Earning a 7-Figure Income in Sales with English as a Second Language

All right, guys, welcome to another episode is coffee is for closers. As you're aware, Matt's away on holiday right now. I just got back from mine. So now it's Matt's turn. We take it. Take it in turns. Can't have the president and vice president away at the same time. And Marco can never be away. He's locked into the office at all times. But we wanted to bring Marco in today as one of the topics that I wanted to cover, which we've never really spoken about on the channel, is how Marco came into the picture into sales Sniper. And one the coolest topics that I found is and the way I give you the most respect is like your ability to kill it in sales and be so successful in this field with English as a second language. So I wanted to like explore a bit of that today and really go down that path. So with that being said, guys, cue the intro. Let's go.

If you listen to this podcast, you will make your first million within three years. I'm going to repeat that. You will make a million dollars within three of the first episode. You listen to. We don't want pikers. We're not here to save the manatees. We're here to make podcasts. You really want this? You listen and review. Put that coffee down.

All right, Marco, well, maybe you'd like to give a little bit of an introduction for the guys that are living under a rock and, you know, they don't know who you are. Who we call Mr. Fashion here. We do the sales, he does the fashion. He keeps us looking good. Spend the money. Clearly, clearly not for me. It doesn't work, but whatever.

I made 100k in commission. I spent the money for it. I think if you watch a peer podcast, you've seen the evolution into this. Now I'm the chief revenue officer of both companies. I don't thought answers that way and a few others. And so I do more like the B2B sales or done for you sales or clients, which actually something that I really like, didn't like it on the stock, to be honest. Well, you know, sometimes you scared things that you don't know and that's a big one. And I don't know the complexity, especially the last deal that I closed, which I closed today. The complexity of that deal, um, it requires learning to the company. And like when you sell B2C is a consumer. Right. So it's. It just is a normal person trying to ask for a service those, they are like different company. When you talk about Sales, for example, with them is like how many type of sales a company does, God knows. Right. Especially a distribution. Right?

Yeah.

Buy something, they might sell something. Or even when they buy, they want to buy less. So they. There is a salesperson to this. So it's like, it's complicated. But coming back where we originally asked is like, what I'm doing now. I'm at my peak. I feel like I'm my peak. I've grown a lot with the help of you and Matt. So I'm in a really, really good, good airspace. I'm learning a lot from Jeremy as well.

So, yeah, it's funny moving into that world because you're naturally super resistant to change. Right. Super loyal guy, don't like to change things. Which brings up like the kind of story of how we first got you over the sniper in the first place. And you are so reluctant to come and reluctant to stay when we first come on board. But pleasant to know. Me, Marco, we did a lot of sales together in the past in previous companies for gyms, and I never got paid commission. I was a manager. Marco was a sales guy. We never actually met in person until, well, like six, six, seven months ago. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. We haven't met in person so long. Yeah.

And, you know, Marco was. Was getting comms. So what I would do is every time I made a sale, I would write it under that. He made the sale so he'd get the comms for it. Just because someone's going to get someone, might as well get PA. If it wasn't me, I thought, why not, right? You know, because of that. I think we. Because I was just like some random dude come on board. I think the first session we ever spoke to each other, I was like, hey, you want me to put all these sales down as you? And we. We built a really good relationship on that. But anyway, back then, still to this day, from the first conversation, your English has developed incredibly over the last couple of years. And I remember the first call I had with you. I was just like, what the are you saying? Like, I couldn't make out. I couldn't understand. But I'm also really bad at understanding accents. Like, I'm terrible at it. I. I grew up in a bogan neighborhood. All I know is, is bogans around me. I speak fluent Australian. That's it. Right. I can't tell the difference between Aussie and English. It's. It's very foreign to me. And I remember getting on that phone call and I heard a few things because you did Some sales for the other gyms that, you know, Marco's killer. He'll crush sales for you guys. And I was just like, I don't see it. I don't see it. I can't understand a word this guy's saying. How is he. Who I can't even understand. I'm gonna sell all these people in the first week. You probably broke records and the most sales into that gym of any week. And I was like, bewildered. I'm like, how. How is this possible? And you have a way that is so individual to you. And you somehow use that accent to your advantage. And I'd love. Tell me a little bit more about that.

I gotta be honest with you. And I'm gonna be completely clear. Is like. Is an advantage at its finest. Because people they. When you have like, they go a job interview or when you start with someone, they really don't have high expectation, man. It's like, this guy's gonna fail. He can't speak. He can't do anything out the door. Is like, okay, let me get up. Because, like, I know what I'm doing. And that like, probably I wasn't especially myself that great. But enough to overcome rejection. So that's. That's a big one. Is that when I'm. That's why now hopefully I'm decent to overcoming rejection. Is because I wouldn't ask questions, but just because I couldn't. Because people wouldn't. Wouldn't understand. So I was rather sane statements and kind of move people along the pipeline rather than ask a question because they wouldn't get it.

Yeah.

So I took it as an advantage all the time. But also I never believed into it. Like, I never thought that there was that things until actually one of the guys in the team, Thales. He told me like, hey man, like, you know, you're a good things because you make people have a second English or single language like Hope. And I was like, oh, man. And now he's killing. Is doing actually way better.

Way better than $32,000 commission day yesterday. So.

Yeah, exactly. Right. So it just. It's just the way the limitation that you give to yourself. I'm a big believer into that. And my personal story overall in life is this the biggest limitation that you give yourself is what you believe on? I never believed into it. Right. But we gotta be honest, the transition from that gym to sales now the biggest limitation that I had. And now I got better through the coaching. Matt and you and David shot David. My English improved him is with money. Right. I Mean, I'm European, so I'm tight. So when you. When you. You. Yeah, I was tight.

Never seen anyone spend more money. I don't know what you mean by tight.

I ain't got too much. I ain't got too much with Matt. So that's the problem.

Rubbing off on me a little bit, too. Yeah. It's funny, right? Because you came and you crush it with those sales. And I was still, like, perplexed. I'm like, do these people just buy out of confusion? Like, what is it? But. But it wasn't. It was more than that because, like, you say, like, you don't notice that because you understand yourself, you know? And it wasn't until, like, studying napq, right, I started to get it right. I'm like, I. I see what he's doing. And I see it's because. Well, my theory anyway, is you take away a lot of the resistance. And my personal thoughts is because an accent, particularly if you're someone like me who's not good with them anyway, right? I have to really. I have to listen hard and I have to interpret what you're saying to make it make sense in my head. And I think that it comes across really strong as a tactic, almost like your strategic pausing and using tonality. Because, like, when you can't fully 100% understand someone, you're forced to fill in the blanks, right? And because of that, you think about what they're saying, and you have. And when you. Let's say if you're asking a situation question, like, I'm actively thinking about what you're saying, I'm thinking about, okay, how is this affecting me? What impact is this having? And therefore, I'm going to give you better answers. I'm more emotional about it. I'm more ingrained in the conversation because I've had the space to be in my thoughts, which has taken away all resistance, has got me out of my shell, and now I can have a. There's a real problem for you to solve, right? So that's my thought. I don't know. Does that kind of feel like it makes sense to you?

Yeah, it does make sense. I think the biggest one that I got is this one. It's like. And I really send back to my old calls just because I want to feel the pain is people don't see any coming. Like, they don't see it coming at all. Because, like, it's like, this guy, I don't understand him. It's fine. I'm just like, I'm Just gonna hang up on the minutes. I'm gonna stay here in 10 minutes. They don't understand that I know where I'm going. Same thing is what I do now, right? So I use it as a, as a thing. That's why I'm not a big believer completely on sales call on dressing like tie and shirt. Because like when I jump on a call, even in a big company, they don't see it coming. It's like this guy has an accent, his tattoos, after I ask questions, they come along until we get to. Yeah, okay, now we kind of things, right? So that's always been my point. That's why people, people say, oh man, you got to dress nice. I was like, no, really, that's not, that's not. Yeah, that's, that's not, that's no way. But second is, that's my weapon. You can't take my weapon, the weapon away from me. Because is the underdog, right? I think that's how they call it. Is the complete the underdog. And I've been the underdog in everything that I did. And I drive into the situation. I actually don't like situation where I'm like, hey man, this guy is like closes 90%. He makes 100 camera commissions. Like, oh, chill it.

Yeah, good about that.

I hate those kind of situation. When someone introduce you like that, I'm more like, calm guy, come in, I do my job. I show you that I do my job and I get out of that.

What, what don't you like about that?

Well, it's like, it's difficult to explain. Actually a really good question. What I don't like about that well is when someone comes in and you are, you are on the hype. You can just go down, right? You can just go down. But if someone say, hey man, I know this guy's good at sales, that you're in the middle, which is like you, they can go up or down. If someone was like, that was the best sell trainer or the best sales guy on the planet. Yeah, starting really up top. Which is especially when you start an offer. If you're watching this, you're starting a brand new offer you need, you have for. I do have still four weeks of like, hey, what am I selling? What these people sounds like, what direction I gotta take? It doesn't help you because all of a sudden you have the pressure, right?

I think there's a lot of perception management there, right? Because as soon as you're put up on this pedestal, you can't see that with the camera put up on the pedestal, that becomes the minimum requirement. And I feel like, particularly in sales, when a lot of the time you were selling to salespeople, it's like, oh, okay, this guy's really good. Well, challenge accepted. Let's make it hard. Less actively, or even if it's unconsciously, let's give him a bit of a challenge. I'm going to throw a kitchen sink at him. And because I have that thought process in my head, I'm now not engaging in the conversation because I know he's going to sell me. I don't want to be sold. I want to make it hard. Right. Then all of a sudden, there's a whole bunch of resistance that brings up that along with the perception management. Right. It's the same as, like, when we speak to a client, if they come in and be like, I heard you guys are the best sales team ever. Right? You guys are closed at 90%. If we're like, yeah, of course we'll crush this. The second we close at 80%, like, we stuck, you know, an 80% amazing, 60%, 50% amazing. You know, 30% in industries is amazing. But because of that, the expectation has been set. And the second that you don't meet that expectation, you could be crushing it. You could have tripled that business. But it's the perception that counts.

You know, I've seen, and this is a good quote, but come up with you. I've seen more superstars up. The normal people succeed, right?

Yeah. It's like a child, right?

Yeah. Like when you.

When you.

When there is the. And that's why when people was like, oh, man, you guys are the best coaching. Well, we're not that cool. I mean, that depends. We can help some people. If you show up to the coaching session, we can help you out. There's always that element of like, oh, bro, let's bring it down. Like, that depends on you. Doesn't depend on me.

Yeah. Because, like, I mean, you can explain better than I why we bring ourselves down. I'm the boring guy.

Yeah.

Like, how do you take a lot of those sales concepts that you've learned now and apply them to real life? Like with negotiating with someone at the airport. Right. Having conversations with people on the street. Like, do you feel now because you communicate, you didn't like to speak to people in touch?

No. No, that's. How do you feel?

Yeah. How do you feel? Like your general communication with just random people is now, like, after learning these skills, man, that's.

That's such A good question. Like I, like I became an faq. Like that's, that's crazy because like either in real life, if you see me, I always go, like I can possibly do that. I cannot possibly do that. So I'm always neutral. And that change a lot because first things people understand you better. Second thing is like you have a structure on everything that you do. And I love structures. I'm a structured human person. But any big. You became part of me. That's how I master into a sales call. Because I can sell, you know that I can tell people in the street, man. Like I can go into.

Is that a. Is that a content idea?

Yeah. Actually going to do it. Well, like it's just so much imprinted in me that I understand where people are in terms of thought process. Right. You speak with someone. I spoke with someone at the gym and I sold it into this for you. That's just an NPG possible because he's a me. Like that's the way how it is.

Yeah. I think the more confident you get with communication skills, the better you are at networking.

Yeah.

It's like, oh, you know, there's no leads. I went over to the States, we got how many calls did I get us with people that I had no idea existed. You know, just having conversations and here's an opportunity and the better you get at that, the more opportunities that come because you start to be able to see what can this person offer me or what can I offer this person? How can I develop this relationship? How can I start this relationship. And I think that all comes down to like for you, what's been clear to me is seeing your confidence just in day to day interactions with people that go through the roof. Right. One of the points you mentioned a second ago and hate to rewind but go back that you said like, I mean it's clear, like we don't dress overly professional. But that change slightly changes in that super heavy B2B because I've seen you put nice shirts on.

Yeah.

Dress yourself, never a tie. But you know that, that standard. What do they call it? The New York suit. Right. White shirt, slack pants, dress shirts. You're kind of like against that. But I've seen you do it in certain situations. Like where. What's the rationale there as to when you, you pick and choose to adjust the your perception to a specific client? Like how do you make those decisions?

That's another good question because I gotta think of it. I do it for myself. Confidence I do for myself because it's for me. If you know me. If you don't know me. Besides sales, I like go to the gym and buy clothing. That's. That's where I'm at. Right. So for example, someone like Ryan Saran. Total respect. Is a killer in what he does. He dressed for his clients. I can't do that address for me. That's because, like, I like to express what I like to express. So one day I might have to wear a Tom Ford shirt and I put a Tom for sure. Like that doesn't change the element of sales because the element of sales is me. I'm still going to be the guy jumping on a sales go.

Yeah, because like, anyway, like I found it contradict. Or that's probably a poor choice of words. Slightly contradictive because I have seen you do that before. Yeah, but that was probably you just testing the water. You didn't like it stopped. Because I've not seen do it since.

No, no. I actually do it for myself because I feel like that the best. The best way to make more sales is you gotta be happy where you are. And I'm super happy when I like. I dress the way how I like and I'm confident the way I'm. You talk about confidence before I think that you nail it. There is confidence, but I will. I won't do it for another meeting. I won't do it for. For someone else as a camera. Bought a Dior shirt. I want to. Really want to wear and I wear. That's all nice.

Yeah. I'm not as much into it as you, but when we do go over, I think. Not sure if we're going to go at the start when we arrive back in the States or. But we'll be going to New York and having dinner with Ryan. I am absolutely going to be wearing Louboutin shoes because he wears them all the time. And I like them. I think they look nice. My. My idea of style is clearly different. Here I am just like a gopher. But, you know, but you know, I like to dress nice on occasion purely because of that. That confidence in the. The conviction and what you're doing that comes with it. So I. I totally get it.

One thing I actually never said on any podcast is the hat. So I got this hat and another hat, which is a brown hat. Especially the brown hat. That's just a cell. Things I got charms. I'm gonna give them. I got decent. An elastic that I always wear. I don't have it here because when I don't sell. Don't use it. But that keeps. Gets me in the mode as well.

Sorry, I think I, I missed like. What do you mean by charms?

Like you. I just keep them for make me. It's just easy. Like have you ever watched the movie Inception? That's, that's.

Oh, you mean, you mean like a. You use the hat as like the.

Yep.

Window.

Yeah. Okay, got you exactly right. So it's something that like, it's like an anchor. It always worked really well. Always, always worked really well.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, so one of the questions I was planning on ask you five minutes before we started and I decided the topic was for a lot of the guys that come in that, that English is a second language. They don't have strong English. To get to the first step of like breaking into the industry, what advice would you give them? But then I'll ask you the same question once we're done as to what about when they're already in the industry, when they take it to the next level. So like new guys getting into the industry, not super confident with their ability to speak English. Particularly when they're taking calls with English based clients. Like what advice can you give those.

Guys if you, if you start caring about it too much? You need to care about it because you need to improve. Right. I've done reading for me, made a ton of total improvement. You need to care about. But if you start caring about too much, they. You're always in your head. It's like the way how I can relate to people that English speakers here, they don't understand me is like think about when Jeremy or someone else or Matt gives you a script and you don't want to ask the consequence question because you don't feel comfortable. That's the same things as we feel when we jump in a close account. They're going to understand me or other. I just don't care. Right. But in the meantime it's like that doesn't mean that I don't have to improve. And that comes the second point which is like I need to get it to the next levels. Like, well there you need to formulate details which is, that's what I'd have to do. That's what I'm doing now with David. Which is like sometimes when you start getting too confident because you're good, you create your own words. Right? I got one is jumping up. Your line is jumping up. It doesn't exist. I just. Right.

It's, it's funny, right? Like I've never heard that word. But I can interpret what that means. There's also a secret weapon that you get to diffuse. Right. And the cool thing is any time that you up and you say the wrong thing, you have that perfect immediate diffuser. Like, if you say something stupid that doesn't make sense, you can just say, ah, sorry, that's an Italian thing.

Yeah.

Let me say that in a way that makes sense for English. And you can't question it because you don't. You don't know the culture.

What I would say is like, how. Also was like, okay, how would you say that in English? And they tell me, oh, yes. So it's like sometimes lately, the consequence question is the possible navigation question I use, like, what are the possible navigation if you don't change? And people won't understand that. Right? Because maybe I go too fast. I was like, well, what if you don't change? And how would you ask that? That sales people like, oh, I will ask, like, what if you don't change? So what if you don't change?

So it's like, congratulations.

Yeah. But it makes them think a lot. Even they have to lean forward and like, what the hell is this trying to say?

Yeah.

And all of a sudden they repeat the question to their head. As I've seen it done. Especially when I used to sell fitness, right? My first eye ticket was fitness. Funny enough, we had the same guy. They chat with the same guy. Cut this. All right. So, yeah, what I was saying is this one is like, I used to sell a fitness offer, and, man, those guys, they weren't qualified at all, right? But when I used to speak with them, they were like, kind of coming up forward. I was like, okay, that's working. So it's like listening. Yeah, you're going forward. And I was like, come on, come here, come here. So, yeah, I'll put you in the cage. So that. That's how I was like, oh, maybe sometimes I can be faster. Sometimes I will be faster on purpose.

Purpose.

Especially when they give me rabbit. Rabbit. Yep. We're looking for this. I will, like. Sorry, what do you mean? Yeah, exactly. What I mean is, like, explaining your salesperson. They will talk because they'll start leaning forward to me. I will do that all the time.

How much? Like, particularly when you're sort of newer at sales, and there was some of those, like, English limitations. How. How heavy did you lean on body language to emphasize points and create understanding.

Yeah, that's a big one. Yeah. Especially if I'm Italian. I live under body language rules. Yeah, exactly. Right. So like the other, the other one that Jeremy has is this. And this one, I used to use this. This is one I do all the times. Like, you want to get here, you are here. You want to get here. What's in the middle? Right. That was a big one that I used to. Yeah, but yeah, body language used to help me a lot. Especially well, like when you future pace people. And I used to do this and you know, they say, okay, I understand what you're trying to say.

And then one of the last ones that I want to touch on was you've obviously, as we said, the improvement in your English is tenfold increase, right? Oh, thanks. Outside of like just trial by fire and pure volume of conversations, I know you've been, you've. You've got a coach that's Matt's dad actually has been working on some very specific ways to help you understand and how to understand English better. Like as an example to like, some of the guys that, you know, something that they could implement straight away that would help them get better at English, particularly for sales. What's some of the like strategies you.

Use to get better at that retained in normal conversation? You gotta slow down a little bit. I know that I just said the contrary three minutes ago in a sales call, but that's a technique, right? I'm talking about talking with your mates, talking with your girlfriend, and talking to other people. You gotta chill a second because the way. The way how you think you same things is not the way how other people understand things. So you. I will picture the. I will picture in my head the question. It doesn't sound the way how I think it is. Right? So. But when you slow down, you. You break it down into boxes. Like, do you like. So you, you understand the tonality, the cadence. The cadence is a big one. So work on cadence.

Cool. Cool. I. I don't think that I have any more questions that I can think off the top of my head. Maybe there's something that you want to ask or something that value that you want to add to the guys listening before we finish up.

Well, the big one that I want to ask you is like if you really starting right, let's say, or if you are in sales and you feel like, hey man, I cannot do it. You can't think that way. Okay, I cannot do it because, like, I don't know how to speak. Is that particular part of what we do is what we sell. You're selling people that cannot do stuff all the time. 90% of the time they cannot have the money, they cannot find them. They don't have the time. They don't see the value in anything that you do. So overcoming that yourself first, which is like, well, it's not true that I cannot do it. I can try and I can fail. And as I can fail, I can get better at it. That is a huge, huge things because all of a sudden it's like you got people in front of you saying, hey man, I don't have money, say, bro, I don't even know how to speak, but I find a way to make money. So which one is worse? You can go and ask for a loan, a bank. I cannot even do that. So you see the difference in that is like when someone overcomes. Objection. Always think about, especially when we do the training in the inner circle is like. Is what Michael would say, what Matt will say, what Jeremy says, let me write them down. Doesn't work in that way. You have to have a schematic way, of course, but the frames himself and the loops comes from your personal experience.

Yeah, I've always been super clear every time, particularly when I was doing a lot of sales coaching for, you know, guys in our team, but guys on other teams. I focus on the non technical side of sales. Right. It's getting everything else right and leave as technical to you because you're better at it. All right. And the one thing is that I found people always trying to emulate Jeremy, emulate Matt, emulate you, but had no idea how to add in that specific personality into the sales call and have no way to put that personality into the script so that it comes across as them. And one of the biggest resistance factors that at least that I feel is when you know, like that feeling like you're just reading from a script. But when you're trying to be someone else, it comes across the same way. Like one of the guys has like, it was a super goofy guy and he was trying to be too Jeremy. It's like this doesn't suit your personality. It comes across as fake. Everyone's just screaming bullshit scam because the way you come across. But if you start putting in like those little jokes, having that laugh, it comes across genuine. It humanizes it. Then all of a sudden you have rapport without needing to build rapport because you're believable. And I think like, that's one of the biggest skill sets that I've seen is like, stop trying to copy and start taking the points that work and make them your own.

Right, exactly right.

And that's what you've done with like your accent, your style. Like you're better at objection handling than anyone I know. So you lean into that. Right.

Like the. That's a really great point. The first bit. The second B2B call that I had. The third one I was all in my head of. And I've done this call with Matt which is a great, great. Give me a feedback. Completely botched the call. Like was completely. When sometimes happened to me as well. Right. Guy didn't open up. Didn't like it. We didn't move forward with them. I close six out of eight. And he's one of the. The two that I didn't close. But anyway, so I met. Told me on that call, say, man, the reason why you're up because he's trying to do you trying. You're trying to art. Right. You can sing from the other side. It's like you're trying to be Jeremy because you're not giving bad vibes, man. And he was like, man, it's true. Because like I never used to sell that way. I cannot be Jeremy. I'm not from Aransas. Right. I'm just. Just doesn't work in the same way. So just don't do that. Just put it in the wardrobe like. But understand the structure of where you bring people and why you do and why you ask what you ask. You're never going to have a problem.

Cool. Okay. Well, I think we can finish up there. So ciao and thanks, Marco. Like the bullet of sales sniper. The single most hardest working individual that I've ever met in my life.

Thanks, man. I appreciate that.

So just want to say thanks for coming on board. It helps me out because I don't think I could sit here and talk half an hour straight at a camera without being boring for the guys. So to the viewers, like, you're welcome. You don't have to listen to me. But yeah, I think. You know, guys, if you want to check out our stuff, all the links will be in the description. We got this here, this here, this here. You can join the group here, wherever, right? All that good stuff, It'll be in our outro video because I've probably butchered that. But thanks guys. And no doubt we'll be changing in the name of our coffee is for closest to pizza and pasta is for closers because that's clearly what fuels this guy and that's what fuels the sale. So thanks for coming. See you guys. Let's. We shall. Sorry.

Can we. Can we edit that into bloopers? If you're watching this or whatever is what. Can we do the bloopers on this?

Yeah. And it's just because Malcolm is so boring.

I'm the boring guy. So I got this hat and another hat, which is a brown hat.

It's because you're balding, though, right?

Yeah.

I'm just messing with you. Awesome. That was fun.

It's really good, man. You ask really good question.