State of Play in the Sales Industry and What We Really Think of the “Top” Sales Influencers

Hey, guys. Welcome to another episode of Coffee is for Closers. I'm Matt and this is James.

How is everyone today?

And today what we are going to cover is State of Play. Our thoughts on the closing industry. Should be a fun one. Plenty of rants. I think I'll get angry more than once, but stay tuned. Make sure you subscribe. I just want to say I looked at the analytics, and a bunch of you fucks unsubscribes. Only about 5% of you guys that listen. There's hundreds and hundreds of downloads each episode, and, like, 10 of you are subscribed. So stop the podcast right now or keep doing it. I don't care. And hit the subscribe button. Yeah, please hit subscribe if you're not man enough to do it. And I can say that because I think, like, only three listeners are female. So if you're not man enough to subscribe, then move along, son.

If you don't subscribe, you're not closing your next deal. Yeah, because that's the objection you're gonna get.

Exactly.

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 years 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, guys, so today we're going to talk about is the. Sorry, there are some rude comments which I think will be edited out. Not. Not FCC compliant. So, yeah, we're going to talk about is the state of play. We're going to talk about different people in the industry, what they're doing, what's going well, what's not going well, and where I think the industry, the quote unquote, closer to industry, is going.

So, yeah, I can't wait to see all the hate from all the fanboys from your favorite celebrity clothesline. This should be entertaining at least.

Dan Locke.

Jesus, that was loud.

Dan Locke. Let's have a chat about Sifu. Sifu himself.

You owe all of our listeners brand new pair of headphones after that.

So, Sifu, what are your thoughts on Sifu for the next seven weeks? Or is he your Sifu for life?

For life. I. I'm so dawn, because I think he's a piece of shit personally, and that's just. Just blatant honesty. But allegedly, Allegedly, allegedly. I am, from what I've seen. And, like, that's a I'm not really giving the guy the benefit of the doubt. Right. And. And the reason I think that is because there's so much out there that, you know, you only really hear negative things to say about him. And all the interactions we've ever had that anyone's come through that course, they're just not good.

I mean, not all the interactions, to be fair.

No, most. When I say all, I. I'm putting a bit of mayo on that sandwich.

It's.

It's the large curry. It's just, just none of them seem to be any good. And it kind of feels like to.

Be fair though, all salespeople suck.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, when I say all, I mean all.

Yeah, well, I guess like, what I mean is like people go through his course and they get. They think that they are now good because they've done something, but they're just not. And they are so full of confidence that it's just like it. They need to be put back in their place because they're not actually good. And the standards that are set in that just don't match our values and the high standards that we have. And it feels like to be fair.

I don't think it's their fault.

No, it feels like a cult, right? That drinking. Drinking the Kool Aid and it. His systems seem more like a pyramid scheme of sales, you know, and that's kind of what it feels like a pyramid scheme anymore.

It's a network marketing opportunity.

Well, Pharaoh Sifu, he. Yeah, I don't know, it just rubs me off the wrong way. He got caught for stealing people shit magnitude of times.

That Dragon 100 is legit. It is not the billionaires code. It's just like the font was quite different.

There's. There's two ways you look at it. One, you either just copy other people's shit because you're not good at what you do, or, or two, you're a terrible business owner that allows your staff to copy that for you to make off. And you should be ashamed of yourself for not having control of your employees. It's. It's. Yeah, I just, I don't like him for those reasons. Plus I think his videos are bullshit, if I'm honest.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I think like. So I think he, like, it's super interesting, right, Because I think he's done things that nobody else did.

Hmm.

He's actually like, it's. He's. He's an incredible marketer and he's amazing in sales.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Right. Like the dude is a savage.

You don't get people buying in without being very good at that.

No, man, he, he, he was amazing. And like, the weird thing was though, like, I think he believed his own bullshit. I don't think, I think he thought he was good at sales. I don't think he's a particularly good sales trainer because I don't think he has enough of a nuanced understanding as to what he's doing. I think he's just incredibly gifted at what he does. He's gifted at selling from stage and he's gifted at marketing. Right? So like that is a killer combination. I mean look at Tony Robbins. I mean that dude is a just a sales and marketing behemoth. He's just got a lot more. Well, from what I can tell, I mean, I don't know the man. From what I can tell, more integrity. His business partner has just been busted doing a massive scam, but tens of millions of dollars out of people. But that's not him.

Not sure it's the business partner. I'm sure it's just like, hey, oh, I'm pretty sure he just got paid for his time to be on, you know? You know what I mean? And I doubt it's a proper business partner.

Yeah, who knows? That guy's a billionaire, he's killing it. But yeah, so it's a really funny one, right? Cause he created a course which is like sales 101 and like HTC is sales 101. That's what it is. And so when you get out of it, you have a basic understanding of sales and persuasion, but which you can get from any 10, $20 book. You can probably spend a hundred bucks in books and you probably learn five times as much as what you learn in HTC. But I mean the thing's only 2,000 bucks. So like whatever. Right? But at the end of it, like you were kind of, you were given a perception that you were going to be good and like that's, that's a mistake because it takes years to get good at sales. Like not many people just pick up sales and actually make money out of it. They're good especially selling coaching and consulting, which is a very difficult type of sale compared to like say insurance sales or roofing sales or whatever because you have, you're, you're selling an info product so you have so many more fear based objections that you would get than other stuff because you're not really getting anything tangible. And everything relies on you learning information and then translating that into income, which is difficult. Yeah. So I just think people just believe the hype. And then obviously the man just upsold like a. Like a champion. And he did. He did his thing. But I think where it all came unstuck is that he genuinely believed his own bullshit, you know, which I think is. Is a dangerous thing.

And I don't think he. I think he went into. With good intentions. Yeah. I think the infrastructure in place to deliver on what he promised.

But it's hard, right, like, if you're presented with an opportunity where you launch this thing. And the thing that he did is he just worked harder than everybody else. I mean, he was doing a video a day. By the time anybody caught on to what he was doing, he was like 850 videos deep. And he was the guy, you know, which is my strategy.

Yeah.

And I hope to get big enough to where I can scam thousands of people and believe my own bullshit and go down in a flaming pile of.

Fucking heap, but we won't let him. And to make that happen. Please subscribe.

Please subscribe. If you want to see me take an enormous hockey stick, like, rise to fame and then drop out of the sky and. Like a burning heap, then please subscribe.

Light the way forward with the bridges you burn, as they say.

Exactly. Exactly. I think he was average at best as a sales trainer. I think the course that he delivered was. Was vanilla and pedestrian. I think the outcomes that it achieved for 95% of the people that did it were pretty poor. And he upsold like a demon and made people want to give them his life savings. And when you can do that, it can be hard not to. If you can create a cult of people who. The closers in black, as they say. But, you know, and then. But, you know, some of the best sales guys that I know came from that pedigree.

Yeah.

But they. They realized pretty quickly that it was like, that was step one and there's so many other steps, and then you have to get good at stuff. And so I just think it's a very interesting phenomenon how. And I think any course, and this includes as much as I like the guys from Traffic and Funnels, their course, whatever. Throw as much shade as you want. Bring it on. I don't believe there's any course out there that should legitimately, to be telling people that you can go from a nine to five to making six figures as a closer. I don't believe we should be saying that. I think it's unethical because I don't think it's true. And I consider myself pretty good at sales and I just, I don't think I can take someone off the street who's never sold before and turn them in 812 weeks into a 6 figure closer. I don't think I can. Nope. I don't think you can do it with a course that costs $2,000. Right. I just don't believe it. Now if you're saying this is step one, this is step one. This is how you get your foot in the door. Don't quit your job, do this as a side hustle, try and get it going. This is going to take you 6 to 12 months to figure out to the point you can replace your income. Unless you're a unicorn. If you're just a unicorn savage, that's never done it before, or you've got eight years of fitness sales and all of a sudden you realize there's a high ticket closing realm. Like what I did, right? Because you could have a look at like my high ticket closing career and you can be like, oh shit, that guy learned to do it like six months. It was killing it. It's like, well, yeah, but I had like 10 years of sales experience. So like, you know, most people that come from a 9 to 5, they're working at fucking Woolworths and they're like, I want to be a closer. And I just think that those are, I think those ad campaigns are disingenuous.

I completely agree. It's bullshit. Like, it takes way more hard work.

Like we have guys who are experienced closers and it takes us a year to get them to a standard that we're happy where they can already at a good standard where they can actually make good money. Because like, it's just, it's crazy.

It takes a very long time to get to earning in this industry. 10k a month, then 20k a month. The point where you get to 20k a month as a close, it's very easy from there to get to 30, to get to 40, but also just, just back to Dan Locke. I think that obviously the skill set there is what he does. Because if you can buy something from somebody that wears a red velvet suit, he's good.

Yeah, that guy's a savage, bro.

Because you don't trust people in red velvet suits.

No. But then you got like Belfort, right? Which I think is like, that guy's stuff is awesome. I like the straight line Persuasion. I think it's really good. I think that is a much better investment. Like, I think it's 9, 9, 7. But if you're out there and you're listening to this and you're like, what's a good. What's a good system that I can apply? I've already, obviously bought the closing code. Obviously you've already bought that. You've already given me some money.

I've already subscribed to Coffees for Closers.

Exactly. So you're getting all this kind of free content. You're sitting there throwing a big old fat sales stick on the table, but you're like, what's a good way that I can get better at. Objection. Handling looping is phenomenal. It works really, really well. I use it all the time. It's just a good framework where you can just keep. Objection. Handling someone until they give up or hang up. Right. Give up or hang up. Those are the two outcomes. So it's really effective. I think it espouses a good value of like the sale is a straight line and like, you know, or a yellow brick road or however you want to kind of picture that. But you need to get there in the shortest possible time frame. And that's because I don't even think he knows the reason why that needs to happen. Because I don't know how in depth into the psychology of sales he's actually gone because he's just a straight killer.

He's one of those natural born guys that could do that course, pick it up and then kill it the next week.

Yeah. I think he's just a great salesman and he's obviously a good sales trainer because he's made way more money than me at it. But from a super, super nuanced level, I don't know if he really understands like the psychology and the multitude of reasons why having a short, short sales cycle is important.

Yeah. The difference between Dan and Jordan is I page or to listen to him and get his understanding. Yeah, he's an interesting.

Yeah, yeah, he's. I would, I would probably. I would like to speak to Dan Locke. I think that would be an interesting conversation. I just did a YouTube video on about him. About what I. With my in depth thoughts about what Danlock is about.

So.

About what he did right, what he did wrong. So shout out to my YouTube channel.

Please subscribe. Theme of the day.

This would be the title. Please subscribe. We'll do some Inception shit like Ivan Netanyahu, Join the Navy from Simpsons.

Yeah.

Eva Netna should just have that in the background. Subscribe.

Nice.

Yeah, so Jordan Belfort's an interesting one because obviously that dude's phenomenal at Selling, man. I've seen some videos of him selling online. That dude knows his shit. He knows what he's doing. He's really, really good. It wouldn't translate across all industries. It's not a type of selling that's going to be massively effective in things like life insurance and stuff. Like, not. It's not a hyper translatable one. I think for fitness and coaching and consulting and obviously like hedge fund stuff like big time B2B. I think that's where sort of it sits. Then you've got like, what's another guy? Jeremy Minor. So Jeremy stuff, obviously I think it's fucking gold because we've invested a lot of time and money doing it. We also sell it. So shout out to me for being the guy who sells that. What do we do? Let me just pull up some stats. Let me just throw a big old fat sales stick on the table. What do we got going? That's this month. This is selling part time. So if you're out there listening, this is part time. Okay, I reckon. What do you reckon? It was my week. You reckon a quarter of it spent selling?

I'd say 12 hours.

Yeah. So a tenth of it? Yeah, probably 12 hours a week. So I've done $267,191 closed deals USD and then I've got closing in the next week. In the pipeline of guys who have put credit card down, I've got 32,997. So we'll hit 300. We'll hit 300K. If I can, I'll try and get these deals to close tonight and I can hit 300k in the first month selling 12 hours a week. So for those of you who just aren't doing that, go get after it.

Yeah. So, Jeremy, let's have a big swing and maybe we should 10x this conversation.

Oh, shit.

Old Uncle G, baby.

Uncle G. I like Uncle G, man. I like Uncle G. I don't know how good his sales training is. I've never done it right. But I know the style.

I wasn't impressed.

I know the style. Did you do the $80,000 one or the $80 one?

Is it the same? No, it's the same course.

But like I subscribe. I mean, I like a bit of Cardone smash. So like I've got that Cardone in me and me and you know, it's like I think his mindset around sales, besides the fact that you should just sell everybody into everything no matter what, that's a bad mindset. I think you just have to put a caveat that if you know it's.

In their best interest, I. I think that mindset leads to the emotional slow breakdown of your soul from doing the wrong thing.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. I used to really like Ryan Cardone when I was.

Marco's listening. Marco loves Uncle G. Oh, he's.

He's a. He's a fanboy, isn't he? Marco?

He's got 10x. He's got 10x tattoo.

I'm sure he does. So I was. I was a huge fan of Grant cartoon back in the early days because he was mostly the only person I knew, and I was really into that whole hustle culture. It's like just 10x everything. You know, if something's not working, you're not working hard enough, just do more, call more, call more, call more. And, you know, when you. When you're young and experienced, that seems like the best way to go, because. Just work harder. You know what I mean? You don't have family. You don't have things. So you can work hard. You can put the time into it. You're younger. You can deal with it better. But slowly, over time, I started to like, man, even when I first read it, some of the things he said, I'm like, fucking. That's full of shit. That's stupid. You know what I mean? Like, that's crazy when people say, stop calling. Don't stop calling them. Like, I was just like, man. But time, I slowly lost interest, and I was just like, man, this guy's just. I think he's losing his mind. And then that. That interview with, you know, the famous one with jb. Yeah. Jordan Belfort, it really painted a picture of all the doubts that I kind of had about his. His character and his style. It really represented the fragile ego that his type of sales was built around. And, yeah, that's, for me, I'm not a big fan. I think he's an excellent marketer, and I think that's more of his skill. And he's, you know, we're talking about him. So what he does works. He's know how to stay relevant. Yeah.

So I like. I like some of what he does. I think there's tremendous value in understanding his style of sales. I just think you have to, like, put, like, a. Like, an overlay of ethics onto it.

Yeah.

But I think, like, you know, it's. It's not too dissimilar to, like, how I want to. The type of savagery that we try and put into our Guys, because just.

Like, make a hustle.

Like, everyone's a just state of play of the clother industry.

Fuck.

They're just a bunch of useless pussies, man. It just drives my shit insane.

Yeah. It's the equivalent of a couple of eggs that have hatched in the nest. Like, no shit.

You want to hear something crazy? You want to hear something crazy? Right? So we won an account the other day, obviously, because we win every account that we go out for, right? And the guy told me they had another guy interviewing and they said they. They want to make sure the salespeople don't make more than 75,000 a year.

Crazy.

Yeah. You were there for that, right? Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I was, like, flabbergasted. I was like, that is full retard. Like, yeah, they said that otherwise. Otherwise they get complacent. They get too complacent.

Like, are you what, kidding?

They're a sales recruitment, sales placement agency that doesn't want the sales reps to make more than 75 grand a year. My fucking mortgage is 75 grand a year.

I would.

Damn it.

I would be embarrassed.

If I said their name. They would have a mass exodus right now. That is ridiculous. If I could not believe when I.

Was told that if I had that come out of your mouth, I'd fucking slap you.

Yeah, that blew my mind. They were like, how much? How much do you guys make? I got top guys make about 35,000amonth. And they were like, that's more like. It's like, yeah, man. Because successful salespeople make money. If you're trying to put mechanisms in the background to where they don't make good money, that is absurd. That made me lose every single last ounce of respect, which was very little to begin with, that I had for that company. You know who you are. If you're listening to this, and I'm very disappointed. Very disappointed.

Yeah.

I couldn't believe it. I was like, no, I want my makers to make as much money as humanly possible. Because you know what's never come out of someone's mouth? Oh, yeah, I don't want more money. It's ridiculous.

I've never heard that once.

It's like this. It's just absurd, really. It really. Like, it only dawned on me right now how much that pissed me off.

I could tell I could be out and about with that much cash in my wallet that it's splitting the seams and it's going to fall apart because it's full of cash and I still wouldn't say, I don't want more money. It's crazy. But imagine like, what if our guys found out that we said that and we want them to have a man on their own lynched. Oh, it's like. It's mental. And that's just like pure example of the state of play when. Because a lot of salespeople get into this because they are purely about money and it probably comes across that we are that way, but it's not true. Like, we have a very, very strong ethics within our company and culture and we support. Like, we don't tell the stories because there's a lot ones that are personally. But we do so much more for what our staff do than what is needed. And yeah, by the way, this came.

Bought this for Will.

Oh, yeah, he bought him a watch. So.

Thank you.

One year.

One year anniversary gift. So I don't think anything. He's seen it. So I'll just show the camera. There we go. Nice little tag heuer. Anyway, bought that for Mr. William. It's a nice watch.

Surprise.

If you're listening, this will come out for four weeks. Get his house by then. Yeah, I gotta switch that up to me.

Yeah. But some of these.

What a surprise. I forgot to do something.

Yeah.

You know I found out this is legit, right? This is a total random tangent. I found out I have a genuine memory disorder.

Yeah, cool.

Um, yeah, I got tested and they were like, yeah, you have this. I can't remember what it's called. Ironic because I've had four concussions.

Yeah. Is that all?

Yes. So they were like, yeah, man, you have this. And they did the tests to do it and they go, yeah, you have this type of memory disorder. And I was like, oh, that makes sense.

I've always thought you were a bit brain damaged, but.

Yeah. And apparently problem solving is the one thing that stops it from getting worse. So me doing sales is stopping my brain from becoming a giant puddle of goo.

Interesting. I love neurosciences.

Brain shit. Yeah, I love brain shit too.

But yeah, just like, like some of the ethics of like some competing agencies that we like. We had a competitor that placed a sales rep into the organization. He got really good. We were training him. He took the dude out and made him work for him. Went to the owner and said, hey, I'm pulling this guy out. I can find you another person if you want. It's like, fuck you, you piece of shit. That's a horrible thing to do. How. Imagine like, that guy's probably listening, bro. Whatever. Fucking come at me Come out like, if you are listening, like, that's a horrible thing to do. You should be ashamed of yourself. Like, that is not business ethics. And it pisses me off because it's such an occurrence in this industry and this is why these dudes implode, you know, it's mental, man.

Our rants are getting angry and angrier. Good.

I hope you like them. If you do, please subscribe.

Please subscribe. If you want to see more angry rants from me telling everyone that they're bitches. Like, by all means, come at me, bro.

Sure.

That signed. I got up to coaching with me the other day, even though I don't want more coaching clients because I got Tony to call with them tomorrow. I was like, here you go, buddy. Let's do it.

Free fallen old Tom Petty, right?

Tom Petty.

Yeah. But I like to think that in this industry we have a pretty good reputation and we do a lot to protect that.

Well, just, we're not dicks. I have a strict no dick policy.

Not even a little one?

Not even. Not even a little one. I was asked to make a special compensation for you, but I said no.

Well, that's probably a good point to end things.

That's fucking goddamn school. Anyway, Well, I hope you enjoyed the significant amount of useless information that is very little pertinence to anyone in this thing whatsoever. But I enjoyed doing it.

I'm sure this will be our most viewed one because it's probably funny and entertaining.

Throwing shade.

Let's do another one of these.

Long story short, Dan Locke is an amazing marketer and I was very impressed with what he did. I think he believed his own bullshit and that's where it all came unstuck. Grant Cardone, pretty phenomenal marketer as well, but I feel like he has no ethics when it comes to selling. And you can't become a closer in three months. It's not going to happen. If that's what they're telling you, you're fucking. They're lying to you. Yeah. So it's not going to happen Anyway, if you do want to become a closer in two weeks or less and you want to earn a nine figure income during to the closing codes, 50 bucks a week and have a 4 million percent ROI guaranteed terms and conditions. There are some exclusions to that, just so you know.

You have to take 4,000 boxes first.

Yep. Physically. And they're in all different parts of the world. Yeah. So yeah. Anyway, make sure you subscribe, guys. You know, I know we joke around a lot, but it really does help us out. The only metric that Apple cares about is downloads and subscriptions. So if you do like this and you want more people to hear about it and you think that we're doing a good thing here, please subscribe to the podcast. Tell a friend, share it, Tell them to subscribe as well and join our Facebook group. Our Facebook group is called the Closing Code. The link will be in the description.

As well, the link to our newsletter.

So you can get this. Absolutely. In the closing code in the Facebook group, which is free. You can watch a role play every single day, so that'll get you much better at sales for freezies. All right, guys, thank you and goodbye. Bye. Put that coffee down. Coffee's for closers only.