The Game with Alex Hormozi - Real World In-The-Trenches Sales Tactics [That work] | Ep 170

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

"Consider the alternatives. You can't expect the same if you change the variables.” Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about some of the most used sales tactics he learned in the trenches, including using the phrase "just how we've always done it" and asking customers which product they prefer. He also emphasizes the importance of having conviction in your service or product and believing in your vision in order to be successful in sales.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:(2:26) - People need to see others do it before they comply.(5:22) - Asking what someone wants is the easiest way to sell.(6:55) - Changing variables changes outcomes, the most important sale.(9:28) - Conviction is key in the sale between you and your service.(11:58) - Conviction comes from considering alternatives.(15:18) - Belief in your service overcomes excuses, leading to success.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Hey, what's going, everyone? Happy Wednesday. I hope you are enjoying your Wednesday, or whatever day you are listening to this or watching this. I wanted to go back to some in the trenches sales stuff. It was on my mind, and I haven't talked about sales in a while, and I do love talking about sales. And so what I want to do is tell you some of the most used,

kind of greatest hits in the trenches, overcomes, and kind of selling situations that I learned the hard way. And so part of this came from the whole Allen project that we have right now, which is our software that works leads. People self-report their closing percentage. We have reports for how much people say they close. So they say they close 51% of people who walk in the door. But with Allen, they're forced to mark every single appointment as showed,

didn't show, closed, didn't close, how much, et cetera. And so because of that, I have what they say, which is 51%, and what they actually show, which is 34%, which I think is fascinating because it just shows you how much we overestimate our own abilities. And so in seeing that, that gyms that we're working with, we're closing one out of three who were coming in the door. I was like, you know what? It might be worth talking about sales. So first off, I wanted to just tell everyone like, I sucked at sales when I started. I couldn't close free trials.

When I first started my gym, it was like really very humbling. I couldn't even get people to give me the credit card for the free trial. And so the first and probably most used thing that I use in sales in terms of in the trenches, when I'm trying to close, especially those little itty-bitty sales, like sales that you shouldn't have to worry about. But some reason, somehow they get messed up, right? Like a free trial. Like you should close 100% of people on that, right? And you shouldn't even feel like a sale because it's a free freaking trial from a referral, whatever, right?

is I would give people the contract, all right? And then they would get to the credit card part and be like, this is a free trial, so I don't need to fill this out, right? And I'd be like, no, you do. And then they would look at me and I'd be like, it's just how we've always done it. And I would just shrug and be like, just how we've always done it. And they would be like, oh, okay, it's because that's how they've always done it. Literally, one of the best and most use lines that I use all the time with any type of sale out there.

And so if you want, because no one knows how you've done it before, but people, people do love following pack. And so if you have something where you need someone to sign up or you need them to put their card there and you need them to, you know, whatever. If you need people to do a thing a certain way because it's more convenient for your business, a lot of times they just need to know that other people have done it. And so just how we've always done it. And for some reason, that pitch has, or that line, that hook has served me so well throughout the years, my gift to you. The next one is, and I'm going to do one on retail, and then I'll do a final one that kind of sums up all these other things in smaller tactics. So one of the biggest ones in selling retail.

So that's like selling supplements, selling products, right, of any kind, which you should at your gym because hopefully you don't hate money and people are going to buy them anyways. They might as well buy them from you. They might as well get them from a source. Who actually knows their goals? What a concept. Anyways. So I decided that I wanted to start selling supplements because a friend of mine from college, I saw him at the airport and he was like hey man how's your gym going I was like oh it's good I was like

how's your you know supplements store going he's like it's good you know we're about 75,000 a month and I was like what like what selling protein powder like you kidding me and I thought this guy was not that sharp and I literally was so like upset that this guy was making that much money compared to me I was just like did like I'm selling supplements and only once I started selling supplements that I realized that I sucked at it. And so I could tell you there's obviously whole choreograph process and whatnot that we have now. But the single biggest breakthrough I had was after getting beat up a whole day of doing orientations and trying to get people to buy supplements. And I was like, oh, it would imbrusably body mass.

And you know, you're going to be going to be less sore, like all this stuff, right? I was talking science jargon and they didn't really care. And finally, I had this really nice one. She's like, you know, the one with a nice ring and the nice purse. And I was like, okay, if I don't sell this person, like, I suck and I should just jump out the window, right? And so I got through the orientation, and at the end of the orientation, I just was like, so do you want chocolate or vanilla? And she was like, which one do you like? I was like, chocolate.

She was like, okay, I'll take that. And I was like, really? And I just like slid it to her. I was like, okay. And then like knowing what it had just happened, I was like, for intro work, I was like, we have strawberry and we have kiwi. Which one do you want? And she just was like, and I was like, I like kiwi. She was like, all right, I'll take that.

So I slid it towards her. And I didn't want to scare her off. So I didn't go for anything more than the two, right, at that time. And so I was just like, do you want to just use the card? Do you have on your contract? She was like, yeah, that's fine. And I was like, oh, my God, I just made a sale. And so this was like, my.

my first supplement sale that I ever did. It took me a really long time to get there. And so from a tactical standpoint, simply asking which one someone wants is one of the ease is one of the easiest and best ways to sell something because it's just, it's an assumed clothes, it's an either or close. And I didn't learn that until much, much later after a lot of pain and suffering. And so sometimes people will say like, like, and what's great is that the first tactic I gave you about this is how we've always done it.

perfectly even in conjunction with this. And that's why I use it all the time. So if someone says like, well, do I have to, do I have to take these products? Be like, it's just how we've always done it. You know what I mean? This is kind of what goes with the program. This is how we know we're going to get, you know, X, Y, Z.

And they're like, okay, that makes sense. And so, like, just like, if you use those two things in tandem together, you'd be amazed at how successful you can be because it's just, like, really convincing lines. One of the other ones that I use pretty much all the time, I would say it's probably the single overcome that I use the most when selling physical products, was if you change the variables, you can't expect the same outcome. That was the close.

And so this kind of got a little bit further along when I was selling a lot more products. If someone's like, well, can I, so there's different obstacles, right? Number one obstacle is like, do I need to buy supplements, right? do I need to buy these supplements? And those are two different ones. Like, do I need to get them in general? Do I need to get these ones specifically? And can I have, can I use the one I have at home?

Like, there's all of those different variations of those obstacles. And the one overcome works all the time. It's just like, honestly, you came here because you want this. What you've been doing the past hasn't been working. And I can tell you that we can hit you here. But if you change the variables, you're going to change the outcome. Right. And like literally that little line of you can,

change the variables, you can change the outcome. People were like, yeah, I guess that makes sense, right? And so, hopefully these are the little lines, right? The first line was just how we've always done it, right? That, like, you'd be amazed at how many times you can close cards and get people to do what you need them to do with that single line. The next is is if you're going through a process, like an orientation or whatever, and you just say, like, great, which of these two do you want? Which one of these people prefer? I prefer this. Or most people prefer this, right? Most people do this, right? Most people end up, like, because a lot of people just want to know, what do most people do? They just want to follow the pack and not have to risk

making decisions. And so you can even sell a bundle that's a four pack or an eight pack or something, but being like, most, like, before you get to the end of the sale, it's like, honestly, most people just get this. And they're like, great, I'll just do that. That's fine. And then you're like, do you want chocolate or vanilla? And then you can go assume the clothes. And then if you change the variables, you change the outcome, right? And that's really, really good for overcoming obstacles around not taking the next step. And that works really, really well. So those are three easy little tactical in the trenches, sales tactics that I used all the time. I think there's a lot of really fancy sales stuff. And usually it's the simple stuff that works. Like the number one

obstacle overcome that I used for, you know, I need to think about it. I'm not sure. Bob, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was always just like, what's your main concern, which is like, but wait a second. Alex, that's not an obstacle overcome? Well, it kind of is because then they were, they'd have to like say what their concern was, which then got me away from what the stall was and got me to like confront the issue. Hey guys, real quick. If you're new to the podcast, I have a book on Amazon called 100 million dollar offers that over 8,000 five-star reviews and it has almost a perfect score. You can get it for 99 cents on Kindle. The reason I bring it up is that I put over a thousand hours into writing that book. And it's my biggest gift to our community. So it's my very

shameless way of trying to get you to like me more and ultimately make more dollars to that later on in your business career i can punch the partner with you so that's my give go check it out amazon and back to the show so anyways uh the last piece uh that i wanted to go over was a conviction so this is a little bit uh on all all hands-on-deck video lots of little tactics the most important sale um is is between you and your service all right like i can't this enough is that like a lot of times even like with our team with gyms who come on board sometimes they sell better before they like in the beginning they sometimes there's some gyms who sell better in their first couple weeks then like six months later and what happens is they

they learn the selling tactics in the beginning and then their sales immediately go up because you have to have some structure the conversation etc but the thing is is that their conviction's really high because their gym hasn't grown a lot right and it hasn't broken And so the most important sales between you and your service, because if you believe in your service, none of the other tactics really matter, right? If you've ever seen someone, like MLMs are a great example. If you've ever seen someone sell like a product, it doesn't matter what it is, right? It could be, you know, Rodan and Field. I mean, I don't know anything about the products.

But the point is, if you've ever seen someone sell those who absolutely drinks the Kool-Aid, who is all in, right it's it's so difficult to to overcome absolute conviction it's because what happens is i don't know if you've ever talked to somebody who has absolute conviction and this could be with religion this could be with anything the thing is is their level of conviction makes you question yours and the depth of their conviction will make you question you're like what do they know that i don't know man they they really believe this like and the thing is is like if you're you really, truly believe that your product, your service is going to help someone, then you will be able to sell better, which is why, as the entrepreneur slash CEO, et cetera,

like, you need to constantly be in the trenches on the other side so that you can keep your conviction sky high so that you can continually acquire customers. And so it's this balancing act. And that's where it gets difficult because this is one of the difficult parts of business. what I mean? Is that like you may know that you need to make sales in order to pay payroll, right? And you know that you need to pay payroll in order to improve your business over time. But there may be times when your product or your service is not as good as you want it to be. And let me just give you the surprise here. It will never be as good as you want it to be.

But what you need to do is think about the alternatives. And so I think one of the biggest things that helped me with my conviction in selling in general is considering, the alternatives. And I actually use this in sales presentations, you know, with someone anyways, but it's like, oh, let's consider the options, which is actually one of our obstacle overcomes in the bug is like, consider the options closed. It's like, what are you going to do? Right? What else are you going to do? And so you may not be perfect because you'll never be perfect, right? Like, as much as I want to, there's, and honestly, in any coaching business, like, I, you cannot eat the food for your client. You cannot work out for your client. I cannot

call the leads for you I cannot make your ads for you right I cannot coach your team for you I cannot teach your classes for you I cannot do that right and therefore there is a disconnect between my product and the results that are going to occur period right it cannot I cannot which is one of the reasons I like like prestige labs and and food and out is that the product is independent of someone else's effort which is what I really like a lot about that but anyways point being if you have a service where you cannot have a hundred percent of the control, you have to look at the alternatives that that person might be pursuing

if they do not use your service, right? And so that's where you're like, okay, Susie, it's been two years and you've gained 40 pounds. So, you know, what are the options? What are you going to do? Well, I mean, I could, I guess I could go to Planet Fitness. It's like, no, you already did that. We already know that that doesn't work for you. Okay, what else could you do? I guess, you know, I could try Weight Watchers. Yeah, but then you're, you know, you're going to do. You know, you're you lost of it and you gained more back, right? They'd be literally heavier than you are now and you already feel like you're not happy right now, right?

So if you gain 15 more pounds because you lose it and then gain it, how would you feel? Horrible. Right. Okay, so that's not going to work. What else you have? And then, like, basically, you exhaust the options where it's like, so you really just need someone to, like, work out with you, make sure you learn how to eat the food the right way, right?

And make sure you actually do it with the accountability. Like, actually hold you to it. That way you won't fail, right? Like, that's been the issue in the past, right? Yes. Okay. And so a lot of times you can confront the issue by having them consider the alternatives. And so like you may not be perfect.

You won't be. Now you should do every, you put every ounce of effort into becoming perfect, right? And trying to make it amazing. And the more, this is actually really interesting. So for us, like with our sales team,

we recently had a call with them because they were doing a shit job or closing. And, yeah, just sucking. And so they know. So it's all good. But, one of the issues was they didn't know what we were doing on the coaching side.

Like we'd done so many things recently like we like so many new processes for implementation teams and all these things. And really, and this is where Layla hopped in and she was like, do you guys know what we're doing on that side? And they're like, no, we don't know what you're doing. And so she just was like, we do this on day one and day two and day three and day five and day seven and they blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And they were like, wow, that was like amazing.

And so like this week, they're right back to where they, you know, normally are. And the thing is, a lot of times if you get too much in the, if they see this and say this and say this and they see this, it's like in the big picture, none of the shit that I said earlier matters because if your conviction is sky high, people will buy. Right. That's it. Like if you believe truly, and this is the big piece, if you believe truly more than they believe in their excuse, you will win. Not that it's a zero-sum game, but like they will be convinced of your argument. if you believe that much, if you believe at a deeper level than they do about their excuse. And so that's really what it is.

You know, and so if you can, like, so then all of your effort should be in being the most convicted. Like you as a CEO should be the most convicted of where you're going. You know what I mean? And what the vision for your company is and where you, what, how you want to change your community and the process that you want to take people through and how you want to solve their problems. If you can paint that picture and believe it, people,

believe you and then they will want to come with you. So anyways, hopefully that balance a little bit of in the trenches. That's how we've always done it. What flavor do you want? And if you change the variables, you change the outcome. Easy, easy overcomes. What's your main concern? Let's consider the options.

Those are all of the very, very, very, those things would be worn out if you can see them in physical space. Like those would be worn out words that I've used many, many times to close sales. But at the end of the day, like if you just believe they will believe they will leave you and a lot of times you just need to check yourself because most of us know how to do the fundamentals of sales right and so usually it's just your own stuff that's getting in your own way you had someone cancel you had someone leave a bad review you had you had a charge back you had a decline that's not responding to you and this person's been going to the gym for a year right

stuff like that stays with you right it bugs you and so that's where you have to remove your emotions from the business and that's why business is hard right is that it's hard to do that It's hard to keep, keep moving forward, keeping excited while also having the trash and the shit that you have to deal with on the day-to-day basis of running a business. So anyways, hope you guys have an amazing Wednesday, a wacky Wednesday. Tag somebody who needs to get some in the trenches, sales tactics. There were five that I released on that call on this little podcast. And I hope you enjoy them and use them to the betterment of yourself and your clients.

Be easy. All right. Bye.