3 Rules For Selling To Rich People (Make A TON of Money)

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If you want to make more money, you have to learn how to sell to rich people. And here's the thing. Most people sell to rich people like they're broke. They apologize for their price and above all else, they stress over the price. But in reality, the cheapest option is the one rich buyers are the most afraid of. Rich people hear the word cheap or affordable, they think lawsuit, a bad hire, a compromise. So today you're going to learn how high net worth buyers actually decide. There are 4 currencies they protect with their lives and the exact playbook I'm going to give you that I'd run if I were selling a really expensive thing tomorrow. And you're going to also get the one follow-up line that works every single time. I'm Codie Sanchez. This is The Big Deal Podcast. Let's make some money. So if you know me, you know I've started, bought, and sold more businesses than I can count, which I don't like say to be fancy. I think in some ways entrepreneurship is a trauma response, but it does mean that I've sat on both sides of the table more times than I'd like to admit. And there is One sentence that will change the way you make money forever. Broke people buy for price. Rich people buy for risk mitigation. I want you to really soak that in for a second. A broke buyer is going to ask you something like this. They're going to say, can I afford this? A rich buyer asks, will this fix my problem or is this valuable enough for me? Those are not the same question and they don't have the same answer. At Contrarian Thinking, We have a business called Boardroom where we help business owners grow and scale their business. Let me tell you what our Boardroom members don't actually care about: the price tag for Boardroom. Why? Because they know price doesn't matter. If you're running a business that makes hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions of dollars a year, something that costs you 5 figures doesn't actually matter. What does matter? Your time and the outcome. If you have a business right now that makes $1 million and I can help you double your business, you're gonna sign up fast for that, you can't even imagine. And so I was actually listening the other day to one of our advisors who have helped thousands of business owners scale to their next 8 figures. And I was sort of chuckling because this advisor was saying, well, I think that this business owner just needs a lower cost for this and then they can come in. You've probably heard this in your business too. And I said, let's talk to them. So we got on the phone and what happened, do you think? I said to the business owner, "So are you worried that you won't be able to afford what the cost is?" What do you think the business owner said? "No, of course not." I go, "I'm worried that I won't actually get what I want out of this and it's just another thing sucking up my time." Every single question about price dies in the light because the truth is they don't trust you, not that they don't want to pay that price. And that's for almost everything. And let me, let me tell you what I mean by this. Like Bain and Harvard Business Review, they actually studied this in their B2B report. And it turns out business buyers don't only value the obvious functional stuff like cost reduction, but they massively value reduced risk, expertise, responsiveness, lower anxiety even more. So a rich buyer isn't really buying your product or service. They're buying their peace of mind. They're buying a story. They're buying the belief that this turns them into somebody else. They're buying a belief that this will decrease their pain. They're buying a belief that this might actually be the thing that will make them X outcome. That could be anything. Could be relief, control, maybe the quiet certainty that they'll never have to think about this problem again. So that means if your pitches were affordable, you're actually pressing the wrong wound entirely. The wound that they need a Band-Aid for wasn't price. It might be friction. So once you stop selling for price, you have to know what you're actually selling. And I think a lot of people go, well, if you don't want it at $20, do you want it at $10? What about $5? What about $3? No, they just don't want the thing. There's so many options in the world. Their most valuable commodity is time. Wealthy buyers protect 4 currencies above almost everything else: time, risk, reputation, and control. Let's break down time. It's the obvious one. So most people have money. What they don't have is another Wednesday to waste on a vendor who needs 6 calls to understand the assignment. Who wants more sales phone calls? Lord knows I don't. You don't either. Risk is the hidden one, and it's the one most salespeople completely miss. Successful people are surrounded by other people pitching them, advising them, managing their money, asking for more money. And so every time they say yes, it's exposure. So every new vendor is a possible weak link with their name attached to it. No thank you. Reputation, that's kind of the quiet one because the higher somebody climbs, the more their decisions get watched inside a small, expensive room. So their spouse sees their call, their partners see it, their investors see it. Who are they by associating with you? This is why the luxury brands do so well. I was in Paris last week, that's obnoxious sentence to say, but I was and we bought a nice watch. And where did I go to buy the watch? My husband and I kind of achieved this goal we wanted to achieve. So we like to buy a little milestone that we eventually want to hand off to the next generation. And so, and we like vintage, so I try to buy vintage stuff when I can. So we go to a watchmaker. Now if you're making an expensive watch person, you know, purchase something that's 5, 6 figures, you're gonna really care where you buy from, aren't you? Why? Well, there's fakes everywhere. You could get fakes just about anywhere. So how do you decide which one to go to? Well, reputation really matters then, doesn't it? It's actually not price at all because you would pay a couple hundred bucks, a couple thousand more bucks on a really expensive purchase If you knew it wasn't fake, wouldn't you? What would really suck is to spend 5 figures on something and find out it was fake. So these watchmakers end up doing a lot to make sure that they have a reputation so sterling, it's the same quality as those watches. And control is actually a really big one. So the whole reason they got here, they're rich, is that they make decisions. If you take away their sense of control and you stop being a vendor, then you actually start being a threat. You're, you're trying to box them into something. They don't like to be boxed in. So you gotta stop asking, how do I make this more economical? And instead start asking, how do I make this feel safer, faster, more reputation-proof, and like such a fuck yes that there's no reason they would say no to you? Because here's the thing, like a premium buyer never lies awake thinking, can I save a couple grand? I know that's hard to say too, 'cause in this world you're like, a couple grand would be nice, but I'm just telling you how rich people think. A really rich person lies awake thinking, Is this going to give me a headache later? Is this actually going to fix what I am struggling with? So if you remove that fear, you've just increased your price without doing anything else. The principle here is I think this, and it's probably where I see most salespeople screw up. And what I tell you about this is we have just in Contrarian Thinking, we have a sales team of let's call it 20 people. In Contrarian Thinking, our portfolio companies, we have salespeople across the companies to the tune of thousands. And here's where people mess it up, and I have seen it more than you can imagine. They walk into a room with a successful person and immediately what do they do? They try to prove them wrong. Do you want to be right or do you want to win the sale? If you go in and you say your marketing's broken, your operations are a mess, you might be right. That's probably true, but it's still a terrible opening because people have egos and successful people have big egos. And with much love, if you're selling to a rich person and you're not rich, rich, they probably got a thing or two on you. They know more than you do, probably about most things except your product. I'm not trying to insult anybody here. I was like really young selling to rich people when I was super broke. I worked at Goldman Sachs, one of the biggest companies in the world, and I sold not million-dollar products, not $10 million products. I sold $100 million products. And let me tell you what, if little Codie Sanchez went into, you know, one of the biggest pension funds in the world and started telling them how shitty their portfolio management was and that I got this for them, Codie is taking home a goose egg. I'm not closing anything in business. And so if you are running with ego, you're going to lose in sales. It can be a big driver for success in the short term, especially with unsophisticated buyers. But you have to attack it before you have actually earned the trust and the buyer stops evaluating your solution and starts defending their identity. You need to be an ally, not an attacker. And I'll tell you what, there's that old saying, you get more flies with honey than vinegar. I can almost promise you telling people they're smart, right, already know this stuff, and then you drop the need for them is going to have you close more business. And this might sound something like this. So let's say you're trying to sell this coffee cup and you're trying to sell this coffee cup to a manager of a business. He's more successful than you are. You're an individual contributor salesperson. This is a manager of a business, probably has more direct reports, probably makes more money. And you go, 'Oh my God, look at the coffee cups you have here. This is a mess. Is this how you guys present yourself in front of clients?' That is literally how most salespeople do it. They tell them all the things that are wrong with what they're currently doing, and they think that this fear idea is going to work. But instead, what should you do? If they have a coffee cup in front of them, you should say, 'That's incredible. Oh my gosh, look at your suit. I can tell you guys care about quality. I walked into this office, it's stunning. Look at this view behind me. I love the design. Did you pick this? What happened here?' Compliment, compliment, compliment. What are you going to do? They're going to start telling you things. Yes, I did. Yes, I have good taste. Yes, I do believe in this. And then when you say, listen, as a person with really good taste who cares a lot about how customers view you, I think you're going to love this because you do care about that, right? What are you doing right there? And they go, yes. Now you've gotten your first yes from them. Okay, so we've now already moved them. Your first yes is always the hardest, so we've got to move them the second yes. So they're going, yes, I do care about that. And I go, okay, great. Well, every time you actually get in front of somebody and kind of have that beat up mug, man, it almost, it doesn't look like you. Like you have the suit, you have the whole outfit, but like, I don't know that this fits, right? This probably isn't your brand, is it? And what are they going to say? Well, you've already just gotten them to say yes. You've already told them that they've got taste. And now you're saying, is this really how you want to represent yourself? And they're going to look at it and probably agree with you. And so psychologists call this motivated reasoning. We process information to protect what we already believe about ourselves, not to neutrally update when the facts show up. So you don't open with, "You're doing this wrong." You open with, "You've clearly built something that works. That's why this gap has to be closed because you have this taste, you have this atrocious coffee cup. Let's bring it in the middle." You're not pointing out The scuffs on their car. You're pointing out how beautiful their car will be once the last scuff is gone because they use your cleaning service. So here's an acronym for you: EGO. Earn, Gap, Outcome. Earn means you name what they're genuinely done right. So like, don't lie. Compliment something that is real. You know, that nail color is amazing. Your business is so incredible. I can't believe you've done this. Gap means you show them the specific constraint that exists because they succeeded. Like, you've already done so well, so we just add this to I'm going to do it, not despite it. An outcome means you tie your fix to the standard they already want to live up to. So in practice, it's the difference between your team is bad and you need to replace all of them and I'm the best recruiter and I'm going to do it to instead, don't you need more winners on your team that are at the same level as you are? You have some incredible people, it seems like here, but would you want more people who are at your level? That's actually the same diagnosis, right? But only one of them is going to get you hired and it's not the one where you tell them their team is bad. And that reframe kind of makes all the difference. And that's why, because the idea is you want to recontextualize a decision from being a headache to actually look at this opportunity. And this thesis is exactly why I built that Growth Boardroom I was talking to you guys about. Like, if you own a real business with a team and real growth problems, the last thing you want is to be making huge decisions around hiring, firing, pricing, expansion all alone. So my belief was I need other people outside of my business giving me opinion. I want experts, analysts, peers. So it's a room for owners who are done making high-stakes calls in isolation. If you're an owner looking for the next lever to unlock your growth, you can apply at contrarianthinking.co/growthboardroom. This is where the practical and the tactical and the applicable all come together, which brings us, I think, to the single biggest tell of an amateur, which is adjectives. Amateurs describe themselves like We're the best. We're high quality. We really care. That actually says nothing. What does that even mean? It sounds like every other seller and somebody you've probably rejected a million times before. Premium sellers, they actually don't describe, they diagnose. The diagnosis sounds like, hey, you've got 3 locations, but every scheduling decision still runs through 1 manager, which is maybe why your labor cost moves before you have a chance to deal with it. And you're like, pausing, you know, your growth for those 3 locations is so impressive. I imagine you're having a hard time keeping up with scheduling because you've grown so fast. Now you're showing them something true about their own world, and that is a completely different kind of authority. So there's a study sort of famously by Daniel Kahneman where people anchor hard on the first number they're handed, even when that number is arbitrary. So in sales, everyone fights over this. It's called the price anchor. But the real anchor gets set earlier when you frame the problem. This is called priming. So let the buyer decide the conversation is about this is expensive and you'll spend the rest of it defending the price. If you instead frame it as this decision protects your time, your risk, and your reputation, well, now price has to compete against consequence. And that's what this whole discovery process is actually for. We're not small talking. Nobody has time for that, especially rich people. Talk fast, move fast, make the money, get outta their way. Don't ask them how was their weekend or, oh, this thing's so incredible, or tell me about, you know, what are you doing this afternoon? No, no, no, no. Forget all of that. Instead, I want you to do this framework. 4 questions that do most of the work for you. One is, what is the problem already costing you? In hours, maybe churn, missed sales. Two, who else feels this pain? Maybe it's the CEO's spouse because they're not home because they're working too much. Maybe it's the CFO because the numbers are always wrong or the partner. They're all quietly in the room whether they admit it or not and you're bringing them in with you. Three, what have you already tried? Because a real buyer always has scar tissue and we say that tourists don't. So They've probably tried another solution. They've been burned by somebody. They're still trying to solve the problem, but you want to get away from that. 4, what would make this a clean win 90 days from now? And I like to say it as, what would make this the best decision you've made this year? This is great because it actually forces them to tell you what success looks like in their own words. So your offer just becomes the bridge to it and you parrot it back to them. Now, obviously we do this not being manipulative. We do this being real. So if I'm gonna buy a professional service from you, like let's say I'm gonna buy painting for my house and you say, hey, I've come here, I've specced at your house, we can do this job, but tell me what would make this decision a no-brainer for you, the best decision that you've made in 90 days from now? And they're gonna have to think about it. At first they might say, well, the job's done, you're on time, on budget, and you might say, that's amazing, but like anything else, we like to make our things really magical for people. And they're like, well, you know, that my daughter, when she comes home into her new room, she loves it. Oh, great. Like, what would love it look like? Well, you know, maybe there's like something sort of magical or unique in the painting, or it's set up by Tuesday. It has to be by Tuesday because that's when she gets home from school. Right? Now you have a chance to do what's called a magical moment. Now you can be like, okay, your daughter loves purple. We're painting her room purple. Do you have decorations that go with that? Should we add a little purple teddy bear on top of the bed for her that's brand new? Should we, um, hey, do you want to like give her a little bit of extra paint and a canvas and she can draw like a little painting alongside of it? You know, do you want a fun before and after of it? We have a photographer here that can do it. This is, this is the key to all sales is turn it into something where they visualize what their life looks like when they said yes to you afterwards. And it's a beautiful visual. There's a broke person reflex that quietly kills your deals, and that is called selling from your own wallet. It's also called wallet share. So you look at the price through your own bank account, and then all of us— this isn't just like you, all of us, me too— panic on the buyer's behalf, and you start discounting before they've even objected to anything. You know, I know it's expensive, or we've got a cheaper package if that helps. Stop it. You're projecting your financial reality onto someone who doesn't even live in it. You know, $20,000 might feel huge to you. To the buyer, they're like, oh, that's like one week of payroll leakage that you'll fix for me. You know, your job isn't to decide what they can afford. Not your job. Your job is to make the value clear enough that they can decide whether it Matters. Show them the outcome, not the price. The wrong way to do this, I saw it actually hysterically on a partnership meeting that one of my writers have. Creatives, I love you dearly. You're terrible at this. I was too when I first started. We don't like to price ourselves well. It feels weird and then you're selling out to the man and you're not creative anymore and all the things. And so we're on a call with one of our sponsors and we want them to do more with our newsletter. And one of my main newsletter writers starts off the call, you guys, and this is a Brilliant guy. He's really good. He's a great writer. And he's like, "Well, I know this is super last minute, so you probably won't be able to do it anyway, but," and then proceeds to pitch. That's the intro. And I remember sitting on there like, "What are we doing? What are we doing?" And so I cut him off and I'm like, "What he's meaning to say is that this is amazing. You have a super last minute opportunity to do this. Nobody else will have it. We can get this into promotion for you in one week. That's probably the fastest turnaround you've ever gotten promotion. So I'm sure you're going to do it because you'd be crazy not to get this in right before this big thing that you have, right? Hey, both those things are true. I didn't lie. He didn't lie. But there's a right and a wrong way to do it. And I remember when I asked him afterwards, I was like, what was the deal with that? That was the single worst pitch I've ever heard in my entire life. And he was like, well, I didn't want him to respect me less. I go, do you think that made him respect you more? That's the problem with when we sell ourselves short is we think somehow being weak, being non-committal, and not getting what we want makes us respectful. It's kind of a twisted thing. I don't know what they did to us in early grade school, but that's why I'm a blick. And I think premium buyers don't punish confidence, you guys. They actually punish your uncertainty. If your voice shrinks when your price comes up, they hear, "Ooh, they don't even believe in that." If you discount in the first 3 seconds of silence, they start wondering what What's the real price? Is anybody else buying this thing? So say the number and then shut up. The silence after a price is not meant to be filled. It is part of the deal, baby. Give the price, don't inflect, put a period on the end of it, shut your fucking mouth. The framework here that I want you to take home is now not every rich buyer is the same animal and treating them like they are is gonna cost you. So I think there's lots of types, But mainly 3. The optimizer got rich or stayed rich by negotiating everything. We've all seen them, right? They like to win. They need to feel like they didn't just accept the first number. If you've got an optimizer on your hands, give yourself room to move, but you're never going to slash the price like you're clearing mattresses on a holiday weekend. We're not going to do that. You're going to give the concession a name and a reason. I can reduce scope, so the things I'm going to offer. I can move the payment timing, aka do payment terms. I can prioritize your first location, so do one aspect of it. But you're not going to just give them right away, but you are going to give them something because that makes them feel like they're winning. And I have a dear friend who's a multi, multi, multi-millionaire whose name is Earn, randomly shout out Earn. And he gets off on negotiating. The man will spend a million bucks, but he'll be like, I got that fucking hot dog and coffee, didn't you see? And I'll be like, Yes, you did. It's the most expensive one I've ever gotten in my life, but you got it. Now, the second type is the delegator. They're opposite. They don't want to negotiate. They want the problem gone. Drag a delegator through 17 options and you're creating work, which is the one thing they're paying you to avoid. For them, the close is speed and certainty. I'm a delegator. Here's the recommendation. Here's why. Here's what I wouldn't do. Here's the next step. Ready, go. The third type that you have to be really careful for is the time waster. And the time waster actually never makes a fast decision. We often call these rational buyers, and there's nothing wrong with the rational buyer, but if you try to speed them up too much, they will never close. You're going to actually have to meet the— a rational buyer. This is so not normal, and I wish somebody had taught me this earlier. The rational buyer can only be met with emotional responses. Isn't that crazy? You'd think it's like, give them the data, give them the research. No, no, no. That just like, imagine it's like feeding a calculator more numbers. What does the calculator keep doing? It's like, oh, I'm gonna think about this more. I'm gonna keep rationalizing it. When instead, what do you need to do? You need to get them outta their rational brain, not allow them to waste more time sort of calculating, and you need to get them into their emotional brain. Forget the numbers, forget the calculations, What does your life look like after we execute this? What does your life look like if you never make this decision? What happens if you keep this problem forever in a month, a year from now? The optimizer wants a smart little win. The delegator wants a clean handoff. The rationalizer actually wants you to be the one to get them emotional. The principle: when a wealthy buyer goes quiet, most salespeople assume rejection. Usually they're just busy, guys. Their inbox, if you saw my inbox, it's a war zone. Their assistant triaging 10 fires. Half their job is just like, don't let anybody talk to the boss. Follow-up is not annoying when it's actually useful. The annoying part is this, just checking in. I was just wondering if we should talk again. Should we jump on another call? No. Useless. Useless. Maybe the most useless sentence in sales is just checking in. I think it should probably be illegal. I want you to replace it with something I call the 3P's: point, proof, path. Point is restating the actual business issue in one sentence. Proof is one sharp observation, metric, data point, risk they hadn't thought about. Path is the next step with two specific options. So might sound something like this: based on what you said about the opening location number 3, the real question is whether your current manager bench can support it. I believe. If yes, expand. If no, we've probably got to fix the bench first. We got to hire more people for you in my recruiting firm. I can walk you through it Friday at 10 or Monday at 2. That's not a nudge. That's not you checking in. That's you being valuable. And you can do this 37 ways from Sunday. You can also break up the 3 and only do 1 at a time in the follow-up. Hey, another client just executed this thing that was really similar to yours. I just wanted you to forward it along so that you could see what their business looks like now. I found them the perfect new manager inside of 27 days. Here's the background of that person. Should I start looking for one like this for you? You can also go to pain. Man, see these guys here? It looks like they expanded a lot but didn't fill it with the right team. I just thought about you today. So you can either go 3-in-1 or 3 with 1 each. A study that I like to use on this is Cialdini's research, which he has incredible books, but He has one in particular where he shows social proof and authority are two of the biggest levers people use to decide who to trust. So smart buyers, they can actually smell what I call borrowed status. So don't name, name drop just to look important. I want you to use a relevant example to make the decision feel safer. We fixed this exact bottleneck for 3 multi-location services businesses last quarter, and the pattern was identical. Every time. This is proof as risk reduction, not as bragging framework, which brings us to the close. And the close is where most people get greedy and blow it. Are you ready to move forward today? Sometimes that works. With a premium buyer, it usually sounds like a quota. Like, get out of here. Make buying feel like control, not consumption. So the premium close has 4 parts: options, recommendation, reason, next step. So based on what you told me, I see 3 paths. Do nothing and keep the current risk, fix the specific bottleneck over 90 days, or rebuild the whole system. My recommendation is actually the middle one because it solves the real problem without overbuilding. Do you want me to show you what that looks like? That close, first of all, gives them control and it shows restraint. And restraint is one of the most underrated signals you can give in selling. The moment you're willing to say don't buy the biggest thing, the buyer actually believes you when you say buy this thing instead. And I really need you to hear this part. When you sell to rich people, the prize was never their money. The prize is their trust. Money follows trust. Referrals follow trust. The next 5 clients follow trust. So that rich client you close, that doesn't stay one client. They become 5 or 10 because you made them look smart for choosing you. Now, the one you close sloppily and don't execute on, they don't just leave, They'll become a very expensive enemy with a really useful contact list. So stop trying to impress rich people. Stop acting rich. Stop dropping names. Stop apologizing for your prices. Just solve expensive problems with less drama than anyone else in the room because you don't need to be cheap. That's not the win. Clear is the win. Outcomes is the win. Do that and you don't sell like a broke person anymore. You sell like an operator and operators don't chase rich clients. They become the person the rich clients can't afford to lose. If this changed how you think about charging what you're worth, then I think you need one other half of the equation. What do you do the second they say yes? You're gonna wanna watch the next podcast exactly for this. I'll see you there.