The Ultimate Sales Training for 2026 [Full Course]
In this extensive segment of the "Ultimate Sales Training for 2026" video, the instructor shares a deep dive into advanced closing strategies, objection handling, and the underlying psychology of sales. The content covers: 1. All‑purpose closes – versatile close scripts that work across price, stall, decision‑maker, and preference objections, including the "reason you’re on the phone" framing and the 1‑to‑10 scale close. 2. The danger of details – why answering specific questions without control creates "death‑trap" objections, and how to respond by asking a question about the question, using a mechanic/secretary analogy, or zooming out to the big picture. 3. The AAA framework – Acknowledge, Associate, Ask – a repeatable pattern to buy time, build rapport, and steer the conversation toward a close. 4. The power of questions – salespeople who ask more questions control the sale; questions are non‑disagreeable and keep rapport. 5. Specific obstacle‑based closes – time, money, decision‑maker, stall, preference, and detail obstacles each have a handful of core close variations (e.g., priority‑reframe, support‑not‑permission, cheap‑competitor, ID close). 6. Stacking closes – layering multiple close angles (value, priority, risk‑free best‑case/worst‑case) to push a hesitant prospect toward a decision. 7. Handling decision‑maker objections – probing for hidden concerns, using hypothetical “what if they said no?” questions, and shifting from permission to support. 8. Guarantees and anti‑guarantees – positioning guarantees as a filter for seriousness and framing lack of guarantee as a sign of high‑impact solutions. 9. Post‑sale handoff vs. handshake – ensuring continuity by passing the prospect to customer success with a personal introduction, improving retention. 10. Enterprise vs. transactional sales – adapting the tactics for multi‑stakeholder, long‑cycle deals and emphasizing relationship density. 11. Sales mindset principles – caring more about the prospect than yourself, volume over luck, mastering through deliberate practice, and hiring for low skill deficiencies. 12. Organizational alignment – integrating sales and marketing under a single revenue‑generation umbrella to eliminate internal conflict. The instructor repeatedly emphasizes ethical selling, the importance of understanding the underlying belief behind each objection, and the need to keep the prospect’s best interests at the forefront. The segment ends with actionable take‑aways on mindset, volume, hiring, compensation, and cross‑functional alignment.
Chapters
Over the last 13 years, I've personally closed 4,000 sales, and these are the 6 elements of the ultimate sales blueprint. So let's begin with sales multipliers. These things right off the bat will make you more money. First sales multiplier: sell 7 days per week. Now, the reason this is so important is that a lot of business owners want to make more money in their business. A lot of salespeople want to close more sales, but they only choose to close 5 days a week. But the interesting thing is that, and depending on the industry, sometimes the off hours from like 5 PM onwards is when the most of your prospects are available. So like in fitness where I came from, I closed all my sales from 4 until 8 PM. And so if you're like, well, I only wanna work between 9 to 5, it's like, well, guess what? No one's gonna buy during that time. And so you can probably close more sales in the back half of the day and on Saturdays and Sundays than you would during the normal 9 to 5. So this is especially true in like retail and businesses where you sell to consumers who work normal jobs and you have to sell basically on the times that they're available. So sell during the weekends. The other piece of selling 7 days a week is like there's actual math behind this. And so there's 52 weeks a year. And so if you have 52 weeks per year times 2 days, right, is 104 days of sales extra per year, which is 29% increase over just selling 5 days a week. And so if you want to immediately increase your sales by 29%, sell on weekends. And I know I've tried to sell you on this, but I'm gonna give you one more really good reason to sell over the weekend. If you've ever tried to book sales and skip the weekend, so you've got Friday here And then you've got Saturday and then Sunday and then Monday, right? And so you skip these days. And so then this Monday gets stacked, right? You have all these people who are saying like, oh man, I'm gonna show up. So your sales guys get amped. They're like, oh dude, Monday looks big. But as soon as Monday happens, it's no-show, no-show, no-show, no-show, reschedule. And you're like, what the hell? Well, you didn't make it available at the time when they wanted to actually come, which is Saturday and Sunday. That's when they clicked on the ad. That's when they actually made the booking. And believe it or not, from a lot of our portfolio companies, we get more people who actually schedule on Saturdays and Sundays for Monday, which means that they are available right then to buy because they've got time. And so when you do it this way, not only do you sell 2 more days per week, which is 104 days more per year, which is 29% increase in revenue, that assumes just a flat increase.. But if you pull up the appointments from Monday to Saturday when they scheduled and Sunday when they scheduled, you then get same day, next day show up rates, which your show up rates also go up on those days. So not only do you schedule more people because it only works for them on Saturday and Sunday and they didn't want to do Monday, you also get higher show up rates on Saturday and Sundays for the people who wanted to schedule then because that was when it was convenient for them. And so you get a multiplier effect across the entire business of sales, by simply adding 2 more days in a year. So it's minimum 29%, sometimes more. Next up, respond to leads in less than 1 minute. Now, you may not know the stats on this. Some of the more experienced salespeople do. If you can contact a lead within 60 seconds of them showing interest or opting in or giving you their contact information, you have a 391% increase in the likelihood that you can close the prospect. And so that means that if you did nothing else but simply put the processes in place so that you can contact leads within 60 seconds, you could 4x your business tomorrow. And so then you have to ask the question, what are all these other things that I'm spending my time on? And do those things have an immediate 4x increase in my business? If the answer's no, then you should probably stop doing those things and do this one obvious thing that can increase your business to such a large degree. Also, 50% of prospects will go with the business that responds to them first, not the one who's best, that they did the most research for, simply the one that responds to them first. And I remember when Layla was— we were out of town, we were scheduling some— or she was scheduling something for her hair or whatever, and she went to a salon and she called them and she said, hey, are you available right now to take me? And they're like, no, we're only appointment only. And she said, Cool. Hung up. Called the next one. She's like, are you available to take me now? They said no. Hung up. Next one. They answered and she— and they said, yes, we can take you in right now. They're the ones who got the business. And here's the crazy part is the first two owners, maybe they're like, I don't know why customers aren't coming. You didn't make it convenient for them, right? And so the thing is, is that people have huge motivation for a tiny period of time. And when they knock on the door in that tiny period of time, you want to open it and and welcome them in. And you're like, okay, Alex, but you know, 1 minute's a lot. Well, totally. And if you do greater than 5 minutes, the likelihood that you close them drops by 80%, which means 4 out of 5 times you would've closed now goes to 20% close rate on those leads. And so the whole idea that people think that the lead qualities go down is not really true. It's completely dependent on how well you work the leads. Now, a lot of people like to talk about follow-up, and follow-up's important, right? You gotta make it personal, you gotta make it fast, you wanna do it multiple times over multiple days, for sure. But one of the most important follow-ups is the first follow-up, which is how quickly you can show them that you have received their interest and are ready to help them. And customers will make a judgment on how good your business is, how buttoned up you are, by how quickly you respond. So if you reach out to a company, just imagine for a second, you opt into something, and then within 5 seconds, your phone rings and someone's like, hey, saw that you asked for more information about this, how can I help you? And right there, you're like, man, these guys are on top of it. It makes a judgment that you cast over the entire business, that first impression, it's the tip of the spear, and most people are missing out. So all the data that I will cite in this video will come from 2 sources. So one is there was a Harvard Business Review that did a huge case study on different sales metrics across massive industries, and then me personally owned Allen. And so a lot of the lead nurture stats are related to Allen, which is a software company that we own, which does like 4,000+ appointments per day. And so we could see how changing scheduling and changing hours per day and things like that affected overall throughput because we could see from click to close. And so we could see how opening up calendars was the single strongest correlate to overall throughput, more than increasing closing percentages by, you know, 10%, 20%, because you couldn't get 400% increases in closing like you can by putting these sales multipliers in that I'm talking about right now. These are all the things that happen outside of the sale that affect your sales more than anything that happens inside the sale. Now, the next one in the spirit of all this speed of response is it's good to have someone have the option to schedule, But you know what else you can give them? Call now. And so when someone clicks down your funnel and they click over to your scheduler or something, if you can add a dropdown that says call now, because now they're calling you and now the intent could not be stronger. Now, if you're in a business where you're like, oh man, we have to qualify leads more, fine, put the call now thing after you've qualified the lead. Duh, right? And so just think through how we need to do this. And if you're like, man, I don't have the sales team to support it. Think about it like this. If you can 3x your business or double your business by simply hiring one more sales rep, if the relative increase in revenue is significantly greater than the cost of onboarding one more sales rep, then you should make that investment so that you can have the coverage for your prospects to call you to give you money. All right, so let's talk about the next one. Which is time slots. So if you are gonna have them book on a scheduler, then how do you set up that schedule? A lot of people don't put any time or thought into this. Now we already covered the 7 days a week, but what about the actual day layout itself? Now most people say, okay, I'm gonna have these 1-hour time slots, 1 hour, you know, 1 hour, whatever. Now what we found out with Alan is that we could increase the overall schedule rate and show up rate by simply changing how the times appeared on the calendar. And so we set this up so that we would have 15-minute slots. So you might be thinking, how am I gonna sell in 15 minutes? You're not. You allow them to start in 15-minute increments, and then we know that the next 3 blocks are used up, and then somebody else books here. Now some of you might say, wait a second, that means that some of my sales guys are gonna have awkward times in between. Well, there's 2 solutions. One is hire more sales reps. Number two is you need to have something called an off-the-call SOP. And so you have an on-the-call SOP, which is standard operating procedure, which is what do you do when you're on the call with the prospect. But if you have a no-show or there's off the call or you don't have somebody on your calendar, then you need to have step-by-step of what they need to do when they're not actually on a call. And most people only address the on-the-call and don't address the off-the-call, which is why their salespeople aren't nearly as productive. And so by doing 15-minute time slots, people pick a time that is more convenient for them. And so I think on one level, because it's more convenient for them, it's more precisely convenient, they show up at a higher percentage. I think the other reason, and there's this big misconception about the idea of like, no, I want to make it look like I'm busy and not have full availability. Completely dumb. It doesn't do anything to literally take up slots that are not true to show that you have traffic. It's dumb. It's just, it's dumb. I just stop it. We've already looked at it. It doesn't do anything. It just makes it less convenient for your customers to book with you. Now, in the off-the-call SOP, all right, what should they be doing then? I'll give you the next hack, which is you start pulling up appointments. So you remember I said we had the Monday, Sunday, Saturday, whatever, and people are booking on Saturday for Monday, right? They're booking here because you didn't put any availability. Well, if you do have your salesperson working and they have an off-the-call block where they don't have anything on their calendar, what they should be doing is they should be— let me see if I can draw a phone here. There you go— calling these leads and then pulling them up. And so when you have that conversation with the prospect, the first thing you're doing is qualifying them, which you should do anyways with any leads that are on the calendar that are going to take a full sales slot. But secondarily, when you call them to qualify them, say, hey, I had an opening later today that just opened up. Do you want the slot? And so it takes a 3-day-out appointment and makes it a same-day appointment. And anyone who's been in sales knows that same-day appointments have way higher show-up rates than future appointments. Next is the actual, uh, person, if they can't move it up for whatever reason, you still have contacted them within just a few minutes of them opting in. So they know that you're legit. You've already qualified them. And by pulling them off and moving them up, if you do have that situation, you increase The salesperson's utilization, because now their whole calendar has more sales appointments that are stacked, fewer open spaces, which is good. And we now have opened up this slot right here so that somebody else can find it convenient and then book in in the future. And so by simply changing what people do off the call, you increase the sales utilization, you increase booking rates, and you increase show rates by adding this one thing to what your salespeople do when they currently weren't doing anything waiting between calls. So the next one is very controversial and a lot of bad salespeople are going to be against it, but the killers are going to be nodding their head. So what you want to do is you want to feed the killers. Now, what does that mean? Is that the best leads should go to the best closers and the worst leads should go to the worst closers. And so you're like, wait a second, what do you mean? My, my worst leads go to my worst? Yeah. Because that means that you have the lowest amount of net waste within the business. The people who are the most closable, who are the most qualified, who have the most money, go to the people who have the highest likelihood of closing them for the most money. And so I'll tell you a story when I learned this. So there was a guy who lives in my building. He does like $3 million a year in personal income. And he was the number one sales rep, or still is the number one sales rep for a timeshare company. It's a multi-billion dollar company. It's the number one timeshare company. He was the number one sales rep and he's won the best sales rep of the year out of 3,000 sales reps, 5 out of the last 6 years. And so I had dinner with him and I was like, so give me your strategy. And he was like, you know, I won the first year when just with the existing system, but then I got to have 1 hour with the CEO as kind of like the prize for winning best salesman, plus, you know, a check or whatever. And I was like, okay. And he said, so when I sat down with the CEO, I closed him on basically changing the way they allocated leads. And he said, so they used to just round robin all the leads to all the salespeople. And he said, when I went to the CEO, I said, listen, you're just throwing money down the toilet. You're giving me people that no one has a chance of closing, and they're completely unqualified, and you're wasting my time. And then I see some really qualified person go into a dud closer's office, and then he misses it. And it's like, shoot, you should give him my terrible lead. He's not going to close them anyways, and give me the good one, and I'll close them. And so the CEO decided to test it just with the location that this salesman was at. He took his income from $250,000 a year to $3 million a year for him as a salesman, personal income. But what was more important is that it 5x'd the company when they rolled it out nationwide. He increased the total output for that one location by so much that they then rolled it out. And so this goes to show that if you're like, wait, I feel bad about this. This is a business decision. But if you are worried about your worst salespeople churning out, why are you worried about your worst salespeople churning out? Now, the other side of this, which is really nice, but a lot of people don't think about is, if your top sales rep can make $1 million a year or $500,000 a year or $3 million a year, do you know the amount of people who will work for nothing for the opportunity to make that kind of money? And so what happens is salespeople will come in and work for way below the, the normal wage for their skill because they want the shot, the opportunity to be top dog. And the other piece that this trains for or helps the business out with is that if someone survives this churn factory of down here where it's really hard for guys to get started because they're getting the worst leads, they learn on the hardest people to close. And then when they survive and they can still make enough to move up, then they get better and better leads, but now they have qualified themselves as closers who are worthy of those leads. So the next hack actually has, again, something to do with things around sales, but is not sales itself, which is most times it's harder to get an entire team to go up by 30% in close rates unless you just absolutely suck at sales, but there's usually massive opportunities on show-up rates. And so one of the things that we do is we give kudos or shoutouts to the closers who have the highest show-up rates. And so by calling those people out, we draw attention to how show-up rates are very important to the business. Because if I had to give you an option, hey, would you rather increase your close rates by 20% or increase your show rates by 20%? Which would you choose? Well, If you're a smart business owner, you'd say, well, they're the same thing. Yes. So then the follow-up question is, which one's more likely given the stats you're at? If your guys are closing at 35%, for you to get a 20% boost might be very, very difficult. But for you to just simply remind them to work their leads and follow up with their appointments might be very easy. And so you shout out the closers who have the highest show rates every week, not just highest close rates, and then you ask them what they did. And they're probably going to say, I just followed the process. And then you're gonna say, that's awesome, great job. And if you want, you can give an extra kudos for the guy who has the highest show-up rate. You can give it like, you know, a $500 flat thing per week, whatever, something that makes it material enough that it's worth showing off for. But I'm telling you, this can increase your overall sales in your business more than sales training can sometimes. And so if you're listening to that, you might be like, okay, well, what is the best reminder sequence for people to show up? Now, the first thing is, is you wanna have your automated reminders set up. Right? Those have to be done. And the thing is, is— and I think a lot of people make this mistake— is you want to, to look automated. Don't try and pretend that automation is a real person. Everyone knows, and it looks like shit, so don't do it. All right? But on top of automation, you layer manual. Now, manual, you don't have to do nearly as much to make it effective. And hopefully I'm spelling manual right. All right? And so there's 3 times that we have some— this is from Alan— that we know that gets the highest show-up rates. All right? Very simple. 24 hours before, all right, then AM, and then 1 hour, all right? And so think about it like this. It's like you have your automated ones until the night before, and someone says, hey, just making sure that we're on for tomorrow, very excited. I did this personalized thing for you. And so you want to show that you did some sort of prep for the prospect so they know you put some effort in, and so they would feel worse about not showing because you show that you've got a whole bunch of work that you want to show them on that call. And so whether you're a weight loss, you know, business, it's like, hey, I set aside this t-shirt for you. What size do you want? Or what color do you want for when you come in? Would be something that you could do for a weight loss customer. If you're a B2B customer, it's like, hey, I looked over your site. We already— I talked to my team about it. It looks like we've got 3 things we can immediately help you with. Very excited to share what we found. Like, it takes 5 minutes to do that. But if you can increase your show-up rate by 30% because you do that, Makes a lot of sense, right? In 60 minutes, you can increase your closure, your total sales throughput by 30% once a day. Feels like it's worth it. Now, that's night before. Morning of, you think you're a prospect, right? You're like, okay, yeah, sounds good. Morning of, you start and your whole day's blank because you forgot everything from the day before. And so the morning, it's like, hey, just a reminder again, I'm seeing you later this afternoon. And they're like, yep, I'm in. Cool. And then 1 hour before, they're busy during the day and you're like, yo, I'm meeting with you in 60 minutes, just making sure. Now for these, I prefer to have blue messages is what we call them, but basically the iMessages whenever possible rather than the green ones, 'cause people still don't entirely believe that it's a real person. And so this is where having voice memos and video work really well for those reminders in addition to the things that you're doing at the 24-hour mark that show personalization. So it would be something like this. Hey John, really excited to meet with you tomorrow. We outlined 6 things for your business that I think would really help you out. I'm very excited to share them with you. These are things that I pulled from my team and just from looking at the site, uh, before we get on the call. So stoked, we're at 4 o'clock tomorrow. Hit me up if there's any issues or you have any problems getting on. Otherwise, I'll see you then. Next one is logistics in terms of how you schedule and/or your policies, which is we like to do same day, next day, period, in terms of our availability. Now the reason for that is because show-up rates are higher same day, next day. And so if we constrain people to those days, we increase the show up rates. Now the key, and this is where most people mess up, is that they're like, well, if I did same day, next day, I'm not gonna be able to book all my appointments. That means you need to hire more salespeople. And when you do that, you'll get more shows, which then means you close more sales. So those are some immediate things that you can do to multiply your sales without even having to learn anything more about what you have to say on the phone or even getting good at at sales itself. These are all the things you do around sales that still close way more sales than anything you can actually do on the call. But once you do get on the call, you should make sure that your guys or you yourself don't suck. So let's talk about sales training. So now that we've covered sales multipliers, now let's talk about sales training, making it happen. So I'm going to cover daily huddles, one-on-ones, game tape review, role-playing, and CS game tape weekly reviews. Alright, and if you're like, I don't know what any of those are, that's why I made this video and I'll break them down. So number 1 is most people have no idea what they're doing when they're training sales. So the vast majority of sales organizations don't even know how to train them at all and simply just run churn factories. So they say, you know, we'll bring 100 people in, we'll see who survives, which fine, but if you know how to train sales as a business owner, you can compensate below market because you can take someone who is not good and make them good rather than relying on people to come in with existing skills. And so that is the arbitrage opportunity that you get to have as a business owner. And so if someone comes in with no skills and then you give them a lot of skills, they come in at that baseline, right? Now, I'm not saying that salespeople shouldn't make a lot of money, they should, but it's all based on the marketplace. If you have 10 times bigger audience that you can take salespeople from, then that's an advantage that you have compared to your other businesses on the marketplace of sales skills. So the first thing that we do is we like to have daily huddles. And so daily huddles are where we do role-playing. Now role-playing is probably the single greatest skill that you need to learn in sales. And the big thing I'll give you as a caveat is every entrepreneur or sales manager is always afraid of looking bad or not being able to close something. In front of their team, and so they shy away from doing role-playing. But you need to set the frame up front, which is no one's perfect, that's why we practice, and so I'm gonna mess up, you're gonna catch me, and it's fine, right? 'Cause if you have any ego around this, you will not do it as much because you'll be afraid of looking stupid in front of your team. So just get over that as fast as humanly possible. Now, when you're doing these daily huddles, you want to do the role-playing. So the role-playing, the important part of role-playing is you actually have to get into it with them and give fast feedback. Now, here's how not to do it. So, and this is how most people do it, which is someone goes through the script and they give not real answers anyways. And then they say, okay, at the end of the 30 minutes or 20 minutes, they say, do this different, do that different, do this different, do that different. So two massive problems. Number one is that you have to give one piece of feedback at a time. People can't handle multiple pieces of feedback, so it's not gonna work. Second is that the trainability of a person, or really an organism, because this actually happens across species, is inversely correlated with how fast you give feedback. And so basically the number of times that you have to, uh, give feedback to an organism is inverted with how quickly. So 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds, whatever. Now this is an exaggeration, but this would be number of times. So that means that if I say, hey, try it like this, and then they can't do it again, and then I have to say, try it like this, and then they still can't do it, and then I say, try it like this, the faster I do it, the fewer times I have to repeat myself before they get it. And so this is why speed is so important for training. This actually happens across human, you know, across the entire organization, but specifically for sales. So when someone does the role play, the sales manager or the other person's only working on one thing. And when they begin the sale, they say, this is what we're working on. And then they start the role play. And then as soon as they mess up or do a good job, which both those are happening in real time all the time, you say, great, keep going, great, keep going. And so they keep talking and they can see you nodding your head. They can see you giving thumbs up and you can hear you saying great. And so you have 3 or 4 different ways that you can give positive reinforcement in real time so that you can train them on the right thing to say. Now, when they do mess up, you also set the frame beforehand saying, listen, I'm going to probably stop you 30 or 40 times during you just trying to say this one script. That's okay. That's to be expected. That means we're doing it right. And so if you set that expectation, people aren't thrown off guard. If you don't, they're going to think that they're just doing a horrible job, which is not what you want to do. And so they go through and you're like, awesome, great job. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Keep it going. Pause. Say it like this. Try it again. Mm-hmm. Great. Try it again. Mm-hmm. Great. Try it again. And so once someone properly does the right way of saying it, you don't just say great, they did it once. You have them do it 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times in quick succession so that it drills it in so that when they actually are on a sales call, it's like this little mini recorder plays and they remember when when they need to drill it so many times in a row. And from a sales training perspective, you wanna be working with them on one thing sometimes for a week or 2 weeks. All right, so it's not a big deal. Now, daily huddles, you're usually working with the team on something. Like, as a team, we're struggling with this, and so as a team, we're gonna be drilling this. On one-on-ones, it's one thing, and it's gonna be specific to that person. Now, the reason that most sales managers do a bad job sales training is because it's a full-time job. Like, you have to listen to sales recordings, you have to see what they're messing up, you have to take notes, and then when you meet with them one-on-one, you have to see all 28 things you think they did wrong and say, which of these 28 things is going to create the highest improvement in their closing rate? And then say, we're only going to prioritize this one thing. So it may be like they just don't know how to ask for the card smoothly. It may be that they don't know how to set the agenda well on the call. It may be that they lose the frame somewhere during the sale. It may be that they're getting lost in the weeds when someone asks detail-based questions that they don't know how to zoom out. Like these are all different skills that a good salesman should know how to do in a sale, and you can only focus on one of them. So I'll give you another one, which is your best closer usually isn't your sales manager. All right. And so this is a mistake that I've made multiple times in my life. And it's because typically the best closers are very like hunter type person. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, hey, that's what makes the world go round. But oftentimes they're not like super like leadership oriented, patient, willing to continue to invest in teammates. Like they just want to close deals. And so most times, most closers that I've had in our businesses, before I explain this to them, they're like, I want to be sales managers someday. And I'm like, do you know what the day-to-day of a sales manager is? Because it's not just like, oh, this makes me more money. It's your entire activities that you do, all the things you love about this job are now going to stop and be a whole new set of things. And so sometimes the best closers, it's kind of like coaches. It's like, it's not the best players who sometimes make the best coaches. Sometimes it's like, mediocre or bad players who just learned how to be decent or good, not the best, who actually make the best coaches. And so I set the stage, what I said earlier, which is like the sales manager has to have no ego and can set the stage, which is like, hey, some of you guys are better than me at sales. Like, and so for example, Phil Jackson is not better than Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant at basketball, but they respected when he gave them feedback on their work. And so I would even use that as a sales manager to set the stage, was like, I hope that you guys are better than me at sales because that's what you have to do every day. You just may not be better than me at helping other people get better at sales. And so these are different skills and it's totally okay. And so when I role play with you, if you smash me, that's awesome. That's fine. If Phil Jackson went one-on-one with MJ, he's going to get destroyed every time. That's fine. My goal is that this team crushes as a team. The next one that a lot of people don't understand is about competition. All right. Now I think competition is very good, but not in the way that you think it is. So I used to be really hardcore and cutthroat about I wanted all my teams, you know, the guys to compete, you know, let the winners win, losers lose, et cetera. And I do, but in a different way. So I don't want it to be us versus ourselves. I want the competition to be us versus them. So you need to pick a big enemy, and it doesn't even have to mean that you actually are enemies with this person. It could be a rival or frenemy, whatever you want, and say, listen, every customer that we're not selling, they're selling. And so we wanna beat them, right? The reason that, you know, the US could get to the moon first, 'cause we were trying to beat the Russians, right? Like having a common enemy is a great thing to align the troops towards achieving a big goal. And it kind of quells the inner conflict of the team. But if everyone's trying to edge each other out, it creates a culture that in my opinion doesn't actually make the most total sales. You'll definitely have people who thrive in those ultra-competitive environments, but you will lose people who otherwise would have been good closers in a team environment. Another amazing sales training piece that we like to do in our companies is game tape review. So first off, you absolutely need to be recording every single call that happens with the customer across the company, across the lifecycle of the customer. If you're not doing that, you should do it. Please do it now. Stop the video, go do this now. Alright, now assuming you are recording all calls, this is something that completely changed my business forever, was getting sales and CS on the same call every week to review the game tape. And so you're like, why would you review sales game tape with customer success on the call? Well, because then you can say, hey guys, when you say it this way, they expect this. This, and it's really bad for the business. And so what it does is actually elevates both teams to a larger perspective. So they understand that, like, whenever you have conflict where CS is like, sales is overpromising, and sales is like, CS, stop being such babies and just do stuff, right? Like, we're the ones who make the money. Like, everyone gets it. We've all been there. And so the idea is, when you get them both on the same call, one of the other nice things is that you then review an onboarding call. Most salespeople have never seen an onboarding call. They've been selling for you for 3 years, 5 years, and they literally have no idea what happens after they click Submit or they run the card or they send the invoice over to finance and then they get the card, the approval for their commission. They're like, all right, next prospect. And that's fine, but they have to understand kind of the larger lifecycle of the customer. And so this is what ends up happening the first time sales sees an onboarding. They're like, oh dude, this is awesome. This is so good. Oh, I'm going to use this in my— right? They actually get way more data that arms them to be more knowledgeable in the sale and increases their conviction position as a closer for the business because they believe in it. And CS can look at the sales and be like, hey, now I understand why they're coming in with these expectations. And they can give sales the feedback of like, hey, do you think if you said it like this, it would change the sale? A lot of guys are like, oh no, I don't know. I just said it that way. I didn't know that they were coming in that way. And so what happens is you create this really seamless process between sales and CS, and you stop having those drop-offs and cold feet where you're losing 5% of your sales or 10% of your sales from people who close and then back out. And so that in a very real way will increase your sales by decreasing a negative. I learned this from my software days. So when I started with Allen, which is the first software company I ever owned, I learned from the software world that they started doing these CS to sales game tape reviews. And so we said, okay, well, if all these really big companies that make more money than us do this, we'll give it a shot. And as soon as we did it and that first call happened where we had the whole sales team and the whole, customer success team on, I was like, oh, I get it now. Like everyone got a holistic view of the customer journey. Sales expectations were better and cleaner. They were more knowledgeable about what the customer journey was gonna be. CS stopped getting upset at sales for making promises. And it also helped because then the CS side was like, hey, would it help you if we did this one extra thing? And the sales guys are like, dude, everyone asked for that. And they're like, oh, it wouldn't even be that hard for us to do. And then boom, both sides get better. They're setting better expectations and they're giving customers what they want more. And the CS team didn't know because the sales team said they couldn't do it because they weren't communicating. Now, on recording sales, which of course you should do and you promise you'll do no matter what after this video is done, for sure, that's pinky promise, that's what you're gonna start doing. All right, now the next thing is what sales should I watch? All right, and so this is my big tip. Is there is no mysticism in sales. There's a lot of like, you know, it's kind of like baseball. They're like, these are my lucky socks. Or like, I always touch the phone here and here because I close when I do that thing, right? There's a lot of superstition that starts to happen in sales because there's such fast feedback loops. So people learn because they change their behavior because it worked before, and so they try and do it again, but they end up adding all these rituals to their sales processes that end up long-term actually eroding their ability to sell. All right, so they start adding all these appendages to their sales process and it actually gets really cluttered and it starts sucking. All right, now the biggest hack that I can give you as an individual salesperson is that there are times when you're hot, all right, where you're like, dude, I feel like I could close everyone today, right? You know it, you're on fire. When you're hot, record the living hell out of that and rewatch those game tapes because You aren't on fire, you're doing things slightly differently. It means that your tone's a little different, how you open's a little bit different, how you transition to the close is a little bit different. And all you wanna do is you wanna look for the details. Because the big difference between good closers and great closers is that good closers try and get hot, great closers never get cold. And it's because they've systematized every single thing on their monster checklist that creates the hotness of their closing. And so if you ever do get hot, know that you now have the potential to close at that closing rate, and then say, cool, I'm going to analyze the living hell out of what it looks like when I'm hot, how I say it, where I pause, where my tone shifts, where I ask my questions, how, like, when I transition to the sale, how I frame my overcomes, how I'm punching back and pushing back earlier in the sale to overcome objections earlier, before I ask for money. That is probably one of the biggest RI tactics I can give you either as a sales manager for your teams or you as a sales professional. Just record everything and when you're hot, analyze the living hell out of it. Next one is also big team management stuff, which if you're ever in a slump, so this is for sales managers specifically or entrepreneurs, is that if you're in a slump, one of the easiest things to do is start drilling everything and sure you can do all that stuff, but in my experience, Reading testimonials can be one of the biggest things that you can do to increase the conviction of the team. And so you can get someone's tone to be correct by lots of drilling and lots of training, but if they are convicted, they will always have the correct tonality because they genuinely believe in the product and they genuinely believe it will help the customer. And so I like to train competence in tone, emphasis, pacing. I like someone to understand all of those things so they know what it looks like when it's right. But there's nothing that replaces a salesperson who's actually convicted. Because either you have a team of sociopaths who don't care at all but know how to say everything the exact right way, or you just have a team of people who really believe in the product, and by believing the product, they say things the right way. And I will tell you personally, it's way easier to find these people than these people. And so read testimonials and then give kudos to the salesperson who closed the prospect who got the great result. And so imagine this, you closed Sandy, you know, 4 weeks ago and you had to arm wrestle her into closing, she was super, you know, worried or concerned, but you overcame that. And then 4 weeks later, you read a testimonial from your manager who's like, hey, here's Sandy saying like, I'm so grateful that I signed up for this thing, it's completely changed my life, it's changed my business, I've lost weight, whatever it is. And you then as a sales manager say, Tom, I know I saw this call and I saw you arm wrestle Sandy to get, to get this deal, like awesome job, because if you hadn't done that, if you hadn't stayed in the pocket, she wouldn't have this outcome. And so I learned this because I figured out that my sales team had the highest absurd closing percentage, like 100%, like absurd closing percentages on one specific day of the month when I had my gyms. And I was like, what is it about this day? Do you want to know what day it was? It was weigh-out day. And so when we'd run our challenges every week, we would have people who'd be weighing out from 6 weeks earlier. And so on Friday or Saturday, we'd have weighouts. And so it'd be people coming in for 15-minute appointments and weighing out, taking their after pictures, weighing out, taking their after pictures. And after someone saw 20 people lose 20 pounds, 30 pounds, whatever it was in that time period, when someone would come in between those weigh-ins or after those weigh-ins and they're like, I'm thinking about signing up, they had absolute conviction in the fact that it was going to help them because they had just recently, that day, hours or minutes before, seen 5, 10, 20 people literally demonstrate results in front of them. And so that conviction they passed to the prospect. And so I just like to remind you of this if you are a salesperson, is that sales is passing conviction from one person to another. It's an education process over a bridge of trust. And so fundamentally, if a prospect knew everything that you know about the product, they should buy. Now, if they knew everything that you know and then they wouldn't buy and you get them to buy, it means that you deceive them, which means that you are an unethical salesperson. So don't do that. And so the idea is that you want to just basically fill in the fewest gaps you need to in order to get them over the bridge so they say, yes, I know enough to make this decision and now I want to buy. Now that we've covered sales training, let's talk about what happens before the sale, which yes, is absolutely part of the sale. So the first thing that a lot of people mess up is that The sale begins the moment the customer engages with your business, not the moment they get on the phone. And so how the interaction and communication happens between click and call will massively change your close rates on the team, independent of what you say. So for example, if you're a local business, and when you call to book the lead, you say, "Hey, before we get going, did you hear about us on," you know, local city's best boot camp list, or that we won this thing 3 years in a row? Is that how you heard about us? Now, if they're like, no, I heard about you from a Facebook ad, you still asking that question will influence what the customer perceives about your business, and then will be like, oh wow, I didn't know that they won that stuff. And so the questions you ask can still be educational and frame how you exist in the marketplace to a prospect before you've even begun selling them, because you have begun selling them. And so the thing is, is that the sale starts at the click, all right? So the setting script, the ad they see, all influence whether they're going to buy. And so this is where having continuity and having a seamless experience between this whole thing is what will overall increase your closing percentage as a team, again, prior to even talking to them for the main sale. So the next thing is like, okay, what else can I do before the sale that increases the likelihood that someone closes? And so the big obvious one, and Cialdini talks about this in his Influence book, is edifying the closer. So if I'm setting a call and I've already edified the business by saying something like, hey, we were on, you know, so-and-so's, lists. Now, a lot of people want to get on those lists because they think the list is going to somehow get them business. No, the list isn't going to get you business, but telling people that you were on the list will get you business. And so that's where— and let's be real, usually just pay $5,000 to the magazine so that they put you on the list of best boot camps in local area, or best accounting firm in local area, or state, whatever. Then that edified the business. Now when I'm qualifying the prospect, I say, oh, I'm going to put you on with Sean. Sean's unbelievable. He's helped 400 people just like you get-to thing that you just said you wanted in your specific circumstances recently. For example, he helped someone just like you achieve this and this, someone else like you achieve this and this, and so you're going to love talking to him. He's a great guy and he's going to help you out. Ooh, you know what? I think he has an opening this afternoon. Let me see if I can get you in. Hold on 2 seconds. Making noise in the background. Yep, he confirmed. We're good to go. 4 o'clock works. Awesome. And so if you have that versus, yeah, I got you down for 4, one of our team will be reaching out. Imagine the difference in terms of how that prospect has been pre-framed to talk to that closer. Now the closer, when they start the call, have to maintain that frame that the setter set. But again, this is all creating one seamless experience of we are on top of it, we are a legitimate business, and we are someone you want to do business with. The next thing is the qualification process. So a lot of people have said a lot of things about qualification, but the nice thing is that IBM did this massive study and then came up with BANT. And BANT is an acronym that stands for Budget, Authority, Need, Timing. And so they said that for a lead to be qualified for an account rep or closer, The setter had to make sure that they had BANT. They had to make sure that the person had the budget, they had the authority to make the decision, they had the need, they had the problem to solve, and they had the timing, meaning they wanted to get started soon. And so those fundamentally are the things that are required to close a sale. And so you can do this on the call. You can also do this on the application that you have prior to the call. And even if you did that on both, you'll still probably have to say it yet again on the closing call, but you want to say it before you ask for money. And so fundamentally, you're making sure the problem— the person has the problem to solve, the money to spend, the time to do the implementation, and the authority to make the decision. And people will say yes to it and then change their mind when you ask for money, but we'll get to that later. Now, this section isn't about outbound per se, but I couldn't help but give you one of my favorite outbound scripts I've ever heard, which is Hey, business, I'm calling about competitor, period. Give me a call back. So think about this. Imagine you have a dry cleaning business, and it's Tom's Dry Cleaners, that's you. And you've got Jones, because you're keeping up with the Joneses, Jones Dry Cleaning across the street. And you get a call being like, hey, this is Alex. I'm calling in regards to Jones Dry Cleaning. Give me a call back when it's convenient. You're like so incredibly curious that somebody has left a message and they want to talk about your competition. And so imagine that versus, hey, I'm calling from 123 Financial, wanted to see if you wanted to work. Like no one gives a shit, right? But because you have this personalized message that you're sending, which works via email, it also works via voicemail, the likelihood that they respond is way, way higher. Now when the person comes on and they're like, hey, what about whatever? It's like, oh, it looks like they're kicking your ass. And so, or, hey, I see that they're in the same industry as you and we've reached out to them as well. And then, so like, it's a very easy bridge into whatever you want to say when you get into your, when you actually get into the conversation. But the response rates from, hey, X, uh, calling regarding competitor. Slays. And while we're on the topic of how to work leads, let me give you my favorite scripting for calling up leads for local business when someone opts in. And so the way that I do this— so this is local leads. So when I call a lead or called a lead, and I called many of them, I wouldn't say, "Hey John, this is Alex. I want to see when you want to come in for it." Like, no, that's not going to work. All right, so even though they already showed interest, they usually don't even know who you are when you're calling. All right, so the way I would do it is this. So I would call and I would say, "John?" Not, "Is this John?" I would say, "John?" Question mark. Note my tone goes up. Pause. And then John is gonna be like, "Yeah, who's this?" Like, "This is Alex." Pause. Then he's thinking, "Who is Alex? Who, like how do—" And I'm acting with the way that I'm toning, toning, that he should know who I am. All right, that's the tone that I'm bringing this. "It's Alex." Pause. And during the pause, I can hear them. It's like, I'm calling you because you opted in on Facebook for our promotion. And so I just wanted to make sure that one, you weren't a crazy person on the internet, ha, and if there was a time that worked well for you to come in, and obviously to make sure that you knew that we weren't crazy people either, right? And so just in that little opener, we have, we pull them in, we pull them in again, then we quickly, like you steamroll this, you go as fast as you can to say, hey, You opted in for that thing on Facebook about this specific promotion. It's like I'm giving them 3 different kind of mental cues around what they opted in for, because people don't remember the things they opt in for. And especially if you don't call your leads within 1 minute, then you call them 2 days later, they're in a different universe at this point. They have no idea what they opted in for, and they might have opted in for 10 things, so they have no clue what you're talking about. And so then you can then bring them in and schedule time. I wanted to figure out a time that would work well for you to come in. I've got 2 o'clock and 4 o'clock today. Which works better? All right, and so by doing that, I'm also giving two options and saying, which do you prefer, rather than saying, asking them to pick a time. I look at my schedule, I see my openings, I present two openings that both work for me, and then they pick. And if you want to hear a little, little, little early Alex story, um, when I started my gym, I used to pretend that I— there were multiple employees that worked at my gym, and I would be like, this is John. And then when they come in, I'd be like, oh, you're gonna love Alex. Alex is amazing, he's totally gonna help you out. He's helped out so many people just like you at the same, same edification script. They come in and they'd be like, you sound a lot like John. I'd be like, get it all the time. And there you go into it. Um, but alternatively, uh, you cannot do that if you don't want to. I was young and, uh, I thought it was fun. And, uh, to me, and you know what, I was deceiving people. And so that is wrong. Uh, but to me, that's a little bit of a white fib of a 23-year-old gym owner trying to, trying to make it happen. And the last one, and this one is so unsexy, and because it's so unsexy no one does it, which is why you make so much money doing this, which is you prep for 5 minutes before the call looking up stuff about the person or the business. And so if you're a setter, you can do this for the closer, or closer, you can do this for yourself prior to the call, but you would be amazed at how much of a genius you look like with 5 minutes of prep. People are like, wow, this guy really did his homework. And it's not because you really did that much homework. It's just because everyone else is so lazy that any level of effort looks amazing. All right. And so the 5 minutes of prep in addition to— and this is clear— all the notes that the setter sets should be in the CRM so that when you go up with the prospect, you want to say, hey, so, you know, Jimmy earlier was telling me that you're X, Y, and Z and that you've done this and you've done this. Got it. So is this— is it fair to say that this is where you're currently at right now? That's what you're trying to achieve. Great, well, this sounds like this would be a good call for you, and I think we're gonna figure something out together, whatever. And so the thing is, is that you never want a customer to repeat themselves. That's not a good experience overall. And the flip side is, it's kind of like binary. Repeating is really negative, but you repeating to them what they told you is exceptionally positive. And so it's this really binary swing in terms of like, this can hurt the sale, this will help the sale, And so it takes 5 minutes and most of the time you should be taking notes on your sales calls anyways so that you can look like you're actively listening, which you should be. And that way, guess what happens to those notes after the closer closes? They get passed on to customer success. And then they say, so I see you talked to Steve, you talked to Jim, and these are the things that you decided on. I think we're gonna be able to help you out with insert goal. And the way that we're gonna help you insert goal is by following step 1, 2, 3. So let's get started. And so by setting this seamless experience from click to close, from setter to closer to onboarding, you create an amazing process for prospects to go through. And again, you can solve so much of this and blow prospects away by just preparing for 5 minutes. And either you do the research or you at least read the notes before the call. The next one's a small one, but we have one in our sales room, which is a mini trampoline. And so I used to take 20, 25 in-person sales, sales consults per day. And so that could be very tiring. And on my really Hercules days, I would see 48, 50 people one-on-one or one-on-two, uh, every 30 minutes. Right. And so I would get exhausted. So one-on-one, one-on-two for 12 hours is 48, um, is what I would do is I would do little mini jump trampoline jumps between sessions to kind of keep my energy up. And mostly to keep my mood up because I would start to get beat down when you have your 25th or 30th conversation that the exact same conversation of the day, it starts to drain you. And so what I figured out was you cannot be in a bad mood and jumping on a trampoline at the same time. So try it like seriously, you can jump on a tramp— like you can't even do it and frown. It's ridiculous, but it really works. And so I did it and I highly recommend it if you're somebody who struggles to keep your energy up, or keep your tone positive when you have like a long sales day. Now that we covered what happened before the sale, now let's talk about the actual sale as it begins, opening up the sales conversation. You need to, as quickly as possible, set the agenda of what's going to happen. So I actually think a lot about proof, promise, plan, just like we do for YouTube videos, just like we do for short content, because humans are still humans, their attention still works the same way. And just like the opener to a piece of content can dictate how well the entire video goes or how likely someone is to pay attention, The same thing is true about how you open a sales call. And so think of every single thing that I'm going to talk about for this whole portion about as things that increase the likelihood that someone purchases. And so fundamentally, it's my belief that the way sales work is that we have 100 golden BBs, we have 100 tiny things that each of them increases the likelihood that someone purchases. And so I will share this one perspective with you on sales, then we'll get into it, which is B.F. Skinner, who's a behavioral psychologist. Said this quote. He said, people say you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. He said, I wholeheartedly disagree. He said, if I dehydrated the horse, bled it out, and salted its mouth, and I put water right in front of it when it's on the ground on a hot day, he said, I can veritably guarantee that it will drink. And I kind of see sales the same way, which is that if you control every single variable, you could in theory close every single prospect. And so I like to think about it that way, as though all of these things are under my control. So I start sales the same way that I start content, which is proof, promise, plan. And fundamentally I do this because I believe that humans are humans. And if you want to gain someone's attention and have authority and have them want to wait until the end, then if you can do it that way when you're not there to reinforce them or force them to stay on the call and you still get people to stay to the end, then this absolutely works when you're also there to reinforce them on the call and keep them going to the end. And so I actually think this is one of the easiest ways, and proof, promise, plan only takes 15 seconds, maybe 20. So you can absolutely get to the point. And so when you start on a sales call, it works more or less the same way, which is, John, excited to get going with you on this thing, this big promise that we're working on. We've done this with lots of other people who are just like you. And so this is the process that we're gonna do, and at the end of the call, We're gonna see if it makes sense to move forward. If not, no sweat. I'm gonna still send you on your way with stuff that could help you with the problem overall, right? And so by doing that, we still set out our proof promise plan right at the beginning. And what I have found, in my opinion, one man's opinion, is that you actually gain more rapport. I actually got on a sales call yesterday with a banker for one of the portfolio companies, and they were trying to bring our business over. And he said, hey, if you don't mind, can we just skip the foreplay? And I was like, I just immediately was like, I love you for saying that. And he's like, let's just get right to it. And then he set the agenda and it was awesome. And so I could tell obviously it was a super, you know, very, very high multimillion dollar per year salesperson because we have big accounts. And so the same thing is true for you, especially if you sell B2B, like get to the point. And when you set the agenda that way, you actually control the frame because you told them how this call is going to go. And if you don't know how the call is going to go, you don't know what you're doing. And then it looks like an increased likelihood that you waste that person's time. And so you having an agenda also shows that you have done this before, that you're a professional, that you know what you're doing. So the next one is follow the script. So I actually asked my sales team to tell me, I said, what are the things that I shout at you guys that have helped you a lot? So some of these isms are directly from the horse's mouth via other horses, horsing it back to the horse. But I say follow the— and I'll put a little asterisk here— follow the fucking script. Now, the reason I want to highlight this is that if your team does not follow the script, there is no point in having a script. And so script adherence, in my opinion, is the first thing that you drill. I would rather have 100% of my team saying script word for word and us close no one, because then I could then close— change the script and then get everyone to close. Because if everyone follows the script and it doesn't close, you have a script problem. If people aren't following the script, You can't change anything because then you have to do it all onesie-twosie all over the place. Now, to be clear, the script is basically up to the ask. After the ask, you have the loops that you're gonna do, the overcomes that you're going to drill with them, and sometimes that leads you down a different Christmas tree. But the first part of the sale, the first two-thirds of the sale, should be pretty much word for word the same. Their answers will change, but the actual scripting remains the same. So there's different levels of following the script. Surface of that would be actually just saying the words, but there are a lot of other things in communication. Like if I slow down what I'm saying right now, it sounds really important. And if I speed up what I'm saying, what it sounds is gonna be really like interesting, and I'm very excited about it, I'm transferring that to you. And you might increase the speed as you're approaching the close, but then when you go for the ask, you might slow down, you might lower your voice again. And the thing is, is that you can also change the meaning of a sentence by changing how you say it. So I got this from Jason Friedleff-Flydeley, who's a good friend of mine. And he said, and I love this one, "I didn't say he hit his wife," which implies that I was the one who said it. I didn't say he hit his wife. I didn't say he hit his wife. I didn't say he hit his wife. I didn't say he hit his wife. I didn't say he hit his wife. I didn't say he hit his wife. Each of those sentences are all the same exact words, but mean very different things. And so one is you can change the meaning of a sentence by where you emphasize. The next is your tonality. So me going low or me going high, both of those things can change what a sentence means. So if I say a statement like, "You're doing $3 million a year?" versus "You're doing $3 million a year?" Those are two very different things. One is a question asking somebody to respond back, and the other is me just making a statement and then moving on. And so you can increase or increase the tone of your voice at the end of sentence, which then implies that you're asking for a response from the prospect. And so one is you have emphasis, which is where am I going to pause? The second is that you have tone, which is am I going to go low, am I going to go high, and how is it going to change throughout the sentence? And then finally, you have pacing. Where do I slow down when I really want to make sure that you hear every word that I'm saying because it's very important? And this is a matter-of-fact tone to increase trust with the prospect because what I'm sharing is something that I haven't told other people or whatever, right? And so pacing, you go slow and fast. Tone, you can go up and down. Emphasis is where you pause. And so when you're following the script or making the script, you want the script to have a tone guide with it. And so you could have X, Y, Z, W as the words, and you can use the things on a word processor, AKA Google Docs or whatever you type stuff on, And you can say, if I underline, it means slow down. If I put this in all caps, then it means emphasize this. If I put this in italics, then it means create space, whatever. So the nice thing is that on word processors, you have underline, italics, bold, and caps. And so those things give you 4 different kind of cues for the closer so that when they're reading the script, they know how they're supposed to read the script. And so when you're drilling, the first thing you're going for is actually saying the right words. Once you have a team that can breathe the script, which they should do very quickly because it's not that many words, you should only be looking at, you know, 12 questions that you might be asking, maybe 1 follow-up or 2 for the questions, not something that's like the Gettysburg Address here, right? Which you still memorized when you were in 6th grade anyways. And so, and you did it for free rather than getting paid for it. All right, here the 201 version of following the script is saying the words the way they need to be said in order to increase the likelihood that the person buys. All right, so now that we have, okay, you have to follow the words, we emphasize tone and pacing, we can write the script in a way that helps the closers have the right tone at each portion of the sale, then we can move on to the actual scripting itself. Now, I have used something called the Closer Framework for a long time. I don't think that this is magical. It just is an acronym that people remember more than anything. Um, and if people remember it, then it means it's been effective at teaching them, because if they remember it, then it changes their behavior. They have learned. And so there are probably more complex ways. We have a different scripting process that I call the diagnostic script. I've made a big video about that. But for the vast majority of sales calls that are specifically transactional, so it's one call, two call closes, I usually follow this structure. And so the C stands for clarify why they are here. All right. And so if you get on the phone and someone says, I just want to have more information, people don't get on the phone to get more information. No one wants to learn stuff. People get on the phone because they want to solve a problem. And so we need to get really clear. We clarify the problem that they're like, why are you here? This is the question that we're answering now. It's like, why did you take the time to hop on the call today? What made you reach out to us? What made you hop into the site? And what you want to ask in these types of questions that are clarifying the problem are reminding them of actions they took to show up on your call. And so the thing is, is even if you're outbound, no matter what, every lead that you talk to is engaged, meaning they've taken one action towards you. So, hey, what made you, what made you comment on my post? What made you respond to my email? What made you set a call on my calendar? No matter what it is, what made you pick up the phone and keep listening to me? Like, they've always done something to— now, obviously, if you're in a close, you're probably not closing on a cold first outreach, right? They've done something at this point to indicate interest, and so we will remind them of the interest and then tie that to a problem they're trying to solve. All right, then we label them. Now, I— this is like the shortest part of the script, but it's incredibly important. All right, which is you label them with that problem. So you've clarified it, but you said, okay, so just to make sure I'm clear, you are here, you want to get here, and this has been the issue that's been holding you back. What you're essentially doing is establishing the gap between present and desired, and sometimes the obstacle that they believe is standing in their way. Once you have that, you have now set the table for making a sale, because now you have, this is where you want, this is where you are, this is where you want, and we've got this big dragon. I think I can give you the sword to slay it, or I can slay it for you, whatever. The next part of the sale is overviewing past pain. Now, the reason the overview of the pain is so important, I call it the pain cycle, is something that I've actually only learned about— I learned this while I was selling. I just knew that talking about people's pain and what they'd done before got more people to buy. I didn't know why, I just knew that that ended up always being the case. Now later, I know a little bit more about sales and more just human behavior, and deprivation creates motivation. And so if I am hungry, I am motivated to eat. If I'm tired, I'm deprived of sleep, means I'm motivated to sleep. If I am— if I haven't seen my wife in a few days, I might be motivated to do other things. You get the idea. If you're deprived, you are by definition motivated to end the deprivation. And so what we want to do in the sales call is basically expand the deprivation. We want to bring their state of deprivation to top of mind so that in the moment we can increase their deprivation, which then rubber bands back to increasing motivation to solve it. And so if you've probably seen, you know, political polls where they're like, what's the topic of this election? What they do is they specifically choose topics to deprive the population of so that we say this is now more important for us. It's not that education isn't important, but for apparently this election, It's not, no one's talked about education, right? But in different elections, they've been like, this is a big problem. And so then that becomes the thing that everyone talks about. And then that's the main reason people choose the people that they're going to elect. And so this deprivation motivates a change in behavior. And within the context of sales, that means taking the action to move forward in the sales process or taking the action to buy. This is why the pain cycle is so important. And so I have a little ism that I have in my sales team, which is the pain is the pitch. Like the pain is the thing that often it's the gap. We have to make sure that they have, it's like, well, I tried this thing, I tried this thing, and I tried this thing. And so we wanna quantify how much they've spent so far in time and effort and what the impact that's been on their status within their community and how much it's costing them to not do this every day. So this is the cost of inaction or the cost of failure. Every single day that they don't achieve this thing, whatever it is that they want. And the reason we highlight those pains is because it creates urgency. It creates an increased likelihood that they act. So the pain cycle that I ran with like weight loss, for example, is what have you done so far to try and lose weight? And then when someone would say I did Weight Watchers or I did, you know, whatever, it didn't matter. I knew what my pitch was going to be because I had a 3-pillar pitch, which we'll get to in the S. Which I would always try and highlight the good things of the things they did and the things that it was missing when they brought it up. And so if someone said, hey, I did, you know, Weight Watchers, I would say, great, so they gave you nutrition. I was like, but I'm guessing you kind of bounced back. Now remember, everything they've done is an advantage for you because they are here in the sale, which means it did not solve the problem. And so I remember even having somebody came in who's like, I already have a personal trainer. And I'm like, yeah, he's obviously not doing a good job. But she just looked at me sideways. I was like, here. And so she was like, fair, right? And so then I closed the sale. But the thing is, is that, so, you know, Weight Watchers was, they had nutrition and they had accountability, but they didn't have fitness, right? And so you lost the weight, then you gained it back because you lost muscle when you did it. Oh, that's why it didn't work. 6 inches from gold. All we have to do is fix this one thing and then we can get you success. Uh, oh, I did the gyms before, but it didn't work for me. Well, did they give you a personalized food plan? Well, you know what they did. Okay. Did they hold you accountable to doing it? No, they didn't. Okay. So you had fitness and nutrition. You didn't have accountability. Because if you have fitness, nutrition, and accountability, you can't fail. Fundamentally, if you eat the food, you work the work, the working out, and this actually makes sure you do the first two, you're going to lose the weight, right? And so every business has what I call a three-pillar pitch that's buried inside of it. So I was making— I always tell the story because it's a fun one, but I was making a sales script for a marketing company that was selling leads to mortgage brokers and realtors. I spent the whole morning being like, what are the three things? Like, what are the three things that makes an amazing lead? And so it's like, okay, well, you want— and I came up with, you want leads to be timely, You want leads to be qualified and you want them to be exclusive, right? And so basically it's like, it's basically going through BANT. It's like you want them to have the budget, you want them to have the timing, and you want them to have the authority and/or need, right? And so obviously the need was established because they were leads and already indicated interest, right? And so it was really just controlling for the other 3 in the 3-pillar pitch. And so when we were talking, and so when we scripted it out, it's like, oh, have you ever done, have you ever bought leads in the past? And if they had, and obviously they weren't having a good experience because they were on the phone with us, we'd be like, oh, what was it? And all we had to do was pick out, oh, you were getting leads from Zillow, but they weren't exclusive to you, right? And so you had to compete with 20 other guys. So you had good quality leads. They had the budget and they had the interest and presumably the authority to make a decision, right? But they weren't exclusive to you. And so that was the problem. And if you'd had leads that were exclusive, do you think you'd be able to make money? They're like, oh my God, if I had exclusive, it'd been great. And you're like, awesome, boom. Established the gap, figured out the pole in between, boom, we can pull them over, we can help you out, right? And so every pitch usually, now, to be very clear, I'm not saying that it's always 3 things that triangulate a sale. I'm saying that humans tend to think in 3s. And so when I make a sales pitch, I try and chunk up to the 3 big things. So you might be like, well, we have a 7-step process. It's like, fine, chunk up until it's 3. So nutrition, I could break down into like, okay, well, we've got calories, we've got macronutrients, we've got micronutrients, we've got meal timing, we've got meal composition. Like, I could get it, I could get as fancy as we wanted to to create more components, but you just want to chunk up to 3 because people tend to remember it. Now, when you get to the S, which is the sell the vacation, which I've already kind of gotten into, we want to talk about the vacation. We want to talk about Maui. We don't wanna talk about the plane flight. We don't wanna talk about TSA. We don't wanna talk about taking shoes off, going through security, you know, getting patted down, how bumpy, you know, it's gonna be on the plane, the food you're gonna have to eat, the person sitting next to you is gonna smell bad. Like, we don't wanna talk about any of that. We wanna talk about Maui. We wanna talk about the experience of what it will be like when they've accomplished the thing, the transformation that we're selling, whatever it is. Now, when we have the 3-pillar pitch, I like to make the statement of what you need, like exclusive, right? Or it needs to be nutrition. You need to have whatever the pillar is. You make the statement and then you give the metaphor. All right? And so this is how I do my 3-pillar pitches. And normally a 3-pillar pitch shouldn't be longer than 2 minutes. And so if you're like, wait a second, so this whole sale, I'm only gonna be talking about my product for like 2 minutes? Yup, because you wanna be talking about the prospect not the product. And so if I want to get into a new organization and I want to figure out how to sell, I'm gonna spend 90% of my time trying to understand the pains. Remember, for motivation, the pains of the prospect. And once you know the pains of a prospect, and this is me just, you know, taking my ethical disclaimer hat on, you can sell them anything. Because fundamentally, if you know where someone is and you know where they want to go and you know the things they've struggled with, if I wanted to sell supplements, you just sell that as the bridge between where they're at, where they want to go, or you sell nutrition coaching, or you sell fitness, or you sell all three. It doesn't really matter. You could sell your piece of equipment. Either way, you're going to have where they're at, where they want to go, difficulties they've had, and then you just bridge it with the product. But most sales teams spend all their time trying to train people on the product and not the prospect. And so then they sound really ill-informed and ask stupid questions that anybody who knew more about the prospect would already know the answer to. So I'll give you 3 of my favorite kind of metaphors that I used to use around accountability. And so I had the 3-pillar pitch. Well, one is I would just, the fact that I would call it the 3-pillar pitch, I call it the 3 legs of the stool. And so I was like, you can have, if you have 2, then the stool falls over, right? You can maybe balance it for a little bit. Maybe you did do nutrition and accountability for a little bit with Weight Watchers. You lost 50, but you gained back 60. They'd be like, yeah, like, right. So you had it, it balanced, but then it fell over. Right? But if you have all 3, and I could use my hands and I would show them that, then they'd be like, oh, I get it. It's like, yeah, this is what you need in order to be successful. This— so I make an analogy or metaphor of what the 3 pillars that we have and how it relates to something that's a strong structure. Now, does the dynamics of how a stool stands have anything to do with SEO or how we get leads from mortgage brokers? No, but it helps people understand. And so fundamentally what a metaphor is, is it compares something they don't understand, your thing that you sell, with something they do understand, and you make parallels. Fundamentally, by the way, this is what teaching is. And so if we want to have a metaphor, so I use these two for accountability, which absolutely slay. One I got from Alison Prince, the other one I got from Tom Miller. So I'll give you the toothbrush one. So you say, hey, when you were a kid, did you hate brushing your teeth? Right? All of us did. Or if they have kids, it's like, do your kids hate brushing their teeth? Yeah, of course. Of course. But, you know, and so every night you're like, "Hey, brush your teeth." And they're like, "Mm, fine." They brush their teeth and they go to bed. And now you're an adult. Do you brush your teeth now? And the answer is yes, most people do. If you have a weirdo, then maybe you shouldn't tell them. Anyways, so you brush your teeth now, of course. Okay. So what happened was in the beginning you had external accountability. Your parent was your coach saying, "Hey." Kept reminding you, kept reminding you, kept reminding you. And then over time, the positive reinforcement of doing the behavior became the internal motivation to stick with it. And so what we're doing is we're going to artificially become that external motivation that you need in the beginning to create the habit so that you can do this long-term, right? Now, that's how I would sell accountability. And so me saying that, notice I'm not saying, hey, we're going to reach out to you this many days and we're going to be on this channel of communication. These are the response times. I just say, big picture, you didn't brush your teeth and you hated it, and now you brush your teeth and you don't miss a day. And the big thing that was the difference was this thing, and that's what we're going to provide to you. Done. Then, a different version of this was The Amazing Race. In The Amazing Race, they actually had to change the rules because there was a couple that won too many times that they had to say— they had to dismantle their advantage. You know what the advantage was? Well, what they would do is whenever they get dropped off in this new area, they would find a local person, put him in the back seat, pay him for the day, and say, "Hey, help us get to this place." And because they had a local, they beat everyone else who tried to do it on their own. And so what I want to do right now is I've been to where you're going and I've been in the backseat with 100 other people just like you, and I can be your backseat driver because it'll give you an unfair advantage. That makes sense. Done. You've already moved on from the pillar, right? And so that's how you explain that. Those are two metaphors to explain something, right? And if I sold supplements, I would give metaphors around, you know, protein or whatever, right? And so the whole idea is that you want to know what your three pillars are and then you want to know an analogy that makes it more relevant. If I was selling SEO, I'd be like, hey, well, think about your ads as your paycheck that you get every month. You have to put work in, make new ads, put money in, but you get money out immediately. Think about SEO like an investment account. You're gonna put money in, but it's not really gonna be much for a while, but eventually it starts compounding, and then within 1 year or 2 years, it's gonna be bigger than anything you could do actively, right? But it just takes time. So it's just like an investment account, right? And so that's my analogy. So you've got SEO and paid traffic is the same as income an investment, right? And so whatever the 3 things that you're selling are, you just want to have a clear analogy that someone can just say, got it. Because if you start getting into details, you get into the weeds and that's where you die. And by the way, if you're working leads because you didn't work them fast and you didn't work them enough, and then you get ghosted at any part in the sales cycle, just send them a meme. Just send them a meme. It's like, there's the Kevin Hart meme where he's like, where are you at? Um, and it actually has the highest response rate out of any messages that we've sent. Just sending the meme. And so that meme has made a lot of salespeople a lot of money. And so you can just send that to your cold pipeline, send it to 200 guys, and you'll probably get 5 to 10 that just re-engage off of that, and they'll probably laugh, and then you're back in the saddle. And I'll explain why closes die in the details when we get into the closing section. All right, now the last 2 pieces are actually around closing, which is if you've sold them at this point, you've said, hey, does that sound good? You ready to move forward? Ready to get started? Ready to get some traffic to your site? Ready to start losing the weight? Ready to start getting back to that high school weight? Whatever it is. Ready to insert goal. That's how you could ask for the sale. Great, let me get your ID or whatever. Let me get your information. We'll start moving forward. Then if they don't say yes, you explain away concerns. All right? This is fundamentally closing. This is objection handling, which is the perfect thing to get into right now. Now that we've covered the open, now we have to get our money. We gotta close. Before I dive into each of the tactics, one, I'm gonna be bringing in audience objections. So we polled my YouTube audience and said, hey, what are some of the objections that you guys are struggling with? So I'm gonna be overcoming some of those now live. And on top of that, I want to preface with the fact that you should train sales back to front. So what do I mean by that? You want to make sure that someone knows how to collect payment and process as the first thing that you teach a closer. Why? Because if they don't know how to do that, they have a 0% chance of closing. And so the next thing that you would teach someone is how to ask for payment and how to ask for someone to get started. Because if they don't know how to do that, the likelihood that they close the sale is zero. And so a lot of people start at the top of the script when they start teaching a closer, but it's my preference to start at the bottom of the script because that is what's required to close. That being said, where does closing begin? Closing begins once someone says no. And to be very clear, just because they said no once doesn't mean they're saying no forever or they're gonna say no over and over again. And we have to train and expect no. That is the job of sales. If every person immediately says yes, honestly, you're not really required. We could just record the video, put it in front, and then just put a buy button. And to be fair, Tesla does this and they do a pretty good job of it, right? And so depending on how good you are at marketing, you might not need sales at all. But under the assumption that you're not the perfect marketer and people come in with more questions or more concerns, when they say no is when closers step up. So before I get into all the things that we can go for, I want to break down the one time where you shut up, all right? Which is if someone says yes and says, "Yes, I'm in," shut up and close the sale. Do not sell yourself out of a sale. And this is something that a lot of beginners do. They get excited when the person says yes, and then they start bringing up more details. And then those new details increase the likelihood greater than zero that they take a yes and turn it back into a maybe, or take a yes and turn into a no. The moment you have agreement, you shut your mouth, you ask for payment information, and you close. Yeah, it's like you're at the bar and you're like, hey, you want to go back? And she's like, sure. And then you're like, oh yeah, I'll show you my Star Wars collection. She's like, oh. Actually, just kidding. It's like, no, you wait and then you show her the Star Wars collection because it's sick, but you don't say it until you're back, right? That's the idea. Save your Lego Star Wars lightsaber for after she gets back. The next one is that if someone says anything that you aren't prepared for, it's because you are underprepared. And so prep equals smooth. Meaning, you should in one breath know exactly what you're going to say back to the person when they have any kind of objection. If someone says, "I gotta think about it," or, "Hey, you know, like, give me a day or two," or, "Hey, I gotta talk to my spouse," or, "You know, I don't really like this particular thing about the product," you should already be like inhaling to begin the next part of your close. Now, to be fair, or to be clear, You don't want to make what you're about to say sound like an obstacle to overcome or sound like a prerecording. And so I made a whole video about the AAA method, which is you acknowledge, then you associate, and then you move on to the sale and you ask your next question. That is what gives the appearance of a more natural sale. Meanwhile, the whole time, there is nothing they can say that you should not already know the answer to, because it is your literal job to have this one conversation 10 times a day for your entire life. And so the fact that a prospect can say anything that surprises you just says that you are underprepared. That being said, once we are prepped, we expect and plan for no. And no is not a failure, it's to be expected. So what happens as soon as someone says, I'm not sure, I need to think about it, whatever? So what I want to do is give you my rapid-fire series of questions that I ask prior to getting to anything that's real closing. All right. And so the questions that I ask are in order. First off, what's your main concern? All right. So from early on in the sale, and this is the first no I get, I'm like, hey, what's your main concern? Because they say, I need to think about it. You say, cool, what's your main concern? And then you're right back in the sale. It's not like, oh, I need to think about it, the sale's over. It's, what's your main concern? Let's talk about it together. Let's figure it out. Now, if you're further on in the sale, then I like to ask a little bit harder questions. I would be like, hey, what are you afraid of having happen? Right? They're like, dude, I just need to think about it. It's like, dude, what are you afraid of? Right? What do you think's gonna happen? What's the big thing that you're trying to avoid? Right? And I ask that question because it gets to the heart of the issue. And what you hear after that is usually the real obstacle. And that you can now overcome rather than I need to think about it, which you can't. Right? And so all of the things that Get Around Stall overcomes all basically try and tease out why they're stalling and how to make a decision. And so from there, what's the main concern? What are the variables you're using to make the decision? And my final two that I love very close to my heart is what makes this a yes? What makes this a yes? And if they can't answer that question, then you can say, well, can I share with you some of the decision-making variables that I often hear when I ask that question? Sure. Now what makes this— and this is a really good one. If they're like, I'm just not sure, then you're like, totally understand. What makes it a no? And so people are so afraid to ask what it would get someone to not buy. The thing is, is that you've had this conversation more times than them. And so sometimes they're like, I don't really know. And you're like, that's amazing. Acknowledge, and then we associate. It's like, well, it sounds like, believe it or not, You're a totally normal person, because anybody who'd be making a decision like this really fast would be crazy. We wouldn't want to work with them. But it also sounds to me like this is just that you're nervous about making the decision, which makes you just like all the people who end up buying and getting amazing results. And so now I associated their, what was once, I need to think about it, to I don't know what makes this a no, which then you circumvent by saying, oh, it just sounds like you're afraid of making the decision, which makes you just like other people who get amazing results because it shows that you care. If you care, you're gonna follow through and you're gonna do amazing. If you don't care, this is gonna be awful. And so it's actually better that you had this fear. And so now we've associated and then we ask the next question, which is, ready to rock and roll? And no, like there, it's like you can even hear, feel, feel my tone change in how I'm saying like, you ready to go? Ready to rock? Let's do this, right? And so that's how I like overcoming lots of stall stalls, which is what are you being concerned, what are the variables you're using to make the decision, what would it take for this to be a yes, and what makes this a no, right? All great ways of segmenting around it without even having to get into more of the standard closes around, uh, I have to think about it, give me some more time. So one of the big things that I like to train with our team is something that I call all-purpose closes. And so all-purpose closes are the 80/20 of closes. So these are closes that pretty much work in all situations. So you have to know price overcomes, you have to know stall overcomes, you have to know decision maker overcomes, you have to know preference overcomes. So that's when somebody's like, I don't like this particular feature, or I don't like it that you do it this way. You have to have overcomes for all those things. But the all-purpose closes work in pretty much all scenarios because all of them basically chunk up and get yourself out of the weeds so you can just make the big decision overall. So an all-purpose close might sound like, do you think the reason that you're on the phone today is because you've struggled to make this decision in the past? And so that works no matter what thing that they're bringing up, whether it's their spouse, it's money, and you just call it the reason. So it's like, oh, do you think— they're like, I think it's a lot of money. You say, do you think that the fact that you haven't invested in the past is the reason that you're not successful? Right? I need to talk to my spouse. Do you think the reason that you haven't been successful so far is because you've needed to talk to your spouse for all these things? You've always needed to get permission? Do you feel like the fact that you struggled to make decisions in the past is why you're on the phone with me today? So like, it doesn't matter what it is, is whatever they say, you say, you think the reason— like, you just take their objection and add, do you think that's the reason that you haven't succeeded? Because they haven't succeeded yet. That's the thing that you have to your advantage. They're on the phone, they have the pain. And so you just say whatever their thing is, that's the reason, right? Now there's another one which is just the 1 to 10 close, which is, hey, on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being, you know, fair, let's do this. 1 being like, let's never talk to Alex again. Your breath stinks. I hate you. You know, where are we at? Now, it doesn't really matter what they say. You just say after that, well, what would make it a 10? Which is another version of like, what would it take, right? But just framed differently. So what would it take? Now, if they say a 6, then you can also say, why not a 1? And they're like, well, because you're great and you're awesome and all these things. Then you have them say it, not you. And you're like, awesome. So what would make this a 10? And sometimes they just give you the 1 or 2 things like, oh, I must've done a poor job communicating that. We'll totally take care of that for you. So sometimes they bring up features that they specifically wanted or some element that you can reframe your existing stack and just like, oh, we satisfy that problem for you. I just didn't communicate that well. Are we feeling 10-ish? Is how I like to say it. We feeling 10-ish? Awesome. Let's get going, right? So all-purpose closes, you should know like the back of your hand. There's a bunch of other ones. I'll just leave it there. Otherwise, the whole rest of the video would be overcomes with all-purpose clauses. The next one is a big, big, big one, which is details are death traps. And the reason that deals are lost in the details is because— not for what you think. The reason that details lose deals and that they are death traps— and let's see if I can use more dealiteration— is because you don't get to pick whether your answers are correct or not. So if someone says, "Hey, how many days a week are you open?" If you answer, I call that a blind answer. So it's basically you rolling the dice that whatever you say is the right answer, which you never wanna do as a salesman. And so whenever someone's asking a question about a detail, what I train our team to do is ask a question about their question. And so we say, "Oh, well, how many days were you looking for?" Or, "What days a week do you need it to be open?" "Because now, based on their answer, I can then hedge or frame my answer in a way that increases the likelihood that we close." And so kind of like lawyers when they're cross-examining somebody on the stand, they never ask questions they already don't know the answers to. And so you as a salesman should never answer questions you don't already know the answers to. And if someone really presses hard on something, this is where you appeal to the authority of the business rather than yourself. And so you say, hey, totally fair question. I would say it's kind of like asking the secretary at the heart surgeon's place, like, what's wrong with your heart without having seen the heart surgeon yet? Or the alternative to this is the mechanic close, which is like, hey, I totally get this is super important. I can't ethically answer your question right now because we haven't brought your car into the shop yet, right? So it'd be like you asking, you know, a mechanic, hey, what's wrong with my car before you brought it in? Like, we got to look under the hood. Before we can tell you what's going on with it. And I used to use this whether it was, hey, I can't tell you what's wrong with your diet. They'd be like, hey, well, what kind of diet are you gonna be giving me? I'd be like, honestly, it's gonna depend. And so it's gonna depend on these things. And this is where you close it. You say, and if anyone ever gives you an answer before looking at that stuff, run the other way 'cause they're just trying to sell you stuff. They're not trying to help. And so as soon as you say that, you have the moral high ground, done. You're out of the details, you're out of the weeds, and you zoom out. Right? And again, a lot of these, a lot of these all-purpose closes zoom out because people get lost in the details. They try and find something to nitpick. And every salesman's experience knows that like you die in the details. One, because it's not your expertise. Two, they get to tell you what's right. And so you want— both of those are terrible things that you want to avoid. And so this is where, hey, sometimes you have to pause to say, I'm like, hey, before we get deep, you know, deeper in this, fundamentally you want this outcome. We sell this outcome. What's getting in the way here? All right, and where we get into details, and this is the theory behind this that you should understand, is that a detail obstacle is actually a preference obstacle, meaning I want to have my cake and eat it too. I want your results, but I want them my way. You can't have that. And so one of the ways you can overcome this is— this is specific to a detail close— you say, hey, you change the variables, you change the outcome. I can tell you that if you do things our way, we'll get this outcome. And I also know from what you told me earlier, pain cycle, that you've tried a lot of other ways and what you have been doing hasn't been working for you. See, I'm lowering my tone. I'm staying really reasonable, right? It hasn't been working for you. And so like, if you're willing to give this a shot, I know that these are the numbers that we can do if you follow this process. Does that sound fair? Right? And when you say it like that, you sound very reasonable and then you can close. And so a lot of times when you get caught in the details, it's 'cause they want things their way. And they want your outcome, and you can't have both. I'd have people say, hey, uh, I see this meal plan, can I just eat what I'm eating, uh, on the challenge? I'm like, no, because I was like, because eating what you're eating is getting the body that you got. I was like, and you want this body, which doesn't come from that food. And if you're talking to a business owner, obviously, like, I have to have rapport to make that joke, um, but if it's a business owner, it's like, no, you can't keep doing what you're doing, right? You can hear my tone change. No, you can't do it, keep doing what you're doing, because doing what you do has gotten you where you've gotten. Right? You gotta change to change. Right? And so that's like, it always usually levels up. So you gotta change to change. You gotta change the variables to change the outcome. Right? So don't get lost in the details. And the first response to any DHCL question is asking why they care about the detail. And so you wanna ask specifics about the detail. So if someone would say, hey, you know, what certifications do your trainers have? I'd be like, which certifications are you looking for? And they'd be like, I don't know. It's like, right. And I'd be like, it sounds like you just wanna make sure that you're making an informed decision. What I can tell you is, Right? And so I was always— what I can tell you is, and like, it's like, it's muscle memory. What I can tell you is, is that each of my trainers are certified in 3 different ways. They're master trainers because they've done over 1,000 sessions. Because I'm guessing the reason that you're trying to ask that question is because you want to make sure that you're safe. Does that sound fair? Yes. Well, let me tell you this. We haven't had a single injury in the last 2 years. Does that make you feel better? Great. Boom. Right? And so you want to chunk up the reason behind the detail. And so if they say, hey, how many— you "how many emails can I send to your support team?" Let's say you had no emails for your support team. You'd say, "Well, one, how many questions were you looking for?" And then they're never gonna be able to answer that question. But even if they did, you'd say, "Well, it sounds like the main reason that you wanna—" Again, reason, the reason behind. "The reason that you want that is because you just wanna make sure that you fully understand things. If you fully understood things, hypothetical, if you fully understood exactly what to do, would you have questions?" "Well, no." Great. Well then, if we just make sure that you understand exactly what you'd like, you don't leave the sessions with our team without knowing exactly what you're going to do, you understand every single one of those points, then you'd feel okay. Great. Well, that's what we're going to do. Ready to rock and roll? Right? And so you never want to get in the details. You either question the detail or circumvent it by trying to guess the reason behind the detail and then chunking up and closing that way, but details are where you die. And finally, of course, you can mechanic close, or secretary close your way out of it and say, hey, I can't ethically answer that question because we gotta bring your car in and look under the hood before we can actually give you an honest answer. And it's gonna depend. So the next one is the AAA system. Now I made an entire training on this because it's so important, but I'm just gonna give you the high level on it, which is whenever someone asks you a question or they give you some sort of objection, you want to follow the AAA framework. And I realized this only years into teaching sales that this is what separated my top salespeople from my mediocre salespeople. And they did it naturally and I never caught it, which is that they first acknowledge what the person said. So the reason you do this is twofold. One is because it buys you time to think about what you're gonna say next, 'cause they say something, you repeat it back to them, it's like, "Oh, so it sounds like," right? And so you basically say the last phrase back to them. So it buys you time, and when someone hears you rephrase what they just said, It builds rapport, 'cause it looks like you're actively listening, which you should be. And so one, you keep rapport, and you give yourself a little bit of time, a little bit of breathing room, then you associate what they said with either something positive, which is like, hey, that's a smart question, or that's amazing, or totally understandable. Like those are just, I would say generic neutral associations, or you make an association with someone that you just talked to earlier that day, somebody who used the product and loved it and got amazing success, or some authority in the business who gave you insight that they don't know. So it's like, that's an amazing question. I actually just talked to our senior engineer earlier today and he actually told me this. Can I share it with you? Right? That allows you to sell a harsh truth to somebody without actually attacking their character. And so if someone says something that's way off, I'd be like, totally understand where you're coming from. I think it's a super fair question. Do you mind if I share something that I talked to someone earlier this morning about the same issue as you and it helped them get over it? Now again, I'm not now saying this to you. I'm telling you what I told them, and I just happen to be telling you. So I'm not insulting you. I'm telling you my harsher truth that I told this person, and then you can connect the dots. And so by having those associations, it creates foils for people's egos, so you can have more direct conversation indirectly. And then the last part is obviously just ask. So you acknowledge, you associate, and then you ask the next question. And that's how you move forward in the sale, because this is a law that you must understand about closing. He who asks the most times gets the most sales. This is a law. He who asks the most times gets the most sales. And the reason that this is so important is because asking, when you ask wrong, usually loses you sales. And because they don't want to talk to you anymore. And so if they get into a bad mood, they don't buy. And so how do you reconcile asking a lot of times closing the most sales with when you ask wrong, people stop wanting to talk to you, therefore you can't ask more times? What bridges this? Rapport. And so the reason this is so important is because it gives you unlimited shots on goal. You stay in the saddle. You stay in the sale rather than getting knocked off. And you can tell when someone's complete demeanor changes, they close off, you've already lost the sale, right? You lost them. You lost rapport. And so by acknowledging what they say, associating with something positive or someone positive, someone like them who got this big result, it allows you to say harsher overcomes that allow you to move the sale forward 2, 3 steps rather than just kind of like, for lack of a better term, pussyfooting around it. And so this is what allows the best salespeople to ask hard truths. Because closers ask hard questions. So in the same spirit as this, in order to keep this whole tone, I like to remind my team childlike curiosity. And the point of this is that you want to understand, not win. And so if someone doesn't immediately buy, it should be your first instinct to not be like, screw this person, I'm gonna hard close them, 'cause it probably won't work, instead being like, "Huh, that's interesting. I wouldn't have expected that. Can you tell me more about that?" Or, "Hey." So all of these things are different ways of acknowledging. And so I even taught this to our team, and you can even see with my head, when I say, "Huh," I always tilt my head up because that's how I naturally am curious. And so when someone does this, you're not like, "Oh, this guy's gonna try and be combative with me." It's like, "Huh, that's interesting." And so that, one, buys you more time, it also isn't competitive. It's not you attacking them. It's you not trying to prove them wrong, because if you prove them wrong, you make no money. So you wanna be right, not rich, the classic ism. You become rich by making them right, because they believe nothing about what you say. They believe everything about what they say. And so the reason that salespeople ask questions is we need them to say it, not us. So within that context, because closers ask hard questions and because we are curious, That means that we ask more questions. And so what a lot of people don't know is the person asking is the person closing. So there's a reason that when you're in an interrogation, they're like, I'm asking the questions here. It's 'cause the person asking the questions is the one who's in control. You're the one who's leading the sale because the questions guide the conversation, the answers do not. And so you wanna be the spirit guide who's letting your questions guide the person to the natural conclusion. And so fundamentally, sales is an education process. And so our goal is to simply figure out what pieces of information they need in order to make a decision and act on it. And so if we think about sales as teaching, because teaching is same conditions, new behavior, then we want them to now have a new behavior, which is buying, which we've motivated them to do by pointing out the deprivation they've had in their lives and presenting our solution as the thing that will bridge that gap. And so if someone asks you questions, it's like hot potato. That's why we ask a question back because we take back control. The reason the details are death is because they are asking you questions. They are in control, not you. The other reason that questions are so powerful is that no one can disagree with a question. All right? So it doesn't matter what they say. If you just ask a question about it, They can't disagree with the question, which makes you like smoke. And so this is my little ism that I like telling my team is that you want to be like smoke. Like they can't catch you. Like any statement that you give is an opportunity for them to disagree. And we want to never disagree with prospects. Now, some people might disagree with that and I don't care. And so the thing is, is you don't disagree with prospects because the likelihood that you lose rapport with the prospect is super high. You can agree with the reason behind the question. You can agree or say that it's understandable for them to have a question, but you don't want to disagree. So there's a very different saying, don't disagree, with agreeing with everything they say. Very different. You just don't want to create a competitive environment. And so questions allow you to have that gap. And so statements are bombs that they can then blow up in your face. And so if we are ever going to answer things, we check to see what answer they want and then say it. And so they say, hey, what kind of foods on the plan? I say, what kind of food you're looking for? Hey, what are your workouts like? Well, what workouts you're looking for, right? Like, and then they say, well, I was hoping you do some sort of cardio and weights. Well, that's exactly what to do. You're in luck, right? Because they just told me the answer. And so it's amazing. At the end of this, they're like, dude, this sounds exactly like what I want. I'm like, yes, because you told me what you wanted and I told you that's what it was. Now again, you want to be ethical and making sure that you're not deceiving people, but I think it's way more about how you frame the solution, right? If I say, hey, what kind of workouts you looking for? And they say, I want to do a lot of cardio. And if I know that there's no cardio in our thing, for example, I might be like, why? And they'd be like, oh, well, I heard that that's what I need to lose weight. And I'm like, what if we could help you lose weight and you wouldn't have to do cardio? Would you still want to do it? And then they'd probably be like, well, yeah. I'd be like, awesome. Well, let's focus on that because this is what I can help you do. Do you care a lot about how we get there? And a lot of times most people are like, no, as long as you get me there. And so this again loops us out. It gets you into, you want cake, you also want to eat it, let me just get you cake and then we can, I don't know what you do with cake if you're not eating it, but that's where that, and then we can throw it. There we go. All right. So even though we're, point being is that you either question questions or you ask the right answer from the person. Before answering it. And so if you think about this as a decision tree, someone asks a detailed question, you then ask a question, what's the right answer to this question? They then tell you the right answer. If you have the right answer, you say, great, that's what we have. If they, if you don't have that as the right answer, you ask why they have that. And then you chunk up to the reason behind it. And then say, if we got to that same solution either way, would you care about how we got there? Both of those, note, got you out of the details and you never answered a question you didn't already know the answer to. As we're going through these closing things, right, rather than make this an entire thing of just obstacle overcomes, I really want to tease up to the strategy behind this rather than just heavy, you know, shout lines at you. All right. And so we talk about killing zombies early. Another way of thinking about it is like you want to defuse the bomb before you get into the close. And the reason that we do zombies is because if zombies get close to you, they eat you and they bite you, right? So you want to kill them from a distance before they get close. All right. And so you handle zombies earlier on in the sale. And so if you recall from BANTT, These are typically going to be your zombies, right? Budget, authority, need, timing. Hey, is there anyone else that needs to be on the call or involved in this decision? Hey, just to be clear, the reason that we do the labeling up front, that gives us the need, right? Timing, like, are you good to start now? When would you like to start if we were to move forward, right? Budget. Some of these things you can ask in the application, you can ask them the qualifier, but when you ask them in the pain cycle, for example, and this is where you can actually collect all your gold for this is when you ask what they've done in the past, you can get an idea of what their need was, what the timing was, what the budget was. Hey, was your husband involved in that decision? Right? And so you can collect all the data you need around BANTs before getting to the close. And so if you consistently have a few things that come up in the close and blow up on you, then you want to just load those earlier in the sale before you ask for money. Because anything that you ask for after making money is when you're in the very, very tightrope area. If you're asking to overcome those things before money, there's no stakes on the table yet. I like to tell my team, literally in person, you always want to be on the same side of the table. If you're via Zoom or phone, you want to figuratively be on the same side of the table. They want to feel like you're an ally, you're going to be shoulder to shoulder, you're going to be across the corner of the table, not across the table overall. And so when you're in the beginning of the sale, you want to be a fact finder, you want to be a guide, right? If you're positioned as a helpful guide throughout this whole process, then you asking these questions are things that are gonna help you help them. If you're asking them after you've asked for money, it's a way for you to extract money from them. And so it shifts the frame when you ask these questions, and these are all answerable prior to asking for money. Another one is just a little ism, which is when in doubt, repeat it back, or when in doubt, say it back. And that's because if you're like, oh shoot, what am I gonna say? You can always just pause, be like, so you wanna know which certifications our trainers have? And they're just gonna look at you like, yes, okay, I was just thinking about the stuff that we have. Which ones are you looking for specifically? Right? And so that gives you that time to come up with whatever your answer is. So if you get into ghost mode, you can always just slowly say back what they just asked you, and you'll still stay in the sale and keep rapport rather than having a long awkward silence. So when in doubt, Say it back. All right, so the next one is, before getting real, get permission. So I would say that this depends on your frame within the sale. And so if you're seen as an authority,, then you can say, hey, can I be a coach instead of a friend here? Hey, can I put my real hat on? Hey, do you mind if I get real with you for a second before we move on? So these are all ways to gain permission before giving someone a harsh truth. Now, if you're in a sale, let's say you're a 20-year-old guy and you're closing 40-year-old business owners that are doing $20 million a year, that's probably not gonna work, right? And so that's where the other 3 foils that I brought up in the associate part of, It sounds like somebody else just like you, because now it's using the authority of somebody else like them, which is their own authority. Uh, using again, someone like you who saw success, just a different version. Or if there's an authority in the business or the product that you can lean on. So, hey, our senior engineer, oh, our founder. Those are things that as long as your founder, which presumably if they're coming to the business, you have at least, they have some authority. If they're thinking about working with you, um, then that gives you some authority that the salesman can then transfer in giving a hard truth. And so, but this, that's the common language before you're gonna say something harsh. So if you ever heard a close or read a close and be like, dude, I don't think I could say that, it's usually because you didn't AAA beforehand, right? You didn't acknowledge what they said, associate with what they said, reframe it, and then ask the question with some sort of like, can I be a coach instead of a friend here? Or would it be totally overstepping for me to share this harsh truth with you? And I say not harsh truth, so it'd be like, that thing, hey, would it be totally overstepping if I shared something with you that might be uncomfortable, right? Can I tell you what I told somebody in your exact same position, right? Now that's an example of the FOIL association rather than the first two. If I'm selling consumer weight loss, you can get away with the first two. If someone's coming to you for weight loss coaching, you could say, can I be a coach instead of a friend? It makes sense, you're starting that relationship. If you're just a salesman, stick with the FOILs that I mentioned earlier. Next one is learn to stack closes. All right, so something that you'll notice, or at least me in my career selling, is that sometimes they're like on the fence, they're on the edge, and they're like teetering. That's where you want to like right hook, jab, jab, jab. Like you want to just like, ah, and push them over. So I don't know if I subscribe to the whoever talks first after you mention money. Like money, maybe, but I can tell you I've closed plenty of sales where like I could say like, hey, it seems like you're hesitating, right? Let me like, let's close this up more. But in the vast majority, now obviously with the price drop, sometimes you do wanna wait, but the vast majority of other times when I have a big pause, I'll just insert more closes from different angles around the same obstacle. So if someone's saying, hey, for example, I don't have a lot of time right now, Then I'm gonna know, one, I'll attack on the fact that, hey, the first thing we're gonna do is cut out 90% of the stuff that's not working, 'cause that's why you're here, so that you will be spending your time doing the stuff that matters. I also know, be like, hey, at the end of the day, this is a question of priorities, not time, right? 'Cause everybody has it, and there's other people in your industry who are growing faster than you, and they have the same resources. So we just need to allocate them differently, right? And then I could go from a macro busy perspective, which is, well, I understand that you're totally busy, and I think it's really reasonable that you say that, So let me ask you a question. Do you think that you're ever going to be not busy in the future? This is a trap. They're gonna say yes. And say, cool, do you ever think you'll be busy again in the future? And now they're like, well, yeah. It's like, okay, well, if you can't succeed when you're busy, then it means that you'll fall off when you're busy again. And so if you want this to be permanent, then we have to figure out how to make it work during all seasons. Does that sound fair? Does that make sense? Got it. And so now it's like, I just had 3 different ways. And so whichever one I said first, If they're like still thinking about it, like if I just said the seasons one, I'd be like, hey, and no matter what, we're gonna cut out 90% of the stuff that you're doing right now. So we're gonna save you that time so you can start doing the stuff that matters, right? 'Cause it's gonna be priorities, not how much time you got, right? Everybody's got the same amount of time, right? Okay, cool, right? And so I just went 3 closes in a row after making the first one. And so learning how to stack closes and weave them together will make all your closing more effective. And this is why knowing the theory behind a close is more important than trying to memorize what close it is, which kind of brings me to this. The next one is, I think there's a lot of guys who say to memorize closes. I couldn't even tell you. I don't think I've really hardcore memorized any close. I know the gist of almost all of them. Word for word, not really. So, shh, don't. Don't memorize. Understand. And so let me walk you through the big understandings that you have to have. All right, so if someone comes with a time objection, they're too busy, then it's really understanding that's a prioritization thing. That's all it is. So we have to allocate the resources differently. That's all the closes that are gonna be around time are gonna be around that. A decision maker close is gonna be around you want support, not permission. All right, so they're gonna ask for permission. You're gonna try and empower the person saying, hey, We're going to rely on past behaviors this person has said. We're going to fact find to say, oh, you know what? It turns out they've done all these other things that would indicate that they're already okay with you making this decision. And so I think you want to go for support, not permission. It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Ha ha ha. Right? And so you can make those little isms, but all of those are going to circle around that main thing. If someone's saying details, it's going to be preferences. It's going to say, I want your thing my way. And so we need to overcome the fact that if they change the variables, they change the outcome. And all the closes around details are more or less gonna be around basically that fundamental line of reasoning. If someone says money, then you're gonna basically zero in on value, because nothing is ever too expensive, it's just not worth it, right? If I was giving you a Ferrari for $5,000, you would find a way to come up with the $5,000, of course, which then leads to the second underlying one, which is about resourcefulness, not resources. Because if you really thought that this was gonna be the thing that was gonna change your life, you'd find a way to make it work, right? If I were giving you the keys to my Ferrari for $5,000, you would call 10 friends and get the money together, which means fundamentally you don't see the value. And so every one of the obstacles that people will throw at you, you just need to understand the fundamental fallacy of belief that they're presenting with so that you can help overcome it. And stall overcomes, the last kind of category, stalls link back to decision avoidance. So it's typically either fear of making the wrong decision, which we reassure them that it's the right decision, and not knowing how to make a decision. So then we walk them through how to make a logical decision, what questions they should ask, and we just lead them through it. That's it. And when I go through the objections that my audience came up with, whatever I respond with, I'm not saying say word for word. I think understanding the argument behind it is what will help you close more deals. In that same vein, you really only need to have 2 to 3 closes per obstacle that you really like. All right. And so that's why I'm saying, like, you don't have to memorize them, but you would want to know the 2 or 3 that you're usually going to bring up when it comes to a time overcome or a money overcome or decision maker overcome or a stall close or an avoidance thing. Right. All of those are— you just want to have 2 to 3 that, you know, like I could give you 100. But which one you're going to use on a regular basis is going to depend on the ones that you feel most comfortable saying in your own language. In the spirit of the all-purpose closes, earlier I said, "When in doubt, say it back." Another thing is that if you ever get lost in the details or you're just like, "Where am I right now?" Lost? Question? Zoom out. All right? So this is where you say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay. I feel like we've gone all the way to Pluto." and back together. So big picture, right? And so this is how you always phrase it, like big picture or let's zoom out for a second. This is where we say, hey, best case, worst case, right? This is an all-purpose close. So it's zoom out, best case, worst case. Best case, we get you this thing. Worst case, you get 6 weeks of free service from us and you get your money back if you hate us. All right? And so again, getting best case, worst case closes, especially strong if you have any kind of guarantee. That's associated with whatever it is that you sell. Hugely valuable, mostly just because best case, worst case, close just murders. Because you can say, listen, at the end of the day, you have two options. Both are risk-free. You can not do this, go home, and that's guaranteed to get you in the exact same position you're currently at. Or you can take a shot here, also risk-free, but you've got a chance of getting what you want. So one is guaranteed to not, the other one's got a chance, both are risk-free. Which one you want, right? Best case, worst case. And so guarantees help you boil the decision down so low that it's just simple yes/no. And so, uh, whenever you're lost, zoom out. So finally, you have reinforce the decision. So you're like, wait a second, where is that coming from? So the closer framework has C-L-O-S-E-R. So everything I've talked about has been E, which is explain away their concerns. The last step of all of these is that you want to reinforce the decision. And so when you reinforce the decision, it's actually what happens after you've gotten the money. So you've explained away their concerns, they now buy, and then post-swipe, post-purchase, that's when you do the handshake. Now, I'm not saying a physical handshake. I'm saying that you pass them off, instead of a handoff, you do a handshake with customer success. So if you've ever seen, from this whole video so far, there's the through line that all information should get passed like a baton from the person to the next person in line. And so I like using this concept of BAMFAM, which is book a meeting from a meeting. And every interaction with a customer, they should know exactly when the next time they're going to be meeting and with whom. And the with whom person should know all of the conversation they've had up to that point, so they know a lot about the prospect and what the salespeople have said up to that point, so that they know the goals, the aspirations, the fears, the pains, so that when they talk to them, they can talk in those terms, and it will be unbelievably more compelling. Now, we implemented this, one of our portfolio companies, I made a case study about it. Just switching from a handoff to a handshake. Handoff is like, "Good luck," right? And they pass them to the CS team, and the CS team's like, "Oh, I'm trying to catch it," right? Rather than, John, this is Sarah. Sarah's gonna help you with your XYZ problem so that you can accomplish goal, and she's gonna walk you through what the next steps look like. You know, it's been a pleasure talking to you. She's gonna take care of you. She's cured cancer 6 times, and someone said she walked on water once. I can't confirm it, but she's amazing. Sarah gets on and says, John, we're gonna— she's— we're gonna help you take care of this thing, and the way we're gonna do that is— then lays out the proof, promise, plan, but specific and personalized to the pains and the, and the, and the aspirations of the prospect. And so we want to reinforce the decision because this video is about making more sales, and just about that is about keeping more sales. And so if you reinforce the decision, you'll get a lot fewer drop-offs, backouts, cold feet, first 30-day refunds, things like that. All right, so now let's get into FAQs from the audience. And so these are going to be real examples of real objections that you guys are getting that I'm gonna do my very best to help overcome. So the first one we got is a cheap competitor. So the good news for you is that we have one that we literally just call the cheap competitor close, so this one you can smash. So you just say, hey, if ours was the same as theirs, which one would you do? Then they're gonna say, well, I would do yours. And you're like, why? And then they'll say, well, you have this thing that seems a little better, you've got this thing, my friend referred you. You're like, right, that's why we're more. So you let them tell you all the things that make you better rather than you telling them what makes you better. And then you say, yeah. And the thing is, is usually when you say it like that, most people laugh. Like, you're like, right, and that's why we're like, and that's why we're more, right? Because we're better and you know it. That's why you're here. Also, by the way, that's usually a buying question. So that's good. It means you're pretty close to the sale. So that's called the cheap comparison close. All right, so the next one you guys had was the ID close, because I do this in person. So if you don't know what the ID close is, is that I prefer to close sales rather than asking for a form of payment when I'm in person for asking for their ID first. The reason I do that is because someone takes their wallet out and usually they put it on the table, or they take their purse out and they pull out their wallet that has all their cards in it. And so when they do that, a lot of little things can't happen after that point. They can't say they forgot their wallet, they can't say they forgot their credit card at home, because now it's right in front of me, right? And because I didn't ask for their payment I ask for their ID. And so we ask for the ID, and I also like to do this because when I get it, there's always a little bit of chitchat that happens there. So I'm like, "Oh, you should see my picture, it's terrible. Oh, so you're from, you know, blah blah blah? Oh, that's amazing. You know, I got a friend who's out there," and you're filling out. And also make sure that you fill out all the information correctly, which one of the ways that you can lose a sale is that you put the wrong payment information in, or you're tied to the wrong zip code. And you're like, "Oh, by the way," this is how you can lean into it, you're like, "The zip code that you have for this, is this the same zip code Is that the same zip that you have for the form of payment you want to use? Right? And at that point, then you say, awesome. You put it between your fingers and you gesture towards the wallet, wherever it is on the table. Say, I'll trade you for whatever one you want to use. Right? And so it's cute. It's easy. You trade like this, but it's clear. You're at line of sight. It's like, they can't say it. Now this just eliminates a lot of BS so that you don't have the, oh, I forgot my wallet. It's like, well, I didn't ask for that yet. And so if you're on Zoom, so that's what this is about. How do I do that same close? You just say, awesome, can you put your ID next to the camera? It's to make sure that we associate the right account profile with the right payment. And it's to make sure that you're you. Listen, nowadays we just try to be careful. We try to be PCI compliant. I just made that up. It doesn't matter. The point is, like, I asked you, and like, if you're really not sure, you just say, that's how we've always done it. They'll be fine with it. Don't worry about it. All right. The next one is just generic decision maker, which is I have to talk to my spouse, my dog, my grandmother, my business partner, my emotional partner. "Whatever," right? Fundamentally, they're saying that they don't have the authority to make the decision. And so first off, if you know that whatever you sell is something that will materially affect a business or household, then you want to give the opportunity for them to talk to their spouse in the setting process, right? And so either it's, you either bring both of them on the call, if you're like selling B2B or you're selling B2C. So especially like I have a friend of mine who sells really high-ticket weight loss stuff. They ask the partner to get on the phone. This is specifically women. And then they end up just closing both partners. They're like, ah, you know, you should join too. And then they sell, they make 2 sales out of it. They sell the husband and the wife because you get better results when you do together. Cool. It turns a negative into another sale opportunity. If you're in a business situation, having the business partners on the phone beforehand helps. Now, I also understand that there are times when it's like you've got one shot and this is your opportunity. So I follow a process, which is number 1, I say, what would happen if they said no? And if I'm talking to a more egotistical guy, I would say, "What happens if they don't give you permission?" Because it makes them sound like a bitch. And so by doing that, they're like, "Oh, I don't need permission." Then you're like, "Awesome, let's get you taken care of then, right? Done. Over it." Now, this is very crazy, but 1 out of 3 times when you say, "What would happen if they said no?" They're like, "I'd do it anyways." And you're like, "So what are we waiting for? Let's get started." Now, the 2 out of 3 times, they'll say something like, "Well, then I wouldn't do it." Now, Some people say, oh, now that's where the sale ends. Fuck no, we still have tons of questions left. So you say, oh, well, what do you think would be their main concern? So now all I'm doing is just shifting from, okay, you're not the decision maker. Now let's talk to this hypothetical person. They've used their partner as a foil the same way we use this hypothetical person we talked to earlier today as a foil for what they want. It works the same way, it's just in reverse. And so you say, so what's their main concern? Even though they have no idea and haven't been in the conversation. Then what they're gonna do is they're gonna tell you what their main concern is through the mouth of this hypothetical person they've made as their business partner. And then you can actually follow through the same, well, what would you think would make them say no? What do you think would make it an absolute yes for them? What would it take for us to move forward, right? And so those are trying to isolate variables, and if you can offshoot there into whatever that person says would be the issue, then you're out of the decision maker frame, and now you're closing the obstacle. Now, if they still say, they would be concerned with this or that or whatever. Then I rotate into past agreements. All right, so past agreements is like, huh, well, do you think, like, what would you think would be a good indication that they would be okay with it? Like, from the stuff that you've done already. Like, do they know that you're here? Do they know that, like, have you bought things like this in the past? Do they know that you're in pain with the situation right now? Yes? Well, if they don't approve of your current situation, why would they not approve of you solving something they already don't approve of? Right, so it's taking a, reversing a negative. And so here it's like, sometimes you'll get, they'll be like, you know what, you're right. I think that's fine. If you still can't close, then you resort to support, not permission. Right. And that's kind of like the final kind of final straw, but I try and offshoot. I really focus a lot on that, trying to break the FOIL and say, what do you think their main concern is? What would make it a no for them? Because now we're isolating issues and we can tackle them rather than getting around decision maker. But if they insist on decision maker and you insist on having to close the sale right now, Then you go to, "Hey, I think that you're asking for permission when you really should be looking for support." Right? Because at the end of the day, if we play this out, let's say your business doesn't grow, like, who are you gonna blame? Is it fair to the partnership that you don't get this outcome because you rely on this person? No. Right? 'Cause all this is gonna do is that if you continue to not get this person's permission, 5 years down the road, where are you gonna be? Right? And who are you gonna blame? Because fundamentally, if they're the one who are in charge, then they're the ones who also get all the blame, which means that you're not in any way in control of your own life. And I don't think that's fair to you. I don't think it's fair to them. I don't think it's fair to the relationship. And so that's the support, not permission angle. And so that gives you a lot of offshoots to, uh, close prior to getting to that. The decision maker is the hardest one to overcome of all closes because it's the only one that the person says, I can't make a decision. So it doesn't matter what you say, I have no authority. And so the whole point, like the reasoning behind this is you see if they actually do have authority and they're just using it as a smokescreen. That's like the 1 out of 3 right off the bat. They say, well, I would do it anyways. That's a smokescreen, done. You already closed the deal. If they're using it because they don't want to say what their real objection is, then they're using this person to tell you a hard truth because they're afraid of insulting you. Because it goes both ways. And so then you say, oh, well, what would the, you know, what do you think they would be afraid of having happen? What, like, what would make them say no? And then you can overcome that because it actually wasn't really that they don't have decision-making authority. They just didn't want to say this thing. But if they truly don't have decision-making authority, trying to then relate the fact that it's like, oh, you might not have authority, but they have already agreed with you based on their past agreements. And so if you think about each of these as arguments, number one is you actually have authority and don't care. Two is you were afraid to tell me and have authority. The third is you don't have authority, but they already have agreed based on what they've already done. And then the fourth is basically trying to get them to take authority of their own lives by asking for support, not permission. So that's the reasoning behind kind of that 4-step close that has offshoots all the way through. But if someone's like, I absolutely need must. That's why we try to, no matter what, if we know that this is a common thing or it's an expensive— you know, if you're trying to sell houses, you're not going to like close the spouse and buying the house without the other spouse. It's not going to happen, right? And so if you know that both people are going to be required for whatever it is that you sell, just involve them in the process earlier. So let's say someone says, hey, everything sounds amazing, uh, give me some time. So it's actually— there's like, there's a false truth in there that's embedded. Which is it's actually not good enough. Here's why. So if someone says, hey, you know, this sounds amazing, let me circle back in a couple quarters, you say, awesome. So what are you gonna be doing instead? And so then they're gonna say X, Y, and Z. And then you're like, okay, um, zooming out. And hey, if you don't— this is just a question I asked somebody earlier today and they, it was, they said it was enlightening. So you mind if I share it with you? Right? Because I'm already getting into hard territory here. Right? So, um, at that point I'd say, do you think that doing what this is is gonna get you better returns than what we're talking about, right? Because again, time is priorities. So all, like fundamentally, like I said earlier, like you have to understand the theory behind this. They're saying, I have other things that are more important. And so we have to say, no, this is more important, which means we have to elevate the value of what we're currently doing or devalue what they're currently doing. So fundamentally, that's how we're attacking this. So it's like, what are you going to do instead? Got it. Do you think it'll make you more than this? And if they say yes, Then you'd say, why? If they say no, then it's like, oh, then you should prioritize this. Let's get rolling. Right? And so each of these, you'll note, there's offshoots. Like if they say yes, then it's done. You've already closed it, right? If they say, no, I think this other thing would make me more money. And the thing is, is if they're right, then they should do that. And so a big part of being an ethical salesman is that the moment that you feel like a prospect is better served not doing something, you should stop. But this is why you want to sell stuff that works better, right? But if you do have something that you know will make them more money, then all you have to do is break down how it's going to make them more money and then cover cost of inaction. So that would be, okay, so let's put math to it. And that's how I'd say, like, let's put some math, let's put some numbers down. So if we improve your conversion rate, you know, by 30%, that would increase revenue by 30%, but you have, you know, gross margins of 90, and so, and your current net margins are 30. And so if we do that, we'll actually double the profit of the business. So the things that you're working on right now, are those doubling the profit of the business? And over what time period? Over 2 quarters? Well, if we could double the profit of the business, would that allow you to make those things happen even faster? Okay, I'm just asking so I can understand, right? And so again, when you're getting into those situations, it's always the seek to understand frame. That's where we're coming from. And so if you have elevated yourself to a helpful guide, then it shouldn't feel combative. It's like, totally get it. Just so I'm clear, you're saying that because the stuff that you're gonna do is make you more money than what we're talking about. And if they're like, no, then it's like, oh, then why are you prioritizing it? Right? And the thing is, a lot of times whenever someone gives you an answer, you can always ask why, 'cause then you can go chunk up to reason, And then basically say, oh, my thing actually solves that reason even better. So, I'm really busy right now is different from the give me some time. And it sounds similar, but they're actually different objections, right? Which is, I don't have time, I'm busy right now, whatever. All right, so this one is give me some time to make the decision, and like, let me decide in a week. That's when you go, that's avoidance, that's decision avoidance. If someone says, I don't have time, and I could do this later, that's the I'm busy, which means that we're, we're talking about priorities. What else are you doing that's more important than this? So let's say that you don't have a guarantee, which is fine. I don't have a guarantee around most of the things that I sell. All right. Um, the anti-guarantee is how I like to sell around guarantee, which is, oh, if you're the type of person who needs a guarantee, then this is definitely not for you. Because at the end of the day, we can control what we can control. We can't control what you do. So do you think it'd be fair for us to guarantee work that I have no input in doing. And so it really just comes down to basically the more control you have, the more you can offer a guarantee. The less control you have, the less you can offer a guarantee if you choose not to offer them. And so you want to basically do a takeaway sale on the guarantee, being like, oh, this is really for people who are serious about doing it. Are you serious about doing it? Okay, cool. I can't control— I can't eat the food for you. I can't work out for you. I can give you the guide and I can tell you that hundreds of other people have succeeded, but I can't do it for you myself. It's one of the few things that I can't do, right? Does that sound reasonable? Right? And that's where like reasonable is what we're going with. Does that sound fair? Does that make sense? Around an anti-guarantee for not having a guarantee if they say you don't have one. Alright, so the next one that came from the audience was, hey, let me watch some of your free stuff, or let me go through your lead magnet, right? So like if you've got some sort of resources that you put out there and then they get on the sales call and say, oh, well, you know what, this sales call was super helpful. I think I'm just gonna, you know, do the stuff that you said on the sales call. What you do is you agree with them and say, oh, absolutely, you should do that. And do that before you come out or before you start our program or before you whatever, before we start and kick you off. So you just say you should totally do that because if you do that successfully, then one of two things is going to happen. Either you're going to succeed, in which case you're going to run into another problem that I can help you solve, or you're not going to succeed, in which case I can help you solve to begin with. But either way, you should get started. So let's get you moving. And so again, we have to take it from, I want to do this thing. We agree with them. We're not disagreeing. You should totally do that stuff because it will make you money. And one of two things are going to happen. You're going to succeed, in which case you're going to run into another issue, which we can help you solve. Or you're not going to succeed, in which case we can help you solve that. Either way results in you doing it, so let's get started. If you sell to the government or you have very large enterprises that require 6-12 month sales cycles and you need multiple stakeholders to buy in, much of the stuff that I covered here is not going to apply. And that's because these are transactional, these are basically These fundamentally, all of these force a prospect to make a decision. Now, in a big Fortune 100 or a government sale, things like that, oftentimes no one has the ability to make a decision and it's a decision by committee. And so you basically need to continue to stay in the pocket, and in most enterprise sales, the amount of people that the customer talks to in your organization increases the likelihood of closing and a smooth transition. If they talk to 2 or 3 people on your team and you talk to 2 or 3 people on their team, it's like— I'll give you a visual. So, if it's you and 1 person, this bond, easily broken. But if it's you and 3 people on their team and 2 people on yours, then you have— whatever, I could draw all these connections, but you get the point. There you go. So there's way more ties and this is much harder to break. And so with enterprise sales, it looks more like this than it does like this. So hopefully you feel like I helped you guys overcome some of the obstacles that you brought up. Otherwise we could be here all day. Now that we figured out closing, we just got to make sure that our headspace is right and that we continue to do the right things over and over again. So wrap up with mindset. Now I hate the term mindset overall because I'm like, what does that even mean? And so what I'm going to try and do is reframe some sayings that I have into behaviors that they apply to. All right, so sales mindset number 1, the person who cares the most about the prospect wins the sale. And so if they care more about themselves than you care about them, they will win. And so in terms of what does this change about your behavior, the idea is that if you truly care about them, you will usually not lose rapport in the sale because you will always seek to understand. And so then you will always Your tone will change, your conviction will change, because fundamentally it says keep the human first. If this is no longer a good idea for them, you should not sell them. You should tell them, I think it's a good idea for you not to do this. And I promise you, there's nothing more powerful than learning to turn away prospects, which will increase your overall closing percentage, because you will know that you are in this to help people make decisions to help themselves. And so if you try to close everybody, it will start to wear on you over time because you'll know that you're a piece of shit, all right? And so either you become a sociopath or your sales will go down. So instead, make sure you qualify prospects, never lie, and if you keep the person at the center of the sale, then when someone says, "Ah, I gotta think about it," you're like, "Sarah, I'm trying to figure out how to make this work for you because I know this is going to help you, and I want to help you make this decision because I, I just genuinely believe that. So what are you most afraid of right now? Like, what are you afraid of having happen, right? And then you get to the heart of it. And the thing is, is if you keep that rapport, you will close more sales because they will feel that you do care. So the next one comes from my team. So this is one that I repeat over and over and over again. So this is banged into their skulls. Volume negates luck, right? And so the big thing with sales is that it is a numbers game. It's like dating. You just have to know what the pipeline is. And the guys who become the best salespeople are the ones who do the most volume. And so there's this relationship between volume and skill. The more you do, the better you get. The better you get, the more you do. And so the idea is that you want to, in the beginning, force-feed yourself through tons and tons of volume so that you can get through the terrible period as fast as possible. Because a master in any domain has more ways to reward themselves. If you're a master editor, then when you look at a video, there's 100 things that you can do that you know how to do, that you enjoy doing, that you've been rewarded in the past for doing. If you're a salesman who's a master salesman, you like pulling a sale out of the depths. You love overcoming the details. You enjoy being in the red zone and kind of navigating those conversations because it's a fun challenge for you. When you're a beginner, you're freaked out and you're paranoid and you don't know what you're doing. And so the idea is to follow what Kobe Bryant did. So if everybody else is working out once a day, if I work out 3 times a day, I'm gonna get better that much faster. And so my recommendation is find the person on your team who's the best closer and do double the effort that they're doing. And if you're like, dude, that's barely even possible, great, welcome to getting better, right? And the thing is, is that I'll draw this visual that we introduce a lot of our sales team with which is this is what your skill is gonna look like over time. So this might take, you know, 2 to 3 months, and this might take, you know, a year, and this might take, you know, 2 to 3 years for your skill. So this is my skill, here we go. But what people don't understand is that this is your income. And so in the beginning, you just learn not to suck, which is fantastic and very important to suck less. But eventually you'll suck so little that you'll actually be very good. And all of the best returns in life come at the very end of mastery. And so people give up in this period of time, but they miss out this much where all of the gains are going to happen because they quit early. And so you have to approach sales as a skill And if you hate it, just understand it's not that you hate it because you somehow have some natural distaste for sales. You just aren't skilled enough. Because I promise the best salespeople love selling. The best editors love editing. The best writers love writing. And when the best editors started editing, they sucked at editing. And the best salespeople started sales, they sucked at sales. I didn't close my first sale. All right. I'm just saying, like, but I had enough reward cycles and I forced enough volume down my throat that I started liking it. And then once you like it, that reward cycle takes over. All right. The next one is sales resumes don't matter. And I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to explain what I mean by this. So I have had two times in my career where our sales teams were not growing at the rate that they needed to, to support the amount of demand that was coming in. And that was very frustrating for me. And once I dove in, I'd wrote a chapter about this in my Leads book. On the employees chapter. Once I dove in, I found out that in both situations, they were screening heavily the salespeople's resume to qualify them to get interviewed. And that is typically, in my opinion, a mistake. Because especially in a transactional selling environment, so if you're thinking setting or 1-to-2 call closing, so very short sales cycles, you're going to immediately look for other skills outside of what their past experience is that you can tell very quickly on a call. And so I am more pro group interviews. And so you can just invite everyone onto the call and quickly do 1 to 2 minute interviews with everyone who hops on because the star salespeople will, in that environment where they need to speak up, be more assertive, be more social, 1, they'll speak up, 2, they'll be clear communicators, 3, the really good ones will also encourage other people who are nervous. So that's just something that we've noticed. They're gonna be more team players, at least the type of salespeople that we wanna attract. And so group interviews instead of resume screening as one of the easiest ways to scale a sales team that we've found. Now, one of the things that people don't understand about this is the understanding between attitude and aptitude, all right? So you've probably heard the like, hire for attitude, Uh, not for aptitude. All right, so that is true, sort of. And so let me explain. So fundamentally, the real truth is you should always hire for the lowest skill deficiency. So it's just, what are the deficient skills? What is the cost of training these skills? I want to hire people who have the lowest deficiency, which means that I have the fastest ramp-up or the highest return on investment for them becoming proficient in the business. That's fundamentally what all hiring is in general, not just sales. And so the thing is, is that we have these bundled terms like kind, hardworking, right, charismatic, whatever, right? But the thing is, is that these are bundled terms that actually have many skills underneath of them. And so when we say hire for attitude, it really means, you know, there's probably 20 different examples of what kindness looks like within the setting of a workplace. And if someone has zero of them, that's 20 skills I have to teach them. Whereas if they only need to learn how to call leads and work leads and say a script, that might only be 2 to 3 weeks of training. But training someone to be kind certainly takes longer than 2 to 3 weeks. Now, where this flips is that there is some point in the future where if you have a very niche expertise that's very, very hard to find, it might be easier to teach you to be kind than to teach you how to code like a level 10 expert, or to be a transactional CFO that's done, you know, 50 transactions before for your type of industry. There might not be that many people who've done that. And so it might be easier to teach them how to behave within your culture than it is to teach them that skill set. And so this is more true the lower level the role that you're hiring for, and less true as you get higher. But the fundamental universal truth is that you always hire for the small skill deficiency. So the next is that compensation attracts great salespeople, but it does not retain them or get them to behave the way you want to. So compensation equals recruiting. Compensation, in my experience, does not equal performance. And I'm— now you might be like, of course it does. I'm just telling you, uh, in my experience, I have never had a compensation change really change the behavior of the team except for one thing, uh, which I will share with you. If you compensate them off of cash collected, you will in general get more cash collected, but everything else in terms of like, we're going to pay this for that, this for that. Most of the times the reward cycle is so delayed. They're just going to still just try as hard as they can to sell. And so the things that change behavior are typically much faster and lower intensity, meaning you are addicted to your phone not because it pays you, but because it has a very fast feedback loop. And so the reason that in general sales in Slack are overrepresented from sales that actually get processed is because people get rewarded for saying, "I closed the deal," in Slack. And so they say they close deals more times than they do. And so you, by the way, pro tip on that is just create a Zap between your CRM and a process sale that's been submitted and make that the thing that goes into Slack that they get kudos on. Just a side little tipsy there for you. But it's been my experience that you absolutely get better closers with higher comp, but, and when I say better closers, I mean people who have smaller skill deficiencies that you need to train, but Then after that, trying to redo compensation over and over again, it's very rare in my experience that it has changed the behavior of the team in a way that training and fast feedback loops can't do better. The next is that sales and marketing are one continuum. All right. So people see them as different departments. And for me, I've actually profited a lot by putting them under one roof. So I always have our meetings as basically revenue generation. And you can have a chief revenue officer who really oversees acquisition overall. And since I've done this, and I've done this for years, there's basically been no conflict between sales and marketing. They're working together to close as many deals as possible. So if you ever have conflict where like sales is like, marketing, they're not giving us enough leads or the leads are shit. And then marketing's telling sales like, why don't you close anything? Like you should be closing. Right? Like it's because they're sitting on opposite sides of the table, but when they're collaborating under the same roof, especially if there's one leader ahead of it, all of that disappears.
