The Game with Alex Hormozi - Just Because You've Watched Porn, Doesn't Mean You Can F&*# | Ep 197

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

"You've gotta be able to sell over the phone. That is the skill." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about the importance of being able to sell over the phone and how it is a necessary skill for success in the current remote setting. He urges us to embrace the process and accept that they will need to put in the reps to acquire the skill.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(1:38) - Selling over the phone is a key skill for success.(3:51) - Exposure conquers fear.(5:22) - To succeed remotely, learn to sell over the phone.(6:10) - The first 20 hours of learning a new skill yield the highest returns.(7:00) - Embrace the suck and get on the phone to sell.(14:22) - Selling over the phone is key to keeping and gaining customers.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

You've got to be able to sell over the phone. That is the skill. Welcome to the Jim Secrets podcast where you talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer, and how to keep them longer. And the many failures and lessons that we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. Good morning, everyone. Happy Monday. I hope you guys are enjoying your beginning of the week.

I stood here staring at the screen, like debating whether or not I was going to title this, what I'm titling right now. we'll see if it's a good or a bad idea. But I'm titling this as of current and maybe by the time you listen to this, I've chickened out, but we'll see. Just because if you've watched porn doesn't mean you can F word. And the reason I say that is, and I was thinking about saying just because you've watched DFC doesn't mean you can fight. I thought a couple different versions, but I figured this would be the most incendiary version

of this headline. And so what I wanted to bring up is some observations that we have, seen in gym launch, the one skill that you're going to need to get through the recessionary times in the remote setting, and something that I found out from my good friend, Dr. Cashy, and how those three things all tie together into one beautiful content package for you. So actually, Robin, you're on here. And so you were asking me the other day, which is kind of funny that you're the first one hot on, you were asking me, you know, I've got this much money left in my bank account.

Should I sign out for GLX, right? How do I know I'm going to, you know, be successful? And the answer that I gave you is the answer that I kind of want to give everyone and I want to kind of drill down a little bit more into that, which is you've got to be able to sell over the phone. That is the skill. And the vast majority of gym owners, personal trainers, et cetera, don't have that skill. In fact, many brick and mortar business owners don't have that skill. And they think that they can sell because they've sold in a trust and a trust based local setting in person. All right. Your skill of sales has to massively level up depending on because what you're doing is really creating more distance and less trust, which means your skill has to overcome a wider bridge in order to close a deal, right? You know, one step removed from in person would be Zoom. One step removed from that would be a phone call. One step removed from that would be a webinar, right? So each of those creates more and more distance, which means your skill of sales has to overcome a larger distance in order to close the prospect, right?

And so the reason I titled this just because you've watched porn a lot of times, right? So like some of us, you know what I mean? Remember or some of you may have kids who are like 13, 14, 15. And I'm sure that you're trying to cyber patrol them and do all the stuff to make sure that they don't watch things you're not supposed to on the internet. But that being said, I think a lot of them do purely out of curiosity, right? But the reality is that just because someone has watched something on the internet a bunch of times does not mean they are good at the thing. And so what I mean by that is, as I'm trying to, to tie this to sales okay and so now that we have more data coming out of

gel x because we can track everyone from from click all the way through sale all right so we can see how many leads how many scheduled how many showed how many sold how much money up front etc and so what we've observed is i said earlier last week it was around 10 but it's actually closer to 25 now that we have a bigger data set of number of sales consults that have to be taken on the phone before people become proficient all right and this was really interesting to me because I was sharing this with Dr. Cashy is a good friend of mine, and he knows tons about the research world of behavioral science. And anyways, he basically explained to me that most fears get conquered through exposure. Right. So if you're

afraid of spiders, if you're afraid of foreigners, if you're afraid of whatever, right, you need to have 25 to 25 to 30 neutral exposures to the stimulus in order to for you to no longer be afraid of it. Right? And so the thing is that it was weird to me that it almost, he's like, there's a ton of data that backs this. So he got super excited about it. But that our observation from the GLX side is 100% backed in science that after you have 25 exposures, what essentially happens is you're able to function at a normal rate, right? So most people are impaired, basically, through stress and adrenaline, et cetera, when they are exposed to a

new setting and so for many of you when you're trying to sell in a remote setting you've never experienced it before and so the reason i started this with this headline like if you've watched a lot of porn whatever you you might not know how to do x right um is the same thing with sales right you may go through all the sales training in the world you may have gone through card on you you may have gone through straight line sales you may have gone through our sales training right and they're all amazing sales trainings but the reality is the best sales training in the world is getting in the arena, right? Is getting in the octagon and getting punched in the face?

Because that is when you'll actually learn, you will learn more about how to fight in your first 25 fights than you will off of years of training to fight, right? And so to the same degree, when you're getting into phone sales, right, the one thing that everyone has to be able to learn how to do in order to be successful in the current state and potentially the projected state of the economy and the buying behavior that people are going to have in a remote setting

is you've just got to get on the horse, right? like there's no there's no there's no way around it and so the way that i've been trying to position this for our community is that instead of paying five thousand dollars for sales training what you're going to essentially be able to do is you're you're going to buy 25 reps right that's pretty much what's going to happen is you're going to get in 25 times and you're going to stumble your way through it until eventually you get to this point where you're like okay i can actually just read this script and i don't have to be stressed when they say something back that I'm not prepared for.

And so it's 25 at bats, right, is what we're seeing. And that's, and I think that's kind of magical because if you look at, like, the first 20 hours of a new skill is where you get the disproportionate return in your time. After that is where you have, you continue to have diminishing returns on your time. Now, 20 hours, if you think, if you think, if you're like, you want to learn a guitar, if you, if you dedicate 20 hours to learning it, you get significantly better than you will off of any other hours after that. Now, obviously, there's marginal returns which are still important, right? There are people who are much better at sales after 1,000 hours of sales or 5,000 hours of sales, et cetera.

But the first 20 hours, right, the first 20 calls, 25, excuse me, that we've seen is what is what is the break, breaking point, our breakthrough point for people to really acquire the skill of sales and be able to replicate their closing in person percentages to closing over the phone. And so the reason I think it's really important to go in with that knowledge is that I think it will lower your stress response to the new selling environment because you have to just confront it. Period. There's no way around it. You're going to have to sell over the phone in order for you to get to be able to grow during this period of time or at least replace what you may be losing in losses, cancellations and freezes. And so I think for a lot of us, we should always look at like, okay, sure, some of us got a shit sandwich and that's okay. But what are we going to do with it? So if by the end of this, you acquired a massively valuable skill of learning to sell over the phone, because you were forced to go through and get punched in the face in the arena a bunch of times, by the end of it, you will be more proficient in this new way of selling,

which, believe it or not, actually gets a higher percentage of leaks to show up for a sales appointment, which is actually kind of cool because you actually get more throughput on your ad's bed, which is awesome, right? Mosy Nation, real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to get to, We have much bigger business going to $50, 100 million plus. We would love to talk to you. And if you like that, we'd like to hear more about it, go to acquisition.com and you can apply anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there.

And so anyways, I bring all this up to say you're going to suck in the beginning. You have to embrace the suck. Right. And the thing is, you're going to keep sucking and then you're going to suck a little bit less. And then one day you'll wake up and actually be good. Right. And people are going to ask you, but man, how did you get good at sales over the phone? and you're going to be like, I just started doing it.

Right. And so if you can position this in your mind as not like, oh, my God, and create a traumatic experience for yourself by being like, oh, my God, I went 0 for five for my first five sales calls, it's okay. You're going to have to eat that for a second before you get good and there's nothing that you can do to shortcut that. Right?

It's like the person who's like, I watched a bunch of squat videos. I'm going to be able to hit a barbell, you know, max squat the first time you step up. It's not realistic. right it's not even realistic by any stretch of the imagination and so if you can if you can if you can if really internalize that if you're the one who's taking the sales but more so also for if you if you eventually get to the point where you're outsourcing the sales to someone else you have to understand that especially if they haven't sold in this environment it's going to take some reps for them to adjust right even if they are experienced in sales before even if they've sold at your facility before in

person it's going to take them 25 reps 25 neutral exposures and he and and Trevor Dr. Cash, kind of like explain this to me. He's like, if they have negative like experiences, he's like, it prolongs that. So neutral exposures where they don't have something catastrophic happened to them, like, or for you. And so that's why it's really important to just like regulate your emotions when you're taking this and say, I'm going to put my 25 in. And what it does is it allows you to lower your pressure so that you can actually, I think, have more mental clarity going into the sale and potentially shorten them. Right. But just knowing that and resetting your expectations of like, I'm going to acquire the skill of learning to sell over the phone.

And the best way to learn to acquire the skill is not to watch more and more trainings, but to just get in and do it. And accept the fact that I'm going to suck before I get good. And that is how it works, right? These things will help you prepare the scripts, the recordings, et cetera. But nothing, everything will pale in comparison to you getting on the phone and having the conviction that you have done this before. And so just like that, you will look at someone who's new and says they've struggled on

their first seven calls and like, dude, I only close one out of seven. right and it was only on like a $50 down like I couldn't you know what I'm like I'm not going to be able to make through it and then you can look at them with conviction and be like dude just get more reps in like just get more reps in and you're going to be okay all right so still sweet spot was was 25 to 30 and that matches up with exposure training for how you can you know get through something an interesting tidbit was that uh dr. gosh and I were talking about this a lot this weekend and what happens is once you learn a core skill right He said the remainder of your skills are what's called distraction training. If you train a dog and you teach you how to sit, right? After you've taught it how to sit, it's then teaching it how to sit when someone new comes in the door.

You teach them how to sit when it's loud and there's music. You teach them how to sit when there's a food that just got poured and they can't go get the food. They have to keep sitting. Those are all different scenarios that are being, that dog is being exposed to you do the same thing. right if you're in a basketball game right everyone wishes they could play like they do in practice right and so essentially all you know exposure training or or distraction training is is how can i increase the stressful stimuli around you and then still get you to ignore that and execute the training that you already know how to do right and so this functions in a lot of ways the same way as that is this is

basic distraction training is that we're putting you in the real world setting where you over time are able to execute the skill you already know you have, but in a stressful environment, right? And I know a lot of you, like, I need to make these sales. I have to make these sales. And I know that, like, that you can come into that with that. But I would urge you to think, I have to serve this person. This person really needs my help. And in order for me to help them, I have to help them make decisions. And following the, this script is the most proven way of doing that. Right. And so having run a lot of sales teams, large group teams, the, the biggest thing that can get people to lose sales is when they start getting cute. They start being cute. They start

trying to innovate the script. To start thinking they're going to beat the algorithm. You know what I mean? It's like you're not going to beat the algorithm. You're not going to be the special snowflake. Right. You're just going to put the reps in and you're going to read the words on the script that have already been tested. And that is how you're going to win. Right. And your skill over the next 25 sales is to learn how to say the words properly, right? Is to learn how to say the words with the right inflection and tonality at the right times in response to what they are saying and lead them down this in sequence so that they come to the natural conclusion that they should work for you or with you and that is how you get the skill of sale which in my opinion is the first step of being a good coach is that you have to sell someone the possibility that they can accomplish what they want right and so i'll leave you with a final tidbit that's been a big big boost to the average closing of the whole gym large community has been we are essentially assuming the sale So we're not even, we're really just like, cool, let's get you started and let's start setting up the next appointments rather than asking if they're in, right?

And so simply by, and it sounds small, right, but it's always these small tweaks, these small hinges that open big doors that are getting bigger, bigger paid and fools and paid fulls right now over the phone and remote setting is $2.99. So that's what, that's what we're targeting all of our gyms at is $2.99 for that front end offer. and that's upfront cash flow and it's working pretty well. So when you're doing that and the leads are as cheap as they are, which they still are cheap, right now they're not two weeks ago cheap. Two weeks ago, cheap was stupid. Right now it's regular cheap. It's sane levels cheap.

You know, we're talking, you know, $5, $10 leads, not like $0.50 to $2 leads, which is what it was 14 days ago. So it's coming somewhat back to normal, which is somewhat good because then it becomes more reliable and predictable. But anyhow, you can use that headline. If you're trying to trade your sales team and if you want to use a less incendiary headline, you can use the fighting analogy of like, hey, just because you've watched, sorry, just because you've watched the UFC doesn't mean you can fight. And in the same degree, just because you've watched Kobe play doesn't mean that you're going to be able to win in the NBA. Right.

It takes practice. It takes reps. And if you can position in your mind that the reps that you're putting in and the cost of acquiring these repetitions is the most, is the most valuable way is the fastest and most valuable way for you to actually learn the skill of sales not by you know cardo new or like don't even wrong i think those are all great trainings um i've gone through them like they're very good um but this will still like not not even close in comparison will help you learn how to sell all right is actually selling so anyways hope you guys have an amazing monday hope you set your expectations properly so that you can get through this and crush um i can't

tell you this I've got I got 15 testimonials for the weekend from guys that were over 75% close rate on their phone calls so it is possible you can do it you just got to get good at it all right and it's gonna be the one skill that's gonna be able to get you through it because you're gonna be able to down sell and keep people who are in your existing customer base and also sell new customers so that they can stay on with you and you can refill the pipe all right so anyways hope you guys are loving life and excited about the opportunity that we all get to have with just a learning skills in a new environment.

I'll catch you soon. All right, like and love and heart and comment and tech and all that good stuff. It found it valuable. Or don't if you didn't. All right. Lots of love. Bye.