#137 Sales Expert: #1 Secret to Master Negotiating | Shelby Sapp

When you teach a woman sales, she'll never go broke because there's always something to sell. People do love to be sold. I take that back. People hate to be sold, but they love to buy.

How do you become a dangerous person at sales?

You shut up. You literally shut up.

Shelby Sapp has built and broken down more killer salespeople than just about anybody. Founders, entrepreneurs, companies printing millions, all riding on one skill: persuasion. Learn to sell and you'll learn to win.

Dude, I used to knock on doors and get the cops called on me. I used to get the door slammed in my face. You really can't do much to shake me because of the thick skin that I've built through sales.

Most annoying line I think ever told by a salesperson. Never let them off the phone.

Oh, I hate that. People need some mother freaking urgency nowadays. I love GaryVee, but I hate when he says, you have time, you're so young. You don't have time.

If you had to give listeners today in 60 seconds one thing that maybe could make them a million bucks, one thing that can make them $100.

4 things. 1.

What does matter if you want to get ahead?

Yeah, so I would say emotional leadership is a big thing that will never become replaced. That's why I say like anything to do with cold calling or setting is going to be replaced in the next like 2 to 3 years, if not faster, um, because you're just sifting through leads. But anything where you have to do a high-ticket deal, um, entrepreneurship, you're leading someone through a purchase decision of over $3,000, they need to talk to a human. And so any type of skill that protects that buying atmosphere is going to be protected no matter what comes into play.

You had a video that I loved where I think you were convincing your now fiancé that he should order some food and was hungry.

Oh, yeah.

Do you remember this?

Yes.

Like, how can you use sales to convince anybody of anything? And maybe you can use that example.

Yeah. So, I mean, you can phrase questions to a leading no. So everybody thinks that questions you should ask should lead to a yes. Um, but the human brain loves to say the word no because it feels safe. So you can rephrase a question by asking like, would you be completely opposed to doing this? Well, no, I wouldn't be completely opposed to it, but the no means a yes. So it's little types of things like that and using questions instead of statements, um, mirroring the end of somebody's last sentence, like the last 3 words, in order for them to go a little bit deeper and talk a little bit more. Um, but you can use sales for anything. It's just Knowing what pain points and what will drive somebody to actually make a decision, using those pain points as leverage in order to get what you want.

So, so how, give me an example. So say I am your husband and you're like, I do want to get a delicious, uh, something from downstairs. I wanna order in from room service.

Mm-hmm.

But your husband's like, nah, too expensive.

Yeah.

What would you do?

Baby, would you be completely opposed to ordering some room service for me? I would love it so much. And you're so sweet. Whenever you order room service, it makes me so happy. So a couple things. Number 1, would you be completely opposed? No. Uh, number 2, you kind of give people an identity. So it's called identity selling where it's like, I love when you do these sweet things for me. And it sounded so awkward saying it to you, but I liked it.

I was here for it.

You're like, yes, we should. Um, but you give people an identity to live up to. So in a sales conversation, it looks like telling someone, listen, you're, you seem so clear, so motivated, so driven to get what you want. Like so many times I hop on calls with people that are kind of in the gray area. They're what we call like fence sitters. Like they're not really in or out. You are so freaking ready. Like, I love that about you. And I say that early on into the sales conversation. That way they can live up to the identity and the label that I put on them later on into the deal in order to act with urgency.

That's so good. Even the way your intonation changes. I mean, I think about it a lot in leadership, which is just another way to sell. You mentioned that before.

Exactly.

But even how your voice kind of went down and you were like, oh, you know, and you change your intonation. What have you learned about not just what you say, but the way your voice changes in sales.

Okay, so this is huge. When I first started sales, I was wondering why nobody would take me seriously, and I felt like I was just becoming people's friends and nobody would buy from me. And then my manager was like, hey, record some of your calls and we'll dissect it. And it came to be, and I learned through the voice recordings, which is a great way to practice sales, that I was talking with commas instead of periods. So I was like, "Hey, nice to meet you. My name's Shelby, so blah blah blah blah." All of my words were blending together. And the way that you talk, like even the way that I'm doing this right now, is more with a downward inflection rather than an uptone. So little kind of tips and tricks really can convey a different message when you're trying to talk to someone, even as little as the tonality, talking with periods instead of commas. It's so funny because you mentioned content a lot, which I obviously love content. You do the same thing in sales. It's called hooking people. Mm-hmm. So people's attention spans are very short, so you can say something that kind of grabs their attention and then the 3 reasons why. Which does that remind you of content? It's like the hook and then the 3 reasons why.

Absolutely.

It's the same thing in communication. So it's just a combination of grabbing somebody's attention, providing them with a ton of value, telling them where to go when they do want to have something. Uh, whether you're in content or whether you're in a sales conversation.

That's so good. So like if I wanted my husband to take me out to dinner, I'd be like, How would I do that? Would I say, hey, I'd love you to take me out to dinner tonight, that'd be amazing, because you know why? Like, every time we do, don't we have incredible conversations? And also, like, it reminds me of our very first date. And like, at the end of the day, maybe I'll give you a foot massage because you'll be tired afterwards.

I like that. Okay, so you did a couple things. You brought it into— you broadened it out from a dinner to the memories, and then you also added in a little bit of an upsell with the foot massage. Yes, you are getting it. Yes. And then also, option closing people is something that you can do in any sort of conversation. Instead of asking someone, hey, uh, where should we go to dinner? It's, hey, should we go here or here? Both options you're good with, but you're giving somebody the illusion of control.

Yeah. Do you ever, does your husband feel like you sell him?

All the time. Well, actually, actually I take that back. Actually I take that back. Cause we filmed a video and somebody asked, he was like, does Shelby sell you all the time? He goes, no, she could never sell me. And I'm like, I look at the camera and I'm like, that's how you know that you're so good is when somebody doesn't even know that they're getting sold.

So he doesn't.

She doesn't know, but that's like proof that you are such a good salesperson because I do it every day.

So what do you think for the person who's listening right now who's like, maybe they haven't? I mean, I've done probably 10,000 cold calls back in my day in finance, and a lot of the best actual leaders I've ever had have done like Ryland, this new guy we hired.

He just—

you can see it's like a glint you get in your eye when you've ever done it. It's this like immediate feedback loop, right? How often do we get a chance for somebody like to tell us yes immediately. It's really fun. But let's say that somebody's listening, they're like, that sounds awful, I am so horrified, I would love to get good at sales, but this is terrible. Okay, what would you tell them?

I would tell them that you either sell or you get sold every single day, 10 different times a day. The kind of clothes that you're wearing, you got sold. The phone that you have, you got sold. Every single little detail about your life, you get sold, or you either learn how to sell. So it's a game that's being played no matter what, whether you're in it or you're out of it. So my personal take on it is I would rather know the game that's being played around me at all times from a salesperson's perspective, but also from a consumer's perspective. And then also it's like, if you choose to play that game, you can add in an amazing additional income in order to stack your income now in addition to what you're already doing, or you can full-time supplement it.

So yeah, I love it. Plus, if you want to be a business owner, you got to sell.

Oh, 100%. It's everything. And it's something that nobody teaches you. Like, I remember in my master's program, I was, uh, I got my master's by 22, so I was like 21-ish in that master's program, and I would wear like workout sets. I was just like little college girl, whatever. That was the era. But everyone in my master's program was like 35, 45, 55. They would work at these companies and just their companies would pay for them to get their master's. And it came to the part where they would teach us sales, and I already had like 2 or 3 years of door-to-door sales under my belt at this point. And every single thing that they were teaching us, I'm like No, like, that, that won't work. And so the teacher actually had me teach some of the seminars in the master's program, and I think that was kind of the point where I realized, like, even if they don't— like, we were grateful that they even chose to teach us sales for a couple weeks because most of the times they don't. But even then, if somebody in college or whatever is teaching you sales, why aren't they doing it? Yeah, you know? And so it was just kind of outdated techniques. And that's kind of—

what is the worst? Like, are there some techniques you see today in sales that you're like, please dear God, never do this?

Yep. Okay, so I say this with, uh, all kindness. Uh, Jeremy Miner is a great guy. Love Jeremy Miner. He's awesome. He's an OG. He was actually the reason I started posting, because I was really good at sales. I was making all this money and I wanted to learn sales. So I'm looking up like sales tips online on TikTok, Instagram, and it was really only him. And I saw a video of him teaching door-to-door people how you should do door-to-door sales. He would wear a construction vest and he would go up to someone's home and he's like, guys, this is the secret. You knock on their door and you look confused. You're like, excuse me, are you the, uh, homeowner? And I'm like, that would get the door slammed in your face so quick. And so that was kind of the inflection point where I was like, Maybe that works for more B2B sales, like the confusion type stuff where you kind of act a little confused and off-putting. But for me, that wasn't it at all. And so I was like, my approach was completely different. And so I tried to look for women that were teaching sales and there was nothing. So I was like, I'm just going to whip out my phone and talk about what I like to do. Um, and that was kind of the whole start of like how I started training people, was just telling them what I do with my approach as a woman, cuz it is a little different.

Oh, absolutely. And you got to use it. You like— I think if you are a woman and you know sales, like, you're pretty dangerous.

Oh, for sure. It's when you teach a woman sales, she'll never go broke because there's always something to sell, whether that's your own stuff. There's always a company that will hire you for sales if you're good, if you have the numbers to back it. And you're always buying things throughout the day, so you might as well save a couple bucks no matter what you're buying in the whole day-to-day life.

Yeah, my top sellers are women here.

Exactly. Yeah, but it's like It can go one of two ways, because if you're a woman and you're not trained and you don't know what you're doing, you'll get walked all over and you'll end up working for free. But if you're a woman that knows what she's doing, you know your worth, you know how to control a conversation— dangerous.

Well, let's talk about that. How do you become a dangerous person at sales?

You shut up. You literally shut up. Too many salespeople lose a deal because they'll get a yes or a micro yes, and they'll just keep talking over the other person. Like, okay, sounds good. Well, we also have this and we also have this and we also have a warranty. And you forget that every single little detail that you give someone unlocks the opportunity for them to disagree with the detail that you said. So keeping it simple and direct is the most valuable thing you can do in a sales conversation. Yet nobody does it. You always run into the salespeople that just talk the entire time. And so I say there's a rule in sales, it's 80/20. Your client should be talking 80% of the time, you should be talking 20. So then the question is, how do you get someone to talk for 80% of the time? Well, the 20% that you're talking is mostly questions, asking them while they're giving their answers.

What are the best questions to ask in sales that you found?

Mm, 3, 3 buckets of questions: probing questions, provoking questions, and future state questions. What do I mean by that? So gap selling is a big thing in luxury sales. Obviously not door-to-door, you're not really selling a gap, but in luxury sales you're selling the gap between where somebody is versus where they want to be. So where they are, you have to build their current state and you have to get clear with them on where they're at, what their numbers are like, what those numbers mean for them, what they're struggling with on the day-to-day, like what that means for them. That's their current state. Then you transition to asking future state questions. Okay, future state questions are like, in a perfect world, this partnership works out, take me through that. Like, what is the number where you open up your laptop and you're like, that's success? Okay, let's say $300,000 a month revenue, you're selling something B2B. Then you would ask like, okay, well, why $300,000? Why not $350,000? Why not $250,000? Like, what does $300,000 mean to you? $300,000 means I could pay my employees, I could take home $50K a month, I would be able to That's what this person cares about. They don't care about the number. They care about what the number can do for them. So, uh, just kind of wrap up. It's probing questions, which are kind of just poking around the bear. Where are you at? What are your numbers like? You're just kind of like poking around, getting some context. Provoking questions dive a layer deeper where you kind of double-click on someone's answer. That way they can explain like why this is a struggle and the emotional pain points behind it. And then the third would be the future state questions.

So good. This is kind of controversial, but do you think that you make more money when you dress better and you're hotter?

Ooh, okay. Yes, to an extent. So we've actually found when you are a woman and you're selling to another woman, you should underdress a little bit. When you're selling to a man, you should overdress a little bit. So it is a little bit different. And I'm not saying you have to like put your makeup on, take it off, put your makeup on, take it off on your sales calls, but it's like it is knowing that the core rule is like, never outshine the master. So if you're talking to somebody and you're trying to say how amazing you are, you're beautiful, it's like, that's very intimidating for someone. And if being intimidating's not gonna allow them to open up and to feel safe with you, then it's gonna hurt you.

Mm-hmm.

So it is a fine line to toe where it's like, look confident because confidence comes out in your conviction, which comes out in the energy that you bring into a conversation. And your energy's your currency. So look confident, but you don't have to kick yourself up every single time you take a sales call. Serious. I have so many girls that they look perfect and they're like, why aren't people opening up to me? And I'm like, you are too perfect. Yeah. People love to talk to someone that, uh, one little trick I teach my sales girls too is to say something a little self-deprecating in the beginning just to show that you're human, you know, or to like wipe your camera a little bit or be like, sorry, I'm having a bad hair day. Something like that. Because it just shows that you're human and you're not super polished. And people like when you're a little imperfect.

Yeah, it's so true. I think, you know, these days a lot of us want something that's authentic. I feel like that's why you've crushed it on social too. You are so obviously who you are. Like, having met you and then we've gone back and forth and then watched your content— yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah, you know, there's not some other face. And that's not that normal, actually. Yeah, a lot of people are kind 2 totally different things.

Yeah, that's true. I feel like that's why content doesn't work for a lot of people though, is in order for it to really, really work, you have to be the thing. Yeah. And like, I just view my, I view my whole life through a lens of sales. Like even if I'm talking to a realtor and they say a word track that I really like, I'll write it down and I'll report it back to my community. So it's like even these little things, like I genuinely do just live my whole life through the sales lens. And I don't think content would be fun for me if I'm just like putting on a face every single time.

Yeah.

It's not long-term, you know?

No, no, no. And you gotta love the game. It's really hard to beat somebody else who's having fun. And so if you're having fun, you can tell. Oh yeah.

Dude, in this world right now, I hate it. I feel like there's no good content creators and all the people that I used to like watching their content, they suck now. And the reason is ChatGPT. They're all sitting, bro, it's so bad. They're all sitting in a chair. With a microphone, looking at a screen, reading the exact same script. And you can tell.

Yeah.

You can see it in their eyes. You can see it in the way that their face just doesn't light up about what they're saying. And I just feel like everything's getting so vanilla.

Yep.

But the caveat is there's such a big opportunity for people that are genuine, that are authentic, that have a unique perspective to just kill it in things like sales and business.

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$500,000.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

In cash.

It hurts my heart with every single moment. And then you also have like a Rolls that's pink and a Porsche that's pink. My favorite part of all this is you're just smiling going, yep. And, um, You know, I had to give you shit because I love buying businesses and I hate liabilities. Now, there are many reasons like taxes. And if one person got the money out of those things in the entire existence of them being made, it's probably you because of the number of videos you do on those. Probably had a fucking write-off as your office.

Well, yeah, I mean, I would argue that it kind of is a business at this point. You know, it's like the investment of $500K. I mean, the next 3 masterclasses I had after that were record-breaking. Yeah. So you get a direct ROI, but it's also like I think when you do the smart things first, like I'm never someone that's like, oh, buy a car the first time you make over 50 grand a month. But I think once you buy a couple investment properties, once you put stuff away into stocks, you pay off your credit cards, like you're good to go financially. I love investing in myself. It's just like, why make money if you can't enjoy it?

And have some fun.

Yeah. I mean, I have so many investment properties where it's like, it's cool, but I never see them. I like, they don't really make me a ton of money. Yeah. So it's like if you have extra money, like why not?

I love it. I, I don't want anybody here to listen to that advice, but I do. I love this for you.

It's not the best advice, but it's what works for me.

Yeah. Well, that's all like you, I do think, listen, we're all just Pavlov's dogs.

Mm-hmm.

With carrots and sticks.

Mm-hmm.

And if you are really into cars and you love 'em pink, you're gonna go make that extra sales call if you know that that's at the end of the tunnel for you. And I think that's damn important. So if like that's what gets you off, that's amazing. And especially if you're not doing it just 'cause you wanna show somebody else that you're fancy, you know? But that did make me giggle a lot. But I kind of wanna go to one other thing I think about from that. Like everybody who's online gets a lot of hate. Me too. I think sometimes especially ladies who talk about money.

For sure, for sure.

What do you do? To not have that bother you? Like, how do you not have haters bother you and not have when people say no to you bother you?

If you— if someone was like, Codie, I hate your purple hair, you'd be like, what? Because you don't have purple hair. So when people give you so much shit about something that's so obviously not true, it's easy to be like, wait, what? Like, even that one guy, he was like, we gotta—

now I'm bleeping out his name. I'm giving him no—

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, thumb guy. Yeah, he was like 'Oh, like, you look like you do OnlyFans,' or something. It's just like so far from the truth that you just have to laugh at it.

Like, all good-looking women do OnlyFans, Mark.

What a weird correlation to draw. Like, what does that say about you? Anyway, let's see that.

Anyway, let's see that. Yeah, big boy.

Yes, but it's that— it's when you believe so much in yourself and so much in your truth, nothing really affects you that much. Um, and then also, dude, I used to knock on doors and get the cops called on me. I used to get the door slammed in my face water thrown on me. So it's like, oh, you really can't do much to shake me because of the thick skin that I've built through sales. So I just think it's funny, like, some people feel the need to make a whole explanation video. And that was actually the first video I've ever done like a reaction to, just because I thought it was so funny. But I never talk about anything because it's just not necessary.

No, not at all. I never do either. I, I actually filmed one because I was so pissed on your behalf, and then I was like, you can tell I'm mad in it. Yeah. And I'm like, we don't need to give this guy more airtime. So I'll probably do one about one of the haters that I remember. Like, I've had all sorts over the years.

Oh yeah.

But, um, but I do think there's something really powerful about the fact, like, as long as you stand in who you are, right? The only time haters really get to me are when there's like a tiny sliver of truth.

And then that's a moment of self-reflection. 100%. Which is why did that get to me? And then you think back and you're like, okay. So I mean, it's just, I always think too, I'm like, the fact that someone would wanna leave a digital footprint of so much hate is crazy to me. I would never be caught. Commenting under someone's stuff or making a video about someone. Just because I think when you have so much value to offer the world, you lead with that. And when you have no value to offer the world, you lead with other people and kind of piggyback off of them. So, oh yeah.

I mean, do the adult thing. Scroll. You don't like my shit. Scroll. Yeah. Keep moving the finger swipe. It's super easy.

Literally.

Could you imagine being the type of person to comment negatively and, and seriously comment negatively on somebody else's thing you don't like? Like, what are you doing? Who has time for that?

I would never be caught dead.

Okay. I do want to talk a little bit about where to start. So let's say that there's somebody right now and she's like, I am not good at sales and I don't know how to sell anybody anything. What do you do to start becoming good at sales?

Does she just want to become good at sales for life or like make an income?

I don't know. Maybe both.

Okay. So let's say she's working like a normal job, like a 9 to 5 office job. So contrary to what everybody thinks, you don't have to quit your job in order to do sales, especially something like remote sales. You can choose your own hours, so you can do it on the evenings or weekends or whatever. So I would get into an industry that gives you warm leads that you can do remote and you can create your own availability for. Ton of good sales industries. My expertise is high-ticket industry. Um, and then if you're like, okay, well, I just don't know how to sell though, you need to get the basics down. So there's so much free content online, like you can seriously implement so many sales tips that you see, but you need to create your own framework as you would say it. So I always tell my girls, I'm like, if you feel awkward saying something, someone's going to feel awkward hearing it. So it's just repetition, practicing over and over again. You can roleplay with AI, you can video yourself doing it, do voice memos, hear yourself back. And I want you to also notice the way that you like to be sold and sell like that. So if you like when someone does push you a little bit and is a little bit more like aggressive with you, okay, take that approach. If you hate that and if you hate when people are pushy to you, but you love when someone's just open and honest and very just, this is what it is, if you want it, take it, then take that approach. So kind of notice the way that you buy things and just replicate that.

Did you change your sales personality from when you started doing door-to-door at 18 to now?

Oh, for sure. So door-to-door is completely different than remote sales because in remote it's all warm leads and you're selling a higher ticket. So you're dealing with more luxury clients. In door-to-door, it's very just quick, pushy, talking over people, bulldozing them, more quantity over quality. And it's low ticket. So it's very just like the sale can be done in like 5, 10 minutes.

What were you doing, pest control?

Yes.

Oh yeah, dude. I owned one of those companies back in the day.

So you know, did you ever knock a door?

Oh yeah, I've knocked so many. I weren't—

I—

we own roofing companies and window cleaning companies. I love a door knock.

Oh my gosh, we should. Wait, what would I say?

Oh, that would be a good video. Maybe that's the YouTube video.

I'm so down.

Okay, I wanna tell you my favorite hack for door knocking. Okay, tell me, tell me. And you can tell me yours. I'm out of practice. You're in more practice. You could tell me if yours is better. One of my favorite tactics, this is for our painting companies.

Okay.

It's like 3 people interested in this online, but you and I are like, let me tell you about door knocking.

Don't worry, the painting company, my time to shine.

So one, obviously we would get one client And then I'd like to do usually 8 to 10 houses around it, how many I could in like that one situation. So I always like to go up to the front, a couple different things like, you know, knock on the door, always make sure my hands are available. I'm a chick. They worry about that less. But all the dudes, we always train them. You got to make sure your hands are shown. Second, as they come out, I always loved the lean back, which is like, look like I'm going to leave right away as opposed to like coming in towards you. So a little lean back and then a Hey, I just wanted to tell you that we're in your neighborhood and if you have any issues with like my guys who are here doing this painting, I want you to have, you know, my information. If we get in your way or anything like that, I just want you to know. Is that okay? And then they'll say like, oh yeah, thanks.

That's great.

And then I would say, and then I kind of look like I was leaving and I'd be like, oh, it's so amazing. Have a nice day. And then I'd kind of like look at something and be like, oh, also, like I should say, obviously, if we're in your neighborhood first. Yeah, exactly. And usually I would always just sell like a little, hey, do you want me to give a look around your house?

For sure.

And I can see what's missing.

For sure. So I like a couple things that you did. One thing was you said you're not straight on.

Yeah.

That's the worst thing you can do because it's very competitive. It's like you're going to stand right in front of this person's face. No, you should always be at kind of like a 45-degree angle. Another thing is too, whenever you get longer into the sale and you're going over prices, you're always taught to kind of lean on the wall or like even in Zoom calls, like you lean back whenever you want to minimize something. Um, and then also the only thing I would tweak is I would lead with pain points. So like when I was doing door-to-door, it's like the only reason we're in the area and I'm, I'm even coming around, cuz normally I don't do this, whatever. Um, the ants are just insane. The humidity is crazy. You guys back up to the lake. Like you have to use some like context clues of like the actual area to show like, oh, this girl actually knows what she's doing. She's not just like some random door-to-door salesperson. Um, and it's like you, you nicer homes, you back up to the water. Like everybody's getting the wasp and the ants, as soon as it rains, like they all just flood in. Do you guys already have someone set up for that or did you not do that yet this year? So it's kind of like leading with the pain points, like ants, wasps, the lake behind. Do you have that set up yet or not yet? So that, and then also, uh, one thing that you love that all door-to-door people do is they use social proof as the area.

Yeah.

So it's like they've got trucks in the area, we're only here because we're doing a few neighbors, da da da. My biggest tip for door-to-door sales is you have to remove somebody from the doorframe because if you're talking to them within the doorframe, you are a door-to-door sales rep. There's no way to get out of that. And so when someone gives you at least one no, they start associating their physical surroundings and the way that the air feels on them, the way that they're standing, their physical surroundings with that no. So it's very hard to turn a no to a yes. You have to get them removed. So I would always just kind of stand back and be like, yeah, it's mainly just this stuff. And like move them over to the garage, the sidewalk, anywhere. And it kind of like restarts the whole sale. That way you can dig yourself out of the no and turn it into a yes.

That's so good. I love that. I love the pain points. I gotta send that to my team. I'm gonna send them a little Shelby Sapp video. Um, yeah, I also want to talk about something else I used to hate back in the day, and I think a lot of people do. So I hated door-to-door sales at first, then I kind of liked it. I still hate networking today.

Oh my gosh.

And I kind of want your take on this, like Do you think that networking helps or is there something else better?

Intentional networking? Yes. Like if you're there for a specific reason within a specific company and everybody has the same common goal and you really want to meet a certain amount of people, yes. But networking cocktail hours where it's just like meet people in your city, I think it's terrible and have a very biased opinion on it because I got burned through random networking more than it helped me, like way more. Because I kind of realized if you were just showing up to all these different networking events, which I used to do, are you just networking or are you not working? Because why are you at 3 cocktail hours a week at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday? Because the real players are stuck in an office. They're grinding away on their computer. They're too busy to go enter a room with people that don't have any value to give them. And so the caveat of this is like, if you're young and you're like, but I wanna network, I wanna become this big business person, like I want help. Couple things. You need to become someone that people actually want to network with, um, and you do that by locking yourself up in a room and getting skill sets and actually becoming someone that people are dying to be in a group chat with, rather than just being like, oh, can you put me in a group chat with so-and-so? Like, it's just icky. Like, I, I don't think you meet the best quality people. Um, also, I mean, I— my backstory is like, I lived in Miami for a while, and I think everybody in Miami, it's kind of smoke and mirrors in there. Um, and I kind of realized every thread that I— every thread of connection that I followed— oh, this person's so successful, they could help me with this— you kind of realize they're not all that's cracked up to be. And it didn't really lead me anywhere, especially as a woman. I feel like if somebody does have value, and it's like that weird dynamic, it's more of like dangling a carrot in front of your face of opportunity And then once they figure out that you're not interested on that level, there's nothing there. So I feel like there's just so much better opportunity if you take that amount of effort and put it into yourself. That way people are dying to network with you and then you can have the choices of who you wanna talk to.

It's so, it's so good. Like if you want to meet interesting people, become interesting.

Exactly.

That's literally the game. Exactly. Build interesting things, do interesting things. Mm-hmm. And that's how you meet the other people. You don't go to cocktail hours. Also, Lord help us all, but if you're doing that today, especially with everything that's going on with AI, like you can't be doing MBA cocktail hours and corporate cocktail hours.

No. And it's so draining. Everybody talks the same. They're the same personality. I just, I can't do it.

No, I'm out.

I literally can't.

Especially if they have the, you know what I'm an out on? Name tags.

Yes.

No name tags.

Yes. It's so bad. And it's, I mean, it's the same situation as like 2 years ago when I had nothing to offer someone like you. If I were to DM you and be like, hey Codie, I look up to you, I'm in Austin, wanna go grab lunch? You wouldn't even open it. You'd be like, why would I spend an hour of my free time with this girl who has nothing to offer me? Versus it's like, now I'm here because I built something outta myself. Also, the reason you wanna network is because you think that other people have the answers to what you're kind of going through.

Yeah.

And you think everyone's more successful than you and everybody else has the answers externally, but it's It's really not true. There's so much free value online, and if you just get experience doing stuff, you'll solve more of your own problems than anybody else will solve for you.

Oh yeah. Not to mention, I mean, if you can just become the best mentee of any mentor you ever have in life, you will have so many doors open you can't imagine.

Exactly.

Because most people do nothing.

Exactly. I had a girl, she was at my house a couple days ago. I had a ton of my closers at my house and she was like, Shelby, I DM'd you like a year ago saying like, I would love to like meet up with you, and you never replied to me, so I unsent it. And I was like, girl, I never saw it. And she was like, but I'm here now. And I was like, why are you here now? Why are we talking now? And she was like, because I actually did something, got value, and got around you. That's the difference. People expect so many free handouts of, oh, can you spend 5 minutes talking on the phone with me for this? Can you meet up with me for this? It's like, no one of value who values their time is ever going to network with you for free. There's always strings attached, weird dynamics, or it's just not true. And they— why do they have so much time on their hands to help you out for free?

So it's really important because people don't tell you that. People lie to you and tell you the PC thing that, no, of course you should just have coffee dates and dinners with everybody and it's totally normal. And that's bullshit. And that's why so many people are behind.

Yeah.

And so I think it's super important, you know, and even this idea of like communicating, Like, I think the way that you communicate will often determine how much money you make in your life. And the better you communicate, the bigger the bank account. And so I'm curious for you, I think sales and communication are really similar. What do you think you have learned from sales about communication? Like, what do the great communicators do?

So they communicate with intent. So they don't just communicate to communicate, they communicate to get a goal across. And so that goal coming across, I mean, in networking it could be getting a connection with someone. In dating, it could be securing the next date. In sales, it could be getting someone to buy something. So they come— it's all sales. So you just communicate with an end goal in mind that you make sure gets done by the time you're done communicating. So sales is just, okay, we're communicating, but I'm leading the conversation 10 steps ahead in order to get it over here. And so the way that you do that is you ask questions, somebody answers, you're actively listening, yes, but you're also steering the conversation and you're thinking 10 steps ahead of, okay, now they're telling me their pain points about this. I'm not just gonna dive in, attack that right now and start selling. I'm gonna kind of keep that in my back pocket, use it as ammo later on, um, and I'm gonna go to a little bit more questioning and then plug and play our product or service to those pain points they gave me earlier.

Yeah.

So you can't—

so what does it sound like to do it badly? So let's say like you're meeting somebody for the first time. Yeah. You're trying to get them interested in you. Yep. Maybe you're trying to get them interested in a date. Like what is a bad way to do that? What's a bad way to communicate? And a good way?

Uh, you talk about yourself the whole time. So guys are really bad at this. Uh, especially in sales too. Like any sort of negotiation, nobody cares about why you think what you have is so good. Yes. They care about why it can be so good to them. So it's different leverage points. Like for example, rich people care about saving time and getting things done right the first time. Poor people care about getting the best deal and just getting like a couple dollars off. Um, old people care about security. Young people care about the dream. Um, women care about beauty and, you know, making sure that you're genuine in who you say you are because women have a really good intuition, uh, and they're scared of getting sold. Men care about their ego a lot of the time, so you have to kind of boost them up and let them sell themselves using their own words. So it's just different approaches talking to different people, but knowing the leverage points.

If you're putting in the work that my guest Shelby Sapp is talking about, like the reps, the calls, the door knocking, the relentless optimization, I know you're probably like me. You're not sleeping as well as you want to. And the crazy part about that is that means you're not performing as well the next day. So I use something called the Pod by Eight Sleep that I swear I would talk about this even if they weren't the sponsor of this podcast. It is not just a mattress. In fact, it's not a mattress. It's a cover that goes on whatever you already sleep on, and it actively heats or cools your bed down to 55 degrees. If you're a dude, if you're me, like a chick, you don't want that. You actually want to be warm because your body temperature has to basically drop to hit deep sleep. So it does this automatically all night. I get to get in warm and toasty, and then it gets me to the right temperature when I'm asleep. What's really cool is this thing called Autopilot. It basically learns all your patterns. So when do you get knocked out of different cycles of sleep? And it adjusts in real time so you don't even have to guess. You don't have to have a ring or a lame looking strap on your wrist like a biohacker. You can just have clinical grade tracking built into your bed. It goes right on your phone and it produces with 99% accuracy your heart rate, your HRV, your respiratory rate, always to say like, did I sleep well last night? Night or not. Then every morning you get this report that tells you exactly what happened while you sleep. But I swear, some days I don't even care about that because the results are so ridiculous. 34% more deep sleep, falling asleep up to 44% faster. I don't need to be a biohacker to want that. That's like not soft numbers. That's the difference between a really good day and a sluggish one. So I'm obsessed with this company and this bed. I credit it with keeping my husband and I married, and he actually does too, and he's the hardest customer. So go to eightsleep.com/bigdeal, use my code DEAL for $350 off the pod. This is like my favorite gift to you I think we've ever given. You get 30 days to try it at home. If you don't like it, ship it back. But like, they're that confident and so am I that you're going to be obsessed with it. So that's eightsleep.com/bigdeal, code DEAL for up to $350 off. Because you know what? We got to get our beauty sleep, right? All right, let's get back into it. What about negotiation? Like, is there a way for a customer to win in negotiation with a salesperson?

Yeah. So I also want to break limiting mindset around sales too, because in a sales conversation, both people have a job. As a salesperson, your job is to sell your shit for as high as possible. Okay. And a customer also has a job. Their job is to buy whatever the shit is, for as low as humanly possible. So you guys both have a job. So as a customer, why should you feel— you never feel bad about your job. If you were to go to your friend and be like, let's go to the car lot and get this car for the best possible price, you'd be like, hell yeah. But as a salesperson, if you were to say, I'm gonna sell this car for the highest possible price, people are like, that's so rude, why would you ever do— no, you guys both have a job, so why would you feel bad about doing your job better than the other party, right? Um, but to your question, the consumer side, okay, you have to be willing in a negotiation— let's use like the car sales example— in a negotiation, you have to be willing to walk away. You can't be afraid of a longer sales cycle because the salesperson will try to sell you. They'll keep following up, they'll keep sending you more stuff, giving you better deals, different discounts, different holiday discounts. Don't be afraid of a longer sales cycle. And then also when you go in for the first time, have comps. Be like, why should I go with this one? There's one right over at the other dealership 20 minutes away for a little bit cheaper. Like, why should I go with you guys? So having comps is a big one. And also it's just salespeople can smell when you're ready to buy and when you're kind of like itching for a new car or you're ready to buy and they'll prey on that. You know, they'll try to hold it for the highest amount possible and not give you a good deal. But if they can sense that you're just, you know, if it's not your number, it's not your number, you're not gonna buy it, then they'll match your number. It's just the energy that you have. Oh, sorry.

Do you think that sales, like, do you think that great salespeople are also the most easily sold?

Oh, for sure. I love buying things. But it's, it's because it's, it's not, well, number one, they have the money to do so, but number two, it's you love the grind and you love supporting someone that you know exactly what they're going through. Like when people knock on my door, I'm like, let me get you a water. Do you need any snacks? And I always buy whatever they're selling, but I make sure I buy it for the lowest possible price, right? So salespeople love when you sell them. Also, people are so afraid of selling salespeople because they're like, oh my gosh, they know what I'm doing. It's like, yeah, call it out. You're a salesperson. You know exactly what this is. I know you're super busy. I'll cut it in half just because I want to get you in and out. And I'll be very blunt with you. I know you know exactly what I'm doing right now. Salespeople People love to hear that. They're like, hell yeah. And then you start building rapport on what it's like being in sales, what you're doing, asking the salesperson for a little bit of advice just to let them have their moment or whatever. And then sincere closing. You always have to sincere close another salesperson.

What does that sound like? What is a sincere close?

So a sincere close is taking the yes or no off of the product and putting it to yourself. So you're making the sale personal. You're saying it's not about this anymore. It's about, I want your business so bad because I know what's on the other side. I know what we can do. I know you're gonna buy this at some point in the future. Maybe it's with the next person that hits you up about whatever it is that you're selling. I want that person to be me. I've seen what it looks like with other competitors, with us, and I wanna be the person that shows you XYZ transformation. Would you please gimme a shot to get you in the door to show you, and then I'll earn your business for life. So it's like you just put the sale back on you. But the key with this is you have to earn the right to do so. You can't just sincere close someone that you just met that you don't have a connection with. This is why building rapport is so important throughout the sale. And then the question is, how do you build rapport with someone, right? Bad rapport looks like, oh my gosh, you're from Florida. My cousin went to FSU. That's so funny. Oh my gosh, I love your hair. People hate when you're fake. And so before the sales process comes about, don't say any of that stuff because they know that you're only saying that because you want to get a commission. And so it just further increases their sales resistance while you're trying to sell them. So instead— and I use the analogy of like, if someone were to text you from high school and be like, uh, hey Codie, like, uh, your dog was so cute, I saw him on your story, like, hope everything's going good— you'd be like, Why is this person reaching out to me? Like, what do they want? You know? And then you're like, thanks, haha. And then they hit you with, hey, let me know if you're hiring at Contrarian Thinking, right? And you're like, all right, there it is. There it was. Versus if someone hit you up and was like, hey, I see you're doing such big things over here. I would love to get a chance to get hired. Also, I saw you post your dog. How have you been since high school? Yeah. It's more genuine when you flip it. So you always have to flip the difference between rapport and then the sell, cuz that's what's because everybody does. It doesn't work. It makes you more of a salesperson. Two, selling them, providing value, and then building rapport after.

So good. What do you do to sell like people who are hard in your life personally? So let's say you're trying to sell like, you know, your parents, your kids. Like what are the secrets to selling in everyday life? Not even a product.

Okay. You have to create a clear game plan. This is for any conversation. So sometimes people don't say no to you because they don't want to do what you want to do. They just say no because there's too much confusion around it and they don't understand like exactly what step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 looks like after they make a purchasing decision or even just a decision to eat somewhere, to show up to an event, whatever. So you have to be clear on creating a game plan for someone. Um, you have to create more confusion around not doing something versus doing something. Mm-hmm. Because when someone enters any sort of conversation where you're asking them to do something, there's more hesitancy around doing it versus just staying the same, right? But if you create more confusion around not doing it versus doing it, then the brain follows the path of least resistance. They'll be like, sure, let's do it. Yeah. And that's why sales looks so easy. Like, The top sales reps, they really don't overcome 10 different objections at the end of a sale because they funnel it so well. They preempt your objections. They're super clear on the game plan that you set to where you can look at everything and be like, sure, let's do it. And people don't understand that sales is creating a whole clear game plan, and it's not waiting for a no and digging yourself out of 10 different holes at the end. That's not what it is. Yes.

Yeah. It's a really good point too, because I think a lot of times with sales, we assume that one, the other person is always trying to sell us something that's bad for us.

For sure.

That we have some innate reaction that every time we're getting sold is bad. What if you're getting sold on your dreams? What if you're getting sold on the opportunity you never would do unless somebody else pushed you and was a little bit of a bully? Exactly.

Let me tell you a story. So when I was first getting into sales, I had so much anxiety. I hated talking to people. People would talk to me, I would stutter on my words, I would think about it for like 5 to 7 business days. Like, I hated talking to people. I seriously hated it. But I wanted to stack cash and I wanted to make a lot of money. So I decided to do door-to-door sales and I'm like, whatever, I'm going to do it. I fly out to Minnesota, a state I've never been to, and the night before I was supposed to knock my first door, every single, like, limiting belief in my brain hit me all at once. I'm like, I'm the only girl here. They don't even have uniforms for me. They don't even think I'm going to do good and stay past a week. I don't know the pitch. I hate bugs. I don't know how to talk to people. Someone's gonna open— everything hit me all at once. And I felt this fear and I caved and I called my manager and I was like, hey, like, this looks good, thanks for training me, but like, I'll just come back next summer. Like, what's the harm in like not doing this, right? Like, I'll just come back next year. He essentially had to sell me on staying and coming to the next day. And so his sell was very direct. It was, uh, it was something along the lines of The timing's not perfect. Like there's never perfect timing. There's just time and what you do with it. Like you're showing up tomorrow. And he hung up. He hard closed me. But if he didn't sell me into that opportunity, the news flash is, is like, I wouldn't have gone back next summer and I would be doing something with my master's degree, working in an office right now.

Yeah.

So it's like at some point you kind of find freedom in being the person that can help someone overcome a hurdle. Of a limiting mindset. Because think about this, everybody thinks that over— that objections are just fancy word tracks that you can say one or two sentences and someone changes their thought process. That's not true. Objections are an outward projection of a limiting belief that they've had their whole life. So for example, if someone tells you it's too expensive, they've probably said that to a lot of other things in their past. They've probably gotten the cheap gym membership over the nicer one, the cheaper car over in the nicer one, whatever. They've probably cheaped out on a lot because they're in cost-based thinking instead of results-based thinking. So it's more reframing their beliefs around investing into something that can help their life. If someone tells you, you know, the spouse objection, or I need to talk to my mom, my boyfriend, my husband, my brother, whoever, it's probably because inside they feel like they don't have the confidence in order to make their own decisions, and they have to consult someone before making any big life-changing decision. It's a lack of self-confidence. So this person needs empowerment and needs confidence, right? Um, if someone's like, well, I just need to do my research, they've probably made a couple bad decisions before to where they were like, I should have done my research. So you're not— objections don't just come out of nowhere. They're a limiting belief that you have to attack more of like the core values on. And that's more elite sales. Like, people will tell you fancy word tracks, and I even make videos. I'm like, the 6 sales objections in 60 seconds. It's like, I wish those worked, but it's not just like one quick thing that makes someone say yes. It's actually sitting down and having a whole conversation with someone.

That's so good. You have objection handling on almost every big thing I've seen on sales, and I think we just went through a couple of them. But one thing that I think kills more dreams and we see them all the time because I try to quote unquote sell people into buying business for sure. And at a certain point, like, I don't really care. I think you should do whatever you want to do with your life. And mostly I believe that people are predisposed to already want the thing that I'm selling or not. And if they're not, then I don't try to sell them.

Like, then they're also not a qualified buyer because someone that wants to start a business has to be hungry, has to be gritty, right? So it's also about like believing in what you're selling, in which you do, to a point where you're like, this is so good, if you don't want it, I can't help you at that point. And that's actually the secret sauce of sales, is being able to be like, this is so amazing. Like, if you can't see that, I can't help you. And if you can't get yourself in the door, you really can't do this long term. So it's more of the thing where it's like, I'm not going to sell you on this. At some point you have to change your own life. Like, I'm not going to force you to do anything.

I like that. It's like an anti-sale.

Yeah, it's a de-sell. It's when you pull back. So sales is a dance. It's like you push a little bit and then when you realize you're talking a little too much and you're like, oh, I'm doing too much, you pull back. And so it's just kind of an in and out and in and out. One thing you said about door-to-door sales is you said I teach people to show their hands, probably in door-to-door sales for safety. But also when you show your palms, it shows genuinity, if that's a word. I think it is, but I'm not really sure.

Whatever.

I'm good at sales, not really anything else. But when you show your hands and when you like nod with people and you're like, this tells me, tell me more. This tells me I'm just, I'm here. Like, you do what you want to do. So changing those kind of body languages and tonalities around what you're saying. Um, sales is like 80% your body language and tonality. It's not really the words. People are so hung up on what words do I say. It's like, no, you just have to hold space for someone to open up to you and solve the issues that they're going through.

What are the most common hand gestures that we don't realize are more powerful than we think?

Right, so there's different body languages that you use for different parts the sale. So whenever you want to regain control, uh, regain authority, kind of set the tone like in the beginning, um, what do you see a CEO doing in a board meeting? They kind of put their hands down, they put them on the table, their hands are down. Uh, whenever you're overcoming objections, it's very open, very honest. I'm just telling you how it is. Uh, whenever you're going over price or something that you think might trigger a little bit of resistance, would be like, oh my gosh, like I don't want to magnify this moment you, like we said, you kind of like lean back, you chill. Whenever I drop price on a masterclass, or whenever I do on a sales call, or in door-to-door, it's always just chill. Um, I'll wear glasses, I'll put the glasses on my head. Um, whenever you drop price— and when I said drop price, that means like put the first initial price out— but price dropping is different. Price dropping is when you're making something cheaper or offering payment plans. You have to look a little uncomfortable while you're doing it. You can't just be like, oh, you can't afford it. We'll just do $1,000 cheaper or no problem. We'll just split it up. It's like, why didn't you tell me that before? So you have to one, justify a reason why you're dropping the price, either take something out that way it can match the value, whatever. Or you can just look a little uncomfy, like a little like neck move, a little like, I mean, I can't do this because I have both necks. I can't do that one anymore. It's just kind of like, or I call, or like with your lips, like, well, you kind of like look a little uncomfy while you're doing it. That way it conveys that you don't do this to everyone and that it's a little bit more of a special occasion.

Ah, it's so good. What about, um, what about like how many reps do you feel like you need to take to get really good at sales?

Mm, okay, so it depends on if you're doing cold leads or warm leads, but I feel like the rule of 100 stands true. I forget what book it was that I read, but it was like if you do you do something 100 times for 100 days, you become an expert. And it's true. Like, if you just get your reps in, it will work. And so everybody thinks that you need the skill in order to be good. It's no, you need the quantity before you get the skill. You get the skill through just doing it. Like, you don't— what's the phrase? It's like, you don't learn how to swim by reading about water. You just have to throw yourself into it, and you learn what you like to say, what you don't like to say, what feels weird and icky versus what really hits with your clients coming out of your mouth. Like, like you just learn your own selling style through actually doing it. But that's the Band-Aid that you have to rip off.

If somebody's gonna listen to this today, what do you think they will take away after listening to this podcast?

Probably that salespeople have all these little tips and tricks that they're using on them, which I think is a really good realization to have because it's true. And I'll always be 100% honest in any video that I make, any podcast that I do. Like, there are some little kind of manipulation things that you can do in sales. Okay, that's the game that's being played. Like, I'm not gonna pretend like there's not, you know, like there are some things that salespeople do in order to make you talk a little bit more, in order to make you feel a type of way. But that's the game that's being played. Um, you can either learn to notice it, that way you can be a more conscious buyer, or you can learn to play it and really get the upside of that.

How much money have you seen people make from learning how to do sales?

Um, my top closer made $62,000 last month, and she used to be a barista making $4,000 a month.

How many of those you got? Like, I've seen lots of ladies say that.

So she— so, well, not lots, saying 60, but she's, she's an outlier for sure. I mean, that's more than a doctor or lawyer. I would say like a realistic level for no sales experience is $20K a month. I always say like, I'll brainwash you into normalizing a $20K a month, because genuinely, like, a $20K month in sales really isn't that far-fetched. And so it's just not. And it's weird to say that out loud because I remember a time where like I was working for $8 an hour, 3 different minimum wage jobs. And did I work harder back then versus now? I mean, not— they're kind of the same. Like the amount of work that you put in, you either get assigned a dollar amount or you can get paid for the work that you put in. But it's like only certain amount of people will put themselves in the vehicle to where their paycheck can match what they put into it because there's no ceiling, but there's also no floor. So it takes like a special level of confidence in yourself to say, no, no, no, my security isn't a dollar amount that I sign. You know, this is what I'm going to get paid per hour, per year. My security is myself. And when I build my skill sets up, I know that I can make this worth it for me because I have the skill sets to do so.

Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the things that I wish like almost everybody would learn because even my employees, like I don't love when people come to me and say like, I just want more money. You know what I really like? I love when they come to me and they say, hey, I want to make more money. Here's like a bunch of things that I think I could do additionally. It's going to lead to this much revenue for the company if I do this and/or this much savings. If I'm actually able to do that, do you think that I can earn more? And I think people are crazy that they say this is a sales job. Every job is a sales job.

Interviewing.

Yeah. Well, also, let's think about the fact fact that if you work at a company, the only reason the company succeeds is because you sell— somebody sells something somewhere. I mean, Carl Icahn famously said, someone gets to eat because somewhere else somebody sold. And so I think it's really powerful. So I guess, what would you say to somebody who, like, they're not in sales, they do any other fucking job in the world?

How can they apply sales to, like, an interview?

Yeah, or how could they apply sales to even asking for more money without coming off off like a dick.

Exactly. So it's exactly what you said, because you thought of the— you have to think of the leverage point of the person you're talking to. So if that's your manager or the owner of a company, they don't care that you think you deserve more money. And also, that's entitlement. Like, why? Why should they pay you more than the next person? Like, seriously, you have to tailor whatever it is that you want. In this case scenario, it's, you know, more money, right? To what the company wants. What does the company want to do? They want to make more revenue, obviously. So whatever that looks like— hey, I think that we can make more revenue if I input this, this, and this, and I pull these two levers. I'm willing to do so if you guys pay me this amount in order to do that. Does that sound like a good game plan? And that's the game plan that you have to be clear on. You have to have value in order to, like, ask for something after. You can't just be on your very first day, oh, I think I deserve this. No, you have to prove your worth first. And then once you prove your worth a little bit, then you can sit down and reevaluate that conversation by saying, hey, out of everything I noticed, I can pull this lever, I can pull this lever, and I can start doing this. But in order to dedicate more time, it needs to make sense monetarily to me in order to invest my time long-term into this.

What do people ask you more than anything else about sales? Like, are there questions where they always want to know this thing?

Is it an MLM? Is it a scam? They always say that. I'm like, So some sales jobs are like, you get paid to recruit people. Like when I was in door-to-door, like you get paid on recruiting your team. The caveat is I don't think that's a bad thing. I think when you're a sales manager and you train your team, you should get paid for that, right? You should get paid a commission percentage based off of how good they do. But some people find that icky, whatever. Um, other sales industries like high ticket, you close deals for an online business and you get paid that amount. There's no recruiting. So, uh, it's just kind of one of those I guess things that people think, oh, it has to be this, but it's really not. When it comes to the actual sales process though, um, they always say something along the lines of, how do you read people? And so I always say it's different for different types of people. There's two different buyers, and I know I mentioned, you know, old, young, male, female, all these things. Those are kind of archetypes, but the two really solid types of buyers are emotional and logical. So some buyers buy purely on emotion, and these are the people where you want to build on the dream, build on the pain, have them visualize what success would look like. Logical buyers, you do that like I'm a logical buyer. If someone was like, how would this make you feel? I would be like, no, why would you ask me that? Like, someone asked me that. I was like, okay, we're done here. Logical buyers, they don't trust a salesperson because a salesperson is trying to sell them. Them. Like, they kind of know the game that's being played, right? Like, a lot of people that are listening now know you will all turn into logical buyers. Now, logical buyers, they only trust one thing. They trust data, because data doesn't lie. So your job as a sales rep is to kind of clock, is this person gonna buy off of emotion, or are they going to buy purely off of logic? And if so logical, you need to rely on numbers, which is, hey, if you don't do this, this is the opportunity cost over X amount of time and X amount of time. You know, your revenue decreasing if you're selling a fitness program, the weight that you're gaining, whatever. What's on the side of not making a decision? Then if you make this decision, what's on this side? And these are the numbers that you set with them on a realistic goal point. That has to be in reality for them. It can't just be, I want to make a million dollars a month, right? Has to be a realistic goal. So you basically say, crossroads, these are the numbers if you don't do this, these are the numbers if you put in the work and you do do this. Now it's up to you. And that's what a logical buyer will like.

What is the best sales pitch that's ever been done on you?

Mm, it happened like 5 days ago. No, actually, yeah. Well, maybe it's just the last one I can remember, but it was so good. So it was an event planner. I don't know if you know him. His name's Icon. Okay, he does a lot of events for, um, like speaking events. But we're on a sales call with him and he's going over the price of all these little things that it's going to take to put on our event. And it starts at 1.9 million of all these little things. The venue, the speakers, all the things. And then he's like, okay, let's go down the line and try to figure out like how to shave a couple bucks off here and there. We got it down to like $1.6K. Then I'm like, well, we'll see how much your fee is. Cause I'm like, I don't know if we're gonna go with you yet. And I know he is probably charging a commission on the event, blah, blah, blah. Then he makes me and my business partner double down on the $1.6K. He's like, okay, so $1.6K, is that doable? Like, is that okay with you guys right now? And we're like, yes, but we'll see how much your fee is. Then he goes to the next slide and he goes, my fee's $0. And we're like, what? Like, I don't want you if your fee is $0, right? He goes, no, no, no, it's actually already in the $1.6 million. And he just whited it out on the Excel sheet. And so we just didn't catch that it was already in there, but it was already in there. So he made us double down and confirm that the $1.6 million already worked. And then he was like, all right, you guys already agreed to my speaking fee. It's already in here. We're all good to go. You can put your deposit in now. And we did. Sneaky. So yeah, it was very sneaky, but I liked it. And so I think when people are like, what makes a great salesperson great? It's something called the pattern interrupt, where you have to be different than every other person that's pitching these people. So everybody sounds the same, you know, everybody does the same questions, the same word tracks. You have to be different. So you have to find little unique ways to position your value, but also position the close and different objections. That make you stand out. And as a salesperson, he was like, I was scared to pitch you knowing you're the sales girl. And I was like, yeah, I was definitely going to try to negotiate your percentage down. Um, but I respected it. He did it in such a creative way where I'm like, you know what, fuck yeah, for sure. Like, I like that. Let's do it.

Yeah. So that's the thing I think people don't realize too, is that if you're gonna be a top-tier salesperson and you surprise and delight someone with the way you sell them, they are going to thank you for the close.

Exactly. When you're a trained sales rep, people will respect it. Like, everybody knows what you're doing, but when you're good at it, people love to be— people do love to be sold. I take that back. People hate to be sold, but they love to buy. Yeah. So if you disguise it in a way to where you're like very straight up, this is what I'm doing, like it's very black and white, here's what it's gonna cost in order to do this. People love to buy stuff.

Mm-hmm.

They're either gonna buy from you or somebody else, so it might as well be you.

If somebody is terrible at sales, like somebody's like, I'm a bad communicator, I'm bad at sales, what are typically the main reasons why no one will ever listen to you or buy from you?

Because they only rely on the words and they sound like a robot and they sound like just some NPC, like you might as well be AI. They're— I— you would be so surprised. I've hired people that are, you know, they can talk to people, they're beautiful, they're charismatic, but when it comes to getting in front of a client they sound monotone like a robot, and they're asking surface-level questions which create a surface-level buyer. No trust is built. Versus if you are someone that just can talk to people and treat it like a FaceTime call with your friend talking through a decision— that's who does good in sales, is just who's genuine.

So yeah, it's true. I have a little short king that's like one of my best sales guys too. We love a short king, and he, uh, he This is really caring about people and curious.

Yeah. Curious.

Super curious.

So I always have my sales girls take a sticky note and write 3 letters on it, W-H-Y, why. And they tape it to their, or I guess stick it to their computer. You will be so surprised how many deals you could have gotten by asking that one simple question, why, when someone tells you something, because it allows them to go deeper. I was auditing one of my girl sales calls and she was talking to a stay-at-home mom. And she didn't clock that the husband was a big block in this. He didn't want her to do anything, all these things. If she would have just asked that one simple question, why, or tell me a little bit about Nick— was the husband's name— she would have gotten the deal because she would have been able to preempt the objection in order, instead of getting it at the end of the call and not being able to do anything about it.

Yeah, I want to talk about shadow influences. So I know a lot of times in more sophisticated institutional sales, the person that you're talking to is not the person who is actually the buyer.

Like a gatekeeper?

Yeah, it might be a gatekeeper or you might be— they might not even tell you. So for instance, we do a lot of institutional sales. We, you know, sell investments to big companies and nobody wants to feel like they're not the decision maker. They want to feel like they're the important one. And so you might not even realize you're not talking to the buyer. You might be talking to the user. Aka the wife, but the buyer's the husband, and you don't even realize that you need to change the sales pitch because you got to talk to this other person. How do you figure out who is really in charge in a sale?

So, um, if it's different between a gatekeeper and a non-decision maker— so a gatekeeper is like a receptionist. When I did door-to-door sales, there were a lot of house managers and big mansions, or maybe their kids answer the door or whatever. A gatekeeper is different because The sale with the gatekeeper is you're not selling the product cuz that's not their decision to make. You're selling the chance to pitch the decision maker versus if you have a non-decision maker in front of you, you are, you should never reveal price without having a decision maker present with you. Mm-hmm. So you have to use the price as leverage in order to get the decision maker on the call or in front of you. So it's like, I would love to have all of us like right here. That way when I go for the price, we can all ask our questions together. I'm sure he or she has a ton of questions. Also, never assume that the girl is not the decision maker, because nowadays I feel like they're literally the decision maker more often than not, the guys. And so never assume that someone's the decision maker if they're not, or vice versa. Um, and like you said, always make people feel important and make people feel like you're a helper. 'Cause if you're a salesperson, they won't let you near the decision maker. But if you're a helper and you're trying to help people, then they will guide you to that decision maker.

What about an everyday trick? Like, is there anything you do to kind of get your way at the airport, at restaurants, like in just the day-to-day as a sales hack?

Ask. Literally just ask. Nobody asks. I was late to my flight last night in order to get here, and if I were to miss that flight. It was at like 10:00 PM and I got in at like 2:00 AM this morning. If I were to miss that, I wouldn't have been able to be here. So I get to Miami Airport, security line is packed, and most people would just wait in line. They would be scared of everybody else in the line, like, oh, I don't want to ruffle any feathers. When you're in sales, you realize that people are just people and like you're really not that important, you know, and people don't really remember you. So I basically just went up to the front, I was like, I'm so sorry, would it be completely crazy if I cut you? I have a flight that's leaving right now. I'm so sorry, I hate to do this. Would it be— again, would it be completely crazy if you were to allow me to cut you? And she was like, well, no, you're totally fine, that's fine. And did everybody in the back be like, this brat? Probably, but I don't care because I'm here now. So people underestimate a simple ask, and it's like, you don't need to have the confidence to ask, you just need to ask. And the more amount of times that you ask for different things in your life, whether that be a raise, a job, cutting someone in line at the airport. I did the same thing for my Uber driver to get into the es— express lane so he could go even though we were stuck in traffic. I was like, would it be completely crazy if you got into the express lane? And he was like, no, but can you tip me? And I said, yeah. So you just have to ask people and you'll be surprised the boundaries that you can cross when you just are super blunt, human, and just ask.

Yeah. One of my favorites is also repeating somebody's name. Nobody asks for a name anymore. You go to a restaurant, you go to a bar, and all you do is like, oh, hey, yeah, I'd love XXX. Sorry, what's your name?

Exactly.

It's so powerful. I was at this event the other weekend with a bunch of kind of famous, fancy people, and they were bigger and fancier than I was. But my husband and I, like, started talking to the guy who was kind of sitting around the VIP area. So like, when it got situated, I'm like, hey, Jeff, like, what's going on? Can we get in here? What are we thinking? And he's like, yeah. Yeah, just like, go ahead. Everybody else is waiting, including the dudes who had like paid for all the stuff. And I remember one of them came up to me like, what'd you do? I'm like, I talked to the motherfucker. I used his name. That's it. We don't have to be so crazy about what sales is.

Also, labeling. Labeling is an amazing tool that you can use in any area of your life. It's the whole metaphor of if you want your dog to be a good dog, you tell him he's a good dog. If you want your boyfriend to be a very thoughtful boyfriend that gets flowers all the time, give him praise when he gives you flowers and say, you're so thoughtful. I love you so much. I love how you treat me. Cuz he's gonna treat you better the more empowerment you give him. Mm-hmm. Same thing that you do with your clients, whatever your archetype of a buyer is. Maybe it's someone that moves fast, is very good at decision making. Uh, if you're talking to a business owner, praise how, you know, you're— I love how you take care of your team. The fact that you're even on this sales call in order to help this specific process that you don't even necessarily deal with. You really want to help them. That way your whole entire business can run. Like, I love that about you. Praising those little types of character traits and labeling them. That way when it comes to a buying decision or an ask or whatever you need, they will rise to that occasion because people want to rise to the occasion of the labels that you set on them, whether that be a good partner, good dog, sweet mom, amazing thoughtful friend. Or when you're in a new city and you're meeting someone, you're like, everybody here is so nice, everybody here's so open, the amount of people are so sweet. Versus if you were to talk to someone, you're like, people here are terrible, you're probably gonna get treated terribly, right? So you have to be very careful about the words that you use around people, because whatever you use around people and the expectations that you shift on them is how they're going treat you, whether that's in sales or not.

So do you think you have to be really careful about how you label yourself?

Yes. So getting good at sales makes you roll your own objections in your own mind. Everybody has objections. I'm not good enough. I don't deserve this position. Um, I don't deserve to get paid more. I'm going to ask for this and they're going to say no. You learn to take a fearful language— this is objection handling at its simplest form, You take a fearful language, you neutralize it, ask a couple questions. Why am I feeling this type of way? Okay, reframe. Okay, well, I'm feeling this, it's actually this. For example, in objections, are you scared to pay the price? Are you scared to pay the cost? Do you want time or do you want information? Uh, do you want to come to your spouse with— do you want to come to your spouse with a problem, or do you want to come to your spouse with a solution? So it's different reframes, um, that you can do in your own mind. I think we're stepping into a new age where people don't like when you lead with names. They don't like when— oh, the worst thing you can do in a conversation is, oh, I know so-and-so, or, oh, I just helped so-and-so. Like, people don't like those names anymore. It comes off super salesy. And why should you lead with the value that you've given someone else, or that somebody else can give you, when you should just lead with your own value? And so it's kind of the same thing where it's like, people see New York Times bestseller, and yeah, that gives you a ton of credentials, but I do think we're also in an era where sales, business, and marketing is taking a more authentic approach where people love when you just do things yourself and when it's not perfect.

Yeah, that's so true. Okay, I want to end with one thing. Um, I know we help the, the ladies. I know we do. But also for some dudes listening.

Yes, yes, they've been waiting for this moment.

Their wife has been making them listen to the whole thing. But how do they help sell their ladies? Because a lot A lot of times, like, you know, I think we get more advice as women on how to get our men to do X.

Yes.

How can a man get his wife to do something that he's been wanting her to do?

Take initiative. That's sales, but that's also just life. I use the analogy of like, if a guy were to text you and be like, hey, do you want to go on a date? Where do you want to go? What do you want to do after? What time do you want me to pick you up? Do you want an Uber there? Do you want me to pick you up? You'd be like, oh, there's too much resistance built in that. I don't even have time to reply to that or to even put my brainpower into that. So I'm just not going to reply. And then that guy doesn't get a date with you versus the guy that texts you and he's like, hey, I'll pick you up at 8. We're going to this place, wear something like this. This is the attire and we're doing this after. It makes it so easy for you to say yes because you took initiative and you created a solid, clear game Plan to where somebody can just sit back, relax, and be like, yeah, sure, I'll show up. That's easy. Let's go. And then you get a date.

Yeah. And you don't even have to spend that much money. I think that's the other thing dudes think now, you have to spend all this money to have a date. I'm like, no, no, you just have to have a plan. The plan can be a $0 plan. Just have one. Exactly.

You can literally go to the grocery store, grab a couple like food items, a little glass of like cheap wine, set out a picnic blanket, and go to a park and a woman would be like, that was so thoughtful, that was so sweet, versus another guy just taking her to a nice restaurant that she's been to 30 other times. Yeah, it's just that personalized touch.

Yeah, it's really good. Let's play a game. Why don't I throw a bunch of common objections at you?

My favorite.

Yeah, and then you tell me how to kill these.

Okay.

Okay. I need to talk to my partner.

You are going to talk to them. You're either going to go with a problem or a solution. A problem of, hey, Hey honey, should we do this?

What do we do?

Or a solution of, hey honey, I decided on this and I would love if you would support me.

Option B, it's too expensive.

The price or the cost? Because the price is what you pay today, the one-time investment of this, which we also do have payment plans for, or the opportunity cost that you're gonna pay over X amount of time when XYZ becomes a way bigger issue.

Can you just send me some more information?

Yeah, for sure. What would you like to know? Uh, reviews, testimonials, blah blah. Okay, awesome. I'm writing up that email right You know what, instead of sending you an email and giving you a ton of homework because I know you're super busy, let's just go over it right now. I have this pulled up, this pulled up, and this pulled up. Let's just hammer it out right now. Back into the sales pitch.

I need some time to think about it.

A lot of people think they need time, but what they really need is intentional time with all the information. And so I know you're super busy, you're just going to close the laptop, go run this meeting, go do this, go take the kids over here. But, uh, we have like 10-15 minutes left of intentional time to actually sit down, and I've got all the information necessary in order to make an informed decision.

Oh God, your competitor is cheaper.

No, for sure they definitely are. I mean, why do you think so? Now they're going to tell me exactly why I am more expensive than them, and that's the selling point they use through the sale.

I'm gonna so annoyingly send these to all my salespeople.

You're what?

I'm gonna send all these to my salespeople. I was like, is this what you're doing? Yeah. Um, I tried something similar, it didn't work out.

You're married, right?

Yep.

Okay, was he the first person you went on a date with?

Nope.

So why would you let your boyfriend, something that didn't work out, stop you from finding your husband? And again, this is a dating analogy, but the same truth stands still with why would you let something that didn't work out stop you from achieving the goal that you obviously still want to achieve? Because you're here with me.

I saw a bad review.

How many? On which website? On Yelp? There was like 10, right? We've had like 12,000 people go through the program. So I know it seems like a lot when you see 10 bad reviews in a row, you're like, oh my Oh my gosh, but when you take a step back and look at it in a data analytics type way, 10 out of 12,000 is like a 0.001% failure rate, um, which I'd probably take my chances on that. And that's also assuming that everyone that wrote a review went through the program and applied themselves in the same way that you say that you're going to apply yourself.

So we're already working with someone.

Great, you definitely should be. XYZ is a huge problem right now. I'm assuming they're 100% perfect. Well, no, they're not 100% perfect. Okay, well, why? And those data points of, well, sometimes they show up and it's not the best and so on and on and on, that's how you're gonna switch them over.

Maybe later.

Sure, how many days, weeks, months define later? Well, after this, after this, whatever. Okay, on those 2 weeks, how much, what are those 2 weeks gonna cost you? You know, are we talking revenue? Are we talking health? Are we talking, uh, whatever? What are those 2 weeks going to cost you of indecision? Because in 2 weeks, you're probably just going to come back and have the same issue, if not worse, and it's going to be more expensive later on.

What do you think we haven't talked about that we should, to make sure people can make more money, get what they want out of life, change their life by listening to this conversation?

I think that we're stepping into an era where you need to know how to sell more luxury clientele rather than just low-ticket type stuff. And I, I really want to talk about the mindset block behind this because of course there's a bunch of little tips and tricks that I can go over if you would like. But I remember the first, my first sales internship, that being, it was being door-to-door sales. I loved selling poor people, like I loved selling in the poor neighborhoods because poor and middle class, because I just felt comfortable because I was I came from middle class. Rich people were so scary to me. And in my brain, I'm like, they're so rich, they're so successful. Like, they don't want to talk to me. They're going to shit on me. They're going to tell me to get a real job. Like, um, and so I would stay in the lower income neighborhoods. And then my manager was like, you gotta go knock some of these bigger houses. I was so freaking scared. And if anyone's entering a sales conversation with a rich person, you're like, I'm so scared. Don't be, because I walked up to this huge house and I was scared. Yes, I would like walk up to it, I would skip it, I would walk up to it, skip it. I'm like, okay, just— I'm gonna do it. Uh, talk to the house manager, obviously get him to give me the decision maker. He comes, he's like, uh, I'm in between calls, I've got 5 minutes, what's up? And I pitch him and he immediately was like, what's the lowest you can go? And I pointed to my iPad, I'm like, this is the lowest we can go. You can't go any low— I mean, you could take out the yard treatment, but I'm If I were you, if I'm going to get it done, I'm going to get the whole thing done. It just won't work the same. And he was like, okay, yeah, let's do it. You have to hold your price and you have to hold your value with rich people because they'll do something called testing you. They only want to work with the best of the best because their time is the most important lever, not money. They don't care about saving an extra $200. I mean, maybe they do, but, um, they care about their time and they care about the opportunity cost of getting it done wrong versus going to someone else, whatever. So if I were to say, oh, well, the lowest we can do is $800 because I just wanted to get the deal, they'd probably be like, um, okay, just leave your card and I'll decide later, right? Versus I kind of did a little pattern interrupt where I'm like, I told you, that's, that's what the price is. Like, you could take stuff out, but I wouldn't do that if I were you. Anyways, he was like, all right, I've got 2 minutes left, here's my credit card, like, here's my email, here's the time that I want, you need to do all the boring stuff, and like, I'll come back later. So I do all the boring stuff, get them set up. He calls me later, he's like, thank you so much for just taking care of everything. I hate when salespeople waste my time. You just did it all. It was so easy. They came in, it was great. And he signed up 6 of his other rental properties because people like dealing with people that match their energy. So if you're a salesperson or just even anybody in life, match the energy of the person you're talking to. So if someone's more laid back, very chill, you're going to be laid back, very chill. If someone's like that rich person where it's go, go, go, I'm super quick, I gotta go. Guess what you're gonna be? You're gonna have a little bit of urgency, right? And you're gonna go, go, go. So you have to be a chameleon.

Yeah, it's really good. And you're right, I think a lot of times salespeople waste your time because they assume— the most annoying line I think ever told by a salesperson: never let them off the phone.

I hate that.

It makes— I, I have a friend, I won't say his name, but every time I don't answer that fucker's call because he's an incredible sales guy, but he won't— he'll just go, and one more thing.

Yep.

And one more thing. And that's because that was old school sales training, which was the longer you keep them, the more you'll sell them. And now I think our generation is the opposite.

Exactly. It's as soon as you get a yes, you shut up and you sign them up. You don't have to keep selling them after they say that they're down because people hate getting their time wasted. And like I said, The more you talk, the more things that somebody, the more data points someone has to disagree with where you kind of bring up, oh, and by the way, we also have a warranty. And by the way, we also have this, this, and that. And now they're like, wait, what's a warranty? Now I have like 10 more questions, you know, instead of just keeping it simple.

Okay, I want to end on 2 more. One is she sells. You've taught like tens of thousands of ladies by now how to sell. What's your secret tips? Like, if I have— if I'm a She Sells Girl by Shelby and I'm listening today, what are the secret tips for sales that you're like, my girls get this, nobody else does?

I love that. So remember how I talked about the environmental close and door-to-door sales where I'm like, you have to move someone? You can do the same thing over Zoom. And I never talk about that on social media because I don't want anybody else to use it, because sales tricks, it's like you teach it for a couple years and then everybody starts doing it and you have to come up with something different, right? So that's kind of one that I gatekeep that y'all can have. But it— I was thinking, I was like, environmental closing works so well in in-person when you just move people because it breaks the frame of being a salesperson and now you're a helper. I was like, how do we do that over Zoom when we're just stuck in a box? Well, the answer is you'd be like, oh sorry, I need to plug in my phone really quick. Oh, I need to go get water. Oh, someone's at my door really quick. This is when you find yourself in a position where someone keeps saying no, no, no, no, no, 'cause they start associating the physical surroundings with their no. So you can kind of restart the conversation by being like, hold on, I need to go put my dogs in the room. I'll come back in like 2 minutes. Because what does this person do? You don't ask, you just tell them. What do they do? They open up their phone, they start scrolling, they maybe check their email. They just forget about how hard you are pressing for a second. And the key is when you come back, you turn your camera back on, you're like, oh, awesome, where were we? The reason you say where were we is because this person is going to blurt out their their true objection, which they weren't giving you because you were going back in circles. They're like, well, we were talking about this, but like I said, it's just too expensive right now. Perfect. Now you can roll the price objection and you can actually close this person instead of just running around in random circles.

That's so good. Um, I guess my last question for today is, if you had to give listeners today in 60 seconds one thing you want them to do after this conversation, one thing that maybe could make them a million bucks, one thing that can make them $100, what would you tell them today?

4 things. One, never set a goal that has limits. Like, when people say you have to be delusional, it's so true. You literally only have one life, and if you're looking at other people and you're like, I wish I had that, you should be looking at them and be like, they have that, which is proof that I could do that, if not more. Like, you need to be so delusional in your own brain to where you're like, I can do anything, because you literally truly can. But number 2 is you need to have the work ethic in order to back that up. Like, you can't just be delusional and say, I'm gonna manifest all this, but never actually put the work in. Uh, number 3 would be consistency. You have to put in the work on a consistent basis because consistency will outbeat someone that has motivation one day, no motivation the next. You can't lean on motivation. You have to lean on what you can control, which are your inputs. Of your consistency, how many people you're talking to, how many businesses you're starting, how many times you're studying, all the things. And then the last part is people need some mother freaking urgency nowadays. Nobody has urgency. People are like, oh, like, I love Gary Vee, don't get me wrong, but I hate when he says, you're— you have time, you're so young, I started when I was 45, you have time. You don't have time. You don't. Because I, I find that if, if you're young and if you're in your 20s, this is the time to freaking go. Because at some point you're going to have other people in your life. You're going to have husband, boyfriend, kids, people you're taking care of, different liabilities, to where it's harder to take risks because you have more liability. If you have nothing to do but just your own day-to-day life, you should be taking every single risk right now because is also every single ounce of hard work that you put into your life right now, whether that be working a normal job, uh, doing sales training, whatever, all of that hard work will reap you benefits. Maybe not right now, but in the future. And money is a lagging indicator, so you might not see the results right now, but you will over time. And so if you're delusional, if you have the hard work, if you have the consistency, and you have some mother freaking urgency, there's no reason why your life shouldn't look dramatically different in a couple months.

This is amazing. Shelby Sapp on all the socials. I really like the Instagram.

Thank you.

And if you wanna sell, she sells.

Yeah.

I love it. Thank you for being here today.

Of course, thank you.