter what, they're going to succeed, which obviously is not the case. Oftentimes this will come up in the conversation when you're asking like cost of inaction questions, consequence questions, and they're like, oh no, I'll get there no matter what, or I'm not going to let that happen. So I'm going to pull out this analogy during that time to get them to actually buy into the belief that it's not guaranteed. And I call it the success bias. So when they say, oh, it's not going to happen, I'm going to go, okay, now I can see where you're coming from. Can I make a suggestion? Have you ever heard of the success bias? And they'll be like, yes, no, it doesn't matter. So what the success bias shows us is that as people, we only see the people who succeeded. For example, and just depends on what you're selling, you'll use a different example. So for example, if you know you're starting a business, okay, and you don't make any money in that business, how long are you actually going to stay in business? Like, not very long, right? So the only people you actually see in business, you actually see on social media showing that they're successful in the business, are the people who have figured it out, are the people who made money and are there long enough to reach success. So for every one person you see that's successful, you don't see the thousands of people who tried, didn't make money, and now they're at the point where they're not even in business anymore. So I have to ask, what happens if nothing changes and we keep doing what we're doing now and we don't reach that level of success. Okay, then you re-ask the cost of inaction question. So what is this story really meant to come across? Is the fact of the matter is success is not guaranteed. 1 out of 1,000 people will succeed, right? So they're seeing things on social media of like, oh, well, everyone succeeds. Everyone that I see in social media succeeds. But you're showing the people who aren't on social media also tried and they didn't succeed. Okay, so you're giving them a different perspective. Okay, so that's great when you're dealing with cost of inaction. Somebody saying like, oh, like that's not going to happen. But what happens if you're in the actual discovery process and for whatever reason you're diving into their problem and they minimize their pain? Now, why is minimizing their pain a bad thing? Because if somebody minimizes their pain, the way they talk to you as a salesperson is the way they talk to themselves. So if they tell themselves, hey, it's not that big of a deal, right? Like, hey, my, my, like, I've, I've gotten comfortable being in a very shit situation. If that's actually their mentality, the urgency they have at the end of the call is not going to be very high. Why? Because it's not that big in their head. So you need to get them to see the fact that it's not that big in their head is part of the problem. And how I do that is through the Super Bowl analogy. So if I'm asking and I'm probing into problem, like, hey man, how does that feel? How's that impacting you? Or how's that showing up for you? And they're like, oh, it's not that bad, minimizing. Bad. Okay. It's like, hey, man, do you feel like that might be part of the problem? And they're like, oh, like, what do you mean? Well, like, at the end of the day, if there's no actual emotion behind it, where's the motivation to change? For example, if you're in the Super Bowl and you had a teammate and they didn't care whether they won, whether they lost, they're just indifferent about it. Would you want that person as a teammate? No. Why not? Right. Because they don't have the actual emotion behind what they're doing to reach and actually win. So I have to ask you, re-ask the question, what happens if nothing changes or you know, how does it actually feel being in your situation? So what am I getting across? Now you can substitute the Super Bowl for really any sporting analogy. I know I have people in Europe that come to me like, use the, you know, soccer or foot— whatever, whatever the fuck you guys do, right? Whatever sporting event that you can use, what you're really getting across is people who win are people who have emotion and care about whatever it is that they're doing. And a real easy way to convey this is Sports, right? So hey, if you had a teammate, you're in the Super Bowl and you had a teammate that didn't care whether they won, whether they lost, would you want them as a teammate? It's very obvious that you would not want that person as a teammate. And then you share to them the reason why is because they don't have the actual emotion to succeed. So then you're mirroring it back to them that they need the emotion to succeed in order to get out of their situation. So the first things first, they need to admit that their current situation is bad. So this breaks them out of the minimal This breaks them out of minimizing and actually gets them to emote the real pain. So if you're able to do this, you're able to have a much deeper conversation on their actual pain. So that's going to deal when somebody actually comes in, they're minimizing the pain. But another big problem that can happen on your discovery is when a prospect tries to give themselves too much credit for just doing research and hopping on sales calls. Why is this a red flag? So if you come to me and you think hopping on a sales call with me is actually doing the work, not actually purchasing the program and not actually doing the work in the program, then you are giving yourself too much credit. That means you are not going to have the urgency because you've already felt like you've done enough, right? Like just hopping on the sales call is enough. But you and I both know that hopping on sales call is not enough, right? You actually have to join the program, number one. And number two, joining the program is not even enough. You actually have to go into the program and do the actual work to get the results, especially when you're talking about education. So When prospects give themselves too much credit, what they're doing is they're giving themselves an emotional out. Again, the way they talk to you is the way they talk to themselves. So they're giving themselves too much credit. They're giving themselves an emotional out. So what I'll always use when somebody says like, oh, well, I showed up to the call or something along those lines. Well, hey, I'm here. Or they'll say this in the conversation of like when you ask them, hey, what prevented you from doing anything in the past? And they're like, oh, well, I'm here now. Like, what does it matter? Something along these lines. Again, they try to give themselves too much credit. What you need to do is you need to shift how they're viewing this on. It's not about showing up to the sales call. It's about coming in and putting the work. So if they say something like that, like, oh, I'm here, or, oh, I showed up, well, that's why I'm here on the sales call, something like that. You want to address it like this. And I use the looking at the gym analogy, right? I'm like, hey, can I make a suggestion on that? At the end of the day, going in and taking a look at the gym versus going in every single day with a personal trainer eating right and working out rigorously are going to be two wildly different things. So be real with me because I'm on your team. What actually held you back from getting hands-on help in the past? Again, I'm going to re-ask the question. Now, what does it do? It shifts that, hey, just looking at something or hey, just doing research, that's actually not going to be the thing that gets you there. And you want to use the gym, and I'll use gym analogies quite a bit, is because it's something simple that people can understand. A lot of these analogies, again, you want to make it simple so people can understand. You don't want to use overused analogies, but you want to make it simple. So like sports, the gym, these things are going to help it click in their mind of like, oh yeah, just looking at gyms, that actually doesn't get you ripped. Going to the gym, eating right, that gets you ripped. Actually doing the action. So you take away them giving themselves too much credit and actually get them to admit that they haven't done anything quite yet. Now the last analogy is my absolute favorite analogy that I use, and it's a sneaky one. And the main issue that this one addresses is when people are saying that the reason they haven't gotten where they want to go is due to procrastination. It's due to them being lazy. Fuck. And number 4, this last analogy is one of my absolute favorites because it really addresses a sneaky belief that can cost you a lot of deals if you don't know how to actually deal with it. So if you're on a sales call and you ask somebody like, hey, what's preventing you from actually doing anything in the past? Or why haven't you hit your goals? Or whatever it is. And they tell you something like, oh, I've been lazy. Oh, I've been procrastinating. I just haven't been motivated. You might think you hit the fucking gold mine. You're like, yes, I have the real belief. Let me really drill into it. And then everything is now around the fact that they haven't hit their goals just because they've been lazy. The issue with this being a limiting belief that you address and this being like a lot of the leverage that you use in the sales call is when you get to the end and you're like, hey, it's $5,000. Hey, it's $10,000. Like, hey, whatever it is, people can convince themselves like, oh, for that amount of money, I'll just stop being lazy. Like, they don't need you to stop procrastinating. Yeah, accountability does help. But ultimately, people can fool themselves into believing that they can just snap out of it and not be lazy, not procrastinate, and just get motivated if the alternative is I have to pay $10,000 or whatever it is. So anytime anybody tells me their limiting belief is not motivated, they're lazy, they're procrastinating, I want to shift that from, oh, that's the belief to the real reason is you just haven't had the knowledge. So why haven't you gone out there and get the knowledge? How I address that is what I call the lottery ticket analogy. Now, this is something I've got from Dan Henry, very, very good, like, stage seller. And it goes something like this. If they're like, oh, like, why haven't you done anything in the past? Or like, oh, well, I've just been lazy or just been procrastinating. It's like, yeah, potentially. Can I share a perspective on that? And they're like, oh, yeah, sure. It's like, yeah, oftentimes— and I've been doing this for a while and I've helped thousands of people— like, oftentimes it's not really laziness that holds people back. The way you can think about this is, for example, if you had a winning lottery ticket and you knew if you cash it in you would get $1 million, would you be lazy going ahead and cashing in that lottery ticket? Yeah, of course not, right? Like, you would get up, you'd do it right away. But on the other end, if you didn't know it was going to win or you very, you know, you thought it wasn't going to win, like there's no chance it was going to win, would you be lazy to actually go and cash it in? Yeah, like, of course, right? Because you don't actually see the reward at the end of it. So it really comes down to it. Oftentimes it's not that people are lazy, it's just that they don't have the winning lottery ticket, the knowledge to know that they'll get the result. Would you agree? And they're like, oh yeah, I agree. So what's actually prevented you in the past of getting that winning lottery ticket, the actual right knowledge? That way you can start making the money you're looking to be making or whatever it is that you're selling. And again, this shifts the burden from being lazy to there's actually an internal belief about getting the right knowledge. So that way you attack the real belief, which is probably just like not making it a priority, or they're fearful of trying something new or something along those lines. And you'll have a much better conversation if that's the belief that you attack and that's the leverage you actually get. Because again, if the leverage you get is, oh, why, I'm lazy, you get to the end, hey, it's $10,000. Well, I won't be lazy if that's right. If I can save myself $10,000, I won't be lazy. It's just a bullshit thing. This is something to wear very early on in my sales career. I made that mistake way too many times, so I crafted that analogy to go ahead and actually address the real belief so that way I started closing more deals and not falling for that. So if this has been helpful, go ahead, let me know down in the comments and I'll see you guys on the next video.