Elijah Bowie: "Sell the Belief, Not the Product"
12 Dec 2024 · 45 min
Podcast interview (Negotiate Anything) with sales/marketing consultant Elijah Bui. Bui explains how to speed deal closing by mapping and collapsing the sales process, identifying bottlenecks (especially one-on-one sales calls), and shifting from selling products to selling a point of view. He outlines a three-move sequence—sell (point of view), close (commitment), then pitch (offer)—and advocates group-based presentations/events to scale enrollment and reduce time-to-close.
I think that a lot of times it's kind of like, you know, they talk about sports. The fundamentals are often overlooked. That's really what I see. Like you said, negotiation, sales, marketing. I think a lot of people or business owners have the skill set of whatever service, you know, they do, but they don't usually go back to the fundamentals. Like I said, you get. You lock those in, the world kind of becomes your oyster, which is pretty cool. Which is, I think, I don't know if I even told you this, which has allowed me to. We've done this. I've worked in over 18 different niches around the world, actually, including, like, one of our craziest ones to the point of, you know, how these principles apply no matter what industry. We had a company in Norway, I don't speak Norwegian. I've never been to Norway, but we had a company, a logistics company in Norway that we helped secure a deal with the Ministry of Defense over there straight from a cold message off of LinkedIn. And we helped them craft all that. And, you know, it's like, but. And people ask, well, oh, do you know? I'm like, you don't have to know logistics if you know these principles. Like you said, negotiation, sales, marketing. And so that stuff's been really cool to just unbox, you know, not box yourself in and realize principles apply to all people, all places, all times.
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I am extremely glad to be here, man. Thanks for having me.
Hey, man, it is my pleasure. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself. And what you do.
Yeah. So the main company that I run is a consulting company that we help small businesses speed up their sales process so that they can serve more clients and make money faster. And then the revenue from that company goes into many other facets, as I'm sure it does for many of us. But that's my main company that I've had for seven years now. That's the main service we deliver.
Fantastic. And listeners, just a little bit of a backstory. So Elijah and I, we met at, actually at the gym. This is, that's where we go. We work out in the mornings. And then I started to see this guy walking around with a shirt that said retired on it. And I was like, wait, what a second. This guy's, you know, something about business that I want to know. And so I wanted to reach out. So I just want to let you know, listeners, that it's the, the sales expertise that Elijah has is, is top notch. But then also just the entrepreneurial savvy as well, because he maybe just give a little spiel on your business acquisition stuff too. I think that's important.
Yeah. So one of the things I'm trying to do, I do a lot is I try to take any skillset that I have, which is usually sales and marketing, and then I look at industries and companies and try to figure out where can I inject. We're not just looking to acquire businesses or sometimes just intellectual property, which is actually my favorite thing that I like to invest or buy in. Matter of fact, we just did a deal recently that should generate over the next 12 months if we kind of mess up an additional million and it's really. We don't on. We have like 40% ownership of the intellectual property instead of the actual business, which is a unique structure. But what I'm trying to do is take my sales and marketing expertise and figure out in any company or business which is usually going to be service based for us, how can I inject my unique or unfair advantage into that company to produce more profits? And what I get out of that obviously is money. But what I really get out of that is freedom. Right. Which is why I wear those shirts like that. We're retired. Because what that allows me to do is inject usually a system into that where either we'll keep the operator in place or train a new operator. Because I don't want to run it. I just want to inject the system there that I know can take something higher and then we get paid out of the profits that are Produced and you know I just kind of get to spend time with my wife and kids which is what I love to do most. And so any service based business that can be med spa aesthetics, I really love those. It can be gym any type of service based business. I actually one of the ones I'm looking at now getting into is I want to do want to in the next year grab a couple probably just two like daycare type centers as well in the area because we've got a unique idea and some campaigns that I think could, you know, probably double revenue for most of the places. So yeah, just anything like that, that's what I look for an acquisition. But at all those acquisitions are driven for me based upon the skill set that I have from the first company. Right. Which is marketing and sales. Can we collapse the speed in which a business creates or earns income? And so that's what I look for in terms of it.
Incredible. And listeners, the reason I wanted to make sure that you all had that backstory is because I want you to know that his expertise goes far beyond sales and it's incredible depth of business sav and so he's able to take this skill in order to generate wealth in different markets and different businesses. And so there is a holistic expertise that he has that's unique because of course we're talking about sales and how we can close faster deals. But sales and negotiation are both business skills. And if you can have somebody who's an expert as in in sales like Elijah, but then also an expert in negotiating deals like that combination is significant. So that's why I wanted to start off there because your background is really unique.
I think a lot of times it's kind of like, you know, they talk about sports. The fundamentals are often overlooked. That's really what I see. Like you said, negotiation, sales, marketing. I think a lot of people or business owners have the skill set of whatever service you know, they do, but they don't usually go back to the fundamentals because like I said, you get you locked those in the world kind of becomes your oyster. Which is pretty cool. Which is I think, I don't know if I even told you this, which has allowed me to. We've done this. I've worked in over 18 different niches around the world actually including like one of our craziest ones to the point of, you know, how these principles apply no matter what industry. We had a company in Norway. I don't speak Norwegian, I've never been to Norway. But we had a company A logistics company in Norway that we helped secure a deal with the Ministry of Defense over there straight from a cold message off of LinkedIn and we helped them craft all that. And you know, it's like, but, and people ask, well, oh do you know, I'm like, you don't have to know logistics if you know these principles like you said, negotiation, sales, marketing. And so that stuff's been really cool to just unbox, you know, not box yourself in and realize principles apply to all people, all places, all times.
Absolutely. Well, let's get into these principles. This, this is great. And again, sometimes I hear different clients or different people complain and, and about the, the challenge they have in the speed of deals, closing deals, how do I close deals faster? And so I want to just give you the space to set the stage when somebody is asking for ways to close deals faster. What are some of the misunderstandings and misconceptions they have about the concept in general that holds them back from doing exactly what it is that they want to do?
Yeah, I think it's an important thing to look at in terms of, you know, speed because obviously companies income depends on that. One of the things that I always have clients or companies look at is whenever we're talking about closing deals faster, the way you do that is actually to first analyze and look at what is our sales process. Right. That is like a common word I think people talk about or throw around often. But I don't think most people really have an understanding of what a sales process is. And so we have a really simple and clear definition. Right. We always tell clients a sales process is the time plus the amount of steps that it takes you, your company to turn a complete stranger into, into a customer. However many steps it takes for that to happen, and however much time it takes for that to happen is your sales process. And the reason we start with that definition is because a lot of times, you know, companies, even really large companies don't really have tracked and fine tune what are the exact steps that a stranger takes and how much time. Right. Does it take them to. If let's say there are six steps between someone finding out about your company and actually transacting and becoming a customer. Okay, those are the six steps. But how long does it take them to get to each steps?
Right.
We have to first play that out because most companies get paid like if you ask just for a simple example, if you ask a fitness trainer, a personal trainer, what is that they do, they'll say, oh, I help. You know what people pay Them for. Well, people pay me to help them lose weight. Well, that's not necessarily true, Right. Because that trainer gets paid before the client ever loses weight. I always use that example with companies, right? So if I get paid before, before my client, and that's how most of you know, business works, before my client experiences the result or transformation, then my income, right. The speed in which we close deals and how much money we create has to do with how many steps, how much time and if I can collapse those, right. What can I do to shorten that process? Because if I have 10 steps and I take that 10 steps and I take them to three or I have 10 steps and usually it takes eight months for a stranger to do that and we can turn it into four or three or two or one month now, right? I'm making more money. That's what we look at, right? So that's the big, the first thing it's like if we want to close deals faster, the very first thing we have to realize is what is your sales process? And then starting to identify what are the bottlenecks in that sales process, which is, you know, where my, my main company spends a lot of time, hey look, here's the bottleneck. Let's remove some of these things that would slow that process down.
This makes a lot of sense, especially when you say again, going back to what you said before, breaking it down to the fundamentals, this has to be where it starts. Because we can't answer the question how do we faster or get to the close faster without even understanding the process that we take to get there. And I am assuming, and you tell me if I'm wrong on this, that a lot of times the process is either non existent or inconsistent.
Yeah, I think, yeah, I would agree with that statement. I think the biggest thing, and it really does surprise, like there are big companies that we've consulted that do, you know, maybe even a million dollars a month. And when you ask them the sales process, they'll know like, oh, people usually find us this way and then they, they'll go to our city. Like, you know, they kind of know the steps that happen but they don't have, like if you go into Apple, if you go into Coco, like you ever know I was telling a client this, do you ever wonder why major brands like a Coca Cola or something still use billboards? That seems like a very archaic. Right? Like, like why are you still. It's because these mega companies, like the top companies in the planet, they have to the day, right? How someone enters in and the exact moment in which they will transact with that company and what they'll buy and what it's worth. Like they know those things. And unless you actually know how many steps. Right. What are this time it takes, you can't begin to optimize, you can't speed it up. Which means that now I'm, I'm kind of stuck on closing on the speed in which I can close deals, which means also the speed in which I get paid and take money home to, you know, our families and you know, our employees and things like that. So, yeah, it's not even almost like inconsistent sometimes they have, it's just like they don't even have it tracked to know that, oh, it's going to take if I just met somebody six months and if I don't know that, I can't start to figure out why is it taking six months and can something in that process be optimized to make it sooner?
Yeah, this is, this is great, Elijah, because I'm thinking too also a lot of people might come and they might say, okay, I need better sales skills in order to close these deals faster. And of course that won't hurt. But again, just taking the time to look at the process that's going to give you outsized benefits if you're just as opposed to just looking at the skills. And one of the things that you mentioned is when you understand the exact steps, then you can identify the bottlenecks. And so what are some examples of bottlenecks that you've seen with some of your clients?
Yeah, that's a good question. So one of the things we're seeing now really in the last five years especially is a move in all industry and in both markets, business to business and business to consumer is one of the major bottlenecks is one on one sales calls, especially in the United States. We have a very weird and unpleasant relationship with sales in the United States. No, I'm just due to media. Right. I like, I always tell people if you want someone to leave you alone and they ask you what they do, just tell them you're in sales. Right. Because everyone's like, oh, right, like it's called a snake oil salesman. Like everyone, when you see that in America, you really have a negative connotation associated with that. And our media and TV portrays that as negative. Right. But we all know in business nothing happens without sales. Right. You're constantly selling everything. You know, their sales go all around. But because of that kind of connotation and I think really Covid and the shutdowns, you know, for those few weeks really exposed and sped some of this up. Where people are like, I don't want talk to a salesperson. I want what I want. I want to do the deal. I want the. But I don't want to have to talk to the salesperson. And technology has made it where we don't have to. And so one of the biggest bottlenecks that we really identify for a lot of companies is the one on one sales call for multiple reasons, right? The one on one sales call, removing it as a hurdle for the person who wants to purchase. But then for the company that would be doing the one on one sales call, removing that hurdle and the liabilities of human capital, human error sometimes that with that used to own a sales agency, it's a headache to hire, train staff, quality sales guys. And then the good guys are always on their way out the door to the next thing you know. It's not scalable. There's a lot of bottlenecks there. For instance, let's say you want to come buy something from me. And I'm not sure if any of the listeners, maybe you guys are like this as well. I'm somebody who like, if. When I decide I want something, even if I'm just kind of interested, I'm like, okay, I just want to like, I want to buy it and I want to like get into it, right? And like there was a Software, just a SaaS company, right? Software as a service online that I wanted to check out for one of our companies. And there was like no trial or anything. They wanted you to book a call to get like a demo. And I'm like, no, I just decided not to use the software. I was like, I don't want to find some time right now. I got to find when I'm available with your sales team. And then I got to tell. And they're getting, you know, most people want to skip that these days. They just want to get the details that they need to make a buying decision, yes or no. And so that's one of the biggest, biggest bottlenecks that we see is like those sales calls significantly slow down the speed in which you can earn income. You can close a deal. And we usually help companies remove that and put something else in place, which is usually selling one to many. And that's been really effective for a lot of companies.
Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate Your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations. At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed. This is a complete paradigm shift because I think a lot of people in the industry, they just assume that this is the way it has to be. Like this is just how you sell and it's just an assumption that that step needs to be in there. And so before we get back to the process, I have a persuasion question for you. If you are talking to somebody who has hired you and you're saying, hey, we can get rid of your one on one sales call and they are skeptical, how do you break through that skepticism to get them to even try this new way of selling?
That's a good question. So for us, that we'd never get to that point, right? Especially not the hiring. And this kind of has to go through, go along with what I teach them. I have no desire to convince anybody of anything, right? So what I mean by that is, to me, convincing is not selling. I mean, so like if a company's struggling and we believe we have a solution, or the people us and the people who work with us are not experiencing that reality, I want them to already be sold. And this kind of goes into one of the things we teach them. So the difference between, there's a difference between selling, closing and pitching. A lot of people in our industry use these words interchangeably, but these words are not one in the same. There are three specific moves that have three different purposes that have to happen in a specific order, especially if you want to get away from sales calls, right? So to your question, the reason why I brought that up is selling is the first one that has to happen right Before I can pitch, I have to close and before I close, I have to sell. Now, most people are trained that they are selling their program, product or service, or they're trained that they're selling the dream outcome, or they're trained that they're selling sometimes themselves, in our opinion, right? In our company, we teach you're selling none of those. You don't need to sell the dream outcome because whoever you're selling to, they've been dreaming since they were children. Right. That's not selling. Come on, man. Don't you want to have, like, don't you want to be a millionaire? Like that. You know what I'm saying? Like, oh, my goodness. I never thought of that until you. Thanks. Like, that's. You're not selling that. All of us have purchased things that we desired, even if the person who sold it to us was kind of. Maybe we had a negative experience. Right? And ultimately, if we didn't have any options and this one individual or entity was the only place to get what we needed, it wouldn't matter if we liked them or not. Right. We would do the deal. So I'm not really selling myself. And nobody was asleep in the middle of the night, woke up in a cold sweat and said, I need a sales coach. Right? I need to relate. Like, that doesn't happen, right? So you're not sell. You like, no one's doing that. And you could do that with any industry, any company. Like, no one's waking up out of their cold sweat. So that means I'm not selling my stuff because the market doesn't actually care about our stuff. So we teach. What are you selling? Well, selling. The purpose of it is to help the market realize that their best chance, which is key because most times when people are selling, if they're effective, they make the market realize that it's a chance. But really, you're supposed to help the market realize it's their best chance at experiencing what they already desire. Right? Their best chance, the market's best chance at experiencing what they already desire is from your point of view. That's what you're selling is your point of view. Now, I'll give you an example of this, because maybe everybody's thinking, like, what are you talking about here? Right? Here's why this matters and why it actually instantly starts to handle objections. Remember, I brought this up to answer your question about who have. Somebody was, like, not convinced, right? They're not sure if they want to try this new way of selling. In that definition, I told you what they already desire. That's how we know automatically I'm not selling my program, product, or service because they don't care if any. If every person could get what it is that they wanted without our program, product, or service, they would. Right? They don't actually want our service. So if I understand, I'm selling my point of view, here's why this is powerful. If. How do I want to put it? When you sell your point of view, the people you're selling to Become the type of person who would just buy the type of program, product or service that you're selling. There's no convincing necessary. Here's a perfect example of that. My wife is a coffee drinker, right? No, she's a coffee lover. She's one of those people, like, maybe many of you guys listening, who. She wakes up and she's like, I don't even. I can't even see people until I get my coffee right? Like, that's her. Me, on the other hand, I think coffee tastes like dirt, right? Like, I don't like coffee. I've never felt, you know, some people are like, oh, it really wakes me up. Or I feel. I've never felt like any type of physical boost from it. I tried coffee way back freshman year. I don't know why I was like, I'm in high school now. I should drink coffee or something, right? You know, you leave middle school, you just think something's supposed to change. But I was one of those people because I'm like, this tastes horrible. So I would have basically a splash of coffee with my sugar. And I realized, why am I doing this? So my wife's point of view is that coffee is good. It wakes her up. It's ritualistic. It just, you know, she needs. Needs it for. She can deal with people throughout her day. I'm like, coffee's disgusting. So my wife, because of that point of view, is the type of person who will sit in line in Starbucks for 15 or 20 minutes, she'll pay 6, 7, $8 for her FRIT. Frap. Frappy wap. Even though it only costs them 10 cents to make that cup, right? But my point of view has caused me to be the type of person where you couldn't sell me gallons of coffee for a dollar. I would. There's. You see what I'm saying? Like, the point of view. If I know someone's point of view, you can predict with 90% accuracy what that person thinks, feels, or do. I'll give you a second one just for the audience. In the United States, we have two major political parties, right? And I'm not going political on you. Doesn't matter which one you're a part of, right? Democrats and Republicans and the whole kind of issue or concept is that these two groups on pretty much every issue that matters have opposing point of views, right? Well, if somebody identifies as one or the other, you can bring up any topic. I'm a Democrat on that or I'm a Republican on that. You know, with 90% certainty, how that person would respond or act, right? So if I can sell my point of view and you take ownership of my point of view, which means we're seeing things the same way. What you could boil the loss of all sales, you could boil down to the prospect. Just didn't see things the way you and your company were seeing them. They didn't see the problem the way you were seeing it. They didn't see the solution to that problem the way you were seeing it. And if they had, then they would just buy the program, product or service. There'd be no convincing. You see what I'm saying? Necessary. So I know that was kind of a long answer, but I think that context was important for, you know, the listeners where it's like, that's what I see as the first thing. If I sell my point of view, which is what we train you're supposed to sell, everything else just becomes this trickle down effect. Because no one has to convince my wife to buy coffee. She's in wherever we're at for whatever price point, she's good to go, right? She's ready for it. So that's selling and that's the first step that has to happen. Because if I don't do that, if they don't have my point of view now, like you said, I'm fighting this uphill battle throughout the sales process and I don'. Want that.
See, I like this because really what I'm hearing and tell me where I'm wrong on this, it sounds like this is why it's so important to have a strong connection between sales and marketing. Because if you are really tight with your marketing and it's effective, then you're going to be doing a good job of pushing away the people who do not vibe with you and don't have that same point of view and attracting the people who do.
Absolutely. Yeah, you hit the nail in the coffin. Like one of the things we always talk to companies and clients about is confirmation bias, right? Which is a psychological theory and concept. But everyone, we want to run our marketing in a way where everyone who enters the first point of our sales process is there based off of confirmation bias. Meaning I don't have to convince these people of anything. They already believe the thing to be true. So now all we're going to do in that sales process is prove them right. So for example, in our one, like in our own consulting company, when we're running our marketing, whether it's on Facebook, YouTube, whatever, and we're, you know, marketing the companies, we're Talking about ditching sales calls. Right. Getting rid of sales teams, removing setters and closers from the process that's in our marketing. And like you said, you're going to get people who are like, well, you know, there's no way. Well, we don't want those people. But the people who enter in the top of our sales process, they're responding to that because they already are dealing with, like, they already either think that's possible or they want it to be possible, and they're just not sure exactly what it would look like. So when we get those people in our sales process, we're not trying to convince them of anything. They're already like, there's gotta be a better way. We're just confirming that to be true. Right. We'll close them. And then when we get to our pitch, which is all about our program, products or service, they're already the type of people who would buy the type of offer we sell. So it's no crazy thing. And we usually have a really high close rate, which is really nice.
Yeah. Okay, then. Now you've mentioned this a number of times, and I want to give you an opportunity to dig into it because I know some of the listeners heard it too, because most people think, all right, the process starts with a pitch, and it sounds like in yours, it ends in a pitch. So can you tell us a bit about the sequencing of your approach? Because that's really unique.
Yeah. So I gave you guys the first one, which is selling, Right. We got to sell, and we're always selling our point of view. Not my program. When I'm selling the point of view, it has nothing to do with my program, product or service, which would be the solution to the problem. Right. It's just before we even try to attack this, we have to be in agreement on this. You know, our point of view the same way. So that's selling. Selling comes first, after we sell. And by the way, what we help our companies do is create one presentation. You only. This is not like a long, drawn out process. If you understand the three moves and the order that they go in. You just need one presentation that sells the point of view first so that their market, your prospect, is seeing things the way you're seeing them, which means that they have now become the type of person who would buy the type of offer, program, product or service you have. Once we do that, then we need to close. Okay. That's the second step in the sequence. And if you skip closing, you're only going to leave hundreds of Thousands of dollars on the table, right? You can still make sales, you'll get paid, but you'll leave tons on the table. So what's the purpose of closing? Purpose of closing is to empower the audience to make a commitment to themselves to do whatever they feel is necessary to get access to what they desire, right? So here's why this is important. And I like giving this example because it'll help everyone understand. I always tell people, companies when we're, when we're training them, I say, look, my wife is married to me because I had the best pitch, right? That's why she's married to me. However, if my wife had never closed herself on being a married woman at some point in her life, it didn't matter how good my pitch was. So let's break that down, because what did I say closing was? It's empowering the audience to make a commitment to themselves. This is not a commitment to us, the salesperson, the company. It's a commitment to themselves. And anybody who's married knows exactly what I'm talking about. Because before you decide you're really going to get married, you really have to make a commitment to yourself that I want to be a married person. Because there's certain things you sacrifice, right? When you go and get married and you say, I'm choosing to have a life partner and intertwine my life, right? You give up a level of selfishness and like, you're like, that takes work. It takes an on purpose, upfront commitment to be like, yeah, I want, no matter what, for this person to be here all the time. Because that's what happens, right? They're there all the time. So before I came along, she had to commit to I want to be a married woman. What does that look like? What does that mean? What if she never commits to that? She never closes herself on that. Because there's people out there. Maybe people are listening. They're like, they're not closed on the benefits or advantages of marriage. Perfect. No problem, right? If that person's never closed themselves on what the benefits of marriage would be, doesn't matter who comes along and makes the pitch of marriage, right? It's not going to happen. So closing has to happen. And I will never pitch to someone who isn't closed, right? They've got to commit. And this is where all objections are handled as well, right? Because I'll give you one other example, and I hope the audience is understanding these examples. I don't want you to. I'm trying to take even out of business, how these things apply. Right. So me and my wife have two beautiful children, but we could have five children. We, like many women and couples in the United States, dealt with miscarriages, Right. What would cause a couple or a woman to consistently go through the pain that comes with that? Right. And we were blessed and fortunate in the fact that it was, you know, three miscarriages, and we have our two, and everything's great. It wasn't for physical reasons, but some people physically have. They do in vitro for. There's all these treatments. Those are very expensive. And the doctors will tell you it's like a 10% chance. What would cause a couple to spend that type of money for that low of a chance? Because they've closed themselves. They've made a commitment to themselves that they're going to do what, whatever they feel is necessary to get access to what they want. We want to bring life between each other. So we're willing. I don't care if it has a 5% chance. I don't care if it costs $40,000. 20 for, you know, per egg. We. I'm committed to doing whatever. If someone's not there yet, no problem. But why would I pitch to you? You're not willing. You haven't committed to yourself, not to me. I don't need a commitment. To me, you haven't committed. That doesn't matter if it gets hard or right that I'm going to do this. And so that's why we, you know, we won't pitch unless someone's been closed. So that's closing. So that brings us to the third step. And the third and final step is now that the market is saying things the way we're seeing them, they have our point of view, right? To use our example from earlier, they love coffee. They see all the benefits of it. They're committed to doing whatever's necessary. Waiting in line for 20 minutes for the coffee and paying $8 for the frip Frap Frappy wrap, right? They don't care. Because, like, by the way, when we go to Disney World and we're walking around and she's like, oh, I want coffee. And they give her a tiny cup and it's like $5. She doesn't care, right? It's like. It's like, that's. That's. But you're in Disney World. In Disney World. What, are you going to drive 15 minutes off of Disney World's campus to go get cheaper? You see, it's like, you're like, I'm going to do whatever I want my coffee. I'll pay extra money for a, you know, eight ounce. I don't care. Now it's time to pitch and pitching, right? Whenever we pitch, we always train our companies and our clients on the purpose of a pitch is not to get someone to purchase. The purpose of our pitch is to make it undeniably clear that your vehicle, your program, your product, your service is the audience's safest option to arriving at their desire. Here's why I said their safest option. It's because every human being is a professional risk manager. From the moment we're born to the moment we die, all we're really doing is managing risk. And there's risk associated with everything we do in life. So what your brain does is it tries to figure out, okay, you've chosen to do something that's risky because everything we choose to do is risky, right? Marriage is risky. Starting a business is risky. But when you go and do that risky thing, your brain starts saying, hey there, you got a couple people who are probably interested in you being a life partner, but which one of these is your safest option at arriving at the desire? Right. This is why I told you guys, my wife is married to me because I had the best pitch. My wife is beautiful, right? And guys don't know this. Guys don't usually have options. Women have options, right? Guys get whoever will respond to their advances. Okay, whatever woman's willing to respond to your advances. That's who you. Right. Women like, well, I could Henry or George or Tommy or. Right? So there's other people who is interested in wife, but when she's thinking about what she wants out of life, what she wants in a partner, what that looks like, what she desires, right? Who, through their actions, the time together, has made it undeniably clear that life with them is my safest option at arriving where I want, right? Having the life that I want out of the people that I have available to me. That's what we're trying to do. This goes full circle because remember, they're already looking at things the way we're looking at it. They're already a coffee person. If I'm already a coffee person, the question's not, should I buy coffee? It's what type of coffee do I want? Right? Do I want the quick McDonald's coffee? Do I want. Everyone's got their little fit. Do I want dark roast X, Y, and Z? That's the conversation. And so that's where we do that in the pitch is making it undeniably clear that because they've already become the type of person who would buy this type of offer. So now the brain's just going to do a very simple risk management and say which one of these that's available is going to be our best, safest option to arriving at our desire. If you do that effectively, you pitch effectively, they're in. So that's kind of our three moves and hopefully that clarifies it for everybody. But that's the differences and we do them in order like that selling point of view, closing and then pitching the program, product or service.
Incredible. And let me, let me just wrap with this last question, Elijah. Because your, your brand, the phone, sales coach, and eliminating the one on one sales call. And so for these sometimes high ticket offerings, you're doing this no call. That is astounding.
So like all the emailing, that's the cool thing. There's so many ways to do it by chat, you can do by email. What we train our clients on is to actually do, to only sell close and pitch in a group setting. Right. So. And it's because there's massive psychological advantages to this. Human beings are hardwired to like we belong to groups, I guess, right. Like we're not the biggest, fastest, strongest thing on the planet, but we dominate this planet. Why? Well, sure, you could say because we're the smartest, but I don't know if that's. Maybe that's just us thinking that. Right. Are we really more intelligent than. Right. Something else? Well, that could be debated. I think the real reason we dominated this is because we understood our ability to band together. Right. And join communities. Which is why historically our living arrangements have gotten larger and larger and larger. Right. We used to be very dispersed. Everyone's got their little tribe. It's like you and your family, maybe two of your friends, like. But we learned early on there's strength in numbers, right. We do well in groups, in societies. So we all belong to multiple societies. Right. And because we get so many benefits of being in those, it's hardwired into us to not want to be shunned or removed from those as well. And every decision we make, even the most independent person, right. Which I would put myself in that category, we still make decisions. Now, your group may be smaller, but based upon the influence of a group. Right. So if that's the case, why would I have a sales process that removes an individual and forces them to make a decision alone, when that's not how they make decisions, it's not how they Feel most comfortable, hardwired, DNA wise to make decisions. This is also called group think in psychology or the other. They are different but similar. There's groupthink and then communal reinforcement. So what we're actually talking about is communal reinforcement. And communal reinforcement is not mind control, right? It's not just the hive mind, it's communal reinforcement is when you put on an outfit and you only have clothes in your closet that you like and you think you look good in and you picked out your outfit because you know you got a meeting or a presentation today. I know you do, speaking all over the world, but you FaceTime your wife that morning. You say, hey babe, I think this is what I'm gonna wear on stage. What do you think? What is it in us that causes us to do that? You packed the clothes, you brought the clothes out, you bought them because you knew you, right? You thought you looked. It would be, I do the same thing. It's communal reinforcement. And if wifey says, babe, I love that rocket, you're like, cool. If she was like, lose the jacket or put a different shirt on, what do you do? Instant switch, right? So the reason we talk about selling in groups, couple reasons. One, it's allows you to create real scarcity and urgency. Something that most companies try to fake when they're pitching. There's a group of people I'm pitching to, right? There's 50 of us that you're all here and you're looking for the solution. And I tell you I only have five. That's not fake. Everybody can look around and see there's only 50 of us and there's five, right? So now scarcity and urgency is real, but the other thing that happens is communal reinforcement. Everyone in that group is all of same mind in terms of confirmation bias, right? And so the other people in the room help you sell the other people in the room by default. There's all types of psychological experiments and studies that have been done on this that I could reference and give people, but so if we put them in a group of like minded people now it seems like we're making this decision collectively and that's more comfortable for us, right? Versus isolating this person then they even sometimes without their partner. This is why people deal with objections of spousal objections and things like that or business partner objections. We don't want that, right? We want this group effect because it changes, right? It makes it easier for us to do things we already want to do. Most people are scared to dance in public, but when they do Go dance in public. Where do they dance? At a club, right. A place where people are already in there dancing. If everybody's in here dancing, it's kind of like, oh, you know, it's easy for me to bust a move. So that's what we like to do, right. And, and if we can do that and the best way to get a group together is just some sort of event, a religious event, a social event, a events, right? Could be virtual, it can be in person, doesn't really matter. We want to get a group of people and it doesn't have to be a large group. 3, 4, 5. That's a group that's going to be more effective and allows you to do some specific things that will really help you when you're selling, closing and pitching as well. And then you just kind of make your pitch and leave it up for there. Because like I said, you're always going to have scarcity in the place as well, which is if I'm selling to five, I'm only going to take two, even if all five want to buy. I'm going to create a wait list if necessary. Right. Why? Well, if one, so I could serve the two people correctly, right. Make sure I onboard them. Right. But even if the group is small, five people, that's enough, right? Because there's major advantages that happen that really help us speed up closing the deal as we talked about earlier. So that's usually how we talk about using most companies because it allows them to speed up their income. But now they can enroll in mass based upon, you know, how they deliver is. And everybody's on the same page because if I have to do it by chat or by email, well, now we're still having the issues of I'm really doing the same thing as a sales call, but slower. Right. So that defeats the speed purpose. Right. So if I can get all of us in a group, like I said, in addition to, and the biggest companies on the planet do this, we could break down Apple and how Apple. One of the revolutionary things that Steve Jobs did when he came back after he got kicked out. Yes. He brought a secret. He did three moves. He chopped their product line by like 90%. They had too many product lines. He brought a secret project with him which was the ipod. And the third thing he did was change the way that they sold and presented their devices to the world, which at the time was unheard of. It was by creating what they called the Apple event. And there's a very specific formula to that that they use that Companies try to replicate now and still they're unable to. Everybody knows when the Apple event is. Everybody knows when the Apple event is happening. It's streamed everywhere and it's a thing. Nobody knows when Google's event is. Right. Nobody knows when anybody else is. You know, like maybe the shareholders like media, you see, I'm saying like. And they did that on purpose because Apple doesn't have salespeople. Right. If you're an Apple device holder like myself, you were probably bullied into buying an Apple device by somebody who had an Apple device because Apple sees things a certain way and they put on events to create an environment that causes people to feel like doing the thing that they want them to do. And so, you know, you can have an iPhone and all iPhone users know this. When you have an Apple device, you feel elite, right? That's the environment they create. You feel like you're better than. That's where this whole like, ew, you have an Android comes from. So there's a lot of things that you can do there. So like I said, there's all types of examples and event. The largest and most successful companies on the planet, selling groups for the reasons that I'm talking about, they do it really effectively. And so that's what we. And like I said, the speed, oh my goodness, the speed to closing the deal drastically reduces, sometimes for months into companies, into weeks or a week, which is usually what it takes most of our clients. A week. Can we take a stranger who has no idea who you are and a week later can they become a customer? And not a single one, because our process is about doing it in mass. Can you take 5, 10, 15, you know, whatever your, your ability to handle and deliver the program, product or services in a week, Absolutely you can.
Incredible. Elijah, this is really great. I appreciate you bringing a new perspective to sales because this is really unique. This is really unique. And before you go, I want to give you an opportunity to remind listeners again who you are, what you do and the best way to get in touch with you.
Yeah. So Elijah Bui and I run my. One of the main companies I run is a consulting business consulting firm where we help companies collapse their sales process so that they make money faster and impact more people. Oftentimes removing sales calls or sales teams. And you can find me LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you know, all over, just under my name, Elijah Bui. You can also always visit our website@elijah bui.com Perfect.
Elijah, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me, brother.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
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I'll catch you.