Entrepreneur and CEO reacts to Sales Advice on TikTok

Hey, guys. What's up? Matt here I was on TikTok, I typed in sales tips and hacks. And so I thought it'd be fun to kind of go through and see the good, the bad, the ugly of what TikTok reckons the right way to make sales is.

Sales technique I've ever found in the whole history of my sales career responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars. I'm also going to give you some examples towards the end of the video. And the technique is this. It's using analogies during your sales call.

So I'm his sales coach. So Jeff knows what he's talking about. He's talking about analogy selling. The reason why analogy selling is so powerful is because everyone makes themselves the protagonist in every story. Like, when you watch Thor, you're like, man, if I was on Asgard, like, I'd be Thor. It's like, no, you fucking wouldn't. You'd be the sales guy on Asgard trying to sell people into fucking coaching and consulting programs. Right? That's. That's what you'd be, right? You're not Thor, you know, a superhero, right? So if you use analogies, you can say hard truths with people through the use of, like, third parties, and they put themselves in the position of the protagonist of the story. So.

And here's why it's so powerful. The human brain thinks in pictures. If I say pink elephant, you do not think about the words. What you see is an image of a pink elephant. So if the brain understands everything we're saying in images, it makes sense to put what you're trying to sell and the things you're trying to explain and get context over into images. So it works a bit like this. Let's say during a sales conversation, somebody is really pushing you on price. They don't want to go through your process. They're just like, how much does it cost? Tell me what the cost is. You're saying, well, look, Dave, I'd love to tell you the cost, but we've got a range of services, and at the moment, I don't know what problems you may or may not have to know if even what we do will fix it. Dave's playing hardball. He's.

It's a good deflection whenever. It's a really good deflection because there's certain parts in the sales process where you just cannot give. You cannot give the price there and then because there's no value attached to it. There's also no problem, no solution. So there's no Urgency in order to do it. So all you'll do is, no matter what you stage, you'll get sticker shock. Sticker shock will ruin any deal, no matter how, no matter how good you've done. Because, like, it takes them out of everything and they're just like, oh, what's happened? So that's, that's, that's the deflection that I would use going, look, I don't.

Care about any of that. Just give me the cost. What works really well here is to use an analogy which would sound something like this, Dave, look, if you went to a garage or a mechanic and said, how much to fix my car?

Sweet. So I taught him this analogy, right? And basically what it is is you go. It's a way to put things back on them where they can understand it from their own perspective. So I would say, okay, let's say, Pat, like, you're a dog trainer. Yep. Okay, sweet. How much to fix my dog? And you go, well, I don't know, like, what's wrong with your dog? And you go, hey, man, I'm super busy. I just want to know how much it's going to cost to fix my dog right now. Two types of people there. One person will go, a thousand bucks, right? And then you go, fucking sweet. Because I have this super high level, all singing, all dancing Malinois that's just had 17 puppies. And I need that dog completely fixed and ready to go into a family in two weeks, right? And they're going to go, whoa, it's going to cost more than that. Be like, hey, no, you said like, sign the dotted line, right? Or they're going to go, okay, I understand. And then you've got them on board and you've now implanted the idea that it's okay for them to know more about that they need to know more about their customer. So it's not unreasonable for you to know more about yours.

Sales tactic that is directly made over $35 million. One day I sold a bunch of people into a new program that was starting that's probably like 15 orientations deep. And I just headed, no effort to know. And finally I was sitting down and this nice lady walked in. She had like a nice ring and a nice purse. She sits down. I remember getting to the end of the presentation and I just said, hey, so with the program, you want chocolate or vanilla for your protein? And she was like, which one do you want? I was like, chocolate. She was like, all right, I'll take one of those for the, the Pre workout. Do you want to.

Okay, this is a classic option clothes, right? Hormosi is very good at giving sort of very tried and tested techniques in sort of a story form. Right. Which is a form of selling in itself, selling with stories. Now it's classic option clothes I'm not a fan of. The reason why I don't like the option close is because I think that it, I think, I don't think it gives people enough credit. Right? Like you're kind of saying it's like the yes train. The yes train is nonsense where you get nine yeses in a row. Therefore the 10th one will definitely be yes. You know, I don't think it's giving people credit because you can do all the steps that he's about to say, which is like, do you want chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate. Do you want the large or the small? I want the small. Do you want the 12 week or the 24 week package? The 24 week package. Okay. Do you want twice a week, three times a week? I want three times a week. Okay, so you want this, this, this, this and this? Yes. Okay, Perfect. That'll be 2,497. They're still going to go, ah. Like I like. I don't think it works the way that people think it works. I've done a lot of sales with a lot of individuals and I've found that there are times when an option close can be successful. But as a process, I don't, I don't think it's optimal.

Sales by just changing a few words. Part 2 Change from free to complementary Here's a complimentary change from features to benefits.

Okay, first of all, features and benefits are different things. Like a feature is what you get, the benefit is what you get from it. Right? So like you can't interchange them. You can change what you're talking about, but you do have to give the feature and then the benefit and then sort of the problem that it solves for them. But it does bring up a good point. I know I've only watched about 10 seconds, but it is TikTok. So it, that's how it rolls is that there are key word changes that you can use to immediately get a better outcome. Like for example, saying contract versus agreement will change the game for you. So especially people who, who do more B2B, authorize agreement is a far better way of saying sign the contract. Sign the contract has a level of finality to it and like I guess legality. Whereas, oh, hey, if you could just authorize the agreement, everyone Likes authorizing agreements. Nobody likes signing contracts.

Benefits of our service are change from objections to concerns. Do you have any concerns with this approach? Follow for more tips.

The concerns ones is good but I think that's to be honest like why, why you would ever say objection? I don't, I don't think anyone would say that. Like okay, so your objection is that you you money. It doesn't make any sense to me but it's not bad.

Three tips. If you want to get better at sales and this could apply for dating is literally the same thing. Let's get you paid and let's also get you. I'm not saying the other word. Tip number one, believe in yourself or the product or service that you're selling. Conviction is so powerful. If someone believes in something so much it will make you question your own beliefs. It's like an ugly guy who's confident he will talk his shit and he's probably more comfortable in his looks than half the good looking people that are insecure. If you believe in what you say, you will act in accordance with your beliefs.

This is all I do agree with that. I think you're, I think you have to sell stuff that's good so definitely don't believe in bad stuff. But I think that one, one thing that I see a lot of the time is if sales reps like they just, they go through a massive downturn it's because like the business owner has for example asked them to do collection of failed payments or they've asked them to do saving calls. A lot of companies will call them red calls. So it's like people who are incredibly unhappy with the service and then they're going to get a salesperson to try and sell them back into it. That is a really really bad idea if you're a business owner because like or you're going to have a salespersons handling complaints. If a salesperson loses conviction that the product or service is going to be is going to be beneficial unless that salesperson is a sociopath, it's going to be very difficult for them to continue to sell it moving forward.

Also why you shouldn't sell shitty products or bullshit courses because you know they're garbage, don't do it. Tip number two, you need to set the frame. Who is the authority in this transaction. Just because you're the one selling does not mean that you need them. If anything they need you.

They okay, so that I agree and disagree with. So setting the frame. I don't know that I agree with that because I Think that's a pretend thing that salespeople who don't have a very good process need in order to, like, how do I explain it? They need it to make themselves feel better. So, like, you, you know, especially if you are a salesperson who's not selling, like, let's just say you're selling like a coaching package to learn how to do something, like a marketing package, right? You know, it's like you're not the marketer. Like, you're not the authority there. You don't know how to do that. So there's certain questions that you can't answer, certain questions you should never answer, and you don't have the skill set in order to actually provide it for them. So that whole setting the frame thing and the authority, I think that having an equal status to the person, like, you don't ever want to be, like, below them in status, but you don't really need to be too far above them in status, I don't think, in order to make a successful sales transaction. So I don't think that, like, setting a frame where you're the authority is needed. If you have a good process, have.

A problem, and you have the solution, you are here to help them, but you do not need them. And there is a saying that summarizes this so well. The person that wins a negotiation is the one that needs at least. And tip number three, embrace rejection. I'm not saying it's always going to happen, but be okay with it. If you play the game, you're not always going to win, and that's fine. Learn to love.

That's pretty good advice. I think a lot of salespeople get caught up in the nose, but a lot of that comes from not knowing their numbers. So I would change that to know the numbers of which your skill set is currently at and then aim to increase those numbers incrementally. Right? Because if you. One of the problems that I see is that sales reps think that they convert at 60%, but they convert at 30. So like in reality, and because they don't actually track it, so they have a feeling or they feel like they get this objection, they feel like they close at this rate. You can't make adjustments on that. So if you know that you close two out of 10, then you shouldn't be shocked when the eight say no.

There's two things you can say to get around. I left my wallet at home. The first thing you do is you don't actually ask for someone's payment first. Instead, what you do is you ask them for their id. So they take their wallet out and then they'll hand you their id. You'll write down their information, say, cool, let me swap you for whatever card.

You want to use.

Now at that point they can't say they left their wallet at home, but let's say that for some reason they say, like, I left the card that I, that I wanted to use or whatever. No problem. Do you have a phone on you?

Cool.

Why don't you pull up your banking app, go to your statements and then we can see your account.

Okay, so what? That, that's actually great advice, especially for anyone who sells in person. I used to do that when I sold in the gyms. Right, that's exactly, that's funny, I've never seen that TikTok before. That's exactly what I would do. And what, what I do now that I'm in like the online selling space. Because you can't do that. I guess you can do that in online selling, but on zoom, in order to make the person feel really comfortable, I'll usually add the credit card into a series of information that I already have. So I've confirmed the sale. They want to move forward. Yes. Now go. Sweet. Hey, just confirming your full name. Is this Perfect. And what's your address? I'll ask for their address. Okay, perfect. And your email, is this correct? And your phone number, is this correct? Okay, perfect. And what's your credit card number? So like I have a lot of information. It's just part of the information that I'm getting. So. Which is the same sort of thing, which is, I think this is great.

Number on the top, right? And we can write that down. We can do ACA transaction just like that. Here's two things also.

The second part of that, which is also good, which I really agree with, is never being flustered by anything. And in sales, the moment you get flustered, you lose sales. So I used to take down people's banking details with no ability to actually take the payment. So because it's, it's, it's an emotional buy in. Right. You know, I used to always say, like, oh, you don't have a credit card. Sweet. Bank account. No bank account. PayPal, cash out. Venmo, what do you want? Like, like where can we go? There's no way that I'm not getting some sort of commitment. And so I would say it's not a problem. What we can do is just go BSB an account and we can just do a direct debit they go, you can do that? I go, yeah, it's not a problem. They go, sweet. They'd give it to me. Then from there I'd call them back a few hours later, go, hey man, just checking. And you receive the emails and everything? Yes. Perfect. Hey man, did you manage to find your credit card? Yeah, I did. Okay, perfect. Weird thing, you know, we never, that sort of bank account thing didn't go through. Do you mind if I just grab your car details and then bang. Because like people will find any reason to not move forward because no matter what you purchase, a lot of the time you get this like weird buyer's remorse thing, even if it is the best thing for you. So I just don't want to put them in a position to where they feel like they haven't committed.

So what do you do when a prospect you've been talking to is just like ghosting you, like not getting back to you? It's so simple. And I see so many salespeople screw this up. They write like this 4 paragraph email about their problems and solution and the prospect never ever gets back to them because nobody has time to read long emails. So what you want to do is you can email or text, all right? And you're simply going to say this, hey, John, tried to reach you a few times but didn't hear back. Then you're going to scroll down two spaces, you don't want to like big long paragraph and you're going to say, where should we go from here? Question mark. And then you're hit send. And that's it. You do that, you're going to see 80 plus percent of your people will respond back and they're like, oh, I'm so sorry.

So obviously Jeremy, my mentor in sales, knows what he's talking about. The reason why that works is because Jeremy is a big believer in status frames, right? So he will never be below status. So he doesn't chase prospects, he does this follow up. He doesn't chase people though. So all of his communication is done in a way where it's like, you know, like, I've got this over here. If you want to be a part of it, that's great. And so when he sends emails out, they're very cleverly worded to where even though you're following up with them and you're kind of chasing them, it seems like they're kind of missing out on something or they're doing something wrong and, and that they should be getting back to you. It works very, very well.

You want to know how to get your way without making it seem like it was your idea, but in fact the other person's idea. It's called mirroring. And something that I learned from Chris Voss, who is a very skilled negotiator. Essentially what mirroring is is just merely repeating the last two or three words of a person's rebuttal to you. So in sales, a common rebuttal would be right now is not a good time.

That's not the point of mirroring. That's like, I don't think she read the book properly. The point of mirroring is to get more information, right? So it's not to get your way, it's to get more information so you can have a better understanding of the person's perspective and place. So if someone says now isn't the right time, you would say not the right time because you want to probe deeper. But the reason why it works so well as a technique in sales is because it's simple and doesn't require lots of words. Um, so what a lot of salespeople do is there's. They'll go, okay, so. So what you're telling me is that now isn't the right time. Help me understand. Like they'll. They'll like regurgitate what they say and then change it in the phrase of a question where like, it's just too long and very transparent. Whereas mirroring is just a much easier technique. But it's not to get your way. It's not for. Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed that content. I think the wrap up is there's some good, there's some bad, there's some ugly on TikTok, you know, definitely find the people of which you resonate with the most and then just follow them, watch their stuff and try and get what you can from it. But if you want to like, learn some actual sales techniques, then we'll put a video here. So if you like this stuff, subscribe. Comment notification Bell and if you want to join the closing code, go down below 50 bucks a week. Role plays, sales training. Go on.