Sales Jiu-Jitsu: The 4 Secret Black Belt Steps to Increase Your Conversion Rates with Daniel Moskowitz and Elliott Bayev: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like the Gold Digger Podcast. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active. And today, we'll be breaking down sales jujitsu, the four secret black belt steps to increase your conversion rates. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Daniel Moskowitz and Elliot Bayev into EO Fire Studios. Daniel and Elliot take a combined 50 years of experience in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in building eight-figure sales teams and they bottle it up inside a powerful new book, Sales Jiu Jitsu.

0:43And today, Far Nation will talk about positioning. It's essential in Jiu Jitsu. It can make losing impossible and winning inevitable. And the lessons that you can learn from Jiu Jitsu as a sales professional can be life-changing and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode. Go to Daniel, Elliot, and our sponsors. Online Marketing Made Easy podcast hosted by Amy Porterfield is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with a focus on online business, including digital courses, list building content and more. Online Marketing Made Easy breaks down big ideas and strategies into actionable step-by-step processes.

1:18A recent episode that will help you get more results with a whole lot less stress is on four ways to avoid burnout. Listen to Online Marketing Made Easy wherever you get your podcasts. Leveraging fractional staffing might just be the key to unlocking growth for you and your business. Get started today with an exclusive offer from Belay. Download their latest resource, The Power of Productivity, for free. Just text FIRE to 55123. That's F-I-R-E to 55123 to get started. Daniel, Elliot, say what's up to FIRE Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know. What's up, Fire Nation?

2:00Elliot Bive here. Something people don't know about me. I've been working behind the scenes for a very long time on a plan for bringing the world together. Hey, Fire Nation, Daniel Moskowitz here. I, well, something that people don't know about me is I absolutely love musical theater and my high school production of Little Shop of Horrors, I played The Plant. Good one, Daniel. I love it. And Fire Nation, as I mentioned during the introduction, we're talking all about sales jujitsu today, specifically the four secrets, black belt steps to increase your conversion rates. So Elliot, I want to start with you today and just break it down for Fire Nation.

2:45What exactly does sales jujitsu mean? And why the heck did you even write a book about it? Well, I run a program, a private training program for entrepreneurs called Mastermind BJJ. And Daniel had come out to it a few years ago. And throughout the class, you could see that every now and again, his eyes would just light up. And as we got to talk about it, he would share his philosophy. And, you know, people have this misconception that jiu-jitsu being a martial art is violent. And, you know, we know that only old school martial art or only old school sales is combative, kind of the bullhead mentality.

3:22Modern sales is much more collaborative, care and service based. And jujitsu as a martial art, you could say is kind of the most gentle of all the arts, literally translated jujitsu means art of softness or gentle art. And there just seemed to be so much synergy between the way Daniel approaches sales and the way I teach jiu-jitsu. And the philosophy of the book is, you know, we're not fighting the client, obviously. We're fighting the forces that get in the way of them saying yes to letting us help them. Yeah, it was amazing to me when I was sitting there, you know, as a student, and Elliot would come up with some way of teaching us a move.

4:08And I'd be like, wait a minute, that's how I teach objection handling and that that just kept stacking and so much so that somebody in one of the other students said you know you guys should write a book it was started as like a joke became you know became a reality and and really for me when i when i when i do sales training it's about not hurting people meaning like you leave people better off than when you found them in any sales encounter and in a way that's exactly what happens in the competition uh and training for like the competition of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is you can learn so much that you end up never hurting anybody, but you can learn so much from those encounters and you always leave better off than when you came in, regardless of the outcome.

4:50You know, as the book came together, we figured out that we've created a system that really addresses some of the biggest complaints from both managers and sales professionals. So like in the domain of managers, it's like my team isn't overcoming objections. My team isn't closing. You know, you're not getting consistent results from your reps. And like for the professional sales professionals, it was like, no matter what I did, I can't get a prospect to engage or I always get to objections that I can't handle or, you know, a deal was deals, you know, that I closed end up falling through. So these are like some of the things that are the main stuff.

5:26And we found as we look back at our system that it addresses it all. And so, you know, as the book came together, we were just so proud of it all. So, yeah, thanks for that question. Well, I really do like how you both described this process because a lot of people do look at sales and they kind of just think of that old school style, that ABC always be closing and hammer, hammer, hammer and don't stop till you get the yes and all these different things. And, you know, it seems to always sometimes be at the expense of the client, of the customer, of the person that you're quote unquote selling to.

5:57And it doesn't have to be that way. And Fire Nation, Daniel and Elliot have a combined 50 years of experience in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And a quick little cool side, I know you guys might both enjoy is I'm actually living in a very small community here in Puerto Rico called Palmas del Mar. I mean, it's actually not that small. We have like, I want to say over 3 ,300 homes in this community. So it's actually a decent size and a pretty good size Brazilian jiu-jitsu community has come out of it. And in fact, one of the guys that really loves Brazilian jiu-jitsu opened up right in our plaza, a little jiu-jitsu studio.

6:34And a lot of people have been really enjoying it. When I talk to them about like, why are they spending their time doing that? Because, you know, we're all busy. That's what they talk about is like, you know, it's not this like hardcore, like fight, fight, fight. but it's kind of like this really kind of dance, so to speak, where, you know, it's give and take, and they're being able to apply a lot of these things, not just, you know, in the jujitsu world, but also in their business and their life and their relationships and so on and so forth. So it's really cool to kind of see how you guys have been able to bring this stuff together.

7:06And you've actually been able to help people through this sales system you've created grow. And we're not talking on a minor scale, we're talking on a massive scale. So maybe Daniel, you can start off this time and just talk to us about how exactly you've done just that and any specifics you want to give the better. It's a system that's really designed to be recursive. It really feeds upon itself. And, you know, the organization I'm with now, Advance Your Reach, you know, I'm the director of sales. And I've been, as I've been learning and as we wrote the book and implementing as I've been going, all the elements into our system.

7:45And, you know, we've grown a multiple eight figure business based off of a lot of these methodologies in terms of how I use that with my own teams. And, you know, there are some stuff that we're going to get into as we talk in our value bombs, but we have, I've implemented as I've been going along and just simple things like our, how we do training, for example, was incredible and that had a lot of benefits. And the system has four major sections. It's pre-fight, fight, winning, and post-fight. And we use jiu-jitsu competition as an analogy for a sales engagement. and and and Elliot can you take us take us through a little bit of the of the success formula I think you do a really good job on that yeah so uh John really uh astute pointing out that jiu-jitsu can really teach us so much about life and so I created this jiu-jitsu success formula which is a as Daniel said a four-phase formula for success in a jiu-jitsu competition then we apply that to the sales engagement.

9:00So the first phase pre-fight is what you do before the engagement to be ready for it. Fighting is how you show up. How do you open and engage the client in the engagement itself? Winning is how we close. How do we actually seal the deal and achieve victory? And then post-fight is what are we learning from every engagement, win or lose? And that's one of the big distinctions that it's very easy. You know, if you're a professional sales rep, you're learning from your losses for sure. But it's, and as a professional competitor in jujitsu, you're for sure doing that as well. But it's very easy to gloss over your wins.

9:40So turning every engagement into a learning opportunity so that you're constantly upgrading your skills. So real quick, before we take a break, let's go through pre-fight in detail. Talk us through that process. Again, if you have any specific examples of how you've utilized it or how you've helped companies utilize it to build and scale, take it away. The system itself has 30 specific components when fully implemented. And what we wanted to do is pick out seven. And when these are implemented correctly, we'll powerfully increase your sales team's conversion rates with existing lead sources. So in train, one of the big problems that we've seen is that teams would do really well with pre-scripted objection handling, but they wouldn't nail it on a live call.

10:28Like they just wouldn't. And this really talks about the idea of in jujitsu where the difference is between training dead or training alive. And that intensity of, say, training live makes a really big difference. So what I implemented was the idea of sparring partners, taking real-world scenarios. So what I did was in a specific week, my team are paired up together, and they are mandated in their calendar as sparring partners to now go and take a real-world scenario that they had that week, something that they actually could not overcome, and become that person for the other person. So they become their own prospect that they couldn't overcome.

11:14And they now spar with that, with their, their sparring partner. And that real resistance, that actual real world scenario that week with whatever we were pushing that week, whatever the, the, the deal, the deal was that week. And it doesn't become this like chore of, of like dead role-playing. It becomes a real alive element that just lifts everybody up. And then from that, we created tools that allow them to not only log that training session, but then we take the learnings from that and put them into things like objection handling databases, niche-specific overcome objections, so that we have learnings that come out of the sparring sessions that enable us to disseminate the learning across the organization.

12:02And we've actually provided these tools as part of the book. Well, Fire Nation, like I said, we have a lot more to chat about when it comes to fight winning in post-fight when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Expectations are at an all-time high these days for sales leaders and sales teams. Beyond your daily cold calls, the relationship building, and actually closing deals, you're also expected to leverage a slew of different tech to-dos. If you're not digging into the numbers, monitoring the best strategies, and switching it up when things aren't working, and collaborating across other teams within your company, then you're not on your A-game.

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13:43Belay has the help you need in so many areas, including virtual assistants, bookkeepers, social media managers, and more. Stop wasting time on tedious tasks that are better done by someone else. Delegate with Belay and watch your productivity soar. To help get you started, Belay is exclusively offering Fire Nation their latest resource, The Power of Productivity for Free. It's full of practical tips and tools to help you increase your productivity and make the most of your time to grow your business. Text FIRE to 55123. That's F-I-R-E to 55123 to get started. All right, Fire Nation, we're back.

14:18And Daniel Elliott, we talked a little bit about pre-fight. So anything you want to wrap up in that section, please do. and then let's move on to fight. One thing that makes jiu-jitsu such a powerful, such an effective art is that distinction that Daniel was making between dead and alive training. So there are other arts that even have the exact same moves, but you practice them in a rote manner where someone attacks you in a certain way and by the time you do step one in your move, they're basically waiting for you to finish. So it's this very dead practice, whereas in a real situation, just like in a real sales engagement you can go in with the perfect plan but by you by the time you try to implement step one you're going to get all sorts of surprises all sorts of resistance and unless you have actually trained and experienced that resistance and adapted to it many times over you won't be ready and that that a live training prepares you for the intensity of say a real self-defense situation on the mats and in the boardroom as daniel was saying you know So instead of just, you know, dead role play, actually challenging each other with real world situations that have come up prepares you to adapt on the fly.

15:32And I really like how you say that kind of dead role play, because I can just picture like somebody on a sales call being like, hey, wait a second, customer, like you were supposed to say that, like you were supposed to say this, like, what am I doing now? I don't know what to do next. So that's a really fascinating way to look at that and, you know, how you show up Fire Nation within that pre-fight. So let's move on to the next section, which is fight. All of jujitsu from the most basic to the most advanced levels based on one principle that allows us to be so effective, and that's positioning.

16:04From a good position, things are easy. From a bad position, things are hard. And positioning is so powerful that if you really focus on it, it can make losing impossible and winning inevitable. And that's really our goal. So the idea is don't try to win the fight. Just try to constantly improve your position. Once you get to a good position, your primary objective is to keep it. Make sure you're not taking even an inch backwards. Then rather than jump to victory from a good position, always it's very art of war. Make small, incremental, secure improvements in your position so that you can eventually set up your win.

16:46Yeah. So listen, as black belt sales professionals, we get paid to solve problems. And with this in mind, I want to teach you three moves within side fight. Secure your position, improve your position and set up the win. So in secure your position, let's say you have a niche where your team isn't closing. Like with sales managers and directors of sales, we're always trying to penetrate into new niches. And if they're not closing in these niches, this might be the issue. So the concept here is getting to the truth of the matter, the why behind the problem you solve. And oftentimes it's getting that third or fourth question.

17:28in. For example, you know, trying to penetrate into HR division of an organization and you're trying to solve some problems there and they say, well, my staff aren't happy. It's like, okay, well, you know, the non-black belt sales professional might start to solve for that first problem. But if you go, okay, well, tell me more about that. Well, staff is, because we did a merger last year and, you know, some people got let go. Okay, well, tell me more about that. Well, one of the CEOs was, you know, fired. Well, tell me more about that. Well, they were having some improper stuff with some of the staff.

18:00Oh, okay. Well, tell me more about that. Well, now the staff and the management are just out of alignment. And okay, now you're getting to the truth of the matter. You actually really understand what you need to solve for. And when you're going into new niches or new areas, you may not know what those three or four or probably five questions deep are. And that's a really great way of being able to figure out getting to the truth of the matter. Next move is improve your position. As sales professionals, I got to ask, have you ever been in a situation where you just knew the sale was going to close, but then someone you didn't even know about came out of the woodwork and killed the deal?

18:38I mean, this has happened to me. This has happened to me. And so when you think about hidden decision makers, before you move into the next phase of a sales conversation, You know, get your champion, whoever that person is, and say, can you really critically think as we're now like, hey, this deal is getting into six figure land. Like who else needs to be on the approval? You get them to think about it because oftentimes they don't think about it until they get to the end. And they're like, oh, wait a minute. I got to go up and up the chain of command here. Get that consensus early. And you are the best person to be in the room to talk to these other hidden decision makers and actually make the case for the product or service.

19:17and like be in that scenario. So that's improve your position. The last is set up the win. Have you ever gotten to a part in a close and you've closed the deal and the next day you get a phone call and you're like, the deal just isn't gonna go through. They've gotten to a point where you got an objection that came out of the woodwork that you could not handle. So what I'm about to teach you now is a bulletproof way to make sure a deal does not slip through your fingers. You get not getting a bulletproof way to make sure that you do not get an objection you can't handle. So it's called setting up your win.

20:00And the idea here is the cost of inaction. What most people do is ignore the cost of inaction or the state of the cost of inaction for a customer. So what you should be doing is making the customer state the cost of inaction themselves. So what would happen if the problem that you solve does not get solved? And it can't be you telling them this. It has to be them telling you. Because when you get this wording right and you feed it back to them at any point in the conversation, it can essentially bulletproof you against any objection. Cost of inaction. Honestly, something I've never really thought about in detail.

20:38And again, it's just another reason, Fire Nation, why you always want to be thinking about these different processes that people who have experience in building these type of revenue generating teams in place. So let's talk now about winning. We're talking closing. We're talking sealing the deal. What's the deal with this section? In Jiu Jitsu, checkmate, kind of victory, closing the deal is what we call a submission It's a move that basically forces the opponent to give up. It could be a choke or, say, a joint lock where you hyperextend their arm. So the idea is that once you've gotten into a good position and you're in position to win, again, the temptation is just to jump to victory.

21:20But we want to say I'm looking to wrap myself around someone's arm so that I can hyperextend it. rather than just try to finish them, I want to understand that they're going to have last-minute counters and resistances. They're going to maybe just try to tough it out. So tiny improvements in my position at the very end of the fight, at the very end of the engagement, can, again, make winning inevitable. So just pinching my knees together, the way I turn their thumb, the angle that I lean my body weight, all these little things allow me to make sure that when it's time to actually pull the trigger, there's no chance of escape.

22:04Yeah, listen, there's two moves that I really want to teach Fire Nation here in winning. And the two moves is reinforce and cement. In reinforce, have you ever been deep in a sales process and you know that your prospects should be salivating for your product or service, but they just kind of feel lukewarm. The problem here might be what I call future casting. It's about painting the picture in a really vivid way what the future will look like with your product or service already installed in their business. What is, how is their business going to be running? What's, how's that department going to be running?

22:44How much money are they going to be saving or making or whatever it is future casting and painting that picture reinforces this position before you go in for the sale like before you go in for the close rather next is cement now for the sales managers out there listening the worst nightmare and i know i mean i've had this happen i had this happen this week to me have you ever had where the prospect calls you up it's like i made the sale the next day they call you up and it says i lost the sale. Well, what could be happening here is they don't mark the moment properly. They don't cement the sale.

23:21They don't go through the process of saying, we're so excited that you're on board here. Here's what the next six months or a year is going to be like with us. Here's how your, you know, your account manager is going to call you in. And this is what's going to happen. You know, and depending on the niche that you're in, the kind of celebration could look very different. I mean, pre-COVID, that would probably be going out and taking them out for dinner. but now that kind of celebration could be sending them a gift afterwards. What will it take to really make them understand that you appreciate their business, you treat them like another human and that they feel that they've made the right decision and really insulate you against any kind of buyer's remorse?

23:59I mean, this is fascinating, Fire Nation, and this is something you so have to focus on. I've seen it just really lead to so much more success in my business, so much less churning and longer stick rates. And that is that cement because listen, buyer's remorse, it will happen. It happens in almost every single purchase on some levels. So for instance, with us, with Podcasters Paradise, we have an immediate onboarding process. You join Podcasters Paradise, boom. Number one, you get an email with your next eight steps. Very clear. They get you cemented into the process. Number two, you literally get a personalized video for me.

24:37I use an app called Bonjoro where I send within 48 hours, and I try to do it within 24 hours, a personalized video welcoming you to the Paradise family. And then we have other things I won't get into now that continue to cement that process. So it's so very critical. And the last and final section is post fight. So boys, take it away. Yeah, listen, have you ever had a sales pro working for you? nail it one day and hit it out of the park. But then the next day on the next call with the same niche, same kind of scenarios, same product suite, same everything. And they don't close and they don't actually remember to do the same things I did the next, the day before.

25:18And they don't use the same techniques that was so successful the day before. And this is why you need systems. And I always used to review my loss sales and I rarely reviewed my wins. When Elliot shared with me how he looks at wins, it completely changed my thinking. So it's very easy. Again, if you're a professional competitor, salesperson, you're going to extract all the insights you can from a loss. But again, it's easy to overlook wins. And so I have a fighter who, he's a purple belt at the time. He was fighting a local black belt. And while we had a lot of confidence in all of his skills, we knew that the best chance the black belt would have would be if he was able to take him to the ground.

26:07Because that's where jiu-jitsu tends to focus in ground fighting. So the plan was to never let him even get close to taking us down. Now, my fighter went in, dominated, and won the fight in two or three minutes. it would have been very easy to look at that and say, oh, it was a perfect fight. There was nothing to learn from that. But there was one moment where the black belt had actually gotten in close enough to my fighter to grab his hips. He stopped it, which was excellent, but that shouldn't have happened. So it would have been easy to gloss over, but just studying that and asking what could we have done allowed him to avoid that situation in the next fight and this idea of doing a post-mortem after every engagement not only allows you to learn from them but then this post-fight becomes knowledge for your next pre-fight and that's hence the whole system of it that everything you learn from one engagement becomes fodder and fuel and information for the next engagement?

27:11Yeah, listen, I would always review my losses. And this taught me to review my wins. And when my team started to dive into their wins, their confidence increased. And as we know, the game of sales is a mental game as well. And you need to have that mental game in check. And we talk about this in the book. But if you don't see your brilliance, if you don't recognize it and see it. You can't repeat it. And that was a game changer. I saw a 10-point increase in my team because they started reviewing and analyzing their wins. And we have a ton of great tools that we put together for everyone who gets the book.