Sales Expert Roasts My Business (I Was Wrong)

Sales is human behavior and psychology.

What was all this for?

Any level of behavioral change, whether you want them to learn something, do something, whatever, you've got to be able to unscrew their brain first.

So where do we start?

No version of you that you have right now is great.

Where did you learn all of this?

Why don't you quit? Don't think about this logic. Just use your, like, lizard brain.

All right, David, I sell a high ticket service, and I'm not that great at sales. So I want this conversation to be like a highly tactical, like, step by step workshop on my sales process. Because I know most of my audience, they're service based, they're high ticket. And so I think any, any value that I can personally get out of this, I think they would also get out of it. Is that cool with you?

Absolutely. Let's do it.

All right, so to start off just very briefly, how would you describe kind of your, like, general philosophy or your, like, general approach to, to selling?

So at its core, for me, sales is human behavior and psychology. And unless you understand both of those two things intuitively like the back of your hand, sales is one of those things that people think is innate. You either have it or you don't. And I think for a lot of people who start their own businesses, that notion makes sales quite difficult to be something that they would be good at. Right. Like, especially when you've been told your entire life that either you're good at sales or you're not, it's really hard to then say, oh, well, if I don't intuitively think I'm good at sales, I can become good at sales. Right. And that's a whole conversation in psychology about fixed versus growth mindsets. But I think a lot of people struggle applying that to sales. So my whole philosophy is you need to meet people where they're at, you as the seller. If you can have a regular conversation with another person, you can do sales. But the vast majority of people never get taught how to do that within a sales context. And therefore they rely on, you know, sales trainers giving them scripts or like going and buying, like a $10,000 course on how to do sales. And it's a bunch of, like, individualized skills and tactics, like objection handling and like a bunch of complex questions that they need to memorize and ask. And it's just utterly pointless. Right. Ultimately, if you know how to have a conversation with a real person, you can do sales. You just need to be taught how to do it in that form.

I love that. Yeah. Because I feel like you get into your sales calls and like, it's almost, it's almost like difficult to act like a normal person. Like all of the things that would just come like, to you in a regular conversation with another person you met on the street or a friend or family member, it's like it just immediately flies out the window and you have to like retrain that back in 100.

And I think that's in part because of, you know, the media that's out there and available for sales coaching or training. Especially the, you know, the, the little pithy quips and clips that you see on socials on short form and even some long form is done by uber charismatic, like very. What I think a lot of people would call natural sales people, right? The Jordan Belforts, the Alex Hormozis, etc, but most people who start businesses aren't Jordan Belfort and they aren't Alex Hormozi and they don't have that natural charisma. So they end up trying to emulate that instead of being more like themselves, which I think causes massive problems. You know, in. For me as a sales coach, like, one of the big things that I have to convince people when they first start working with me is that you don't need to sell like me, you don't need to sell like anyone you see online. Like, you need to sell like you. Because that's going to be the easiest thing for you to do, right? Like, let's not try and create a new version of you just to get into the idea that, oh, well, you know, maybe that version of me will be better at sales. No, the version of you that you have right now is great. Let's just make that person able to sell in a way that is natural for.

Yeah, that's such a good point because, like, most of us are like, we're basically nerds who are like really good at something and that's the reason we're in business, right? Like, we're really good at something. We started doing that for people and then we were like, holy crap, you can make money from this. And then we get to the point where, oh, I actually need to learn how to sell to somebody who's not like a red hot lead, 90% ready to buy from me before they ever speak to me. And that's where, yeah, it gets really difficult. We're trying to like emulate some somebody else. I've, I've never heard that take, but I think that's very spot on, very accurate. So let me walk you through my offer. And let's, you know, we can start wherever you'd like and wherever you think would be, you know, highest leverage here. So my offer basically is I will help you build your first or next marketing funnel so you can add 10 to 50k in new sales each month. So where do we start?

Well, intuitively, the sales process is going to differ marginally. Not by much, but it's going to marginally differ whether you're selling something entirely new and they've never touched this as an idea, versus you're selling something as a replacement for an existing thing. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Okay. Do you intuitively understand why you thought this was going to be one way? Oh, no way.

Well, I think new is easier to sell than better.

Interesting. Okay, what makes you say that?

Well, I mean, that's. I guess it's probably more of a marketing concept than it is a sales concept. But like, in your. In your marketing, you know, you're. Everybody's told, like, oh, you need to come up with some unique mechanism. And so, you know, in my world, that ends up being the same repackaged funnel over and over and over, but with a slightly different name. Right. Like, every marketing bro has the authority funnel or the social funnel. So, like, that. I mean, that's my intuitive, like, first thought.

Okay, so I'm gonna. I'm. I'm gonna explain this as best as I can, and then we'll do it in practice and it'll make a lot more sense. So the, the problem with selling new is that there is zero comparison set. Right. And a comparison set, for example, is. Okay. How. How tall are you, Peter? Six.

Three.

Okay. Would you say that you are tall? Yeah. Okay, great. Would you say that you're tall compared to a tree?

No.

Are you tall compared to a cat?

Yeah.

Okay. If you'd never seen another human being alive, would you be tall?

Probably not.

Right. But it's the distinction of this versus that that allows us to understand whether something is objectively X or Y. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

When you sell something new, they've never done anything like it before. There's, by definition, no comparison set. So trying to get someone to do that requires a lot more mental effort on their behalf to come to the conclusion that this thing that they've never done before that they don't really know a lot about is worth doing. Right. Well, when you compare that to something that already exists, there's already a comparison set there. We worked with another agency and they screwed us. They, you know, we got Burned because we spent a bunch of money on ads and nothing worked. Right. Or oh, yeah, we tried to do it ourself, but, you know, it didn't really work out. Right. Alternatively, oh yeah, we did work with an agency and it worked really well, but we didn't get the support that we needed. Or it worked. But we want to scale it to the next level right now because of that, there is a comparison set. There's something that you can use to create distance. When there's nothing there, it's way harder to do. Does that make sense intuitively?

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Okay, so you said that you, for your clients, make either a. The first attempt at a marketing funnel or a new one versus the one they. They have existing, right?

Yeah, Generally, I'd say like 80% of the time, their only marketing in the past has been word of mouth and referrals.

Understood. So your offer in and of itself is fine. You don't need to do any work on that. It makes sense right now. The specifics of that are going to have some level of impact on the sales process, but broadly, yeah, you have an offer that's sellable. Is there a guarantee? Is there any kind of, like, stipulation on the kind of work that you do or the timeframe that you get the results in?

Yeah. So our intro offer is the funnel construction. So because we're not in that, we're not promising to run their traffic for them like their content or their ads. There's no guarantee if they do sign up with us for ads. There is a guarantee of. We guarantee profitability, like, net over this whole period. You've been working with us by the end of six months.

Okay, great.

So that's the. That's the upsell conversation.

Yeah, understood. So the intro offer that they see is we'll build out the funnel. Yeah, Cool. Understood. So when we deconstruct your sales process. Right. Walk me through a call as if you were, you know, explaining the component parts. I don't need you to, you know, role play.

Yeah. So I usually try to keep the small talk to a minimum. So, you know, within 30 to 60 seconds of them getting like, as soon as I see the little audio thing, I'm like, hey, can you hear me? And then I try to kind of get right into it. So I'll basically start out by just explaining, you know, here's what this call is going to look like. I'm going to ask some questions, we're going to talk, make sure. Basically make sure that my company can Help you. And we generally do a two call close right now. And so that call will end with us scheduling, like more of a closing call. I tried a one call in the past and that was just tough to fit everything into one call. Yeah. So next thing is basically exploratory phase. And I'll do it in a different order depending on how the conversation starts. But I'll usually start that out by asking, like, what stood out to you that, you know, got you interested in booking this call today? And then from there I'll kind of dig into. I want to understand their service. I want to understand, are they successful in doing it for other people, AKA like, do they have good case studies that we could leverage from a marketing standpoint? I want to understand what they've tried in the past, which is usually basically nothing. Let me think what else. I want to understand if they, if they've been doing a lot of research up to this point or if this is kind of like their first, like, step into exploring, like a new marketing solution and I guess kind of like what their goals are with implementing a new marketing solution. So those are kind of like the main things I would say that I'm trying to get out in the exploration phase. And then, like I said, that would kind of then get us to the second call.

So the end of the first call is basically you gathering enough information, right?

Yeah, so I do, I do. I'll give them like a two minute, like, here's the high, the high level of what we do. Here's ballpark pricing. And then I can give you a specific proposal on our next call. And that's usually like, you know, 48 to 72 hours from today. So that's kind of how I ended off with, I can give you specifics on the next call. Does that sound good? And then we'll get that booked.

So that's end of call one. Yeah. Call two. Walk me through it.

Call two. So I'll, you know, again, try to kind of cut the foreplay. We'll get a little bit more like small talk because now we've got a little bit of an existing relationship. But usually I still try to keep it tight. First thing I'll just get into is basically like reiterating what we talked about on the first call. Specifically, if there's any like, specific pain points that I remember from the first call, I'll bring those back up. Specific goals. I'll bring those back up. Just to basically allow them to say yes, that's correct. So then I can refer Back to it. And then from there I'll basically like have a Google Doc with a proposal that I'll walk them through, try to tie each element of the pitch, like back to, you know, the, the earlier parts of the conversation and then, you know, prices at the bottom of the sheet. So we'll go through pricing and timeline and then it's kind of.

Do you wanna pricing and timeline and then buy question mark.

Yeah.

So let me go piece by piece. I sat and took notes throughout. Okay, so you said the first call, very low. Small talk. You try and get right into it. I want you to imagine you meet someone for the first time. You meet that person, and within the first 10 seconds they start asking questions. Describe that experience in your mind.

Probably a little bit off putting.

How come?

I feel like I don't know anything about them.

True. Why else? The funniest part of whenever I ask this is most people have no idea why, but something in the back of their head is like, I don't know, it just feels weird. Yeah, I don't know. It feels weird is the exact answer I'm looking for.

Oh, okay.

You don't know why when you try and jump into a call, it feels weird. It just does. And that is reason. Reason enough. You don't need to have a complex explanation as to why it does feel weird. That's irrelevant. The issue is you hear it or you are on the receiving end of it and you're just like, I don't like it. Right. So the way I start off every call and the way that I tell all my clients to start off every call is the exact same. I will role play it with you. Right. And I want you to imagine back on how you run calls, that first little intro bit. And I want you to compare and contrast for, you know, everyone watching and listening. Okay? So let's just role play the very beginning with me as a seller and you as a prospect. I'm gonna go. Okay. Hey, Peter. How's it going?

Hey. Doing well, David.

Nice. Where are you calling from?

We're a little bit outside of Chicago.

Oh, nice. Whereabouts?

It's a town called Crown Point.

Okay.

About. About an hour south of the city.

Nice. I was in Chicago when I was in the US In October. As you can probably tell with the accent. Not a US Native. The accent gives you away pretty quickly.

Yeah.

All right, well, Peter, the way I normally run these calls, I just want to understand whether what we can do can actually help. And if I think it will help, I'll give you the Whole spiel. I'll give you the rundown. You know how we normally help clients, the kind of clients we normally help, the investment, the process, all that good stuff. But the last thing I want to do is keep you on this call for 30 minutes if I don't think what we can do is actually going to be helpful. Does that sound good?

Yeah.

All right, cool. Done.

Nice.

Now compare and contrast that versus yours.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I'll be like, I'll usually as soon as, as soon as I see the little audio icon, I'll be like, hey, David, can you hear me? Okay, can you see me? And then I'll kind of jump into, I'll try to jump into. So, you know, basically the way these calls normally go and then kind of go from there.

Now when we had our little back and forth about where you live in the world, right? And I made my comment about, oh, I'm from England, hi, you can hear it in my voice, right? There was a little bit of like, oh, okay, haha, cool. Tiniest bit of rapport that's built there. Now imagine you jumped on the call and I'll do this back to you. Right. Don't think about this logically. Just use your like lizard brain.

I'm very good at that.

Okay, so. Hey Peter, can you hear me?

Yeah, yeah.

Can you hear me? Can you see me as well?

Yeah.

All right, cool. Well, the way these calls normally work is blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, yeah, super, super off putting, like weird like, right?

Not even a hello. Yeah, even a how you doing? Yeah, it's odd, right? It feels too almost like get to the point. Yeah. And as a seller, you can't be that. Your job is to put the prospect at ease so that you can control the call. But when you give them that like immediate, oh, oh, Jesus Christ, this guy's really, really jumping at me. It's kind of like a, you set them on edge and that's never a good thing as a salesperson. Okay, cool. So the next thing you said that you set kind of an agenda. You, you do what I call framing. Great, cool. I'm assuming it sounds pretty similar to mine, maybe a little bit different.

Yeah.

And then you kind of clarified this slightly later. You run a two call close because in your words, it was. It's tough to fit everything you need to into one. So I would ask you this. What is the function of the setting call?

The function is to go over the proposal, handle their objections, answer their questions and you know, get the, get the credit card digits.

Fantastic. That Is the function of the call for you? What is the function of the second call for them?

I guess it's to like find out exactly what our service and our offer, our offer would look like for them.

Okay. Think back to the last film that you watched that stopped halfway through. How annoyed are you?

Pretty. Pretty annoyed. How come I sat down to watch.

A movie now, but it's a cliffhanger. It's exciting. You'll find ideas. Doesn't make intuitive sense. Right. The brain hates open loops. So why are you creating one where one doesn't necessarily need to be made? Right. So the way I explain this to clients is the way that you need to think about structuring your call flow, right. Is in two forms. One is it that you can't fit everything in to the first call because you're not very good at sales. That's the first question. The second question is. Okay, well, let's say you do need to do a two call close. Why? What is the function of that second call? Now, for people who do audits, right? Let's say you're a. Let's say you're, you're an accountant, right? And you need to take a look at the books, right. You need to see what actually impact you could have before you sign someone up. Great. Fantastic. The second calls function, the purpose of it is to go through that audit with the client, right. If there's some work that you need to do in the background in order to justify that second call. Now there is a reason that they need to turn up for the second call. Yeah?

Yeah.

Well, if the reason that they need to show up to your second call is that so you can show them a proposal of the work that you're going to do. Be honest with yourself. How much work do you need to do beforehand to make that proposal? Is it entirely customer? Is it the same one every time?

It's one of three, like small variations.

It's the same one every time.

Yeah.

Right.

Basically.

So what's the purpose of it?

I guess it's probably because I think I'm. I think I'm probably inefficient in the questions that I'm asking. And maybe I think I was, I was thinking there would be benefit to making the barrier of entry for the first call smaller. So making it a 20 minute call instead of an hour call.

Absolutely. Agreed. However, the metric that then becomes important is how many of your second calls show up. Everyone likes to track the first call, Right. Your show rate, great. But if you run a two call Close your follow up or demo or audit, whatever you want to call that, that show rate is even more important because by that logic, those are qualified leads. People who show up in the discovery aren't necessarily qualified, they're kind of qualified. They're like an MQL or people who go through to the second call are SQLs. If you have a 70% drop off between call one and call two, and there doesn't really need to be a call to, you're just doing it because you're inefficient. You're wasting tens 20 leads a month at least. Yeah. So the way that I delineate this is the structure of a call, right. Of your, of your sales process is either a one call close or a two call close. Now there's some gray area in that. A one call close is structured as a one call close in that you get everything done. They hear the pitch, they hear the investment, they, you do all the discovery, you find out kind of where they're at and where they want to go, etc, etc. And the goal is to close them in one call. One call closes may take more than one call to close. Right. So you could have a one call close that takes two calls or even maybe really bad three calls to close. That's fine because the average should still be in and around one. Well, that's fundamentally different to a two call close where the second call has a function, there is a purpose behind it because then you're having a two call close that could take three or more calls to close. But by definition you could never close someone on the first call because the second call serves a purpose. Right. Now what most people do, you included in this case have confused or conflated a one call close that takes two calls to close with a two call close. Right?

Yeah.

What you need to do is make your first call more efficient so that, yeah, the laggards who are going to, who are going to take longer to close can use that second call and close on that. Or you actually integrate some level of audit or function or demo of a service or whatever to the second call to make them show up to it.

Yeah.

Following thus far, that makes perfect sense. The next thing that you said was you get into the exploratory phase. Now what got you interested? You try to understand the service, what case studies they have, what have they done in the past, Are they in the research phase or is this kind of their first foray into understanding about ads and funnels and then finally their goal now do you have all these questions written down on a sheet of paper that you look at while you go through the call. Be honest.

Not anymore.

But you did at one point.

I did at one point. And then I kind of like 80% memorized it. And then there's probably been some. Some decent amount of drift since.

Well, when you have these conversations, does it feel like a box ticking exercise where you ask, okay, so what first got you interested in. In the service that we run. And then they answer in whatever form. And you go, oh, okay, cool, interesting. And like, tell me a little bit more about your service. And you go through it and you understand a little bit more and you go, okay, cool. And what kind of case studies do you have? And you kind of go through this almost linearly and you kind of tick the boxes as you get the answers that you want.

I would say it's a little all over the place where I kind of mentally, like, roughly have the pieces of information in my head that I need to get from them, but it's kind of. I might ask three questions about one thing and then move on to the next and then remember something I needed to ask about the other thing.

So you have a slightly different problem to what most people do, which is they list out these questions. Right. And then they just box, tick their way through.

Sure.

The problem that it sounds like with yours, and it kind of alludes to the idea that you. They're a little bit all over the place. And sometimes you, you know, you. You get caught in a loop and you don't really go anywhere with. The cause is that there's no logical flow with your questions. One question doesn't lead into the next, which leads into the next, which leads into the next. Right. And what happens with that is prospects will get very annoyed with you very quickly, and they'll start interrupting and be like, listen, I'm done with all the questions. Like, please shut up. Just tell me what you do. Right. Because no one enjoys being interrogated, especially when the questions don't flow in a logical order. Now, the way that you make this conversational is that you ensure that the questions flow in a logical order. Right. Think about the first time that you hung out with, you know, a friend that you hadn't seen in a while. And you're like, oh, like, what have you been up to for the last couple of years? And he says, oh, well, I've been doing this and I've been doing this and I've been doing this. Well, if you then asked him completely separately to that chain of questioning. If you went, oh, and how are your parents? He's gonna look at you like you've just stepped off a spaceship because you've got.

Why did you listen to anything I just said?

Exactly.

Yeah.

So the goal is, if you want to make it conversational, is you have to flow logically through the things that they've said instead into the next topic, into the next topic, and into the next topic. Now, if you're saying that you have kind of these questions in your head as almost like waypoints, that so long as you get there, that's fine, great. Then the only thing that really needs to happen is you need to break down, how do I get there? What is the logical flow of questions that allows me to go through these waypoints in a smooth, continual manner?

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Any questions thus far?

Not a question. But I think, I think if I, if I'm self diagnosing my issues because I like, I've been consuming a lot of sales content trying to figure out how do I fix this if I'm self diagnosing? I think you've pro. You've just nailed probably one of like two main problems that I have, which I think we'll get into the other one probably as we get a little further in the call, but this is fantastic.

Okay, so then you give a two minute overview in a pitch. Yeah. Well, if you went out for dinner and you ordered something and you got a version of that, but it was like the size of your finger, would you be annoyed? Probably right? You'd be furious. I came here to find out what you do and now you're telling me I have to turn up to a different call. What the hell is wrong with you? Why? Just give me what I came for. Right, so now you're building frustration in the prospects because you could quite easily tell them exactly what you do in about three or four minutes, but you've chosen not to, and now you've said, well, well, well, well. If you actually want to find out what we do, you got to take another half an hour out of your day and you got to come to this other call. Even if you are speaking to the most, you know, happy, go lucky, empty calendar, having prospects on the planet, it's still going to annoy them.

Definitely.

Final part, ballpark pricing. I can't use down the price.

I think I'm, I think I'm trying to make them feel like it's customized.

When you hear a two minute pitch and then you get ballpark pricing in Your mind does your own internal bullshit detector kick off? Let's say this was happening.

Sometimes if the salesperson was like, clearly really, really good, then the bullshit detector might not go off. But otherwise, probably.

Well, by your own admission, you said that sales is not a strong point for you.

I'm definitely sending off bullshit detectors.

So even that, right, the ending of this call is so potentially damaging to your entire sales process because now you've got people who are like, this guy just took half an hour of my day that I've got so many other things that I could have been doing. Didn't tell me what he actually does, gave me a ballpark price, and now as I was, for another half an hour on my calendar to go over it. I bet it's not even bloody custom. And he's just making it up as he goes along to seem more official than he actually is. Right. And I reckon if you went back and looked at all the data, you have a massive drop off between call.

One and call to not having tracked this, my gut tells me it's around 20 to 25% that drop off.

Okay.

How many calls you take a month generally? Target is like 10 a week. And so what's that, 40amonth?

40Amonth, fine. How many of those actually agree to a second call?

Let's say half.

So then 20, right?

Yeah.

Well, what's 25% of 20?

I'm losing five people every month like clockwork. Yeah.

Just because you have a sales process that is not optimized for your actual offer. Okay, well, what's your close rate on that second call?

Right now it's like 15. 15%? Ish.

So that means every one in what, seven, you close roughly. Well, if you had 20 extra calls on the calendar, you'd close three extra clients a month. How much is each client worth to you?

About ten grand.

Do you want to make thirty grand every month?

Yeah.

Without doing anything really that different? Yeah, simple as that. All right, so you can, you can boil it down to numbers really fast. Right. But anyway, we're, we're, we're off on a tangent. Okay, so second call, small talk, bit tight again. We've talked about that. No real issues. Reiterate the pain points and the goals.

Good.

That's the one thing that I see most people absolutely forget to do on, like your second calls. Yeah, good, well done. Third thing, proposal. How many people that don't close on the call asked to see the proposal afterwards?

Most.

Okay, why?

Because. Probably just because there was one.

Do you sell something really Complicated?

Not particularly.

Do they need to go through and look at like technical specifications or like look at very detailed explanations as to how the thing works?

100% not. Definitely not.

Why do they need a proposal?

They don't.

You're giving them something and as a result it's going to add time to that decision making process and it's going to lead longer sales cycles. Simply because it exists now, they want it. Right. If it didn't exist and they said, hey, can you send me a proposal? You just go, no, we don't do that. Oh, why not? It's not that complex surface. I'll be so honest, you just don't need to see one. Was there anything unclear from what I explained? No. Okay, What I can do is I can, I can send over in an email everything that I just said and you can have that for reference. Is that helpful? Oh, yeah, I guess. Okay, cool. Done. Move past it. Yeah, but because it exists, they want it. It's literally like, you know. Do you have dogs at home, Peter?

I don't, but my wife's parents do.

Okay, perfect. Next time you go to your wife's parents place, find that dog's favorite toy and just play with it in your hands. What do they do they want it. What happens if they have another toy in there in their mouth?

No, they want this one.

Exactly that same logic. If it's there, I want it. Now that you. You're saying I can't have it now I want it even more. Right. So you just have to expunge it entirely. Unless you're selling something so inordinately complex that a proposal is required simply because of the amount of information that you're going to have to give this person for them to make a decision. It's not helpful. Yeah, okay. Pricing and timeline. And then do you want to buy it? I mean, we could spend an entire podcast just talking about this idea.

But I will say it's slightly more refined than that. Slightly? It's like not a lot, but like slightly.

So the, the key thing is, for me at least, especially for my clients that do run a two cool clothes that require a two call close. Pricing is something that you should absolutely be doing on call one, because otherwise you're going to get pure time wasters coming onto the second call that you won't be able to close and they'll, they'll nickel and dime you on the price on the second call and you're just wasting your time right now. When you get to price on the second call, it's never price, it's always investment. You think about the price for coffee, you think about the price for gas, you think about the price for a pair of jeans. You don't invest unless it's a really expensive pair of jeans. Right. But you don't invest in gas for your car, you don't invest in a coffee. You got to change how prospects are perceiving the words you use. Right. So I do a lot of like lexical analysis with my clients. Like the words that they use and the impact that it has. Because again, it goes back to the first thing that I said. Right. It's all decision making and psychology and words have a massive impact on that. Now, I don't go the whole nine yards into nlp. I think that's a little bit. But like, you should absolutely be conscious of the words that you're using in the impact they have. That's the factor, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And then you got the final thing, like, do you want to buy? Should never be a do you want to buy it? Decision. It should be if this makes sense. Given everything that you've heard, are you comfortable making a decision? And that decision can be no. I really don't care if it's yes or no, but I just want you to make a decision now, not about buying it or not. If you say, no, I don't want to buy it, that's absolutely fine with me. Have a good life. But the minute that you conflate buying and decision making, it has a massive impact psychologically on you as the seller. Because when someone buys, you're happy. When someone doesn't buy, you sad. Well, when you flip that and it's about decision making, if they make a decision, great. Whether it's buy or not buy is irrelevant to me. I just want them to make a decision.

If they say no, that means I don't have to follow up.

Great. Cool. Next new prospect. No issue. Yeah. Okay.

There you go.

That was your sales process broken down just from hearing that. Thoughts?

Amazing. Yeah. So I think the two problems that I've kind of self diagnosed are I'm inefficient in the exploration phase, which we talked about. The other thing is I think I. I have an aversion to like pressing the prospect, if that makes sense. Like if they give me like a kind of generic answer to one of my questions, like I don't always know how to dig in deeper and get the real answer. And the same goes for then obviously, like, objection. Handling later in the call. If they put up Some kind of smoke screen. I don't always have a good way to, like, cut through that because all of the objection. Handling content that I see out there, you know, the hormozies and the. The Jeremy miners and whatever, most of them are talking in, like a B2C context. And I know that, like, me coming at another business owner who's realistically, like, ahead of me in business is not going to come off the right way if I do that. So, like, how do you. How do you kind of get past that?

The tough part, I think, for most people to come to terms with is there is no silver bullet. And any sales coach or sales trainer or sales manager, if you're a sales rep that thinks that there is and makes you conform to a specific idea of what that is, is a charlatan. They're a fraud. They just want you to do it their way because it's easier for them to teach it that way. The real way that you get past it is you have to, unfortunately, do a ton of mindset work. This is a mindset issue. Right. And I'm not going to bear the inner workings and machinations of your mind on your podcast with all of your listeners to hear, but from other clients that I have helped. Oftentimes when people struggle with having those kind of difficult conversations, whether it's prospects aren't opening up enough, or sometimes, you know, they get to objection handling, and they're just like, oh, I don't really know how to deal with this objection. Like, this guy's ahead of me. And now I feel kind of weird, like pressing him against it or pressing him for it. All of that is a mindset issue. And that mindset issue tends to stem from two or three different possible avenues. And this is the kind of work that I do with clients. So the first three or four hours of what I do is just mindset work. And it consists of me understanding exactly how they think, why they think that way. Where did that come from? And like with most things, psychology, most of it comes from your childhood. And then how do we get you past that? Right. How do we take out what I call bad code and fill in good code? Right. So again, without having done any of the mindset stuff with you, I mean, we don't know each other particularly well, so I'm just going to use three hypothetical people.

Right, sure.

Okay. Well, hypothetical person one. Let's say that they have a. A really overbearing sister, and anytime they did anything, their sister would kick off. They would tell them that you know how they were doing it was wrong, that they shouldn't be doing it this way, that this is the right way. And any attempts to try and fight their own corner would be met with even more criticism. Well, that person pretty quickly is going to learn that standing up to authority is a bad idea. You're gonna get conditioned into the idea that, actually, I shouldn't be. I shouldn't really be pressing anyone. That's bad, right? I shouldn't stand up for myself in any form. Okay, hypothetical person. One hypothetical person, too. Well, let's say that whenever they spoke to their parents when they were younger, and they were like, why is this like this? Their parents were always busy and they never had any real time where, you know, they got that kind of loving parental tolerance of, I'm gonna ask a thousand questions to my mum and dad and my mom and dad are gonna sit and answer them, right? Maybe their parents were absent. Maybe their parents were, you know, present, but not really there. They were thinking about work or thinking about their own lives or struggles or whatever. Right? And those questions never really got answered. So after a while, you stop asking them. Right. Well, that immediately kind of lines up with the issue you're talking about right now. Again, I haven't done this work with you. It's very tough for me to be like, and this is your version of that. Right. But there will be something right in your life, whether it was, you know, you. You got roasted or bullied at school, that causes this, like, oh, I don't really want to press people and ask them too many questions. Right? Then on the flip side, the other, you know, issue that you had was like, when objections come up, and it comes from people who are probably ahead of you in business. How do you do that without sounding like you've got a stick up your ass? Well, I mean, that's probably some power dynamic element, right? So it could be, you know, a sister who's really domineering, Right. It could be that you don't have a relationship with your dad, which was one of my clients. Right. There's a client interview with him on my YouTube where part of the reason that he couldn't deal with the objections and stuff that came up was that he was looking in every prospect who was ahead of him as a father figure, because the relationship that he'd had with his dad was terrible. Oh, wow. He went from being like a 20 close rate over seven months to hitting a 50 close rate. And that was the big work we did was identifying that. Actually, he didn't need to prove himself to all of these people who came on the call who were uber successful. He didn't need to find approval in more, you know, in older men that he saw as, you know, role models or father figures. He didn't need their approval. He was good enough as he was 50. Close rate. Wow. Right? So unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. It is, you got to do the internal work. And if you do the internal work, then, yeah, a bunch of stuff will come out and it'll be really easy to solve for those problems. But there is nothing that I can give you that's going to be like, oh, yeah. So the reason that this happens is because of, you know, you aren't using this script or this talk track, but that makes for way better short form content. So that's why telling someone that they need to, you know, unlock deep rooted psychological trauma is not scalable, unsurprisingly. So most people don't want to do the work. And also most people have never done that work themselves, so they have no idea on how to do it to other people.

Yeah, that's so fascinating. So I guess what's, what's the bridge between doing the internal work and boom. The right words come out of your, of your mouth, like what's the reason behind that? Or is there some middle step there?

Yeah, so I think the, the, the bridge is let's, let's, let's take my, one of the clients that I worked with, right? So he was an incredibly like, giant dude, like played college baseball, like very accomplished, could have gone pro. And you know, I've already had this, this conversation with him. But like, when his dad found out that he didn't want to go pro anymore, his dad's response to that was, well, there goes my retirement. Right. Massive impact on a young man. Well now everything that he did was trying to show his dad, hey, look, like, I am worth something. I am worth something. I am worth something. Well, as soon as you unlock that. And the work that we did helped him realize that that was the problem. He went and had a conversation with his dad and that conversation went well. And him and his dad now have a great relationship. Well after that, because he knew that he didn't actually have to prove anything to anyone. And actually the work that they did as an agency was great and all of their clients were happy and, you know, they were delivering on exactly what they said they were going to do. It's like the world gets quiet and now it's not like your brain goes all the Time. And it's like, hey, man, like, we do great work. Do you want to work with us? And so long as you have a compelling sales script or so long as you have a compelling way of doing sales calls and you have the client results to back it up and you're confident on the calls, which when you're not trying to prove yourself anymore, is pretty easy to be people buy. And that's how he went from 20% to 50% in four months. Wow.

Okay. So it literally is. You do the work, you inherently will start to act and communicate differently. And that makes. That's going to make a difference in the way people react and respond to you.

100. So think about it. And. And I use a lot of analogies, which some people love, and it really helps them understand and clarify what I mean. Some people are like, just please speak directly. Stop talking in analogies and metaphors. But it's how my brain works, so you're just gonna have to eat it.

It's very helpful in my opinion.

Good. Well, think about it like this, right? Like when you're at school, very quickly you see like an established social hierarchy, right? You've got the kids at the bottom that are kind of the butt of all the jokes. You've got the cool kids at the top that you know they're cool for whatever reason, right? So in England, when I went to school, if you were good at sports, you were one of the cool kids, right? Like if you're on the rugby team, one of the cool kids. Pretty easy way of getting into like the cool kids circle. If you liked weird stuff, you probably didn't ever make it out of the middle rung, right? Now, as soon as you realize your place in the social hierarchy, you start to behave in the same way. You'll not stand up for yourself when you're the butt of the jokes because so long as you're around the cool kids, so long as you're involved, that's kind of good enough. And as soon as you. It clicks in your head that actually, hang on a minute, I am in and of myself important, I am in and of myself good, etc. Etc. It's very easy gap to close in your own mind and you just start behaving that way.

It's fascinating stuff. Where did you learn all of this?

So I got into what I call sales psychology because I left college. I did a year in the US and the US education system is super different from, you know, college in the uk. College in the uk super theoretical. It's all theory. You're taught by academics who have probably never done the thing that they're teaching, but they are just academics who work at, you know, colleges, institutions, whatever. Well, I went to the US and I went to Emory and Emory has a great business school and it's super practical, focused. So like, you know, I was. There was a marketing consultancy practicum where we were, you know, actually consulting for Coca Cola, which was amazing to me. It was completely unheard of versus what I was doing back at home at university in the uk And I was like, huh, okay, that's weird. Well, I did this marketing consultancy stuff. This sounds fun. I'm gonna go and do that. So I did that for 18 months and I loved it for the first six and I hated it for the next 12. And one of the sister companies that work that kind of was within the parent company that I was working for was Ogilvy's Behavioral Consulting Group. And I said to my then, my then line manager, I was like, that's what I want to be doing. Like, I really want to go and do behavioral science stuff because I think that's fascinating. I'd read psychology books since I was kid a kid. I was like, that's the kind of stuff that really gets me going. She was like, no, we're not moving you. There's no internal transfers available, so you're stuck here. And I was like, oh God, I don't know if I want to do this. So I went out and I was, I was listening to the Modern Wisdom podcast. I don't know if you're familiar.

Big fan.

Great. So I was listening to Modern Wisdom and this is years and years ago now. This is like 2019. They had a podcast with these two guys called Prince and Matt and they wrote a book called called Blindsight and they're neuromarketers based out of San Francisco. And this is me, like just starting to get active on Twitter and I thought it'd be really cool. It wasn't to summarize this podcast and tag Chris Williamson, who's the host, and you know, these two guys. And in my infinite wisdom, I thought it'd be really smart to summarize this and like, why I insert random, you know, 23 year old kid thought that was, you know, interesting or smart or whatever, right? Which is, you know, hubris at its highest form. But neither here nor there. Just by dumb luck and the power of Twitter, these guys responded and they're like, oh, amazing. Like, I'm so glad you enjoyed the podcast. Like thanks so much for doing this amazing summary. And I DM'd them. And I was like, hey, look, I'll do whatever you want. Like, I'll summarize books, I'll read papers, like, I don't care, just teach me. Because what you do is fascinating to me. And I ended up interning with them for, for a little while. And, you know, Prince and Matt became mentors to me. And they said, you know, you hate your job. Like, why don't you quit? Like, go and do this? And I was like, I don't know enough about marketing. And Prince said to me, listen, you've. You've been interning with two of the leading experts on the planet about neuromarketing. You know more about neuromarketing than 99% of people. Just go and do it. I was like, still, I don't know enough about marketing. Like, I feel like a scammer. Well, I did know a bunch about sales. So I started my own business. We got into lead gen for, you know, B2B businesses. And we got them the leads, but they couldn't close them. So I ended up creating this, you know, psychology based sales understanding or framework. And I was like, huh, okay, cool. This is useful. I can teach this. And I taught it. And, you know, people got awesome results. And I was like, this is great. And then I coached. At this point, I probably coach about 1500 people, maybe 2000 people total. And some people just got it. I told them it, and they were like, oh, my God, this makes so much sense. I understand this. This is amazing. And you know, they got awesome results. But some people, no matter how many analogies I use, no matter how many metaphors, no matter how many different ways of explaining it, just couldn't go in their heads. Couldn't for the life of me figure it out. And then I met my now mentor and a retreat that was hosted by one of my clients. Him and my clients co hosted this retreat and we did so much mindset work just on this retreat. And I was like, whoa, this is. This is crazy. Crazy. I didn't even realize that I had mindset work to do. Again, arrogance, hubris, off the charts, right? But I was like, wow, this has had such a profound impact on me. I didn't even realize that this was a thing. And I was asking him and he was like, dude, like, you ever want to get anyone to be able to learn anything, do anything, you got to fix their brains first. Most people don't think, right? And I went, huh, okay, that's Scary. And then a friend of mine is a mindset coach and I was talking to him about it and he was like, yeah, any level of behavioral change, whether you want them to learn something, do something, whatever, you've got to be able to unscrew their brain first. And I was like, oh, okay. Then I ended up working with a shadow work practitioner who helped me kind of go super deep into my own brain and figure out why I was the way I was. And everything started to make sense. And then it clicked and I was like, oh, that's how I'm going to get people to be able to do this. And I was already kind of doing it. From going through the process with my mentor and going through the process with, with a buddy of mine who's a mindset coach, I kind of knew how they would do it. And I basically just replicated to the best of my ability, combined it with sales, and I was like, all right, let's see how this goes. And about four months after I started working with clients who I was doing this process with, four of them doubled their business in four months. Wow. That's the story.

Incredible. So for the, for the person who's maybe realizing they've got some mindset work to do, or maybe they're hearing you say they've got some mindset work to do and they're not even sure what that is, like, where do you get started? Like, is it something you can do yourself? Is it something you need guided help through? Like, what do you see working for people?

So mindset worker is one of those things where you can get some really awesome results by yourself and you will genuinely see a difference in who you are as a person without anyone doing it with you. But if you want to unlock the real stuff, the game changing stuff, you've got to do it with a practitioner. Like I do it with all of my clients, right? And like, you know, the best result I ever had was watching the, the guy I mentioned, you know, completely fix the relationship with his dad based on the conversation we had. But moreover, he completely changed how he talked, his appearance, everything. He got completely new lease of life as a result of this. Right? Another one of my clients who has the most insane case studies, the most incredibly accomplished person working with some of the biggest companies, biggest, you know, name, name brand people would get on calls and would be so timid and so like, oh, yeah, you know, like mumbling his way through calls when someone told him, yeah, I don't want to pay, you know, four grand a month for this, he'd be like, oh yeah, you know, that makes sense. Well, I mean, I could do it for two and a half. And they go, yeah, great, thanks a lot. Right. And I spoke to him today and he's, he's actually about to throw all of his money at ads. And he was like, give me a month. I just want to get ads up and running for myself and have all of my focus on that and then I'll come back. He now has two spots left on an already scaled team. In the two months we work together, we doubled his business in two months. And he said to me, he was like, I got a call later in the day and honestly, if they don't sign, I'd be in a better spot because I have two private deals that are worth half a million each. And I know that the business that has a call with me next is maybe worth 50, 60 grand to me. Those private equity deals, that's what I'm looking for. I can't wait. And he was excited to jump on sales calls. When we first started, sales calls were the worst part of his week. He was terrified because in his mind he was like, I just don't know if I'm going to be able to close this. Oh my God, if I don't close this, where am I going to get money? He went from complete scarcity to complete abundance in two months. If you want a professional, if you want the big stuff, you got to work with the professional. And that's why I still have my shadow work coach. Like I, the first time I worked with him, I was in tears. I was crying. Clients have cried with me before. Like it happens. But when you start dealing with like the big stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's the kind of response you're going to get. So anyone who's thinking about it, the advice that I would have is, is two books. The first book is called the Courage to be disliked. You can buy an audiobook you buy on Kindle. I love how you immediately picked up your phone. You're like, I got to, I got to get me some of this. The Courage to be disliked is the first one. That is your best intro to like how to fix your own brain. The second one is called Warrior, magician, lover, king. And there's two versions of that. There's an old one and a new one. The new one has a blue cover. It's written by a guy called Rod Boothroyd and Rod is my shadow work practitioner. And damn, that one, that one will get you in your feels.

What Is. What is shadow work? You've said this term a couple times. I haven't heard it.

Yeah, so shadow work is based on the teachings of Carl Jung and Jung basically developed Jungian archetypes. And the shadow is the idea that there is, you know, versions of you in your own brain that all coexist and enable you as the individual to function, make decisions, behave, etc. And Jungian archetypes split that out into the warrior, the magician, the lover and the king. The king is your. Your internal, like, you know, the one who controls it all. The warrior is your get up and go, the drive. The. The. When, you know, for example, when you see some random fella looking a little bit too long at your wife and something stirs up inside you and you're a bit like, oi. That. That's the warrior. The magician is the kind of the person that thinks they can control and mold the world into the exact form that allows them to, you know, get the most out of it. And the lover is exactly what you think it is. Right. It's the thing in control of all of your interpersonal relationships. And in this book, warrior, magician, lover, King, it basically shows you how those different archetypes that everyone has inside them interplay, interact. And what happens when, you know, maybe you have an overactive magician and you're a little bit conniving and you're only out for yourself and you, you know, are prepared to do anything, say anything to get the outcome you want. What happens when you have an underactive king and, you know, there's no guidance, there's no direction in your life, all of those kind of things. So shadow work is super, super enlightening. That was. Yeah, completely changed my life.

Fascinating. Okay, so start with those couple books, get your initial little bit of momentum, you know, maybe try working with somebody on it if you want to get really deep. And yeah, I mean, I imagine this, this has some pretty insane consequences for the rest of your life too. So for those people who are doing this just to get their close rate up 5%, maybe think twice.

Yeah. A lot of my clients tell me after we've kind of gone through the first, you know, three, four hours of doing the mindset stuff, relationships with their wives, their kids, their business partners all get better simply because, like, you're now kind of free of the stuff that was locking you up mentally, your whole life gets better. Like, as soon as I started doing this kind of work, my life changed completely. Completely and utterly. And best thing I ever did.

Yeah, yeah, well, it Puts you in a place to, to like absorb these new information, pieces of information and these new behaviors that you're looking to implement. Which I know, like, for a lot of people, especially like us high achievers, like personal development junkie types, like, the implementation is often the hardest part, right? You get caught in a cycle of reading book after book after book after book, but then two years later you're the same person and it's like, what was all this for?

And that's the difference between reading books and working with someone that can actually move you through it. So one of my clients had gone through, you know, therapy after therapy, after therapy, as a kid, you know, got sent to therapy, blah, blah, blah, blah. And after we did ours, I was like, okay, so you went through therapy, you told me you hate therapy. What if anything was different about this and if it wasn't different and it was equally crap, like, tell me. And he was like, you were the only person to like tell me that it was my fault. I was like, well, yeah, of course. Who else is fault is it? If your life isn't going the way you want it to, who else are we going to point the finger at? And he was like, yeah, that lit a fire under my ass and it made everything make more sense. So yeah, you, if, if you want like a long lasting change that sticks, you got to work with a practitioner.

Amazing. David, where can people go if they want to learn more about you?

So I used to be pretty active on Twitter. I'm, I'm setting it as a 2025 goal to be more active on there. You can find me on LinkedIn. My Twitter handle is David Jacob_1. That's the same as my Instagram handle and I think my YouTube channel as well. Pretty active on LinkedIn. David Jacob, sales coach. It's a picture of me. You'll see me pretty quickly.

Yeah, awesome. And we'll have links below. But David, thanks so much, man. Really appreciate it.

100% brother. Glad to be here.