The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast ClosingBig.com CEO Josh Letsis

Episode Date: June 5, 2019

ClosingBig.com CEO Josh Letsis

Hi, this is Foss here from thechrisfossshow.com, thechrisfossshow.com. Hey, that's the most, you know, what can you say? That's the theme. It saves us a few bucks. Anyway, guys, welcome to the show, The Chris Foss Show Podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. As always, we have the best guests, and of course, we have the best audience, so we thank you for tuning in and all that good stuff. Be sure refer the show to your friends neighbors relatives we know you guys love

the show but be sure to tell people to subscribe to youtube.com for just chris voss hit that bell notification you can go to itunes google play luminary.com iheart radio spotify uh geez wow there's a whole list on chris voss podcast network.com. You can go see all the syndication we have in the show. And, of course, you can find us in all the third-party apps that are out there for podcasting. Anyway, we appreciate you guys' support. We've got a great and most interesting guest, as always, on the Chris Voss Show we're going to talk about today. His name is Josh Letzis. And Josh has got some really cool things. He runs closingbig.com and he's going to

give us some great insight into the valuable experience that he's acquired and developed in life. He started out though from a single wide trailer. He dropped out of high school and he knew the odds would be stacked against him. He started in the car business at the age of 18, knowing he'd have to outwork everyone around him. he proved his worth by working seven days a week, 10 years of his career. And he rose through the ranks rapidly in the automotive world, expanding to markets in Oregon, Arizona, California, and Colorado. He worked for an automotive group that's a Fortune 500 company. And get this, he became the youngest GM, general manager, at the age of 28. And he was kind of held up as a leadership store. All the different executives would come learn what he was doing

there. And after a decade with the Fortune 500 company, he became the GM of John Elway Chevrolet. You may have heard of John Elway, the famous football star. And the store is the number one shutaway store in the state of Colorado. And I guess John Elway liked him so much, he offered him to be part owner of the same store. So pretty awesome there. Welcome to the show, Josh. You've got your own company now and we want to find out what you're doing and how you're using all this wonderful experience that you had to take it to the next level. Yeah. Yeah. So it was, you know, a lot of guys, gals,

I use that term guys generally, but they, you don't want to offend anybody. I'll say to girls, I'll say you guys. Yeah. Like what? But you gotta be careful.

So I don't want to offend anybody. I don't want to offend anybody. A lot of the car people, you know, they work their entire career to get where I got. And, and I got there, I got their entire career to get where I got. And, and I got there, I got the GM at 28, really young age. And it was one of those where when I was a salesperson, I always said, Oh, I want to be a sales manager, want to be a sales manager. And then I got that at a pretty young age. And then I said, Well, maybe I want to be a finance manager. Okay, got that. And then you just kind of start checking things off. And then I became a general

manager at 28. And you realize, well, shoot, I probably have another gear to grab here. I'm only 28 years old. And, you know, I told myself, well, you know, I don't know if I'll ever be able to own a store, but let's just keep working hard and seeing what happens. Uh, I left, uh, I left the company I was with. It was a big corporate company. It was good and bad. It was nice to get out of that corporate, you know, kind corporate thumb on you. Came to Colorado and worked for John Elway running a Chevrolet store. And after about six months or so, they offered me a partnership, which was the pinnacle, right? That was the dream come true. Not only just a partnership, but a partnership with John at a Chevrolet store in Denver. I mean,

it was incredible. So I did that for about six years. And then I had some personal stuff going on that required me to be at home with my son and my family a little bit more. And as you said in that introduction, I was a bit of a workaholic. I started my career. I worked seven days a week for 10 years and then worked six days a week for the last 11 years. And it just wasn't working anymore. So I walked away from that, which like I said, was a dream job, but I walked away from it and decided that I didn't want to leave sales. I didn't want to leave, you know, helping people and coaching people. Cause as a leader, that's really what I felt like what I was doing was coaching and leading people. It was less about selling and more about people. And so I'm trying to decide

what can I do where I'm still involved with salespeople, still involved with selling and helping and coaching people. And so I started my company Closing Big probably, well, shortly after I left, but really got in the full swing of things over the last six months or so. And that's been nice. It's given me some flexibility that the day-to-day in the store didn't give me. And it's also fulfilling that need I have as a leader to help and coach people along. So closingbig.com is the website you launched. And what sort of services, like what do you guys do there? Yeah. So I do, I obviously do in-person

dealership consulting and training. My main product I just launched about a month ago is an online training platform. So it's kind of like training on demand basically. And most dealerships, they don't train well. And it's not because they don't see the value in it, but it's just, it's one of those things that as the day goes on, it's like, well, let's train at eight. Oh, we've got a customer here. We're busy. Okay. We'll do it after lunch. Okay. Well, you know, now we're appraising some trades and you know, this is going on and all right, well, let's, let's get it in the afternoon. And it just doesn't happen. And next thing you know, three weeks have gone by and you haven't had any training. Um, and some of it is the sales managers are typically your best performing salesperson. That's the one who

gets promoted. Well, to be a best top performing salesperson, you're a pretty individualistic. If I said that right, individualistic person, you know, you're not really a team player. You're all about you. So a lot of guys struggle as they make that transition into that leadership role. Cause now it's not about you. It's about your team. And so that's part of it too. And so I came out with, I've got probably 650 sales training videos. And then I partnered with Eric Thomas, who's the number one motivational speaker in the world. And we've got several hundred motivational videos. So my idea was most dealerships, they just suck at training. And it's not because they don't see the value, they just suck at it. And most salespeople, they leave because they're under-trained and they lack

the motivation piece. And Eric's a good friend of mine. So we put together a platform and a program where we've got the training and done by an actual car guy, not somebody who sold cars for two years and all of a sudden I'm sort of expert. This is all I've done my entire life. And then Eric's obviously got the motivation piece down pat. So we partnered together, put the platform together and just launched it. So that's what we're super excited about right now and really trying to get out there and help as many dealerships as we can to complement what they know they need to get done. But they just struggle with getting it done on a day to day basis. What's interesting, you talk about a lot of different things. I did a year in the car business back in the day when I was a kid um and it's an interesting business and you really learn a lot in fact uh

you learn so much especially from a sales aspect of what it takes to be a core salesman um i uh after we started other companies that were in other industries i was like you know i really wish i was rich enough where i could afford to have my salespeople train in a used car sales division uh floor for like three months yeah and come to work for us because the stuff you learn there is is uh is some of the most but the best old school selling techniques base core whatever you want to call it of selling that you can ever learn in your life. And you, you almost can't, uh,

you almost can't school book that sort of stuff, but you speak to something else. It's very true that I found, uh, across my life was not all salespeople. Great. Let's say, let me reword that.

Not all great salespeople become great managers or even should be managers for that matter. It's a really unique person who can make that transition and master both fields. I would even sometimes argue that sometimes anybody who could be a great manager probably, I don't know, maybe I wouldn't make that argument because every great CEO has to be a salesperson and a great manager.

You have to do both. So there are people who definitely master it. So yeah, I don't make that argument because every great CEO has to be a salesperson and a great manager. You have to do both. So there are people who definitely master it. So, yeah, I don't think I would. Yeah, it's just I would always tell my guys, and again, generally speaking, when they want to get promoted, I would always tell them, I don't need you to be the number one salesperson. Because quite frankly, the number one salesperson in my past experience has made not a great manager. It's just been a tough transition for them. I've ruined, and once you make them a manager, they're never a salesperson again

for the rest of their life, mentally. So you can't step backwards. So I've ruined a lot of good salespeople by promoting them. But I always tell my guys, you don't have to be the number one. I do need you in the upper quartile. You've got to be a top performer, but I don't need you number one.

What I looked for, and this probably later in my career, I realized this, I would look for that guy or gal that had some of the intangibles. They were helping customers when they knew that they weren't going to get paid for it. They were helping other salespeople when they knew that financially, it wouldn't benefit them. They, you know, you know, obviously the moral part of it, the lying, cheating, stealing, they didn't do any of that stuff, but they just, that you could tell that they would go above and beyond when they knew that it wasn't going to benefit them. And that's when I would go, okay, that's going to be a, you know, a decent manager more than likely. Um, but you also had to be a top performer

because you had a lot of bottom performers that they knew they were on the edge of getting clipped. And so they were super helpful also. And that doesn't do you any good. So you had to find that top performer that could see the big picture. And generally, they would make the better managers, but they're usually not the number one salesperson. Number one salesperson is, they're kind of all about themselves. They're not really the team player. And yeah, so it's a tough transition. And a lot of guys and gals, they really struggle with worrying about just themselves. And then all of a sudden,als, they really struggle with worrying about just themselves. And then all of a sudden, now they've got to worry about 10, 20 other salespeople that are all relying on them. And it's difficult. It's definitely difficult. It's definitely a hard

target to pick. I mean, over the years, like you said, yeah, I've ruined a few good salespeople too by promoting them. And really, their skill set was based upon sales, most great salespeople, I think, in the in the in the one percentile, I don't think make great managers per se, they can surround themselves with the board. I mean, you see a lot of great salespeople that can have a board around them to take care of the managerial sort of stuff. But even then, it's hard. But, yeah, building great salespeople is an interesting thing. When I became – how I transitioned in the auto industry was I took in –

had a leasing agency that I went to work for, and we would lease the cars out to, uh, people. And what we did was we did this weird thing where we work with the dealerships. Uh, people come to us, this is early days of trying to buy custom cars.

So people come to us and they would go, I want this car. And we were like, we will find it for you. We'll get the dealership to give it to us. We'll lease it to you. And blah, blah,

blah. We're trying to cut up the, um, uh, dealership kind of in a way we're trying to build this customization cars that now you can just go online and you know custom get what you want so we did that for about six months and I was selling it and that got me into car sales but I was a great salesperson. I didn't, I really sucked at sales. Let's put it that way. And I took in, turns out the owner was not paying the automotive companies for the contracts that were getting cashed at the credit unions. He wasn't paying the undercarriage. He wasn't paying the insurance.

And, you know, the whole thing came down as pyramid cards. One day when, you know, everyone showed up to read offices. And I went, wow, I work for a scam artist. So I knew the car business. So I was like, I've got to work in the car business. And I couldn't sell my way out of a paper bag back then. In fact, I thought sales was an evil word that you were trying to trick people to do something they didn't want to do. I had that whole mentality. And I remember they came down to a point where they were ready to fire me and the sales manager pulled me aside he goes look I know you're a kid

I know you're just trying to make this work you really suck at sales he goes I know you're broke I know you're living on top ramen I'm going to give you $5 to go get Seekers Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar and he goes I'm going to give you this five bucks of my money.

He goes, if you use this to buy food or ramen, you will be fired because you're pretty much fired. So what I want you to do is take this five bucks and go buy this book, and you've got 48 hours to read this book and save whatever job you have. So I was like, fuck it. I went and did it. Um, and that changed my whole life. Uh, the, the other thing that I think was, well, these are my stories, so we'll get to yours. Uh, I got a few card stories. I learned a lot about the core of sales. So you guys work with dealerships, you help them find the people that they need to take and uh

get them going you help them train them uh and do you also train sales managers you just train sales people now sales managers also um because again that's a big weak spot you know a lot of sales managers are just they're not qualified and nobody ever coached or taught them uh and just like a lot of sales people it's like you know here you go here's the lot customers, sell some cars. Same thing. Hey, you were the best salesperson in the last six months. All right, you're promoted, you know, go, go work some deals now. And nobody ever taught them how to be a leader. There is zero leadership coaching and counseling and teaching in the automotive industry. And that's, and that's one thing I did at my store every Friday at 630 in the morning. I would do a, I called it life group,

leadership, influence, focus, and energy, where I would talk to not only managers, but salespeople. And it was all voluntary. And it started with, I had, I would always have people come to me and go, Hey, I want to, I want you to mentor me. I want you to, you know, I want to be like you. I want to get where you got. I want to do how you do it, how you did it. But it was always on my time, smack in the middle of my day. And I said, okay, finally, here's what I'll do, guys. I will absolutely coach you and mentor you. But, and I don't mind giving up some of my time, but it can't be smack in the middle

of my day. So from 630 to 730 on Fridays, I'll, we'll talk about coaching. We'll talk about, it was very little sales, actually more leadership, time management, time management, all sorts of things to help make them a better rounded person. To answer your question in a long way, I do coach and work on sales managers. My online platform has a course for sales managers also because that's a big hole and a big need. Yeah, most definitely. I mean, it's, it's going from selling people is great, but then being, becoming a manager where you've got to,

you know, babysit this, babysit that reports. You got to report to higher management. I mean, selling, selling is quite the skill, but going to the next levels really can,

can really be a challenge. So you guys have built, do you, do you mostly work with car dealerships? Do you ever get outside of the car dealership? I do. I do. Actually, it's funny. I was telling somebody today, I've got a, uh, one of my clients, one of my very early clients actually was a veterinary clinic where they're all great doctors. They just didn't know how to sell, um, contract negotiation, uh, you know, upselling bumping, you know, that sort of thing. They just didn't have a

clue. So that was one of my very first customers, first customers was a veterinary clinic. So I do go outside of automotive because at the end of the day, sales is sales and there's word tracks and things that you can do and that just, they, they go across all platforms. You know, but it really, it's taking care of the customer, finding what their need is and their problems are, because that's what we are as salespeople is problem solvers. And then how do we solve it so that we can get their business? And that's the goal. Our value has to exceed the price. As soon as our value exceeds the price, somebody will do business with us. And so we've got to learn to build value, to figure out what their problems are, isolate their objections and get past all the BS, right? Because most, especially in the

car business, customers come onto the lot, they're going to give us some BS because they think we're a bunch of sharks, you know, we're just bomb of the barrel people. So they're going to tell us all sorts of things that aren't true that just give them a way out. You know, I got to talk to my wife. 95% of the time, that's a smokescreen objection.

It's just not real. You know, I got to keep shopping around, especially this day and age where the average consumer spends 19 hours online. They've done all the shopping. It's not like when you were in the business. And when I first got in the business, the only way to shop was you had to go to auto mile, wherever that was in your city. And you visited 10 stores and you, as a salesperson, you prayed to God that you were the last store they visited. Because if you were the first one, you knew it's going to be so hard to stop them in their tracks. Unless you had a unicorn of a car, they were probably going to continue shopping.

Well, now if they come into the lot, they've visited 19 or they spent 19 hours online. And the data shows that they're only going to visit 1.2 stores. So the goal would not be the 0.2 and just not mess it up, treat them, you know, as they need to be treated and build down those walls that the customer has already built up because we've, for multiple generations in the car industry and salespeople really in general, we've just solid our reputation and we owe it all to ourselves. We've done it to ourselves. Our fathers and grandfathers, they've all done it. And now we've got to come into this new age and realize that we can't do some of the things that we used to do. We definitely have to be much more customer focused

than we ever have been because that's the only way we're going to get the business. Oh yeah, totally. So one of the things that you talked about is bringing people up to a better skill level and just what they're trying to do. So when you do courses and stuff, is it an ongoing thing where you're doing multiple courses for people like an ongoing thing, like 10, 20? How do you play that out?

Yeah, so the online deal, it's all on demand. So they can go in and take whatever they want to take. And I've got an objection handling section with all sorts of word tracks and all sorts of closes. So if they get, let's, I got to talk to my wife. They've heard that from the last three of their customers and they haven't been able to address that well. They can click on that section, watch 10 videos on how to handle that. And they may listen to a word track or listen to something and go, I can't say that. That's too cheesy. That's just not me.

But the goal is for them to find one or two, because you're not going to use 10 different word tracks for the same. As a salesperson, you're going to find that just like any skilled person, you're going to find that tool that you like using the most. And that's the one you're going to use 95% of the time. So that's the goal is for them to hone down on what they really need to work on. But then there's other sections too that help them out hone down on what they really need to work on. But then there's other sections too that help them out with anything. So my goal was for them to be able to watch two sales videos a day for two years and never watch the same video.

And I've got that on there. And then it's always growing and expanding. I had a dealer ask me last week or week before to expand on some social media, branding, and presence, that sort of thing for salespeople. So I'm doing a course now on that. So if one of my dealers says, hey, could you do something on this? Absolutely. It's just a matter of getting in the studio, shooting it on the green screen, getting it edited, and it's up there in a month or so. That's pretty awesome.

You can custom make stuff for people. Yeah. Yeah. And that's my goal. I want to be, especially now while I'm still small and growing, I can do that when I have 50% of the dealers in the country, hopefully it'll be much harder to do stuff like that. But yeah, if somebody has something, I don't want to be some cookie cutter, you know, this is what it is and it is what it is. You know, they have some sort of need and if I can add value there, I want to be able to do it. Well, simply. So you were saying about how people, you know, they shop around, they go to 1.2 stores, I think it was you said. Yeah. The one thing I found is a lot of people are looking for a leader. They're looking for a

salesperson. They're looking for someone to sell them. And I think that's a lot of times where they leave a dealership or go to another dealership is they just haven't found that guy. They want to be sold and they want to be handled well. You know, I mean, some people live for the game of the negotiation. And research has been found that a lot of consumers actually like that game. They like the challenge of, it's kind of like know you're you know you're probably gonna lose but you you like you like the chance of it yeah but uh you don't lose when you buy a car so it's a little bit different you actually you know make an investment in something um but uh whereas when

you go to the casino i don't know, you do invest in having time and entertainment. That's an investment. Exactly right. You gave away your, your, uh, kids as a college teachers, but whatever. Uh, but, uh, I, you know, I, I really think that a lot of times, uh, and I would see that a lot of times when they were going to the car lot, they were searching around for someone to sell them, uh, care for, or find out what they really needed. And that's important to them.

They've got to find that person who wants. I think a lot of times just searching for that person who's going to be in the vehicle that they feel comfortable making a buying purchase from, the rapport or whatever the case may be. Yeah, you've got to be a counselor to them. You know, it used to be for decades and years, the dealerships controlled all the knowledge and information. You know, if you wanted any information on a car, you had to come to the dealership. If you want to know what your trade was worth, you had to come to the dealership.

And we did a great job of holding on to all that knowledge and making people come to us. And while they were with us, we put them through some terrible process, just took too much of their time, kept them there, waited until they were tired. I don't know if anybody actually threw keys on the roof, but I've heard that story. And now it's different, right? They come to us because they've got a lot of the information now. And as a dealer group, we don't have the information. The customer knows what their trade's worth. Is Kelly Blue Book perfect? No, but it's pretty darn close. A lot closer than the classifieds, which is what they used to use, right?

Here's what my car's worth. No, that's what somebody wants for their car that clearly hasn't sold it yet. So, you know, all the information. They know what invoice is. They know what interest rates are. They know, you know, they just know everything. I mean, essentially, they can work their own deal all by themselves. They really don't need us.

But they do. So we want to be their own deal all by themselves. They really don't need us, but they do. So we want to be their counselor and guide them along the process. If we still, and this goes for any sales industry, if you try and force people through your process and go, hey, I have 10 steps and I need to go one and then two and then three and then four, you're going to get some people that will let you do it, but you're also going to get some people that spit the hook and go, Hey, I want to do five next. You know, I don't want to do two. And so I tell my guys all the time, it's our sales process is fluid. You know, are there things that we have to accomplish and achieve on there in order to

close the deal? Absolutely. But if a customer wants to go to five or to seven first, sometimes we need to go to five or seven. Otherwise, we're going to risk losing that customer. So you're spot on. They're looking for some sort of guidance and counselor along the way. And knowing that, hey, if it's a new car, I'm going to have to come back for service and warranty. If it's a used car, there's always that risk of having it break down and that sort of thing. So they want somebody that they can trust and that's going to help guide them along the buying process and then the after sales process. And that's really what separates those incredible dealers from just the dealers that just transact and do business.

Yeah, it's interesting to me what makes people buy. And of course, being a salesperson, I've always been there. The greatest salespeople I've ever met are people who can gain rapport with anybody. You drop them into Vietnam in the middle of the jungle and they'll gain rapport with the North Vietnamese and win the war or something. But they have this ability to get rapport with just about anybody. And not just a logical connection but an emotional connection because great sales people understand that people buy based upon emotion um they buy on a lot of other things too like identity their their their identity of how they

feel about themselves uh and being able to play in that sphere is really important and people you know i think i think in spite of everything that's gone on with technology and stuff, people still want trust. They still want rapport. They want to feel like they're, you know, on some level they feel like they're just buying a car once or buying a product once, but they're kind of like, I really want to like this guy because if I have to keep doing business with him in the future, I want to be able to trust them. And so I think that's still a big part of everything that goes

on in spite of, you know, the electronic sort of static internet sort of things that people have before them. When it comes down to making that final decision, those are going to be the aspects that are really important. And it's an emotional purchase. I mean, you're buying a car. I mean, people name their cars. People, I mean, do all sorts of crazy things. It's not quite a pet, but a lot of people have that emotional attachment. I've seen people cry when they trade their car in.

I mean, it's unbelievable. And imagine that. Somebody has so much emotion attached to a car that they're crying when they trade it in. And that car salesman potentially could have went out and go, oh yeah, this car is terrible. It's the wrong color, wrong options. You know, it's got too many miles on it. It's, you know, it's a stick shift. Everybody wants an automatic. And they

just come out and start bashing this car that they're so emotionally attached to. So, you know, there's definitely a skillset to that, uh, to being a salesperson that some people are great at and some people aren't, but that, that ability to bond with your customer because people buy from people they like, they just do. And nowadays, again, you can buy,

I mean, the last two cars I bought, I never looked at the car. I had them, they were from across the country, had them shipped to me to my doorstep, never even saw it. So,

but I talked to the salesperson multiple times, built a little bit of rapport, realized, realized, okay, I like this guy. I can trust him. I can trust his dealership. So I'm going to do business with them. If you don't have that trust, the only way you're going to do business is number one, if you have the lowest price, that's a terrible place to be. Or number two, if you have that unicorn car that they've searched nationwide on auto trader, and you've got the only one in that purple with the pink polka dots and that's it, and there's not a whole lot of those unicorns out

there. So you don't want to hang out there either. So you've got to be able to have that trust and, and have your customers get attracted to you. And then they'll come back, right? They'll buy more cars from you. They'll probably, if you're a new car dealership, they'll service with you. And that's great because people that service with us are twice as likely to buy from us again. They'll refer their friends and their family. And a lot of salespeople, car salespeople, they forget that most households have three cars. So if you sell the husband, the wife's probably going to be in the market in six to 12 months, you know, and maybe even sooner if you get them really excited about that purchase, you know, and they probably have a kid in the household who also has a car

or needs a car. Maybe they've got a sophomore, maybe they got something like that. So you're not selling just one person, a car, you've got that opportunity to sell a family car. And then God forbid they go to, you know, family dinner or church on Sunday or whatever they do. And people see it, start asking questions. Oh my gosh, you got a new truck. Tell me about it. Where'd you buy it? You know, Oh, it's the best process in the world. I said, Josh, it was absolutely incredible. And then you might spark some interest. So it just snowballs and that momentum keeps going and going. But it only does that if you build rapport and you build trust and that value as an actual,

you know, as a guidance counselor almost in that sales process. I think that's where a lot of people lose the, the, the bigger picture. Like when I worked on a car lot, uh, there would be a lot of cherry picking and prejudging, especially on the used car front. Um, you know, they'd be like, Oh, look at that car. And, and, uh, me being a salesperson, I'd take anybody to talk to me really. Cause I wasn't that great of a salesperson either but I I would try and you know and if you if you're following a mirror sometimes those bad thing sometimes I should have probably maybe true but I remember there was one

time where this car the guys came running over my dealership or when they came running over the new car area they were were over the used car. They got, hey, there's an old beat-up, you know, it was like some 1970s beat-up old car. The people didn't look like they were just in from the mobile home park. They look like me, so no offense there to mobile

home park people. It's probably how I dress every day. But they just looked really awful. And everyone in the dealership was like don't go out there oh my god this is gonna be the worst client ever and i remember watching them make the whole uh journey you know driving through the used car a lot they drove the new car a lot and uh and i remember sitting and screw it i'm you know all salespeople were like, don't go out there. Don't go out there.

Just everyone just stay in here. Avoid them. And so finally I just said, screw it. I'm going to go out there. Hey, Mikey, you'll try it. So I go out there. These folks have been living within their means by owning old cars and old stuff. And they have literally been saving little saving to cash purchase a vehicle at full price when they can.

And so they come in the door. They're the most wonderful people. They're not dressed up, you know, really nice. We're not fancy clothes. And their car is like sold, you know, whatever. Like they don't even care because they're just like, we get it, it's an old car. We've been saving money for the past 10 to 15 years,

and we can buy a car with cash, and we own a car today. I sold them a car, and they paid full price for it. They didn't even care. I think they just liked the fact that they could. We have the money. We'll pay full price because we don't even give a shit. Yeah, yeah.

And I sold it. And everybody's like, holy crap. And I was like, yeah, it was the easiest sale ever, man. Yeah, yeah. And it's funny because so many salespeople, they have success as a – I call them green peas as a new salesperson, because they don't know that they, Hey, I'm supposed to prejudge that guy. I'm supposed to look at his car. I'm supposed to ask him about his credit. I'm supposed to ask him, what's your payoff? Hey, who's your bank? Who are you financed with? Oh, that's a bad credit bank.

You know? And as a green pea salesperson, you don't know all these questions. So you go out and talk to the person in the 1970s Chevelle, that's beat up and rusted because you're just supposed to talk to every customer. That's all you know. And then you sell some cars. And then what happens is after about six months, you start to learn these things you're supposed to ask these customers. And then you go, oh, I'm not helping that customer. Somebody else helps that customer and sells them a car. And yeah, it's no good.

So we see that a lot with salespeople. And what's the point, right? You're sitting around with five or six or 10 other salespeople shooting the shit, talking about things that, you know, talking about last night's game or whatever. You're not doing anything. What does it cost you to go talk to a customer

to go find out that farmer John has been, you know, selling hay for the last 20 years and he's got a stack of hundreds in the back of his pickup truck. You know, you have no idea, but the only way to find out is go talk to that customer and see what you can do. It's some of the best customers of people I've prejudged and went, I'm not going to answer that email.

Yeah. You know, I'm frustrated. Last time I answered the email, they were ugly and screw this, what am I doing? And sometimes those turn into clients that last you for like 10 plus years yeah um so you guys do a lot of automotive sales training you guys do courses coaching community stuff you have a core curriculum with over 600 plus videos holy crap yeah and uh video training libraries so basically they can go utilize, is there a paywall behind all your videos? Is that how it works? What do you mean paywall? Uh, so if I want to get access to over 6,000

videos that you guys have, um, do I, do I need to hire you or? Yeah. Yeah. So, so I sell it currently just to dealerships as a package and they can have up to 35 users. Um, I should be launching an individual platform for individual salespeople later towards the end of the year. But currently, yeah. So the dealership would sign up and then they would give access to their salespeople and management and then they could go on. And the nice thing is, like I said, you can do it when you want, how you want it. Whereas most sales training, you know, it's okay. Hey, it's two o'clock round up the guys. Let's go upstairs. It's a total disruption to the day. Or you bring in an outside sales trainer like myself

and you know, Hey, Tuesday, we're having training. Everybody stopped what they're doing. I paid this guy big money. You got to go to these classes. Yeah. And it's just, you know, and then you ruin that day. You lose all productivity where with this, they can do it when it's convenient for them individually as a salesperson, or I've got stores that use it as a team. First thing in the morning, they watch a video 15, 20 minutes. They talk about the video every morning. That's what they do. And then obviously the salespeople can use it individually on their own also. But that's the nice thing. It was designed to fit this insane, crazy, busy lifestyle world that we live in now and not go,

Hey, you know, two o'clock on Tuesday, that's when we do our training. If you have the ability to do that, great. But you also have to have some level of flexibility because Mr. and Mrs. Jones might want to be here and they might want to buy a car. And that's pretty darn important too. Yeah. The you know, you hold an event and the one salesperson that you have that's the weakest that you really wanted the training for, you know, he's off sick that day. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Great. We paid the consultant all his money to show up. But I really like this. Video training is also a good way to, I'll have to watch some of your videos, but it's a great way for people to learn how to sell well, have kind of tactical on things. Because that was the biggest challenge I have.'m a very visual learner yeah and uh so people would be like well you know here's how you sell and i'm like how do i do that in the thing and i was lucky enough to have some great sales managers and sales trainers around me that taught me a lot of hard lessons i remember one of my favorite lessons and Danny Alva

was his name. I can still remember his name to this day. Which is something, considering my name. Considering everything that's gone by. And I'll never forget, I'll never forget, he does this thing with me, and this is back but when I'm struggling. And he goes,

I'm going to show you something. He goes, reach in your pocket, pull out your wallet. And he goes, I'm going to show you something. He goes, he goes, he was reaching your pocket, pull out your wallet. And I go, I go, okay. He goes, now I want you to open your wallet and I want you to pull out a $20 bill and give it to me. So I pull out a $20 bill and give it to him. Puts it in his pocket to my shock and amazement

and goes, thanks, man. Appreciate it. He walks off. He asked for it i'll never forget i'm like what is that so he comes back he goes listen i just taught you a lesson and i really should keep your 20 bucks so that you really get the lesson um he goes what i taught you is how to assume the sale and how to once once you know what people want to do, help them achieve what they want to do and help them get through the decision-making process and any insecurities

they may have. And he goes, did I ask you at any point to that conversation to do something for me? And I go, yeah, you did. You asked me to give you 20 bucks. He goes, no, think about what I said to you. And I got thinking about it. He goes, I didn't ask you to open your wall. I didn't ask you to pull it out. I didn't ask you to give me the $20 out of it. I asked you if I could keep it.

I told you through the whole process to do those steps. He goes, when you're a salesperson, you identify what your customer's trying to do. You help them achieve that point, but you're a salesperson, you identify what your customer is trying to do. You help them achieve that point, but you also help them get fulfilled and take away any securities they have and whatever sort of doubts they may have and sort of all that good stuff. And so I learned that. I think it came from, I think it was W. Clement Stone who said to a man for his time, take it. And I honestly believe if you're a salesperson, if you're

working for the good of the client, you've listened for what they want, and your job is now entrusted from them to encourage them to achieve their goals based upon what they've espoused to you, that's your job, is to lead them down that pathway. Because that's what your job is.

They can't just walk into a dealership and grab a set of keys off a wall and go, Hey, I'm going to go test drive this cool. They're like, yeah, I bet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's unbelievable, right? Just that assumption. And, um, uh, I think it was a Zig Ziglar who said, you can get anything in this world you want, as long as you help enough people get what they want. And so that's the key as a salesperson, you got to figure out what do they want and then how do I help them get it and then have that assumptive piece where they're not here for the free coffee because the coffee sucks. They're here because they want to buy something. And so I'm just going

to go ahead and assume that they want to buy it until they put the brakes on me and go, hey, I'm waiting for my tax returns or whatever. And then I'm going to try and overcome that too. But I'm going to assume that they're here to do business. A lot of salespeople, it's amazing to me how many salespeople are scared, for lack of a better term, to either ask for the sale or to just assume the sale

and roll right along with that sales process and see if the customer doesn't ever throw up an objection. And they just let you go through the sales process, close the deal and boom. And you go, wow, that was almost too easy. Well, it's because they were there to do business. You did what you needed to do. You built value. You helped solve their problems. Why else would they be there? I mean, yeah. There's a certain point that I think a lot of people will get sold

and I wish people had made it segmented in my mind, but there's a certain point where the client, you gain rapport with them, you gain their trust. Now your job is to go do your job. It's interesting to me, like one of the things that I always see is whenever I go in to get a haircut these days with these haircut places,

you know, I just go to the general ones. If you've ever seen my hair, you can, you clearly see why. You're like, wow. Yeah, me too. $12 haircut right there, and it looks like the same as a beaver's ass. And he didn't pay $12, so I don't know what that means. But on today's podcast, beaversasses and closingpick.com.

So tune in tune in at 5 but no it was interesting to me that you know there's a point there where once you get that thing you've got to leave one of the problems I have when I go get in a haircut the gal always tells me she goes well do you want a number 5

or a number 6 blade or whatever clippers and I'm, I don't know. Listen, all I know, honey, is I pay you to be the professional in this field. I don't want to learn to be a haircutter. I don't want to know what blade number five or six do. Just cut my damn hair. That's why, and there's a lot of that in this sort of world where people want you to do

their job for them. And you're just like, this is the reason I pay you to be a professional. If you're in car sales or if you're in sales in general, you need to realize that there's a certain amount of, what's the right word, expectancy that the customer has in placing their trust in you and going, okay, I'm giving you my trust and I'm giving you my trust. Or it's your job to lead me down the road and run with this baby. And if I have some sort of insecurities or objections, it's your job to help me overcome the road and run with this baby. And if I have some sort of insecurities or objections, it's your job to help me overcome them. This is why I pay you. This is why you're getting the commission. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's funny. I talked to, you know, the salespeople about how, you know, back to that. If, if a customer starts giving

you objections or questions or whatever, you know, one of my philosophies throughout my entire career is that we treat everybody like they're our mom, our dad, our brother, or our sister. And I tell them, you know, we always going to get along with our brother. No, of course not. Do I want to punch my brother in the nose sometimes? Of course I do. But if he calls me and he's got a problem, I'm going to help him out with that problem. And so tying in with that, if your mom comes onto the car lot and your mom says, well, you know what? I think I'm going to go shop your competitor. What attitude and what mentality would you take?

Now, if you've built some rapport with your customer, you can even get a little sharp with them. But that's that attitude deep down in your soul that you have to have that. Hey, my mom, my brother, my dad just said they're going to go down the road and shop my competitor. That's insane. Right. You would you would call them out and you would go, that's insane. And that's that mentality. If you have that same mentality, when a normal customer says, I'm going to go shop your competitor, you're going to dig deeper than you would if, oh, all right, well, here's my business card. Call me if it doesn't work out. Yeah. So you've got to have that same mentality that,

hey, my mom just told me. And I talked about that with my service advisors. If you've got to have that same mentality that, Hey, my mom just told me. And I talked about that with my service advisors. If you, if you're going to sell a customer, a brake job, and you go, Hey, your brakes are at like, you know, one millimeter, you're, I probably wouldn't drive this thing. And they go, well, you know what? I'll get back with you. If that was your mom, you would say, absolutely not mom. I'm not letting you drive this car out of here. Let's figure it out. Maybe we can go with some cheaper pads. Maybe it's a price issue. Maybe it's, you know, I mean, there's some issue there. People aren't going to drive out of the service department if they know that their brakes are bad. You know, so we have to have that

same mentality that, Hey, my mom or my dad just told me, I don't want to do business with you, Josh. And how would you feel deep down inside? And then take that feeling and that emotion and use that on your current customer that you've got. Because if you've done a good job building rapport, you've got a great product, you've built value, you owe it to that customer for them to do business with you. Because if they go down the road, not every dealership, not every salesperson acts the way we act. They're not as transparent. They're not as nice. They're not as friendly. They don't stand behind their product or their customers like we do. So would you really let your mom go down the road and buy from one of those other salespeople? Of course you would. So it's just a matter of changing that mindset and going, okay,

I need to dig a little deeper and not give up so easy because I wouldn't let this happen to a family member. Yeah. And a lot of times people get ripped off too. I mean, one of the challenges I've always had in sales is I'll give somebody a really good deal and they'll be like, you know, here's a really good deal. And they're like, oh, I think I'm paying too high a price. And maybe I failed somewhere in my sales presentation or dealing with sales objections. Or maybe I just didn't gain enough rapport with them. Whatever the case is, they decide to move on. And they'll go down to somebody else and you'll come back you'll see them

later maybe in the service shop and they're like yeah i bought the car at the other dealership and i'm like well you know you said we were charging too much how'd that other thing work out i don't know they got me a really good deal a 34 interest and yeah and uh paid like 40 000 for a 35 000 car you're like what you got ripped off and but. But that's the example of where maybe they just like the salesperson better, the salesperson had better silver tongue than I did, or better objection. Who knows why that converted? But I've had that happen so many times in my selling career where somebody tells me that I somehow didn't sell them.

And they go somewhere else, and they end up paying more and whatever. And what's even interesting to me is they're actually happy about it. You're just like, wow. And they found that hot button. That salesperson figured out what was important to them. And I like to say, in the car business, we say three Ms. It's the man, the money, and the machine. Outside the car business, it's the three P's. It's the person, the product, or the price. So the person being me, do they not like me? Or the dealership

as a whole can be the person also, the business. Do they not like my business? Do we have bad reviews? Do we have sweatshops in China or something like that? Is it the product? Is it the wrong color wrong options wrong something because a lot of times consumers they won't tell you because they don't we just built rapport we're fishing buddies now i don't want to tell you that oh i wanted the one with the moon roof and this one now the moon so i'm just going to tell you that i'm going to keep shopping i'm going to think about it because that's easier than that rejection i don't want to reject you a lot of a lot of people don't like rejecting other human beings.

Or is it the price? And a lot of times it is the price. And then you can address that, whether it's a monthly payment, a down payment, or an overall purchase price. But if you can figure out which one of those three reasons why the customer isn't doing business with you, and a lot of times I'll just ask them. I'll just be flat out and tell them, hey, when somebody doesn't want to do business with me for whatever reason that they're giving me, it's usually one of these three things. It's the person, you know, do you like me? Did I do something wrong? Are you

all right with our company? And they'll say, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's you. It's you know, you're great. You know, I love you. You're incredible. Um, is it the product? Are we on the right product? Is this the right color? Does it have all the right options? You know, and that sort of thing. And just start really detailing that out. No, no, product's right. Okay. Well, then the last thing is probably the price. Is it the monthly payment, down payment? Well, yeah, I was waiting on my tax returns and I don't have my down payment. Okay, perfect. Well, we can overcome that. That's easy. But if we can isolate that to figure out which one of those three things it is for their hot button, then we're great and we can move forward. Because we may be focusing on price, which we do as salespeople a lot because we think

that's the most important thing, but it usually isn't. On a list of top 10 things, it's like eight or nine. Color is more important. And a lot of people are like that. If you're going to spend $50,000 on a brand new car and you're going to keep it for five years, I would pay $1,000 more to get the right color. Because five years from now, I'm not're going to keep it for five years, I would pay $1,000 more to get the right color because five years from now, I'm not even going to remember what I paid for the car. So people will pay more for the right color or that right option, that cold weather package or whatever it is that they're trying to do. So sometimes as a salesperson, we have to back up a little bit and go into that needs analysis or fact-finding session to figure out, hey, what

did we miss? We missed something along the way, because if, if they came in, they've spent some valuable time of theirs. We built some rapport with them and now they're telling me they're not ready to do business. There's some sort of problem. So let's figure out what that objection is, isolate it down to this one thing, and then see if we can overcome it. Yeah, it's, it's, uh,. Yeah, it's an interesting thing, the whole dynamics of selling and everything that goes into it. So you guys do one-on-one coaching,

you do dealership consulting, sales training. And of course you guys, I like this part, 600 videos. I've done, I don't know, 3,000, 3,500 videos on the Chris Voss Show. So I know how much work is in making 600 videos. Yeah. And that's just the sales, right? I think it's up to, it's almost 700 now. And then the Eric Thomas motivational ones, there's, oh man, there's probably five or 600 of those also. So you've got the training and motivation. And then every day on my Facebook page, I do Monday through

Friday, I do a free one on my page, some sort of sales tip tactic training that anybody can log on to and watch. Because I know not everybody's going to be able to get the platform or dealership, you know, for whatever reason. So every single day I do a video. And for somebody who does a lot of videos, you know, that can be tough sometimes. You got, you know, you got something going on. You just don't feel good. You're sick. You know, I got a black eye. I'm like, I don't want to do a video. I got a black eye, you know you got something going on you you just don't feel good you're sick you know i got a black eye i'm like i don't want to do a video i got a black eye you know so it's

you get all sorts of reasons but it's that consistency piece that wins through and and so that's my goal is just consistently put out some content for anybody that wants it and then if they see some value obviously i can upsell them to the you know to the full package yeah it's it's interesting um and it's cool. I think, I think what you guys have is as sales training is pretty freaking awesome. Uh, so give me the plugs for you guys is, uh, for your website and all that good stuff. Yeah. So just go to closing big.com. All my information is on there. Um,

and I've got a Facebook pixel. So if you're on Facebook, I'll keep tracking you for the rest of your life. But, uh, but that's,. But that's the best way to get ahold of me, see my content and that sort of thing. All right, guys. Well, we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Go to Josh's website and go to closingbig.com. I got to tell you, whether you're in the automotive business or just in sales in general, you can learn a lot from automotive selling. In fact, like I say, I used to want to train all my salespeople still this day.

I'm like, I wish you could pay for a three hour training by fire course where they would have to go work at a used car dealership and just learn by fire, all that stuff. Anyway, guys, be sure to go check it out and check out all the other materials he has online.

And we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for coming by we'll see you guys next time