Alex Hormozi’s Advice on Selling

0:00Mr. Zach Jonathan Thompson. People can't see this, but it also says on Riverside that my name is also Zach Thompson. But who is the real Zach Thompson? By the end of today's episode, you probably still won't know. Zach Thompson, how are you? Yes, very, very well, Jack David Frimson. How are you? Very, very well. To what I get a lot of messages saying, and when I say a lot of messages, I mean no one's ever said that before. I'm using it as a way to get into today's episode, is people say, I love Alex Hormosey. What do you think of him? I say, well, that's one question to answer. And they say, what if there was one place where I could just watch some of the best Alex Hormosey advice and you guys reacted to it?

0:44So one question, I don't think I've ever actually asked you this, and we talk at least for four minutes a week. What's your view on Alex Hormosey? Are you a fan? Are you not a fan? I think he's an amazing marketer. amazing marketer the way he thinks about it and he's got that rory sutherland thing you know you listen to something you go like oh that's a good bit of an interesting way of thinking about it now obviously in this conversation we're not talking about his ability as a marketer we're talking about his ability as a seller i mean he's he's definitely sold i think like that's his thing as a marketer and as we know selling is not created equal i don't think that this is going to be like the Gary economics video.

1:29I don't think we're going to be like looking at him thinking, what a schmuck. I think there's going to be some good stuff today, but I think there's probably also... We weren't looking at Gary economics saying that either, were we? What were we saying? We were just saying like, what's the solution, Gary? What is the solution, Gary? I don't think anyone called him a schmuck actually, so Gary Stevenson, I do apologise for that. No, it's okay. Are you ready for the first video? I'm ready to be asked you're ready to okay you'll have to bear with me because hey let me bear with you so listen i'm just remembered this okay i'm just oh we go five rules for sales it's a lot easier than you think let's go all right i'm gonna pen then 50 million dollars a year these are five rules for closing that i teach them number one the person asking the question is always in control and you want that to be you.

2:26Number two, be like smoke. If you don't know how to answer it, just ask a question about their question. Number three, tell them what their question means. They might say, I need to think about it. And you might say, that's amazing. That's what some of our best customers have asked. What's your main concern? And so instead of taking a step back, they actually take a step forward in the sale. Rule number four, use straw men for harsh truths. If you have a hard truth that you want to ask or a question that can seem kind of cutting, you don't want to ask it to them. You want to tell them a story of someone just like them that you ask the question to.

2:56And then you have a third party in the sale who can then be the person you deliver the hard truth to. And then they just bear witness. Five, retain childlike curiosity at all times. And so if you say, huh, that's interesting, or huh, that's a really good question. That then keeps you in the sale. It keeps rapport and then it buys you time so you can think about what you're going to say now. Thank you, Alex Ormosi. That was Alex Ormosi, everybody. Round of applause for Alex Ormosi. Thanks, Alex Ormosi. We'll get back to you in the studio in a moment. some good stuff in there some really good stuff there was definitely some stuff in there if that's what you were going to say definitely, what was the good stuff, what did you like?

3:341, 2 and 5 yes 1, 2 and 5 I would say one was there was childlike curiosity, yeah love that, always be curious ask a question, answer a question the person answering is in control And the person answering is in control. I think we're going to talk about softening the blow at some point. And the other one was around. He did that. Like I need to think about it thing. And then the response to that was, oh, that's amazing. That's what some of our best customers have said. Yeah. And that's an American thing. I think it's an American thing. I was actually going to say, I think it's an American thing.

4:14And I think that this is where the British American thing is different. Go on there. Yeah. So points three and four were probably the ones that stood out to you. Tell us where your brain went. Well, I need to think about it is usually a sign of something upstream. And often with that one, it's like a reactance bias. So it's just probably like pushed a bit too hard and someone needs to think about it. So you can alleviate that whole step upstream, right on top of the call. You can say, if we arrive after the end of this at a, you need to think it over. are you comfortable just agreeing with me that's probably a no nine times out of ten blah blah blah and then if you still got to I need to think about it you probably want some form of acceptance first before you do the whole I think people are kind of it might have worked once upon a time but I think people are smarter than that now if you go that's what our best customers always say I think they'll go oh I know what you're doing but if you said yeah that makes sense it feels like maybe there's something in particular in your mind, like, you know, just letting the space to explore and accept that.

5:24But the ultimate solution to that is dealing with it upstream. I think there's a thing as well of when I hear Alex Hormozzi say things, I think your confidence, your tone is like so bang on. I could imagine you saying that and I could imagine that working, right? I'm not here. But, and I don't know, actually, I do know what your Instagram algorithm is like because I've, I've seen it. And when it's printed on paper, could you print it on paper and brought it to the Manchester office? It's awful. I can't believe, I can't believe that's really bad. You could even print an image like that, but I'm getting a lot of these like high ticket closers, like coming up on my Instagram feed and I'm hearing them say stuff like that.

6:06And I just think I was thinking about this. Like when people say this about budget, you say this and when people think about this, about their partner you say this and i was like i i think like you say the issue is probably upstream of like just getting it out i don't think that you need to handle those objections in that way of like okay and when you go to your partner and you say this what why are you gonna i just think like there's a there's a better way of probably fixing that earlier um i do think delivery is key with these kind of things as well i agree and the other thing was that third party story uh again like probably spoken like a like i said at the top someone who's good at marketing story is obviously very key at trying to get in front of lots and lots of people at once you can skip that whole step and all the nonsense of it that the issue that he's got is like if you if you give someone a direct question it might feel combative yes right so what you do instead of that you just soften the blow how you soften the blow is you say how do i ask you a really direct question without upsetting you come on you can ask me are you sure i feel like we're kind of getting on i don't want to ruin we're in the rapport no go on what is it well you're telling me you want to jump on the gym plan you've tried a few different gym plans before they haven't stuck why would this one be any different you don't have to then tell the big third party story of the guy who did the stick at the gym it just feels too complicated for me yeah i like that i was i also i like stories when it like it fits so like in that situation yeah yeah our current provider is fine okay can i can ask a bit of a direct question yeah and then the story can be so soften the blow typically when i get home from work and i say how was your day looking after a one-year-old and my partner says fine it feels like there's probably something more so you can tie in that story but i i think you can definitely um soften the blow and we talk about that in the book is that exact thompson i'd like to give you a round of applause because i know that that was a fairly long uh short and you managed to keep concentration for the whole way through so well done very very proud of you you ready for another one oh what's that there right we're ready for another one i said are we ready for another one's like tomton i need like a yes i'm ready i can't wait to see that hench swine always walking around these are the best the best sales line i've ever heard let's see if it is really good sales lines i've ever heard leila and i were at the store some luxury thing for like nice jackets for the winter and leila and i were trying on jackets but the problem is we lived in austin it's hot there all the time and we'd never need a jacket like this.

8:56And so we told the salesman, Hey, you know, it's not about the money. I just, I don't think we're really going to use it. And this is what he said. He said, if it were free, would you take it? And I just smiled and he was like, right, well then it's not, not about the money. And so then it actually redirected us back to price overcomes. And I thought it was one of the best ways to get back in the saddle in a sale. When you hear somebody who says, Oh, price isn't an issue for me. It's something else. Well, just ask him if they would do it for free. And if not, then you can work back into the direction.

9:23We like it. We're going to talk about that my my advice would be if you're a company that's selling big furry jackets don't sell them in one of the hottest states do you know i mean if if i'm if i'm selling like the next piece of ai i'm not going to go and sell it at the uh h2o exhibition at the uh emmien arena think about where your audience is but what was your take on that um i think it's an american thing again i I think the first time I heard that was in Jordan Belfort straight line persuasion, which is now probably what? 12 years old, isn't it? I'm not against it. I think people love those little buzz lines, don't they?

10:08Like you were saying before, that's your high ticket close with TikTok video line. And then I get on the phone as a salesperson or in a meeting, the salesperson, I go, Hey, if it was free, would you buy it? And they go, well, yeah. yeah but it's not oh right now i don't really i don't really know what to do like it doesn't really get you anywhere probably the question to ask in a scenario like that is um i mean we'll go back we'll reiterate a point this soft in the blow so yeah i like it but um we live in austin most of the time and um i just don't think we get the use out of it that that makes sense do you mind if i ask you a bit of a direct question yeah go on i can't think of a better way to word this one, but what made you want to look at them in the first place?

10:49Why the fuck are you trying it on? You got a fancy party or something? Exactly. It's some form of I'm basically saying, what problem are you trying to solve? It's probably very hard when you're selling jackets because the problem they're probably trying to solve is, I want to look cool. And if you're someone like me, you always look cool. I'm going to give you another one because we're talking about cool jackets. Do you find me cool? Depends what you think by cool, because my epitome of cool and your epitome of cool is probably different. What do you think is cool? I think you find me cool. Cole?

11:26You can't even say it. Right. I want to have a house, Cole. All right, look at him. He's holding a door there, love. Oh, right, back in the 30s. Ah, that's pretty good. He said, I wouldn't stop knocking doors until I got 20 appointments set. And he would count the number out loud as he went from house to house. As soon as he'd get one, he would say, one, one, one, one, one. He was a psychopath. But he also was one of the top producing door knockers of all time for that company. And then he hit the second door. And he'd get it. And he's like, two, two, two, two. And he would not stop until he hit 20.

11:54And as soon as he hit 20, it was either at lunchtime, midday afternoon. It was dark at night. He wouldn't stop until he hit the goal. One of the best door knockers I ever... What does that remind you of? I bet that takes you back. We're now four years in business. Where does that take you back? I don't know. Should have taken me back so much? Yeah, literally. you're you're oh yeah sorry no you're right yeah no no sorry when i set you up and you let me down so i didn't let you down when i started my business i used to not stop until i'd set to meetings for myself a day so that was 40 a month and i had choice because i had five days in a week sorry jack i didn't deliver it properly i was thinking about literally knocking doors and wondering if we both ever did that before but we didn't did we no and actually you just take that to what should be a core memory but isn't my dad used to live on a cul-de-sac in Cleveland and what did you used to call it?

12:55a cul-de-sac Torrenton cul-de-sac so I was in Jamaica it's a cul-de-sac and there was someone on there who was like why don't we go and knock on people's doors with this bucket and say we'll clean that card and see if they'll pay us but i was very very young i don't know if i would have a good job i'd say like maybe five because it was a cul-de-sac in the 90s you could play around and less paid you'd probably be fine definitely well we just didn't know about them as much they weren't filling out surveys like they are now um but that was like a door knocking thing anyway 20 meetings 20 meetings uh a day I get it.

13:35I get the methodology. Sales is, unfortunately, I know people think it's not. I have some people like, it's not. It's an intellectual pursuit and listens are complicated, blah, blah, blah. Inevitably, it's a top of funnel numbers game. So the more appointments I can get, the more likely on the other end I'm going to achieve revenue. So I am totally with them on that one. And like we say, probably not all doors are created equal. So in this instance where nobody knows you, you probably have to knock on like 20 doors to get one. If you're Alex or Mosey and you've been marketing for your whole life, you might need to knock on one door to get one.

14:20And it depends. So tough game, tough game. Right, okay. Sales hack. He's not getting much abuse from us, is he? Like he's doing all right. No, but I think that that's something to do with his arms and the strength that he might have. I think that if he ever... I think he'd be able to get me in a good headlock. I reckon he's about your height. So he's about six foot two? My most used clothes... Right, leave it. A lot of the short stuff, come on. Well, speaking of, put this on, this short. Oh, it's loading.

15:03Do that thing that people do when they're giving you a SaaS demo. It's not always this slow. Oh, God, my internet. It's just a laptop. You never just go, it's pretty slow. This doesn't usually happen to me. These clothes that I use in transactional selling is the reason clothes and then followed by a best case, worst case. Usually, you get to a point in this area where you need to transition. So you're like, hey, the reason we have these kind of results, the reason we have this kind of success is because, and then you have some sort of reason. Now that reason can be whatever you want it to be.

15:31And it's because we're unique. It's because our product works. It's because of this method. The point is that whatever you say the reason is, people's mind will believe because they believe whatever happens because. After I have that, that's usually when you make the first ask. And then if the person doesn't immediately say yes, they say, hey, well, let's just look best case, worst case, right? Best case scenario, we change your life. Everything's amazing. Worst case, you get all the service for us for free and you still lose nothing besides the six weeks. The most used case. All right. there's quite a lot in that one go on I feel like you're ready to let loose American does that right I mean he's got a book about offers hasn't he all offers aren't created equal if you've read that book the big thing is and it must mean that he's pretty good because his offer is basically free up front and you pay him based on it being a success later on down the line it's a cracking offer but probably not one that a lot of people either can do or can afford to do right so you probably get away with some stuff by being able to get away that specific close at the end of being like well look it's free if it works you'll pay me if it doesn't you won't pay me do you want to go ahead we should all be so lucky as to be able to do that now looking at the actual clothes that he went for you want to have as much of your sales process about the other person as possible right so hearing alex homo there say here's the results we we get and the reason that we're able to get these rules is because we can do x and me me me should be some form of flipping that around so if we were to work together jack what kind of results would you need to see to think okay i think i've invested well here yeah so i get you to kind of build that out there's a thing called the ikea curve which we talk about a lot but basically if you've built something yourself you tend to value it more this closing whole conversation though if you even have to do any hard closing or reinforcing or whatever it may be at the end again it's typically something's gone wrong upstream there's something upstream or even you've gone too far you kind of push too hard and then because of that you've hit a scenario where someone kind of needs to be pushed and closed in that way but it's a it's a tricky spot because what can happen is you can push someone to a close they can say yes to make the beating stop and then they can ghost you or disappear and i know it is retorted but well i've got the credit card machine available that it's i'm i'm not a massive fan of that so i like a lot of the stuff that he said in this video the closing stuff needs needs work needs an overall you just you just don't want to i mean the the selling doesn't stop just when you've got the money do you know i mean you want you want the commitment and like you you think about like if you bring on a customer that wants to be there and it's motivated and driven they're going to be your best customers you don't want to be replacing customers.

18:35I get what you said, but yeah, I get what you were trying to say, but you actually said it the wrong way around. You said the selling doesn't stop when you get the money, it's when you get the commitment, but it's probably the other way around that you meant it, isn't it? The selling doesn't stop when you get the commitment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even when you get the money, the selling doesn't... Because people in the comments, they're me. I don't want them to say anything bad about you. The last comment we had was, I like your beard, where's it from? That was the last one. well they weren't talking to you though were they yeah because I actually shaved today for this you want another one then kia shave kia shave is that how you say it kia like I kia yeah is it true do you kia yes I kia god I'm sore today I know why you're sore

19:33dead you've been doing a lot of dead hangs haven't you you saw crossfit recently you've been doing a lot of dead hangs you got a lot of your fingers anyway that's you i've always got callous on my fingers on a scale from one to ten ten being we're moving forward one being you hate me and you never want to talk to me again where are we at right now with this program so let's say they say six and you're like all right why not a one and then they tell you all the reasons that this is good and you're like got it so then what would it take to get to a tent a lot of times they don't have anything they're like uh it's like all right well it sounds like it's not about the program so what are you afraid of having happen and so then that gets you to sidestep so you can go straight to the issue and obviously if they do give you something that gets you to 10 most times it's like oh i just didn't tell you that we have that my bad so that's on me so i tell you a story i actually i had an american use this clothes on me uh two three weeks ago all right now the issue is right like like with everything i can imagine that clothes the one to ten question you know it's probably one of my favorite sales questions you love it i love people getting in amongst it and it's like a give me a bit more that's like a real scale that people can get their heads around the issue is you take that your discovery is shit you've not asked any good questions it's been me me me and then it's on a scale of one to ten the answer i gave this person was i'm a one i'm genuinely a one and they were like all right okay what what what would you and then i just said like i don't feel like this was a good call i haven't got anything out of it she was actually quite stuck as to where to go then I just think going back to what you say on the closing, it's a great question I don't think it necessarily has to be the closing question it's very very simple to be like what would you want to happen next?

21:12where do we go from here? that is the closing question the closing question is what do you want to happen next? that's it and then you as a salesperson if the outcome isn't a clear yes or no, I've done something wrong. That listening to any sales advice that is like, here's how you deal with the think it over. The actual advice, and it's not very sexy, it wouldn't fit nicely into a TikTok video, is when you get a think it over, you've done something wrong. You've fucked up. So that's what it should be. Here's what you do when you think it over. You fucking go back over everything and say, why does that keep coming up and how do I get better at it?

21:54One million percent. downstream it's coming up at the end every time you've fucked up but it's not sexy we'll do one more video and the title of this this video is called how to close the sales all of a sudden we've watched three videos back to back on closing and I think about our world and it's like the stuff that really really hits is the it's the cold call openers or the closers like these are the sexiest bits asking good discovery questions alex or mosey he would definitely be out of he'd be able to bench you anyway but he gets tired why there's no sound of that there is easiest way to ask a close question in a sale which is where everyone always chokes is simply asking would it be totally crazy for us to move forward today would you be totally opposed to us moving forward today would you be totally opposed to us moving forward at the end of this call would you be totally opposed to moving forward period when you ask it like that it's not saying hey do you want to sign up or hey do you want to pay or hey hey, do you want to buy right now?

22:52We're saying, would you be opposed to moving forward? And then the person can feel safe and say, well, I'm not opposed to moving forward. And you're like, awesome. Boom, you get it. And you can move forward with the paperwork. And that's one of the easiest ways to ask for sale. The psychology I love, as you know, we're big fans of going, would it be ridiculous to ask a few more questions? Would it be ridiculous to whatever? Would you be opposed? But I think for the closing, it goes back to that thing of, come on, give me, give me the ownership. let me decide yeah yeah i mean i don't know because he's not here to to talk to us about this but the would it be ridiculous to move forward and they go well it wouldn't be ridiculous and then you go okay great did it and start trying to like get them all signed up and stuff maybe if you are doing that would it be ridiculous to move forward no okay we'll make you feel comfortable what do we need to do okay what happens next i i almost think that isn't the closing question that's almost like you know we've let's say we've done the demo or whatever it may be the person's seen everything they's like there's the problem there's the motivation are you comfortable the way that we'd solve that for you yes okay i mean i wouldn't ever say it but if you got to that point and then said okay so here's a summary of what's happened so far yeah that's correct would it be completely ridiculous to move forward i'm not necessarily 100 i'm not totally against that i probably wouldn't do it that way but then when they say no it wouldn't be ridiculous okay cool what would you like to happen next i'm not against that and then they say i just think there's probably a way to do it well what what usually happens next and then it's like colt you passed me the baton back over but they feel like they're that's the low pressure way of doing it the psychology you're right they're going for the no like 100 do that all the time it's superb i was thinking about this watching that one do you think there is any differences in b2c versus b2b when it comes to these kind of questions do you think there's like any awareness from like as we know some buyers some buyers are smarter than other buyers like do you feel like actually if i'm selling to b2c somebody that doesn't really know this space those techniques of influence slash manipulation might work more so because they're not as um frivy can i say frivy is that the word to it privy frivy frivy to the privy privy isn't privy right um it's an interesting one isn't it because the the probably the perceived value is different in b2c so you know if someone comes to you for a piece of software it's quite easy to sort of like the mission critical problem that it solves but if i go into a sofa shop and i need a new sofa the salesperson probably ends up talking to you about how comfy the new sofa is and the feathers that are used in the cushions and whatever else they probably don't naturally go to what made you want to get a new sofa then what's going on talk to me about they probably don't think in that sort of way so i would just think people might not be thinking of it as an emotional purchase probably as much as it is i was thinking david actually about a problem with uh if you're in america real estate but we would call it estate houses yeah you know an estate agent right so if you go in the uk if i want a house i type in like the type of house that i want and it comes up with the house yeah and it's like it's got a garage it's got three bedrooms whatever else because people aren't thinking of it in this like problem-centric way or even the story selling way i would think about selling a house if you could tell a story about that house how much more impactful would it be here's the driveway where my son learned how to ride his bike when he was this year's old it served as a great property between the ages of five and ten when he got a bit older he swapped to this bedroom we knocked the kitchen out so every sunday when we got got in there and we did some baking the waft of fresh baked goods in the house would go for all the you'd be like fucking i can we've got kids that i'd love to live there whereas it just goes like three bedroom here's your energy right the story would come from the discovery so you walk into the estate agent say listen you want to view this house there's probably loads we could show you tell me where where are you at in your life what's happening what are you looking for yeah where do you imagine yourself what does it feel like to be there's there's something in that when I'm talking in consumer pedestrian selling it could learn a lot it could learn a lot I think from B2B consultative selling but it's smash and grab tactics maybe that's our next venture we open a B2C shop easy for you to say Zach Thompson really good to see you I've got two minutes do you have a task for everyone yeah I've got a a really good task actually this week so we're actually going to send this to alex homozy and his team get their thoughts it's really important that you put your comments in the chat so i'd like people to like this as much as possible and comment as much as they can below even if they're putting multiple comments but i'd like you to put in there something that would make alex scan through the video.

28:22So, oh, he'll hate that. Oh, God, I'd hate to see him when he watches all this, those types of comments. If you're someone who exceeds five of those comments, I will give you a grand for every five. Wow. You are rich. Thank you, Zach Thompson. I've been Zach Thompson, and I'll see you soon, Zach Thompson. I've been...