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I think that a lot of times it's kind of like, you know, they talk about sports.
The fundamentals are often overlooked.
That's really what I see.
Like you said, negotiation, sales, marketing.
I think a lot of people or business owners have the skill set of whatever service, you know, they do, but they don't usually go back to the fundamentals.
Like I said, you get, you lock those in, the world kind of becomes your oyster, which is pretty cool, which is I think, I don't know if I even told you this, which has allowed me to, we've done this, I've worked in over 18 different niches around the world actually, including like one of our craziest
ones to the point of, you know, how these principles apply no matter what industry.
We had a company in Norway.
I don't speak Norwegian.
I've never been to Norway.
But we had a company, a logistics company in Norway that we helped secure a deal with the Ministry of Defense over there straight from a cold message off of LinkedIn and we helped them craft all that and say, you know, it's like, but in people ask, well, do you know, I'm like, you don't have to know
logistics if you know these principles like you said, negotiation, sales, marketing.
And so that stuff's been really cool.
This just unbox, you know, not box yourself in and realize principles apply to all people, all places, all times.
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Elijah, thanks for joining us today.
I am extremely glad to be here, man.
Thanks for having me.
Hey, man, it is my pleasure.
So how would you get it started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Yeah. So the main company that I run is a consulting company that we help small businesses speed up their sales process so that they can serve more clients and make money faster.
And then the revenue from that company goes into many other facets as I'm sure it does for many of us.
But that's my main company that I've had for seven years now.
That's the main service we deliver.
And listeners, just a little bit of a backstory.
So Elijah and I, we met actually at the gym.
This is that's where we go.
We work out in the mornings.
And then I started to see this guy walking around with a shirt that said retired on it and I was like, wait, what a second.
This guy's you know, something about business that I want to know.
And so I wanted to reach out.
So I just want to let you know listeners that it's the sales expertise that Elijah has is top -notch, but then also just the entrepreneurial savvy as well because he maybe just give a little spill on your business acquisition stuff too.
I think that's important.
Yeah, so one of the things I'm trying to do, I do a lot is I try to take any skill set that I have, which is usually sales and marketing.
And then I look at industries and companies and try to figure out where can I inject and we're not just looking to acquire businesses or sometimes just intellectual property, which is actually my favorite thing that I like to invest or buy in matter of fact.
We just did a deal recently that should generate over the next 12 months if we kind of mess up an additional million and it's really we don't on we have like 40 % ownership of the intellectual property instead of the actual business, which is a unique structure.
But what I'm trying to do is take my sales and marketing expertise and figure out in any company or business which is usually going to be service -based for us.
How can I inject my unique or unfair advantage into that company to produce more profits and what I get out of that obviously is money.
But what I really get out of that is freedom, right, which is why I wear those shirts like that.
We're retired because the what that allows me to do is inject usually a system into that where either keep the operator in place or train a new operator because I don't want to run it.
I just want to inject the system there that I know can take something higher and then we get paid out of the profits that are produced and you know, I just kind of get to spend time with my wife and kids are just what I love to do most.
And so any service -based business that can be Med Spa Aesthetics.
I really love those it could be gym or any type of service -based business.
Actually one of the ones I'm looking at now I'm getting into is I want to do one in the next year grab a couple probably just to like daycare type centers as well in the area because we've got a unique idea and some campaigns that I think could you know, probably double revenue for most of the places.
So yeah, just anything like that.
That's what I look for an acquisition.
But it all all those acquisitions are driven for me based upon the skill set that I have from the first company, right, which is marketing and sales can we collapse the speed in which a business creates or earns income and so that's what I look for in terms of it.
Incredible and listen, as the reason I wanted to make sure that you all had that backstory is because I want you to know that his expertise goes far beyond sales and it's incredible depth of business -savvy.
And so he's able to take this skill in order to generate wealth in different markets and different businesses.
And so there is a holistic expertise that he has that's unique because of course we're talking about sales and how we can close faster deals but sales and negotiation are both business skills.
And if you can have somebody who is an expert as in sales like Laija but then also an expert in negotiating deals like that combination is significant.
So that's why I wanted to start off there because your background is really unique.
I think that a lot of times it's kind of like, you know, they talk about sports.
The fundamentals are often overlooked.
That's really what I see.
You know, like you said negotiation sales marketing.
I think a lot of people or business owners have the skill set of whatever service, you know, they do but they don't usually go back to the fundamentals like said you get you lock those in the world kind of becomes your oyster, which is pretty cool, which is I think I don't know if I even told you this which has allowed
me to we've done this.
I've worked in over 18 different niches around the world actually including like one of our craziest ones to the point of you know, how these principles apply no matter what industry.
We had a company in Norway.
I don't speak Norwegian.
I've never been to Norway.
We had a company a logistics company in Norway that we helped secure a deal with the Ministry of Defense over there straight from a cold message off of LinkedIn and we helped them craft all that and say it's like but and people ask well, do you know I'm like you don't have to know logistics if you know
these principles like you said negotiation sales marketing and so that stuff's been really cool.
This is just unbox, you know, not box yourself in and realize principles apply to all people all places all times.
Well, let's get into these principles.
This is great. And again, sometimes I hear different clients or different people complain and about the the challenge they have in the speed of deals, closing deals.
How do I close deals faster?
And so I want to just give you the space to set the stage when somebody is asking for ways to close deals faster.
What are some of the misunderstandings and misconceptions they have about the concept in general that holds them back from doing exactly what it is that they want to do?
Yeah, I think it's an important thing to look at in terms of speed because obviously companies income depends on that.
One of the things that I always have clients or companies look at is whenever we're talking about closing deals faster, the way you do that is actually to first analyze and look at what is our sales process, right?
That is like a common word.
I think people talk about or throw around often, but I don't think most people really have an understanding of what a sales process is.
And so we have a really simple and clear definition, right?
We always tell clients the sales process is the time plus the amount of steps that it takes you, your company to turn a complete stranger into a customer.
However many steps it takes for that to happen and however much time it takes for that to happen is your sales process.
And the reason we start with that definition is because a lot of times, you know, companies even really large companies don't really have tracked and fine -tuned.
What are the exact steps that a stranger takes and how much time right?
Does it take them to if let's say there are six steps between someone finding out about your company and actually transacting and becoming a customer?
Okay. Those are the six steps.
But how long does it take them to get to each steps, right?
We have to first play that out because most companies get paid like if you ask, just for a simple example, if you ask a fitness trainer or personal trainer, what is it they do?
They'll say, oh, I help you know, what people pay them for?
Well people pay me to help them lose weight.
Well, that's not necessarily true, right?
Because that trainer gets paid before the client ever loses weight.
I always use that example with companies, right?
So if I get paid before my client and that's how most of the business works before my client experiences the result or transformation, then my income, right?
The speed in which we close deals and how much money we create has to do with how many steps, how much time and if I can collapse those, right?
What can I do to shorten that process?
Because if I have 10 steps and I take that 10 steps and I take them to three or I have 10 steps and usually it takes eight months for a stranger to do that and we can turn it into four or three or two or one month now, right?
I'm making more money.
That's what we look at, right?
So that's the big the first thing.
It's like if we want to close deals faster, the very first thing that they realize is what is your sales process and then starting to identify what are the bottlenecks in that sales process, which is, you know, where my main company spends a lot of time.
Hey, look, here's the bottleneck.
Let's remove some of these things that would slow that process down.
This makes a lot of sense, especially when you say again, going back to what you said before breaking it down to the fundamentals.
This has to be where it starts because we can't answer the question how do we make the deal faster or get to the close faster without even understanding the process that we take to get there.
And I am assuming and you tell me if I'm wrong on this that a lot of times the process is either non -existent or inconsistent.
Yeah, I think yeah, I would agree with that statement.
I think the biggest thing and it really does surprise like there are companies that we've consulted that do you know, maybe even a million dollars a month.
And when you ask them the sales process, they'll know like oh people usually find us this way and then they'll go to our state like, you know, they kind of know the steps that happen but they don't have like if you go into Apple if you go into my coco like you ever know I was telling a client this do
you ever wonder why major brands like a Coca -cola or something still use billboards?
That seems like a very archaic right like like why are you still it's because these mega companies like the top companies in the planet they have to the day right how someone enters in and the exact moment in which they will transact with that company and what they'll buy and what it's worth like they
know those things and unless you actually know how many steps right what are this time it takes you can't begin to optimize you can't speed it up, which means that now I'm I'm kind of stuck on closing the on the speed in which I can close deals which means also the speed in which I get paid and take
money home to you know our families and you know our employees and things like that.
So yeah, it's not even almost like inconsistent sometimes they have it's just like they don't even have it tracked to know that oh, it's going to take if I just met somebody six months and if I don't know that I can't start to figure out why is it taking six months and can something in that process
be optimized to make it sooner?
Yeah, this is this is great Elijah because I'm thinking to also a lot of people might come and they might say okay, I need better sales skills in order to close these deals faster and of course that won't hurt but again just taking the time to look at the process that's going to give you outsized benefits
if you're just as opposed to just looking at the skills and one of the things that you mentioned is when you understand the exact steps then you can identify the bottlenecks and so what are some examples of bottlenecks that you've seen with some of your clients?
Yeah, that's a good question.
So one of the things we're seeing now really in the last five years especially is a move in all industry and in both markets business to business and business to consumer is one of the major bottlenecks is one -on -one sales calls especially in the United States.
We have a very weird and unpleasant relationship with sales in the United States.
No, I'm just due to media, right?
I like I always tell people you want someone to leave you alone and they ask you what they do.
Just tell them you're in sales, right?
Because everyone's like all right like it's called a snake oil salesmate like everyone when you see that in America you really have a negative connotation associated with that and our media and TV portrays that as negative, right?
But we all know in business nothing happens without sales, right?
You're constantly selling everything.
You know their sales going on around but because of that kind of connotation and I think really covid in the shutdowns, you know for those few weeks really bows and sped some of this up where people are like I don't want to talk to a sales person.
I want what I want.
I want to do the deal.
I want the but I don't want to have to talk to the sales person and technology has made it where we don't have to and so one of the biggest bottlenecks that we really identify for a lot of companies is the one -on -one sales call for multiple reasons, right?
The one -on -one sales call removing it as a hurdle for the person who wants to purchase but then for the company that would be doing the one -on -one sales call removing that hurdle and the liabilities of human capital human error sometimes that comes with that used to own a sales agency.
It's a headache to hire train staff quality sales guys and then the good guys are always on their way out the door to the next thing.
You know, it's not scalable.
There's a lot of bottlenecks there.
For instance, let's say you want to come buy something for me and I'm not sure if any of the listeners maybe you guys are like this as well.
I'm somebody who like if when I decide I want something even if I'm just kind of interested.
I'm like, okay, I just want to like I want to buy it.
I want to like get into it.
Right and like there was a software just a sass company, right software as a service online that I wanted to check out for one of our companies and there was like no trial or anything.
They wanted you to book a call to get like a demo and I'm like no, I just decided not to use the software.
I was like, I don't want to find some time right now.
I got to find when I'm available with your sales team and then I got to tell and they get you know, most people want to skip that these days.
They just want to get the details that they need to make a buying decision.
Yes or no. And so that's one of the biggest biggest bottlenecks that we see is like those sales calls significantly slow down the speed in which you can earn income.
You can close a deal and we usually help companies remove that and put something else in place, which is usually selling one to many and that's been really effective for a lot of companies.
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It's gonna be great.
This is a complete paradigm shift because I think a lot of people in the industry they just assume that this is the way it has to be like this is just how you sell and it's just an assumption that that step needs to be in there.
And so before we get back to the process, I have a persuasion question for you.
If you are talking to somebody who has hired you and you're saying, hey, we can get rid of your one -on -one sales call and they are skeptical.
How do you break through that skepticism to get them to even try this new way of selling?
That's a good question.
So for us that we'd never get to that point, right, especially not the hiring and that this kind of has to go through go along with what I teach them.
I have no desire to convince anybody of anything, right?
So what I mean by that is to me convincing is not selling.
I mean, so like if a company is struggling and we believe we have a solution or the people us and the people who work with us are not experiencing that reality.
I want them to already be sold and this kind of goes into one of the things we teach them.
So the difference between there's a difference between selling closing and pitching.
A lot of people in our industry use these words interchangeably, but these words are not one in the same.
There are three specific moves that have three different purposes that have to happen in a specific order, especially if you want to get away from sales calls, right?
So to your question, the reason why I brought that up is selling is the first one that has to happen.
Right before I can pitch, I have to close and before I close I have to sell.
Now, most people are trained that they are selling their program product or service or they're trained that they're selling the dream outcome or they're trained that they're selling sometimes themselves in our opinion, right in our company.
We teach you're selling none of those.
You don't need to sell the dream outcome because whoever you're selling to they've been dreaming since they were children, right?
That's not selling.
Come on, man. Don't you want to have you like don't you want to be a millionaire like that?
No, you understand?
Like, oh my goodness.
I never thought of that until you thanks that that's I'm not selling that all of us have purchased things that we desired even if the person who sold it to us was kind of maybe we had a negative experience.
Right. And ultimately if we didn't have any options in this one individual or entity was the only place to get what we needed.
It wouldn't matter if we liked them or not.
Right. We would do the deal.
So I'm not really selling myself and nobody was asleep in the middle of the night.
Woke up in a cold sweat and said I need a sales coach.
Right. Or I need to relate like that doesn't happen.
Right. So you're not selling you like no one's doing that and you could do that with any industry any company like no one's waking up out of their cold sweat.
So that means I'm not selling my stuff because the market doesn't actually care about our stuff.
So we teach what are you selling while selling the purpose of it is to help the market realize that their best chance which is key because most times when people are selling if they're effective they make the market realize that it's a chance.
But really you're supposed to help the market realize it's their best chance at experiencing what they already desire.
Right. Their best chance the market's best chance at experiencing what they already desire is from your point of view.
That's what you're selling is your point of view.
Now I'll give you an example of this because maybe everybody's thinking like what are you talking about here?
Right. Here's why this matters and why it actually instantly starts to handle objections.
Remember I brought this up to answer your question about who have somebody was like not convinced.
Right. They're not sure if they want to try this new way of selling in that definition.
I told you what they already desire.
That's how we know automatically.
I'm not selling my program product or service because they don't care if any if every person could get what it is that they wanted without our program product or service they would right.
They don't actually want our service.
So if I understand I'm selling my point of view, here's why this is powerful.
If how do I want to put it when you sell your point of view the people you're selling to become the type of person who would just buy the type of program product or service that you're selling.
There's no convincing necessary.
Here's a perfect example of that.
My wife is a coffee drinker.
Right. No, she's a coffee lover.
She's one of those people like maybe many of you guys listening who she wakes up and she's like I don't even I can't even see people until I get my coffee, right.
Like that's her me on the other hand.
I think coffee tastes like dirt, right?
Like I don't like coffee.
I've never felt you know, some people are like, oh it really wakes me up or I feel and I've never felt like any type of physical boost from it.
I tried coffee way back freshman year.
I don't know why I was like I'm in high school now.
I should drink coffee or something, right?
You know, you leave middle school.
You just think something's supposed to change but I was one of those people feel like this tastes horrible.
So I would have basically a splash of coffee with my sugar and I realized why am I doing this?
So my wife's point of view is that coffee is good.
It wakes her up. It's ritualistic.
It just you know, she needs needs it for she can deal with people throughout her day.
I'm like coffee is disgusting.
So my wife because of that point of view is the type of person who will sit in line in Starbucks for 15 or 20 minutes.
She'll pay six seven eight dollars for her frit frat frappy WAP even though it only costs them ten cents to make that cup right.
But my point of view has caused me to be the type of person where you couldn't sell me gallons of coffee for a dollar.
I would there's no you see them saying like the point of view if I know someone's point of view you can predict with 90 % accuracy what that person thinks feels or do I'll give you a second one just for the audience and the United States we have two major political parties, right and I'm not going political
on you doesn't matter which one you're part of right Democrats and Republicans and the whole kind of issue or concept is that these two groups on pretty much every issue that matters have opposing point of views right.
Well, if somebody identifies as one or the other you can bring up any topic on it Democrat on that or I'm a Republican on that, you know with 90 % certainty how that person would respond or act right.
So if I can sell my point of view and you take ownership of my point of view, which means we're seeing things the same way which you could boil the loss of all sales you could boil down to the prospect just didn't see things the way you and your company were seeing them.
They didn't see the problem the way you were seeing it.
They didn't see the solution to that problem the way you were seeing it and if they had then they would just buy the program product or service.
There'd be no convincing you see I'm saying necessary.
So I know that was kind of a long answer, but I think that context was important for you know, the listeners where it's like that's what I see as the first thing if I sell my point of view which is what we train you're supposed to sell everything else just becomes this trickle -down effect because no one
has to convince my wife to buy coffee.
She's in wherever we're at for whatever price point.
She's good to go right.
She's ready for it.
So that's selling and that's the first step that has to happen because if I don't do that if they don't have my point of view now like you said I'm fighting this uphill battle throughout the sales process and I don't want that.
See, I like this because really what I'm hearing and tell me where I'm wrong on this.
It sounds like this is why it's so important to have a strong connection between sales and marketing because if you are really tight with your marketing and it's effective then you're going to be doing a good job of pushing away the people who do not vibe with you and don't have that same point of view
and attracting the people who do.
Yeah, you hit the nail in the coffin like one of the things we always talk to companies and clients about is confirmation bias right which is a psychological theory and concept but everyone we want to run our marketing in a way where everyone who enters the first point of our sales process is they're
based off of confirmation bias meaning I don't have to convince these people of anything.
They already believe the thing to be true.
So now all we're going to do in that sales process is prove them right.
So for example in our one like in our own consulting company when we're running our marketing whether it's on Facebook YouTube or whatever and we're you know marketing the companies we're talking about ditching sales calls right getting rid of sales teams removing setters and closers from the process
that's in our marketing and like you said you're going to get people who are like what you know there's no way well we don't want those people but the people who enter in the top of our sales process.
They're responding to that because they already are dealing with like they already either think that's possible or they want it to be possible and they're just not sure exactly what it would look like.
So when we get those people in our sales process, we're not trying to convince them of anything.
They're already like there's got to be a better way.
We're just confirming that to be true right.
We'll close them and then when we get to our pitch which is all about our program products or service.
They're already the type of people who would buy the type of offer we sell so it's no crazy thing.
And we usually have a really high close rate which is really nice.
Yeah, okay then now you've mentioned this a number of times and I want to give you an opportunity to dig into it because I know some of the listeners heard it too because most people think all right the process starts with a pitch and it sounds like in yours it ends in a pitch.
So can you tell us a bit about the sequencing of your approach because that's really unique.
Yeah, so I gave you guys the first one which is selling right.
We got to sell and we're always selling our point of view not my program might when I'm selling the point of view.
It has nothing to do with my program product or service which would be the solution to the problem, right?
It's just before we even try to attack this.
We have to be in agreement on this your our point of view the same way.
So that's selling selling comes first after we sell and by the way, what we help our companies do is create one presentation.
You only this is not like a long drawn -out process.
If you understand the three moves in the order that they go in you just need one presentation that sells the point of view first so that their market your prospect is seeing things the way you're seeing them which means that they have now become the type of person who would buy the type of offer program
product or service you have once we do that.
Then we need to close.
Okay, that's the second step in the sequence and if you skip closing, you're only going to leave hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table, right?
You can still make sales you'll get paid but you'll leave tons on the table.
So what's the purpose of closing purpose of closing is to empower the audience to make a commitment to themselves to do whatever they feel is necessary to get access to what they desire, right?
So here's why this is important and I like giving this example because it'll help everyone understand.
I always tell people companies when we're on retraining them.
I say look my wife is married to me because I had the best pitch, right?
That's why she's married to me.
However, if my wife had never closed herself on being a married woman at some point in her life, it didn't matter how good my pitch was.
So let's break that down because what I say closing was it's empowering the audience to make a commitment to themselves.
This is not a commitment to us the salesperson the company.
It's a commitment to themselves and anybody who's married knows exactly what I'm talking about because before you decide you're really going to get married.
You really have to make a commitment to yourself that I want to be a married person because there's certain things you sacrifice, right?
When you go and get married you say I'm choosing to have a life partner and intertwine my life, right?
You give up a level of selfishness and like you're like that takes work.
It takes an on -purpose upfront commitment to be like yeah, I want no matter what for this person to be here all the time because that's what happens right there there all the time.
So before I came along she had to commit to I want to be a married woman.
What does that look like?
What does that mean?
What if she never commits to that she never closes herself on that because there's people out there.
Maybe people are listening.
They're like they're not closed on the benefits or advantages of marriage.
Perfect. No problem, right?
If that person's never closed themselves on what the benefits of marriage would be doesn't matter who comes along and makes the pitch of marriage.
Right? It's not going to happen.
So closing has to happen and I will never pitch to someone who isn't closed right.
They've got to commit and this hand.
This is where all objections are handled as well, right?
Because I'll give you one other example and I hope the audience is understanding these examples.
I don't want you to I'm trying to take even out of business how these things apply, right?
So me and my wife have two beautiful children, but we could have five children.
We like many women and couples in the United States dealt with miscarriages, right?
What would cause a couple or woman to consistently go through the pain that comes with that right and we were blessed in fortunate fact that it was you know, three miscarriages and we have our two and everything's great.
It wasn't for physical reasons, but some people physically have they do in vitro fertilizers all these treatments.
Those are very expensive and the doctors will tell you it's like a 10 % chance.
What would cause a couple to spend that type of money for that low of a chance?
Because they've closed themselves.
They've made it a commitment to themselves that they're going to do what whatever they feel is necessary to get access to what they want.
We want to bring life between each other.
So we're willing. I don't care if it has a 5 % chance.
I don't care if it costs $40 ,000 for you know per a we I'm committed to doing whatever if someone's not there yet.
No problem, but why would I pitch to you?
You're not willing.
You haven't committed to yourself not to me.
I don't need a commitment to me.
You haven't committed that doesn't matter if it gets hard or look right that I'm going to do this.
And so that's why we you know, we won't pitch and unless someone's been closed.
So that's closing. So that brings us to the third step and the third and final step is now that the market is seeing things the way we're seeing them.
They have our point of view right to use our example from earlier.
They love coffee. They see all the benefits of it.
They're committed to doing whatever is necessary waiting in line for 20 minutes for the coffee and paying $8 for the Frip Frap Frappy Wap, right?
They don't care because like by the way when we go to Disney World and we're walking around and she's like, oh I want coffee and they give her a tiny Cup and it's like $5.
She doesn't care right.
It's like it's like that's that's but you're in Disney World in Disney World.
What are you going to drive 15 minutes off of Disney World's campus to go get cheaper coffee?
You see him? It's like you're like I'm gonna do whatever I want my coffee.
I'll pay extra money for us.
You know eight ounce.
I don't care now. It's time to pitch and pitching right whenever we pitch we always train our companies in our clients on the purpose of a pitch is not to get someone to purchase the purpose of our pitch is to make it undeniably clear that your vehicle, your program, your product, your service is the audience's
safest option to arriving at their desire.
Here's why I said their safest option.
It's because every human being is a professional risk manager from the moment we're born to the moment we die.
All we're really doing is managing risk and there's risk associated with everything we do in life.
So what your brain does is it tries to figure out okay, you've chosen to do something that's risky because everything we choose to do is risky right.
Marriage is risky. Starting a business is risky, but when you go and do that risky thing, your brain starts saying hey there you got a couple people who are probably interested in you being a life partner, but which one of these is your safest option at arriving at the desire right?
This is why I told you guys my wife is married to me because I had the best pitch.
My wife is beautiful right and guys don't know this guys don't usually have options women have options right guys get whoever will respond to their advances.
Okay, whatever woman's willing to respond to your advances.
That's you right women like well, I could Henry or George or Tommy or right so there's other people who is interested in my wife.
But when she's thinking about what she wants out of life what she wants in a partner what that looks like what she desires right who through their actions the time together has made it undeniably clear that life with them is my safest option at arriving where I want right having the life that I want
out of the people that I have right available to me.
That's what we're trying to do.
This goes full circle because remember they're already looking at things the way we're looking at it.
They're already a coffee person if I'm already a coffee person the question is not should I buy coffee it's what type of coffee do I want right do I want the quick McDonald's coffee do I want everyone's got their little fit do I want Dark Roast X Y and Z that's the conversation and so that's what we
do that in the pitch is making it undeniably clear that because they've already become the type of person who would buy this type of offer.
So now the brain is just going to do a very simple risk management and say which one of these that's available is going to be our best safest option to arriving at our desire if you do that effectively you pitch effectively they're in so that's kind of our three moves and hopefully that clarifies it
for everybody but that's the differences and we do them in order like that selling point of view closing and then pitching the program product or service incredible.
Yeah, and let me let me just wrap with this last question Elijah because your your brand at the phone list sales coach and eliminating the one -on -one sales call so for these sometimes high ticket offerings you're doing this no call that is astounding so like all the email in that's the cool thing there's
so many ways do by chat you can do by email what we train our clients on is to actually do to only sell close and pitch in a group setting right so and it's because there's massive psychological advantages to this human beings are hardwired to like we belong to groups.
I guess right like we're not the biggest fastest strongest thing on the planet but we dominate this planet why well sure you could say because we're the smartest but I don't know if that's maybe that's just us thinking that right are we really more intelligent then write something else well that could be
debated. I think the real reason we dominated this is because we understood our ability to band together right enjoying communities which is why historically are living arrangements have gotten larger and larger and larger right we used to be very dispersed everyone's got their little tribe.
It's like you and your family maybe to your friends felt like but we learned early on their strength and numbers right.
We do well in groups in societies so we all belong to multiple societies right and because we get so many benefits of being in those it's hardwired into us to not want to be shunned or removed from those as well and every decision we make even the most independent person right which I would put myself
in that category we still make decisions now your group may be smaller but based upon the influence of a group right.
So if that's the case why would I have a sales process that removes an individual and forces them to make a decision alone when that's not how they make decisions.
It's not how they feel most comfortable hardwired DNA wise to make decisions.
This is also called group think in psychology or the other they are different but similar this group think and then communal reinforcement.
So what we're actually talking about is communal reinforcement and communal reinforcement is not mind control right.
It's not just the hive mind.
It's communal reinforcement is when you put on an outfit and you only have clothes in your closet that you like and you think you look good in and you pick out your outfit because you know you got a meeting or a presentation today.
I know you do speaking all over the world but you FaceTime your wife that morning you say hey babe.
I think this is what I'm going to wear on stage.
What do you think what is it in us that causes us to do that?
You packed the clothes.
You brought the clothes out you bought them because you knew you right.
You thought you looked at it would be I do the same thing.
It's communal reinforcement and if wifey says babe.
I love that rocket.
You're like cool. If she was like a lose the jacket or put a different shirt on.
What do you do instant switch right?
So the reason we talk about selling in groups couple reasons one.
It's allows you to create real scarcity and urgency something that most companies try to fake when they're pitching there's a group of people I'm pitching to right.
There's 50 of us that you're all here and you're looking for the solution.
And I tell you I only have five.
That's not fake. Everybody can look around and see there's only 50 of us and there's five right.
So now scarcity and urgency is real but the other thing that happens is communal reinforcement.
Everyone in that group is all of same mind in terms of confirmation bias right and so the other people in the room help you sell the other people in the room by default.
There's all types of psychological experiments and studies that have been done on this that I could reference and give people but so if we put them in a group of like -minded people now it seems like we're making this decision collectively and that's more comfortable for us right versus isolating this person then
they even sometimes without their partner is why people deal with objections of the spousal objections and things like that or business partner objections.
We don't want that right.
We want this group effect because it changes right.
It makes it easier for us to do things.
We already want to do most people are scared to dance in public, but when they do go dancing public where do they dance at a club right a place where people are already in their dancing if everybody's in here dancing it's kind of like oh, you know, it's easy for me to bust a move.
So that's what we like to do right and and if we can do that and the best way to do to get a group together is just some sort of event a religious event a social event a events right could be virtual it can be in person doesn't really matter.
We want to get a group of people and it doesn't have to be a large group three four or five that's a group that's going to be more effective and allows you to do some specific things that will really help you when you're selling closing and pitching as well and then you just kind of make your pitch
and leave it up for there because like I said you're always going to have scarcity in the place as well which is if I'm selling the five I'm only going to take two even if all five want to buy I'm going to create a waitlist if necessary right why Wolf one so I could serve the two people correctly right
make sure I onboard them right but even if the group is small five people that's enough right because there's major advantages that happen that really help us speed up closing the deal as we talked about earlier so that's usually how we talk about using most companies because it allows them to speed
up their income but now they can enroll in mass based upon you know how they deliver is and everybody's on the same page because if I have to do it by chat or by email well now we're still having the issues of I'm really doing the same thing as a sales call but slower right so that defeats the speed
purpose right so if I can get always in a group likes it in addition to and the biggest companies on the planet is we could break down Apple and how Apple one of the revolutionary things that Steve Jobs did when he came back after he got kicked out yes he brought a seek he did three moves he chopped
their product line but like 90 % they had too many product lines he brought a secret project with him which was the iPod and the third thing he did was change the way that they sold and presented their devices to the world which at the time was unheard of it was by creating what they called the Apple
event and there's a very specific formula to that that they use that companies try to replicate now and still they're unable to everybody knows when the Apple event is everybody knows when the Apple event is happening it's streamed everywhere and it's a thing nobody knows when Google's event is right
nobody knows when anybody else's you're like maybe the shareholders like media you see I'm saying like and they did that on purpose because Apple doesn't have salespeople right if you're an Apple device holder like myself you were probably bullied into buying an Apple device by somebody who had an Apple
device because Apple sees things a certain way and they put on events to create an environment that causes people to feel like doing the thing that they want them to do and so you know you can have an iPhone and all iPhone users know this when you have an Apple device you feel elite right that's the environment
they create you feel like you're better than that's where this whole like eww you have an Android comes from so there's a lot of things that you can do there so like so there's all types of examples in event the largest and most successful companies on the planet selling groups for the reasons that I'm
talking about they do it really effectively and so that's what we and like I said it just the speed oh my goodness the speed to closing the deal drastically reduces sometimes for months into companies into weeks or a week which is usually what it takes most of our clients a week can we take a stranger
who has no idea who you are in a week later can they become a customer and not a single one because our process is about doing it in mass can you take five ten fifteen you know whatever your your ability to handle and deliver the program product or services in a week absolutely you can incredible Elijah
this is really great I appreciate you bringing a new perspective to sales because this is unique this is really unique and before you go I want to give you an opportunity to remind listeners again who you are what you do and the best way to get in touch with you yeah so Elijah Bowie and I run my one
of the main companies I run is a consulting business consulting firm where we help companies collapse their sales process so they make money faster and impact more people oftentimes removing sales calls or sales teams and you can find me LinkedIn Facebook Instagram you know all over just under my name
Elijah Bowie you can also always visit our website at Elijah Bowie calm perfect Elijah thank you so much for coming on the show really appreciate it thanks for having me brother wait wait wait wait wait now before you sign off I have something to tell you that I've never told you before just kidding
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