The Game with Alex Hormozi - The Story Behind The Story | Ep 223

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

The salesman has the weight of the brand behind them, and the brand is the story. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) takes us back to the time he started out at his first gym, the problems he faced at the time, and how he turned a really bad situation into gold by changing the narrative and language around his offer. 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:(0:45) - Getting conviction and repetition(2:55) - Overcoming a challenging first sale: tonality and words matter(5:32) - Unique gym angle attracts people: private rooms, exclusivity(6:56) - Story behind the story defines your company's identity(7:53) - Creating a business story that others want to associate withFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

I flipped the narrative of the story from like some hood upstairs, you know, five individual rooms, right? Which literally had barbells in the middle of them to to this swanky, almost like mini secret society like transformation center that only celebrities and politicians would go to purposely off the beaten path so that they could maintain their discretion. 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. Happy Wednesday. I'll make this a short one. It was something that came to mind yesterday. And it's about the story behind the story. And so one of the things that I think has been

really powerful, maybe even one of the most powerful things that separates really good salesmen from everyone else, is their level of conviction. Now, the question is, how can we get that level of conviction and do it repeatedly in other people? And the first person you have to do it is yourself. And so what I want to kind of give you is one example of how to use this kind of strategy and how kind of important is. So in Dan Kennedy's, I think it's book called, I think it's like triple X selling or something

like that. So he partnered with a woman who ran a brothel. like a prostitute business on how to sell. And I've read the entire book end to end, and there's a lot of really very tactical good nuggets in there. But the most viable thing that I can say that I got from the book was the concept of congruency throughout a sales process. And so the choreography of the customer experience,

that their experience should match the expectation of the perception of what the business wanted to communicate. So what I mean by that is, does every part of your sales process, the tonality of the person, the first email they get, the wording, that all of these pieces,

does it align with a truly world-class business, right? And so they took a ton of care in this, it was like a New York brothel, to make it feel like this call service was truly top-notch. The women on the phone were British, they had this, you know, so they could sound like, you know, rich butler's all that kind of stuff. And whatever the term is for a female butler, but you get my point.

So like, hello, so, you know, like whatever. And, you know, what type of woman would you like? And I mean, you may be discussed about that. I get it. But from a sales perspective, understanding how they greeted people, how they had the experience, how they did the follow up, all of that fit within the prospect's mind. And she talked about how if for some reason any one part of that story was not a line, with the true imagination of what they had created and depicted in the prospect's mind,

they would pop, and then all of a sudden they would just, like, be a whorehouse, right? And so that's kind of the difference with the positioning here. And so an easy example of this, or like a real life for me, was when I was selling the very first or second gym that I was selling gym launch at, and this is when I was flying out doing the sales, I had been told by the owner that this place was going to be, I mean, he said, boogie. It's going to be just like unbelievable. It's going to reek of money.

Those are the exact words of used. And so I was like, oh, this is going to be great. I'm going to fly out. I'm going to do a ton of high ticket sales. It's going to be awesome. And so when I got there, some of you guys have seen my video of selling 191 people in the hood. It was that gym. And it wasn't even a gym.

It was an upstairs apartment that had, that he had rented two apartments side by side. and it was like they had like a kitchen and like bedrooms and it was just it was just not at all in actual like anyways the point being wasn't a gym it was literally you know five individual rooms in two different apartments and there was bars on the windows and you know it's creaky really dirty steps there's like you know the corner market right down the street it just like you know what I mean it was not at all what was being depicted to me and so the challenge was how am I going to overcome the story that people are seeing with their eyes and tell them a new narrative. And so the narrative that I came up with, and it was in D.C.

is I would say, because things aren't that far apart. So I told people, I was like, oh, yeah, I was like, these individual rooms, I was like, have you ever been to, you know, it's like, when you ever start working out, you want that privacy, right? I was like, yeah, you don't want other people staring at you when you're starting out, right? And they're like, oh, my God, yeah. And I'm like, right. And so a lot of our clients really appreciate the privacy. that we offer them because we have a lot of people who prefer to keep their identity secret.

And so they just get off, you know, get off the subway. It's not in the main areas. And this is where we really deal with people who are, you know, high class, you know, who are very important. And so that's why we have this structure that way. It's really to cater to that type of client's help. Hey, Mosin, Nation, quick break just to let you know that we've been starting to post on LinkedIn and want to connect with you.

All right, so send me a connection request and note letting me know that you listen to the show and I will accept it. there's anyone you think that we should be connected with, tag them in one of my or Layless posts, and I will give you all the love in the world. All right, so let's get back to the show. And I would tell that story, just like I just did. And all of a sudden, people were attracted to wanting to be part of this new thing that was off the beaten path, that was upstairs in this building. I was like, we're purposely discreet.

That's part of how we do things. We don't want to be out there and in the public. We are the place that people go to that they don't want other people to know that they're coming and doing those big transformations. I was like, we're that off the beaten path, and we value the privacy of our clients. And when I, like, so it's, can you hear, you hear what I'm doing this? Is that I flip the narrative of the story from like some, some hood upstairs, you know, like five individual rooms, right? Which literally had barbells in the middle of them to, to this swanky,

uh, secret, almost like mini secret society like transformation center. that only celebrities and politicians would go to purposely off the beaten path so that they could maintain their discretion. And so that is the story behind the story, right? Obviously, you have to do your sales process the same way you normally would. But the thing is, because it was useful for me, he told me that's what was going to happen. And so I incorporated that into my belief system and I was convicted when I was explaining this story about what we were trying to do.

And by doing that, we were able to close away higher percentage, et cetera. And I mean, we crushed it. And so what you can do from that is first, ask yourself the story behind the story, right? Like, what type of company are you? Right. And if you can be convicted in saying that we are world class. And the big problem here is that many people aren't convicted. They think they say, I want to help 10,000 people, I want to change people's life, but they're not really convicted about being the best.

Right. And so do the things to get your conviction because once you have that conviction, you can tell someone the story behind the story. And they can feel the air between your words and the sentiment that's being communicated. And I think it's incredibly powerful in a sales setting especially because we're always just telling stories. And if you can create a story of the type of business that you are, then it will be hopefully something that the person that you're talking to wants to associate with. and it gives you a much, much stronger detractor and it can help you overcome some smaller things. And so anything that you have that could be perceived as negative, you have a story that you can flip, right, to use in reverse of that story, to explain it away and even position yourself

in a better way as a result of that. And so right now, that's, I mean, I just, I'm trying to communicate this in the best way possible. That story that you ache yourself with is going to be the thing that gives you the conviction that can close so many sales for you. And also, if you're, like, if you've sold your salesperson who's new on the fact that, like, you're this type of company. So like, think about somebody who's new comes in and you're, they're like, they don't know who you are. And those first moments are so important because you're like, no, no, no, no, like, we are world class. Let me show you why we are positioned this way.

We're not just saying that. We are. And if you can get that conviction, they will speak with a different air to prospects. Think about how the salesman at Gucci or Prada or Chanel or any of these really, really top-tier brands talks to a prospect, they have the weight of brand behind them. And they, like, some people were like, man, they were kind of updating there. It's like, well, they're trying to ward off a certain type of people and attract a different type person that values exclusivity and supremacy, not the right word because it's all politically,

whatever, but like elitism, right? They're trying to attract people who want that, right? And so the salesman has the weight of the brand behind them. And the brand is the story. And so if you can create the brand story that you sell yourself on first and then can sell your salespeople on, you will be able to sell more people and they will be more. And they will be more. in as long as the entire process is choreographed to reinforce that story. So that's the story behind the story. If you don't know what your story is, it's being made for you and it's probably not the one you want told.

And so I highly recommend getting that straight, making sure the sales guys and girls and yourself included know what that story is so that everything they do is in alignment with that.