Transcription
[Music] Did that show up for you? I like that; that was cool. Thank you, very cool. You can thank AI for that because I am definitely not that tech-savvy.
What's up, Facebook? Zack Brown, Josh Lions here, here to talk about high-ticket sales. Don't have an agenda. I thought we had to just rip everybody. We, we are, we are; we got a huge list ready to go, so buckle up, boys and girls. No, for real, it's, it's good to, uh, good to hop on and chat with you.
So, for those of you that don't like that, don't know who Josh is, like, just give a quick rundown for anybody who's just passing by, uh, for what you do, who you serve. So, aside from being the best salesperson, I'm also the best sales trainer. So there you go. Hey, you heard it here. My, my, my story is pretty interesting. I went from zero dollars, no background in sales, no previous sales experience. Like some people had other types of sales experience before they then got into high-ticket, I had none of that. I was working four jobs; I was a nighttime security guard, I was a takeaway delivery boy, I was working in an office, and I was laboring on a building site across the week. So I had four jobs, and I was making $1,500 a month total, and I got into high-ticket sales, and within 18 months, I was making $100,000 a month in commission. So that's kind of the first thing that people hear about is I made a lot more money than most people in high-ticket sales, and I did it very quickly. So usually they ask, "How the hell did you do that?" Second thing is, from that experience, I then went on to train some of the top sales teams in the industry. So I've trained Gym Launch, which was Alex or Mo's old company; I've trained reps at Seventh Level; I've trained reps at Sales Sniper; and in now I run my own Mastermind with my mentor, and we train salespeople to be the best in the industry.
Love it, love it. Speaking of the industry, I wanted to kick us off with a question I was thinking about earlier. Here we go. Yeah, what, what do you see is something that's super common with maybe within the space at large or even with sales training, a lot of sales guys that are out there that is just completely ass-backwards? Like it's super popular, but it makes zero sense, and it's actually doing more harm than good. Is there anything that pops out or like a theme that you're seeing that you're having to, like, untrain guys on when they come in, um, to Unicorn?
Yeah, memorized lines, memorized orders of questions, memorized entire sales process; it starts here, it ends here; this is the order. It's like, I don't know, I, I admire the marketing, um, firepower that has clearly been used to indoctrinate people that conversations go like that, but as far as life experience goes, I've never seen a conversation where you pre-plan every single line of the conversation, and yet that seems to be what has now been brainwashed into salespeople, which is really unfortunate. Because the biggest challenge with un-brainwashing people with that is the salespeople that are like, "Well, I'm closing deals, so it, it can't be that bad." It's like, yeah, but you're a, you're an order-taker, so like you're closing deals because you're on a decent offer or offer that's not terrible, and you're going to get, for every 10 prospects that turn up to your calendar, you're going to get three or four that were going to buy anyway, so you didn't do anything; they were just going to buy, and you were just the middleman that processes their Visa. So it's, it's that challenge of then saying, "Well, just because you've made 7K this month or 10K, that is not," it's called an illogical fallacy; that doesn't mean that what you're doing is actually the right way to do it, right? And so trying to un-brainwash people with that is a fun experience that I go through on a regular basis.
Yeah, so with, what's your, if it's not that, what's your thesis? How do you build sort of like the, the structure of how to approach a sales call or just how to approach the sales philosophy in, in general? So I think there's two things. I think you have certain things that you need to get clear on in a conversation. I'll give you a very simple one: What is the problem? Why, why is it happening? Why is that having an impact on the person? So those are like kind of signposts that you need to have a conversation around. How you get there, I believe, is just listening to the prospect, listening to what they're saying, and asking a question that allows you to direct the conversation either towards one of those signposts so you can now explore it or deeper down into one of those points once you're already there. So I've always been taught that the question that comes out of your mouth is based on what the prospect just said. Yeah, it's not based on, "Oh, hang on, let me grab my piece of paper here. Oh, next question, question 3B is, uh, so, um, what impact is that having on you personally?" There it is, there it is. Yeah, so you would argue that no two calls are the same, and that because they're not, because everybody's different, everybody's unique, you should approach the sales calls the same way.
100%, just like a doctor. A doctor might have 10, 20, 30 patients that all ended up with the same, uh, diagnosis in the end, but how did they get to that diagnosis was going to be completely different based on the person that walks into the room, right? You might, you might have 20 people that have lung cancer, but the doctor didn't go through the exact same sequence of things to get there. He started asking questions, and based on what the patient was saying, then explore different things, and, "Okay, has anybody else in your family had this? Okay, what happened to them? You know, how long ago did you start having these symptoms?" Whatever, and it's, it's about learning what's called first principles. I'm sure you've heard that term before. Like, first principles is how to ask questions, how to read people, how to understand psychology, how to understand sociology. You know, you start figuring out buyer avatars, general mental models of the world. I've got, it's under my laptop actually; I've got, uh, Poor Charlie's Almanac, which is the book about Charlie Munger's mental models, and I think Sales Done Right is more about having a repertoire of mental models, not some pre-planned scripted questions.
Yeah, what, what, what are you seeing in the industry that strikes you as interesting? Well, a lot of that, one, one more follow-up question on that, Bo, before we move off of it, is there anything that you act, that you do or that you teach guys to do religiously at all on every single call? Like, is there anything that, that fits into, like, "You always do this, no matter what, on every call," kind of like the, the scripted framework, but, but not?
Yeah, so great question. Just like when you're building a house, there's going to be all sorts of different styles of housing, all sorts of different furnishings on the outside and the inside, but every house is going to have a foundation, walls, and a roof and windows. So yes, this core principles. So like, for a sales call, I train what's called the four core pillars, which is the intro and the framing; you've got the transition; you've got the temperature check. And so that was the first two: your intro, framing, transition, and temperature check. Of those four, they're the same on every call, but what happens in between that is completely different every call. You should open with, "Hey, Zach, how you doing?" "Excellent, yourself?" "Yeah, doing great, ready to crack in." "Yep, awesome." That's going to be the same on every single call. Now, I say that, and there is a caveat: When you learn to sell without a script, you're then more equipped for when things go awry in your four pillars. Like I was doing a training last night with my group, and we're in the opening, asking the prospect, you know, "How are you doing?" The prospect's looking over here, like, doing something over here. And if somebody's only been trained on a script, they're like, "What do I do?" Like, yeah, "Where does it say on the script what to do if the prospect's not looking at me?" Whereas if you've been trained to actually be a human being and have a real conversation, you'd say, "Hey, you okay?" Seems logical, pretty obvious, isn't it, right? It, that's another thing that I, I talk, I say all the time when I'm talking with the students in the Mastermind is, "Guys, what would you do in this situation if it wasn't a sales call?" And they're like, "Oh, I'd probably ask my friend, 'Are you okay? Like, are you distracted? Is, is there something going on?'" I'm like, "So why don't you just try that in a sales call?" They're like, "Can we do that?" Like, "We can just do what we would normally do." I'm like, "Yes, Sherlock Holmes! Like, try that. You know, elementary, my dear Watson," right? It's so crazy, and like I don't know if it's because sales has become this mass market, you know, info product where it's like, surely it's completely different to conversation, like, because I'm going to pay for a course on it, so it must be some different thing. It's like, it's, it's an advanced form of communication, like anything; you get better at it, but it's still just real life and being human.
Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. Like, it, it's almost like we agreed on something, right? Yeah, yeah. Whoa, dear diary, um, yeah, it's like people, I think a lot of, at least from what I'm seeing with sales training at large, is they're teaching you like, like that there's one right way to do it, and I think that's what people, it's tripping people up. It's like, okay, there's a formula here; I need to figure out exactly what to say, how to say it, the way that the person who's teaching me is saying it. And when I first started selling, that's what I was doing; I was like literally trying to mimic to the tee this guy's mannerisms, his personality, his cadence, everything about how he sold, and I was absolute garbage, complete garbage. And, um, it wasn't until after I was like, "You know what? Let me just toss this thing in the trash and just talk to people, um, the way that I want to talk to them. And if they don't like it, oh well, they're probably not a good fit anyway," um, and that's when everything, not that I'm a sales pro, like I would never, I'm not anywhere the caliber of you and or most of the people that I recruit for, but, um, you know, I can hold my own, and, uh, but it didn't get to that point until I just, actually, what you said, just started having, having conversations with people. Like, "I know you have a need; we're here because you have a need; let's figure it out. If it makes sense to do it, and if it does, cool, let's pull the trigger." I mean, I just think that, I, I saw somebody the other day post that a lot of sales guys are over-coached, and I think that makes a lot of sense, um, and, uh, it just seems like too many people are, are, um, just, I think, scared of doing it wrong, when in reality it's like, like you said, just go talk to people, like you're going to talk to some of your friends because you're, you help your friend solve a problem; why can't you just translate that into over here? And again, I think it's like this, like a step, like a one, two, three step process that these sales trainers have turned this, you know, what should be just a very natural thing, um, into this like just weird, I don't know, weird, weird process that doesn't need to be there.
I agree. I, I did a video on YouTube, one of my first YouTube foray, I'm getting into that now, on selling without a script, and the analogy that I use is it's like if you go to learn a musical instrument, or it could be singing, and the only thing you're getting taught by your teacher is to do cover songs, it's like, at some point, if you want to be a musician and you want to actually call yourself an artist, you're going to have to learn the fundamentals of creating your own music. Now, the counterargument to that is, "But it's easier to do cover songs." It's like, it's easier if all you're intending to do is be a karaoke star, but it's definitely a lot harder to be a musician, an artist that only has cover songs in your arsenal. And so like it depends what the goal is. Like, if your goal is to be someone that can actually have really powerful conversations and change people's lives, have an impact on the world, and get paid based on the level of impact that you have, you're going to have to learn to have an authentic conversation. If all you want to do is get paid to be an order processor, I think a script's probably easier; sure, just get a script, take your 25% rape, and be done with it. But I used to get so frustrated, not that I ever learned to use a script in the beginning, but I used to get so frustrated when I didn't close someone; I was like, "I needed to help that person; I, I didn't know how to move the conversation in a way to actually serve them," that I became addicted to wanting to master this ability to help people, whereas when people come at it from the, uh, perspective of, "I just want to get good at reading my script," it's like Zig Ziggler had a quote which was like, "You can have whatever you want in life if you can help enough people get what they want." So if you're not focused on having more impact, you're going to hit a ceiling on your income just because you're coming at things from the wrong perspective.
Yeah, I agree; that makes sense; that makes sense. Um, well, what, what else you seen in the industry that, that you think is doing is like a net negative or doing more harm than good? Anything been mulling around your brain recently?
I think follow-ups a load of, okay, all right, I'm, I'm curious to hear, hear, hear your, your thoughts on that. So I, I think let's first define follow-up, because words are important. So follow-up, to me, in the industry lingo, is, "I'm going to send the prospect a text message or a phone call or a voicemail sometime after the original sales call." That, to me, is follow-up; you're sending them something to re-engage. I think that's horseshit, because your job on a sales call is to either force the sale or to push away the sale. In other words, you need to make the decision as a salesperson if you get to a point in the call where you're realizing, with the prospect's assistance, "We're not aligned right now; like, this is not a fit," then why the hell are you going to do follow-up? You tell them, "Hey, based on where you're at right now, I can't help you, and I can't see a way that you're going to be successful; the reason for that is A, B, and C. Now, if those things change in the future, we can definitely have a discussion about it, and you're welcome to reach back out." In other words, you reach back out to me when you step into alignment on what is going to allow you to be successful or what is going to be a fit for this program. The alternative, swinging the pendulum the other direction, is you get to the end of the call, you know it's the right thing for the prospect; they know it's the right thing, but all of your objections or fears or whatever get in the way. You have an ethical and a moral duty as the salesperson to push through that until the person either tells you to off or they close. Getting to the end of the call, knowing it's a fit for the prospect, and they say, "Oh, you know, can we, can we reschedule for two days or three days or five days or get back to me," it's like, how's that helping anybody? You have to be able to lead the person over the finish line. So follow-up, to me, is I leave every conversation where I've either closed the person or I've told them what they need to do to be successful, and that might be, "Go and do A, B, and C, and then come back to me," or it might be, "Go and do something else that's nothing connected to this service or this industry." For example, if I was on a call selling e-com, so nine-to-five us to build an e-com store, and we go through the discovery, and I realized that based on their goals an e-com store is not the answer, it's probably the wrong thing for them, I'll just tell them, "Hey, I think you should go do cryptocurrency, or I think you should go do real estate. Based on your goals, you want passive income; you want to have long-term legacy; I think a real estate portfolio is probably better for you than an e-com store," and I just pushed them away; I'm not going to follow up with them for the next days or weeks or months. And the reason that this has become such a thing is because it's pushed from the sales managers or the trainers of large sales organizations that do done-for-you sales, because half of their reps are so, they have to get the extra one or two sales out of every 20 because their reps are so dog; they can't actually close on the phone. If you're actually good at what you do, there's no way, shape, or form that you need to be chasing back up with the prospect. You should be such a good leader that if there is a second call or a third call, it's the prospect texts you and says, "Hey, Josh, I'm ready to go." "Brilliant, brother. Do you have any questions?" "Oh, yeah, I've got, you know, one quick question. I'll probably just answer it by text, but if not, I'll hop on a call, finish the questions, finalize the deal, and get them onboarded." There's no me in my CRM, "Oh, I need a couple of extra deals this week; let me try and send out some text messages to people that didn't actually want to buy." Like, what, where's that come from? And, and I just think it's because reps are trained to be so bad that they have this, like, little glimmer of hope, like, "Well, maybe I can close them in follow-up." So maybe you should close them on the call.
Okay, so are you, are you saying that there's, there's no, it's either a yes or a no? It's either this, you're a good fit for this, or, and you're, you're not a good fit for this. Is there any circumstance under which you think a follow-up is warranted by the sales rep, or are you placing all the burden of follow-up on the prospect to reach back out? Always on the prospect? Why, why would I, as the salesperson, need to do, do you have an example of a time when the salesperson would need to do the follow-up?
Well, so, and again, because you're, you're rightly saying this is super common, so, uh, what about if, like, it is the right fit, you guys both agree, and let's say they literally don't have the money or they've got a credit card coming in next week that they want to use? Would you say, "You know what? When that comes in, reach back out, and we'll make it happen," or are you saying, "Hey, let's schedule a follow-up date?" So, aside, aside from the credit card coming in, are you 100% ready to do this, Zach? Yeah, so nothing else but the credit card, right? What funds do you have available right now that we can get you started in the program? We'll finish the transaction when the credit card comes in. Okay, so you're taking a partial, if nothing, 100%? Yeah. And even if, if they turn around and say, "I don't have any money," I'll say, "Okay, so literally nothing. When your credit card comes in, if this is still something you're committed to, message me, and I'll send you a link." Why am I hopping on another call or chasing up with them? It's like chasing up with them for what? Like, and, and the reason that that has to happen is because the salespeople haven't actually done such a good job of getting the prospect into pain, getting the prospect into ownership, getting the prospect committed to this next action in their life to a level where, because the objection, the salespeople would be listening to it, saying, "Well, they might forget about it, so it can't be that important." Then if a week later they forget about, you know, "What? I hate my nine-to-five, and I wanted to build an e-com store to not have to do my nine-to-five," two weeks go by, and they forgot about it. Well, if they forgot about it, then you didn't do a very good job of a salesperson of helping them realize how their life is working for the man, having a nine-to-five, not being able to do the things they want in their life, and that it's entirely their choice. So that two weeks can go by, and they're still thinking about it; they're like, "Where's, when's the credit card coming? When's the credit card coming?" As soon as it's here, I'm gonna, gonna message Josh, and we're going to get rocking and rolling. You should have been able to do that as a salesperson, that if two months go by, for whatever reason, they're still waiting for whatever the missing piece was that prevented them from enrolling on the spot, I, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be doing that as the salesperson.
Yeah, well, you obviously train a ton of guys, and they're selling on a variety of offers in the space. Do you get feedback from like sales managers or founders from the guys that you're training; they're selling on their offers? And if so, what is that like? Because you're obviously doing, you know, teaching something that's, I would say, more countercultural than not. Like, do you get a lot, your guys who are trying to implement what you're teaching them with the follow-up strategies, strategy specifically, do they get a lot of kickback from, from guys when they're like, "I'm not gonna follow up with that guy; he can follow up with me if he wants to."
A business owner, rightly so, should only be looking at the numbers, and my guys end up breaking the records for their companies. So if your sales guy is doing more than the person, number two person, number three, I don't think a business owner is going to be looking in and going, "Well, why don't you follow up with this person?" Because ultimately, and this is part of the game of sales, you should get really good at sales so you can accomplish what you personally want in your life as a salesperson. And if you don't want to be doing follow-up, then get so good at sales that you can turn around to the business owner with respect, not with arrogance, and say, "I'm not following up on these people; I know that I did everything on the call, and they're, they're not going to buy." And if you have that conviction in your sales skills and your closing ability, like my mentor was also my boss when I first started, he never messaged me and was like, "Are you going to follow up with these people that didn't close?" He knew, and he was listening to my calls; I did everything that I could do on the call, and if they didn't close, they weren't going to close, right? There was nothing that I wasn't doing that a follow-up message was going to fix it. Now, sure, I had calls that I didn't close, and I didn't close it because I messed something up that the follow-up text message isn't going to fix it; I screwed up making the person take ownership. Got it. So when you do have a call that doesn't go the way you want it to, or you've got guys that you train on, um, on this ideology, what do you, what do you recommend? Like, if they've totally screwed a call up, do you, would you recommend them trying to save it or you just cut, cut the losses and move on to the next one once the call's finished? Or you mean, yeah, yeah, like if you get off the call, like, is in, like, would you ever, uh, encourage or train some of any of your guys to do follow-up at that point? Or if it's like, "Hey, if you botched the call, like, it's done; don't even try to, try to save it," that down the road at all?
I've, I've, this is me; this is not my, the salespeople I train, but I've personally recontacted prospects in the past that I know I messed up the call, but only when I messed up the call 'cause I was in a bad mood, and I brought that to the call, and I feel like I did wrong to the prospect. So I have probably three times in my life messaged the prospect and said, "Hey, John, um, I feel like I didn't really do a good job of taking the time to understand you, and blah, blah, blah, um, it did sound like this is important to you, but I don't feel like I gave you the opportunity for us to figure this out, um, I'm, I'm checking myself on this; do you want to talk about this again in a week?" And I've done that a few times, and probably two, two out of three of those times they said yes, but I wouldn't be messaging a prospect from the frame of, "I turned up with the right energy, but my skills weren't good enough," because, got it, what are your skills all of a sudden going to be better, like, 24 hours later, that you now know how to move the prospect into a place where they take action? Some people might tell you it's possible, potentially, and, and buy their course. What's that, if you buy their course? Oh, yeah, well, yeah, the two-for-one, trick wonder course. Yeah, yeah, I derailed you; please continue.
Yeah, I, I, I think if you listen back to a call and you know, I, I wasn't challenging the prospect, I wasn't doing what I needed to, I don't think that prospect is going to buy from you if you had another call. Like, you've lost frame; you've lost trust; you've lost the, the belief in the prospect that you can actually help them. Now, sure, let's just say you do your one-trick wonder course, and 24 hours later your skills are all of a sudden better in the prospect's mind; they still have the memory of you not serving them on the first call. Kind of like it's a bit of an exaggerated example, but like if you have a relationship and your girl cheats on you, and then after she's like, "Hey, can we get back together? This time I'm not going to cheat on you," it's like, yeah, you might be a better person now, but that's done; like, it's too late, you know.
Yeah, yeah. Huh, got it; interesting. Very, and I also think everything, everything is opportunity cost, right? Like, okay, you, you imagine you take 20 calls in a week, and 50% of them you didn't close because your skills aren't good enough. You could spend an extra 10 hours calling them again and having a second call. How much have you improved if you're spending those 10 hours doing a second call with the calls that you didn't close versus taking that 10 hours and going and doing 10 hours of getting better? It's kind of like there's a, there's a saying by, I think it's Abraham Lincoln, and he says like, "If I had 10 hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first five hours sharpening the axe," right? And it's like, so you've, you've got an axe; you're trying to chop down a tree; you're not getting anywhere, so you take a break, and you come back and pick up the axe and start chopping again. It's like, yeah, what are you doing? Like, you, you need to do something different than chopping, which is sharpening the axe. And I think in one of the big skills for business owners, closers, is to be able to zoom in and zoom out, and like zooming out is, "Okay, I'm not closing these people; I need to go and get mentorship and go and get training," as opposed to, "Let me stay zoomed in and do more follow-up with the people that I'm not closing." So yeah, that's, that's probably not the root cause that's going to solve the problem; you just need to get better at sales, and there's only one of you, and there's only so many hours a day, right? Or do more tonality, advanced tonality, excuse me, training. Yeah, rubbing your chin like Russ Papers, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Oh, man, I can make fun of that all day.
Um, so you mentioned earlier that there was some, that prospects, there's always going to be some in the bunch that are going to close regardless. So how does, how does that work with your ideal, your ideology of like, "We're going to either force the sale one way or another, either yes sale or no sale," and like how does that work with marketing? Like, do you teach your guys how to work with the marketing department or like how to analyze the leads when they're coming in, because that does affect their ability to, to, to close? Or do you think it, it doesn't, and that if a lead comes in, if it's on that call, they're closable? Like, where would you fall in that spectrum?
I think there's a line with marketing where you can end up getting a decent number of leads that just aren't closable; like, they haven't had any understanding of the industry, haven't had any understanding of the brand or the offer, and potentially they have just no idea of the financial investment for whatever you're selling. With outside of those kind of three high-level criteria from a experience point of view, but also from a belief point of view, I hold the belief that everybody that turns up to a call is closable, not because that's necessarily right, but because it's the belief that's going to most serve me and most serve the prospects, whether it's factually correct or not, I don't really care, um, and I learned this from my mentor, and I learned it from Napoleon Hill, who in the book Law of Success he talks about this principle called accurate thinking, and he says the accurate thinking isn't necessarily what is fact or fiction; accurate thinking is what is useful to think versus what is not useful to think. So it might be fact or fiction that every prospect is qualified; I don't really care. What I know is it's very unuseful to think, "Oh, I'm going to get some prospects that aren't qualified." Well, it's not a very useful belief for you to hold when you turn up to a call. The opposite of, "If they're on my calendar, they're, they're qualified; they're closable," that's a very useful belief for you to have. So it's, it's learning to play these much higher-level personal development games as a salesperson; that's a lot of what I teach is, yes, you got to know what to say on the call and, and how to show up, but a lot of it is your mental models and your beliefs. So it's kind of like that old adage of, "If you're only looking for red cars, that's all you're going to see is red cars," literally. And it's, it's like you literally create the red cars on the road. Like, if you're a salesperson, you're thinking, "Ugh, can't be bothered to close tomorrow; I can't be bothered to work tomorrow," or had a, had a bad few days, you're literally going to manifest a bunch of prospects onto your calendar. And I know that sounds very woo-woo for people, but it's, it happens; it's just how it works.
Yeah, well, our brains like solving problems, so if we create a problem, it's going to solve it for us. "Oh, you're looking for this? Well, here it is; I've got it for you; it's right, it's right here," literally, literally self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, I had a, a company, uh, two weeks ago that told me they wanted to hire somebody to replace the current rep that they had because the guy was approaching every single call like every single prospect was broke, and they, they were like, "He's in his head; he's, he's stuck, and he, he's already, he's already decided that this person can't buy before he's even talked to him." So sounds like that's kind of along the lines, same lines of what you're talking about here.
100%, yeah. Huh, very interesting. Um, I think a couple of people dropped some questions on here; fire away; let's see what we got. I can't see the questions, so just shoot them out.
Okay, yeah, there, I, I pulled up my, the live on my phone. Okay, Ronaldo asks, "How do you know if this is urgent for them?" And I'm assuming this is a few minutes ago, so I'm assuming it, um, is talking about them potentially buying. How do you manage when you ask a prospect, "What happens if you don't change your situation and you don't get the results that you want X months from now?" And they say, quote, "That won't be me, because I'm looking for options," end quote, even though you don't, even though you know they are very likely to not change your situation?
So you got that response because you asked a question, which is a, I'm not going to say the name, but a certain person's consequence question. It's a question; so, "What happens if six, 12,
I don't know their background, but view yourself like a video game character. And if you've ever played a video game, or if you ever know enough about video games, you know that in a video game, the character gets to level up; it gets a new backpack; it gets a new sword; it gets a new shield; it gets a new this, whatever. You got to view yourself like that. So when you look at yourself as a character—third person looking onto you—and you're doing an inventory of you, your life, your environment, the people around you, your habits, your rituals, your health, your beliefs—everything—look at yourself like a video game character and start designing the road map for you to level up as a character. That's how you start working on internal mastery.
The first step is to zoom out and look at yourself as a third person and look, quite frankly, with all due respect, guys, how weak, how much of a little weakling you are, and how all of the areas of your life just aren't that developed. Like a simple one: if you look around your house and you're not inspired, well, why not? Why don't you just go and spend $1,500 and buy a painting that makes you feel like the man or the woman? But you got to look at all of these things and have the, um, self-inquiry and have the self-awareness to look at them as an extension of you. It's not just the clothes you wear; it's like your environment, your beliefs, the people around you—everything around you is you as the video game character. So just start—like if you just got a piece of paper and said, "What is one thing in my life right now that I don't like that I could change?" Start there, and it's just a never-ending process of doing that.
So you're saying a lot of it has to do with not necessarily your career, uh, or sales in general; it's all the supplemental other life verticals that influence one's ability to show up and perform at a high level consistently, 100%. Because our career is such a narrow, narrow band of our life. Like I can't tell you how many salespeople lose three, 4X of their potential income because they're in a relationship they shouldn't be in. And it's like, if you come into my Mastermind and I notice that, and you ask me for training on scriptless selling, and I see that you're in a relationship, I'll literally tell you, "I'm not going to train you on that until you fix this," because there are things that are way, way, way higher leverage changes than, you know, I don't train tonality training, but to train on tonality or to train on this or to train on that. So how about you just get out of a toxic relationship? Like that will double your closes overnight. And I'm, I'm guessing you see that happen all the time.
All the time. Yeah. So you'll, you'll train Nat on sales, and you'll help somebody with just a life problem that they're having, and all of a sudden it's like, like a hockey puck. Just so, for, for example, when I trained Alex H Mo's old gym launch team, the first four weeks we didn't do anything to do with sales, and their results just exploded. I didn't, I didn't do a core review; I didn't talk anything about objections; nothing about sales. I just audited the lives of the closers and went through the different recommendations, and they started implementing; they started taking action, and their close rates all went up. And like that's the other thing with a lot of sales training now is it's like you can get better at sales by doing A, or you can get better at sales by doing B, and let's just say that the results were the same, but option A is Josh tells you one thing to do that's going to take you 30 minutes; option B is you can get the same results by doing 35 hours of role-play. I'd rather not do 35 hours of role-play to get the same result, whereas, and and this is a deep rabbit hole that we will just skim over, but I think a lot of salespeople have a big issue with the hustle and grind concept of like, "I'm doing the grind; I'm doing the hustle; I'm doing my role plays; I'm doing my," you know, all of these sales people now that are hopping on Facebook interviews of each other. It's like, "What the—are you interviewing each other for? You're all at sales, so why are you interviewing?" That's the weirdest one I've seen. It's like one guy I know off the top of my head is jumping on all these interviews, "Hey brother, it was so great to have an interview with you." It's like you're interviewing salespeople that are making 15K a month. Why the—are you interviewing them? Like, anyway, so yeah, the biggest thing that you can do as a salesperson is look at the things that actually are going to make the biggest difference. Nine out of 10 times, it's nothing to do with your sales stuff. Caveat to that is if you're a total beginner, yeah, you, you, you need to learn the foundations, but that's why my Mastermind is not geared towards beginners, although we have a number of people that are like, "I'm just going to join on day one of sales because I'd rather learn the right stuff from the beginning." But ultimately, it's you're going to have to do the internal work as well as the external work at the same time.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, am I gonna answer questions in the chat or not, Russ? No, I can't type and listen at the same time. I'm sorry. Answer them on here as best we can. I think that's, think that's all we had. Just a couple scared everyone away for real. Oh, there's 28 people watching right now. Uh, I never had that many people watching a live, so that tells me one thing: they ain't here for me. And the only reason, by the way, that I even suggested that, even hinted at the fact that you were slightly better-looking, is because you got better camera equipment than me. That's all it is.
That's true. It's the blue brings out your eyes. Yeah, 100%. So, smoking mirrors. That's right. That's right. Oh, we got a couple more minutes. What else? Anything? Anything, uh, you, you, you probably got a much bigger pulse on what the business owners are struggling to find with the average salesperson, which is a, it's is a completely different angle to what I'm seeing because I'm seeing it when salespeople come to me, and I'm like, "Oh, you've got a lot of bad habits that we need to fix." You've got a pulse, which is business owners probably coming to you all the time being like, "Oh man, can you, can you get me some decent sales reps?" Oh yeah, like, "I need a killer; I need a," yeah. So what, what are you seeing from the business owners that, for a salesperson now listening, can be like a fly on the wall listening to what the business owners are crying out for?
I think to be a business owner, and I'd like to know if you agree with this or not, you have to have at least, uh, a piece of you that's, um, a bit unrealistic, uh, and a bit—there's a word I'm looking for—what's the word—you're overly optimistic in a sense to where you're almost like you've almost got blinders on in a sense. And I think there's an element of being a little bit of a control freak, um, and if you think about the info product space, a lot of these businesses, these are manifestations of what's in somebody's head out there in the ether. And so they, business owners and founders, they sort of like create, try to put this bubble around their, their offers and their companies to, to the point where I think they can get a little, little too defensive. And so I think that, um, when it comes to bringing in salespeople, I think a lot of times they're just, they're not—there's a lack of trust. It's like they'll hire somebody, and then they want to do this, and like the kind of like the traditional corporate management structure where it's like, you know, "I tell you to jump, and you say, 'Okay, how high?'" Um, and so I, I think that more managers and founders would do well to recognize that you're taking a risk hiring somebody, just like somebody's taking a risk coming to sell for you, especially if it's a contractor type situation, that if you hire somebody, you're making an investment in your business, and you need to hire somebody that you think is a good fit and then let them do their job. So if someone's coming in and they're not doing their job, uh, or they're not doing it the right way, one of two things are going on: either you hired the wrong person, or you're not, you're not getting out of their way, and you're not letting them do what needs to get done to get to whatever the, the endpoint is, you on a, you know, hour, daily, weekly, monthly basis. Both of those are the responsibility of the business owner; either way, it's still your fault. So I actually think that sales reps are treated pretty badly in this space generally, um, I think they're treated as cogs; I think they're treated as dispensable, disposable, uh, and that, and and less than in a lot of ways. Like it's just, "Hey, what can you do for me?" And one of the things I cannot stand is when business owners are like, "Hey, I want to bring you in, sell for me, but I need you to basically work for nothing until you prove to me that you're a good closer." And it's like, okay, I understand this is a performance-based type of role, but that's an extremely lopsided mismatch in commitment, and you're not going to bring PE—your first impression or the first impression these reps have of you is that you're, uh, overbearing control freak, and that if they make a mistake, you're probably going to drag them through the ringer. And that's the other thing, too, is like something I've learned from being incorporate and being in management is like people need to know that if they make a mistake, you're not going to fire them, and you're not going to, um, uh, rake them across the coals. Like people make mistakes, and I've never ever seen people part ways when things are going well. No one, no one leaves when things are going well; they leave when the hits the fan. And so more business owners and sales reps would do well to talk about ahead of time, "Hey, when we have problems, how are we going to solve them? What are we going to do? Are we going to dump things that we do to each other we don't like in the anger bank and just pretend that the problem's not there, or are we going to open up Pandora's Box, talk about the elephant in the room, and solve these problems like big kids, like adults," um, and it just, it never fails that people leave. It's like business owners would, would rather, uh, keep their ego than let a sales rep or then keep a sales rep and let them go when they are a confirmed positive ROI on their business. Like you're going to let that guy go? Like he, he does well with your company; like he converts on your offer; he's a good culture fit, and you're going to let him go because you got to stick up your rear and because this problem came up that you didn't know was coming, and you don't want to solve it because you just want to keep your, your, your pride. So anyway, like I, I don't think that both sides understand the other as well as they, they could, um, so I think understanding like what problems you're trying to solve, like, like any, any typical sales situation, like what problems you're trying to solve, Mr. business owner, Mr. sales rep. Okay, let's find the alignment with you trying to solve problems for me and me trying to solve problems for you, because there's got to be a partnership where this side gives 100%, and this side gives 100%, just like marriage, like in the same—there's a lot of similarities to it, um, so that's kind of what I'd say on those lines.
To what extent do you think the swing of the entitlement of the business owners could be because there are so many sales reps that aren't very good? So therefore, the business owners are kind of, as you say, they got to stick up their rear. Let's take, for example, a different version of the industry: the average sales rep is an absolute killer. Do you think business owners would be so strong if the average salesperson was actually pretty good rather than a bunch of salespeople that were much less so?
I think, yeah, I 100% say, say that's a factor, because if, if I was a business owner that needed to hire salespeople, and I didn't know how to find just the right people and filter out the wrong closes, and I was getting a bunch of salespeople that were coming in, and the best they've done is make 10K a month in commission, at that level of skill set, I'd get pretty fed up as a business owner. Like I want to know that I could go out to the industry and just find a guy that's able to hit 30, 40K a month in commission—in other words, generate my business 3, 400K from one person. These days, that is such a dime a dozen. And I've not been in the industry for decades, but I've been in for over five years now, and when I first got into the industry, hitting 30, 40K a month was kind of like, if you're not hitting 30, 40K a month, like you're not in the industry yet. Like that was just kind of the normal thing. It seems to be now the industry is bottomed out where there are so many closers that are making 5K a month, 7K a month, 10K a month, 12K a month in commission, and it's like all of those closers are the bottom feeders that a business owner has to go through to try and find the ones at the top that are producing 3, 400K a month in, in cash collected. I just think the industry has just blown up way bigger than it should have, in, in a disproportionate way where there are so many closers, uh, clinging on to offers that really, if you're that shitty as a closer, you might want to go back to 9 to 5 or do something else, you know.
Yeah. Well, like it was led to earlier, you know, being a closer has been turned into this like weird bizop where it's like, just come in and pay, pay for a program, we'll teach you the skills, and you're off to the races. Here's your 10, 15, 20K a month. And it's like sales is a craft; it takes time to, to develop and grow into. I'm so glad you said that, that if I were to summarize the best thing I've heard in the industry from anybody that, if adhered to, would change the industry, is that sales is a craft; it's not a bizop; it's not, "Oh, I'm doing a 9 to 5; I'll go and do a course, and then now I'll just take my 10K a month." It's like that is, I believe the problem with the industry is people five years ago that were getting into high ticket were like, "I want to master this thing called communication; I want to master this ability to be a critical thinker, to be a problem solver, to understand human beings, to, to help people." It was a real mission; it was a calling; it was something that you devoted yourself to. Now it's just, "Oh, I saw an ad that I can make 10K a month just basically processing orders on the phone; I'll do that." So yeah, that's, that's where the, the, um, the kind of the stewardship of what this is supposed to be got lost. Yeah, it's been, I mean, it's been commoditized, and that's, I think why, to your point, why I think business—they do have a problem with, with finding good talent because, um, there's so many options out there. I'm seeing more and more business owners move to the group interviews because they're just trying to find the right fits without spending days and weeks and months and hours and hours of time and thousands of dollars in resources to, uh, to bring somebody in, and you know, I don't, I don't fault them for that. I mean, there's people that spend four figures, thousand dollars per call. At—I did a live last week with somebody—it's $1,000 to get somebody qualified on a call. They're like, "We can afford to have some, some, you know, rinky-dink person who just went through training come in." So it's like, I, I, I think people underestimate how difficult true salesmanship actually is, and, um, I think that is part of the problem for sure. Like I, I don't, I don't necessarily blame salespeople, or excuse me, um, business owners for, for that part of it, but at the end of the day, like if you're not willing to take a risk on somebody coming in in a performance-based industry, that's more what I'm saying; it's like, then you don't need to be hiring. If you're not willing to lose 20 calls while somebody gets, you know, figures out your offer, or you're not ready to lose the investment that you're putting in, like you can't, you can't invest in your business, but like only half do it. Like you either, you're either investing or you're not. And I get messages every single day from reps that have said all sorts of crap about how business owners operate, and yes, there's three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth, um, but like there's too much consistency from what I, the feedback I get from all the reps for there to be, uh, for it to entirely be just, "Oh, just the sales rep sucks." I, I do think that there's, like, a lot of these businesses or startups, I think a lot of them lack the infrastructure to really actually help the sales rep get to where they need to go, and I think a lot of the sales training is now trying to overcompensate, like with this objection handling for bad nurturing of leads coming in through a marketing sequence and then showing up on a, on a phone call. You even said it earlier: like people don't, they don't know, uh, what we're buying, how much does it cost, uh, you know, what's, what's the benefit here? So it's like, I, I just wonder if there's not something that contributes on that side as well.
I agree. A man of many words, huh? Let's see, any, anybody anything else? Let's see. Okay. Okay, that looks like it's probably about it, just scrolling through all the, all the, um, comments on here. About the top of the hour. You get any last, last-minute thoughts, uh, anything you want to leave? I, I, I think something that I've enjoyed our discussions publicly on, on Facebook, I, I, I hope, and I, I feel, I feel positive—the cat is out of the hat now as far as this whole canned lines, tonality training—I'm, I'm starting to see things moving that people are like, "You know what, that actually does make sense. Why the am I practicing tonality and memorizing scripts?" And I've literally watched, I believe I've watched it unfold in the last like four weeks, which is pretty crazy. Like I, I'm starting to see a lot more movement of people waking up and being like, "Oh yeah, hang on, like it's a conversation; like it's not a memorized script." So I think for anybody that is listening to this live or on the replay, like do your own self-inquiry and your own thinking for once and think, like, which side are you going to be on? And I don't mean this about, you know, it's a battle between one sales trainer and another or whatever, but I mean, are you going to be on the side that is ultimately going to prevail, or are you going to be on the side that's the Titanic that sinks? Because it's your livelihood, guys and girls; like it's your money; it's your family; it's your future. And if you're on the side, as this tide starts turning, of like, "Oh no, I can only read a script," you're gonna be jobless; like you're not going to have an offer. Like you have to wake up and be like, "You know, I can kind of see the, the, the writing on the wall here; like I probably need to actually learn," like Zach said, and like Zach helps with, you know, to actually get on an, with a genuine business owner that isn't entitled, that actually has their together, has their operations down, has their marketing down, and you probably need to learn the actual skills that are about the craft of sales, the art and the craft of sales, not being a parrot that can read lines off a piece of paper. So I'm hoping that people are starting to wake up because I made a ton of money in sales; I made so much money, people don't have a clue, and I don't believe I'm special; I just, I had a mentor; I studied from my mentor, and I learn, and, and, uh, dedicated myself to the craft of sales. I think anybody could make as much or more money than I made in sales; they're just doing the wrong thing; they're just trying to memorize canned lines. So I hope that people can fall back in line with—I view sales as very sacred; I view it as a beautiful thing that can change the world, can have such an impact on people and make you such a massive, massive, massive amount of money in the process. And I'm hoping that people are starting to wake up and that they can have the life of their dreams.
Yeah. Yeah, I think people think that just because it's popular that means it's good, and it's like last time I checked those things are mutually exclusive. So anyway, I know there's a couple things we probably didn't get to, uh, in here, but anyway, thanks for everybody hanging out, um, Josh, working. If anybody's interested in, in talking to you about joining Unicorn, where can they find you? Where's the best place to get a hold of you? You can go to unicorncloser.com, or you can find me on my Instagram, which is joshlions.sales. Amazing. All right, thanks, Josh. Appreciate your time. See you, please, brother. Talk soon. Talk soon. [Music]