What I Learned About Sales From the "Wolf of Wall Street", Jordan Belfort | #Sales - Ep. 42
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Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next Selling Online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast. That's sellingonline.com slash podcast. This is the Russell Brunson Show.

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the show. I'm excited today to talk to somebody who I actually first found out about this person. I actually, it's kind of crazy, I looked on my Amazon. So September 11th, 2010, I bought a book called The Wolf of Wall Street. And then shortly afterwards, I bought another book. I think it's called...

catching the is it part two catching the wolf of wall street yeah yeah yes this is before the i want i want to tell me i knew who you were before the movie came out because i was reading both i read both these books uh i was actually it was a it was a time my business where i was struggling and we were flying around trying to figure out like what our next step was what we're going to do and someone recommended i read uh read this book actually listen to it i listened to the audio book and i listened to part two and i was like mesmerized for like i don't even know

you know, four or five weeks of this story that made no sense. It was crazy. It was ups. And it was just like one of the most fascinating stories I'd ever heard. Obviously, a lot of you guys now have probably seen the movie. So you understand at least most of the story. But anyway, ever since then, I've had a chance to get to know Jordan and watch behind the scenes what he's doing. I had a chance to go through his straight line self-persuasion course, a bunch of other stuff and just,

Excited to have him here because we're always talking about marketing and sales, and there's a few people that understand both of those like Jordan Belfort. So thanks, man, for jumping on the podcast. I appreciate you. My pleasure. My pleasure. When did you actually write the books? I'm curious. Yeah. So originally I wrote the books. I went to jail in 2004, 2003 actually, and got out in 2005. So when I was in jail, I taught myself to write.

You know, I started like I was studying a book called Bonfire of the Vanities and I model, I believe in modeling. So I modeled the book that I thought was amazing, right? And, you know, put in my 10,000 hours when I got out, you know, I said, what am I going to do? I said, well, let me just write this book and really, you know, think I'd ever finish it. And, you know, I started doing it and like I'd show the pages to people and everyone loved it, you know, and by the time I got the page published,

you know, it was sold to Random House for a huge amount of money, you know, and I was like, are these guys crazy? I mean, like, I don't even think I could finish the book, you know? But,

You know, and you've written books. It's not easy. It's hard. Because I don't write for post writers. I write myself, right? So now I guess I could have AI writing to help me write. But back then, there was no AI, right? So I wrote the book. It took me a year. And it literally locked myself away. And I think this is what some people don't get about success is that, like, you know, when you have to do something, number one, I put in massive work studying learning how to write. And that was it.

step to writing a book. Like, some people try to write, but they haven't put in the time to teach themselves the actual skill, right? So I really put the time in teaching myself the skill, and then a year, like, locked away 18 hours a day just writing and writing, and at the end of the day, I wrote 1,000, actually 1,100 pages, went through, like, seven edits, and what came out of it was the book The Wolf of Wall Street. And, you know, very quickly, you know, within, before it was even released,

It became a bidding war in Hollywood between Leo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. And all the way back to Leo, he brought in Scorsese to direct. And the rest, as they say, is history. That's crazy. When did the second book, did you write that right afterwards? Was that after the, when did that come in?

Yeah, after I wrote the first book and it was sold to Leo and Marty, you know, grandmasters, because you've got to do part two. They had an option, right? So they exercised the option and started writing book two. You know, the really interesting thing about The Wolf of Wall Street is that it was greenlit in 2007.

the first time, right? And, you know, I wrote the book. Then again, Terry Winter adapted the screenplay in 2006. Everyone loved it. Like, it was amazing, right? And the book was slated to come out in, like, November of 2007, right? What happened was the script was great. Warner Brothers loved it. Leo loved it. Marty loved it. And then the writers strike it. Remember the writers strike it, right? And they couldn't polish it.

So the window closed. I was freaking devastated. I'm like, oh, I was this close. They had rented the sound stages, right? And they went and did Shutter Island instead. And then it took about...

four more years for five more years for the stars to realign because marty's very slow right and i was in this torturous period but the interesting thing is this is that as bad as it was what it forced me to do was to adapt i had to do something to make money the gfc hit in 2008 so no one was paying you for anything so i started going on doing speaking free speeches right and

I started teaching sales to straight line. By the time the movie came around again in 2011, I'd made a ton of money. I was rich again, right, from speaking and teaching the straight line. And when Leo came to my house, I'd say, hey, great news, I'm going to come over. Already the first time he came to my house, I was in a little tiny one-bedroom apartment. Now I'm on a mansion in the water. He's like, what the hell happened to you? And I told him the story. I showed him a video of me. It was at the Frank Kern event. I showed him this video of me speaking. He's like,

Marty is going to go crazy with this. He's going to love it. Sends it to Marty. They ended up rewriting the whole third act of the movie and turned it into a comeback story. Because originally, it ended with me going to jail. There was no comeback. You get it? And it...

They added on a commercial of me teaching the straight line, sell me this pen. So it made it a much better movie and obviously paved the way when it came out for me and blew up my business. So it's really interesting. Bad things happen, but if you work hard, you make the best of them. Yeah, it's very interesting.

in the second book, I think at the very end you were talking about, cause you were, were you jail or cellmates with Cheech or Chong or one of the, I can't remember exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I know because it was fast as you're finishing the book. I got that spot. And then you start talking about you writing the book and you finding your voice for the book. And I was like, and then, then it ends. Right. And I remember I was like, Oh my gosh, like I've been sucked into these books for the last. And again, I respect great writing. So you, you, you write really well, but I was, I was sucked in this thing. And then it was kind of cool. You telling the story at the end, but I think,

I'm sure you know this or you thought about this, but one of the things I think was most powerful about the way you wrote that was fascinating to me was a lot of times I get into books and there's all these characters and I get stuck by, I forget, who's that character? Is that character? And you brought characters into the book, right? And then you would give them a nickname, like the Mormon or the this or the this. And I'm Mormon too, so every time you brought the Mormon, I had a picture, I could picture exactly that dude flawlessly in my head. And I understood how he would react to the situation, but because you took the name away and like,

synced it to like a, like a stereotype or whatever it's called. Like it just made the characters really deeply and then gave him a nickname. Right. So like, you know, it's like one of the mistakes people make when they write is they tend to under describe people, locations. They, the richness is in the description, you know, because,

on the other isn't it's words on a, on a page. So you have to paint a picture, right? And I think that just to say, you went there, he went there. No, he went there and he walked in the room and he saw this type of couch, the walls did. And he felt like this, this, you get it. So it's really getting very deep and taking time to bring scenes to life. And I think that's really all things that we know, whether it's on landing pages, no, there's taking the time to make it really interesting and cool. So it's not just something that's like, you know,

Bland and generic. I think it goes to all types of marketing. Yeah, it takes them on a journey. I talked about it before, people, like when you're trying to tell a story or write a copy or anything, like getting into the feelings of the character is what makes the feelings of the reader like pop out, right? Because then they can emphasize versus most people are like, he walked in the room, it was hot versus like his palms were sweating, like, you know, whatever, like going deeper with it, like you're talking about the feelings.

which I think you did, yeah, such a good job in that book. Anyway, I haven't read it since, you know, whenever that was, 15 years ago. So I just want to go back and re-dive into them. Now, the movie was based on the first book. Will you talk about what the second book was? Because it's an interesting part of the story. I don't think most people, you know, a lot of people obviously have seen the movie or whatever, but the second part I thought was, the second book was very interesting because it was more like almost you dealing with the,

Like the aftermath of it all. Yeah. You talk about kind of what that was for those who would be interested. Cause I think a lot of people, even I'm sure you get this on, you know, people there's the controversial side of you, but it's like, there's also this other side that that's interesting. I think that, you know, listen, that whole life I lived, it looked fun. It was fun. I won't deny it was fun. Right.

And I don't have any regrets in the sense that, of course, I wish people never lost money and stuff like that. But you can't look back at your life and live with regret because everyone makes mistakes. The idea is to learn and grow and get better. But I think there's a time when your life is literally imploding in every single way, losing your family, your money, your reputation, ultimately your freedom.

And, you know, you end up going to jail. You're the lowest, you know, it's where the losers of the world go. And it's very easy for you to feel like, you know, I'm a loser versus maybe I did some things wrong that temporarily put me in the loser column, but I am not a loser, right? But for me, like, you know, it was about reexamining my values. Like, you know, here's a great example. Like, if you would have asked me when I was 25 years old, you know, what's the purpose of business? Why go into business? To make a shit ton of money.

I would have said the more the better. You go into business to get rich, to make money. But in truth, that's not really what business is about. Business is about delivering value, monetizing value. In other words, a business exists to take something of value and

And then to deliver that value to people in a cost-effective way, okay? In a cost-effective way. So in other words, the idea is you have so much valuable. If the business is run poorly, by the time you're done delivering it, you haven't made any cost, you're more to deliver it than actually, you know, than you could charge for it, right? So a well-run business is...

is about figuring out who your best buyers are, having something that has massively value, message to market match, and then running the business in a way that allows you to essentially make the sale, deliver the value to someone. And at the end of the day,

You make money. And by the way, that's what it's supposed to be. I want to think that when I'm running a successful business, if I make $10, they would have paid $50. They feel like they got $50 in value. And that's the sort of mentality, right, that's going to lead you to make great decisions in pricing and marketing and just features and benefits, right, versus saying, how do I just maximize and make the most money I possibly can, regardless of whether they get a fair shake or not?

So it's really problematic when you go into business thinking, I'm just doing it to get rich. Of course you want to get rich. Why not? I love money, right? But the idea is the purpose of the business itself is to monetize value. And I learned that lesson the hard way. And it's very difficult to change your values, except if you get like slaughtered in life. Like it takes some severe insult where you say, you know what? I need to re-examine my values, right?

Because obviously I got something wrong here because I know I'm really talented. I know I'm really great at what I do, but somehow I ended up with nothing and have to start over. What's wrong with my strategy? What's wrong with my values? And the answer was, is I had some bankrupt values back then. It was all about how much can I make every single day? Ask myself that question. How do I make more? How do I make more? Not a great way to live. So nowadays when I do anything, I'm always thinking, okay, you know, how do I give more value to people?

Because I know how to run a business. If I give more value, I'll make more money automatically. So it's a shift in perspective. And I think it's really powerful. That's really interesting. That's very powerful. When, like, do you remember, like, when, like, was it something conscious? You're like, okay, I got to think through these values. Or was it something more just over time as you started doing those things kind of came to light? Or how did that transition, you know what I mean? How did that happen? I think part of it had to do with, you know, a desire for instant gratification.

You know, it's really problematic for people in business. And I think now when I was young, I really had this desire to be making the money now. I wanted it to happen now. And the truth is, and I've learned just through writing, is that very often good things happen

Things that are really valuable take a lot of time. They take time. It's not easy. So I had to teach myself to write. I put in those, you know, proverbial 10,000 hours. I put in a year of my life and it took me another year to write the book.

But then I watched what happened because of all that hard work, putting in the time, delaying my gratification, right? And then watched how it rebuilt a life that I would have never dreamed possible. Money, success, fame, the whole thing, right? Because of the massive hard work. And I kind of realized this, you know? And for

And really from that moment forward, it was like this idea that I would never engage in a transaction where I thought I'd make money and others would lose. Does that mean everything I do is always great? No, I make mistakes, but never intentionally. Like I would never go and do a deal and think that someone would lose and I would make money. I'll give you an example. I can't tell you, you can imagine how many people have approached me to do a meme coin.

i can make 50 million dollars tomorrow 50 easily probably 100 million dollars on a jordan belfort wolf meme coin but i would never do it because i know at the end of the day that i'll make 50 so they're going to lose 50. so i just won't do it i'd love to have an extra 50 but what's the point and the idea is that when i engage in any transaction right now i always say okay well what am i what's the value i'm giving here and if i can give massive value i'm

I'll do the transaction, but not if I can. - So if I come up with a meme coin idea that provides value, then you're in? Just kidding. - I don't think that's possible. But listen, there's nothing wrong with meme coins. There's nothing wrong with meme coins if you want to speculate and make meme coins. But the idea that I would have a supply of 100 billion meme coins and it would shut up when I dump my meme coins, I mean, no thank you. I just don't want to do it.

I just don't want to be part of it. You know, there's no amount of money that you could give me. No amount that I want to do it. You don't know who I am. Yeah, for sure. All right, funnel hackers, let's have some fun for a second. One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing isn't getting attention. It's getting the right attention. I'm sure you know what I mean. Isn't it a pain when you see the weirdest ads showing up in your feed? Ads for things you know you would never use in a million years. And you start thinking, that person is wasting so much money targeting me for a product or service I will never use.

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Indeed.com slash clicks. Terms and conditions apply. Are you hiring? Indeed is all you need. Okay. I want to transition a little bit. So after I read the books initially, then again, I love books. I love stuff. Then I started diving into everything you're doing. And I think, I don't know when you'd come out with Straight Line Persuasion course, but I found it, bought it, got a copy of it, started listening to it. So many good things. But there's one thing I wanted you to talk about because

So I teach our audience. Most of our people coming through are building funnels, but they're also like doing one to many selling. So webinars, challenges, things like that. And there's a million different things I teach them. But there's one thing that you taught your phone sales guys that I thought was interesting. It's very applicable to people who are speaking other ways. And it's, you went deep into tonality, which I,

I wouldn't even know how to go for more than like 20 seconds teaching tonality. I think there's like an hour long DVD or something of you just going deep into that. Would you explain the tonality and how that works on the phone? And then we can kind of liken that to how people can use that when they're speaking in other, other situations, you know?

Well, it also works tonality on paper. In other words, when you're writing copy in a funnel, there's tonality there, and it's based on punctuation and pacing and ellipses and highlighting something or using an italicize. You could put tonality, and that's what I learned to do when I wrote.

is creating language patterns and punctuating things in a certain way, even misspelling certain words, creating tonality on paper, right? But let's get to it verbally, right? Because it's really, tonality is like this, is really the secret weapon of influence. And, and,

What happens is that there are different ways that we communicate. One is the words that we say. This is basic NLP stuff. I'm sure you studied it. Another is body language. And then there's tonality, the way in which you say things. Now, on the phone, body language collapses into tonality. They can't really see you. But based on how you sound, they'll make a mental image of you. They'll imagine what you look like. So, for example...

there are some people like myself naturally i have perfect tonality it's born that way and i'm not the only person there's many people that have perfect tonality when it comes to sales because there's tonality in regular communication like you're talking to a friend or telling a story then there's what i call goal-oriented communication meaning there's a specific outcome in mind you're trying to persuade someone trying to achieve a goal

So when you're dealing with goal-oriented communication, the rules change somewhat. And the first thing is that you want to be perceived a certain way. I always say sharp as a tack, enthusiastic as an expert in your field. You want to be perceived that way. Why? Because what it chunks up to is people will say you're a person worth listening to.

because you can help them achieve their goals. We wanted to seek out experts to help us achieve our goals, solve our problems. We've been dishing since we're yay big, right? So the million dollar question is, well, how long do you have? You have four seconds. It's instant. It's an unconscious reaction, a gut reaction, right? So if you have four seconds to do it, how? That's the million dollar question. Is

Is it through the words you say? Well, what could you say in four seconds? Hey, I'm Sean. I swear, I'm an expert. There is no words, right? Now, you could say the wrong words. Hi, I'm a moron. Nice to meet you. But it doesn't come with the words, right? The way you do it is through tonality and when you're in person and body language. But let's talk about tonality on the phone, right?

So for me to be a quick example. So you're a salesperson, you're on the telephone, right? And you said it's when you're cold calling or even not just cold, but you're calling back a lead that you have that, that, you know, answer to that on Facebook. Say, hi, this is Jordan Belfort calling from XYZ company in New York. How are you today?

Now, I would never do that. By the time you're halfway through, they're like, oh, my God, another sale. Why the hell did I freaking do this? Who the hell is this freaking Jordan Belfort? And they already hate you, right? Right.

But when I would say, Hey, I would say, Hey, Jordan Belfort calling from XYZ company in New York. How you doing? They're like, Oh, what? I'm phrasing things that are declaratives, but I'm stating them like questions. So you say, Hey, it's Jordan Belfort. You're like, Oh, wait, do I know Jordan Belfort? Um,

wait, I'm supposed to, and my mother told me when I was five that I'm not supposed to forget people's names. And all of a sudden, they start this process trying to keep up with the inference of the tonality. And I say, from XYZ company? They're like, do I know XYZ company? By phrasing it as a question, you send their mind into search mode. And then you're like, in New York? They're like, what do I do? They say, how are you doing today? Now, I don't say, how are you today? How are you today means you know that I know that I know that you know. I don't give a shit how you're doing today. It

It's a perfunctory greeting that humans give each other. How you doing today? Screw you, right? But I say, how you doing today? And they're like, whoa, he really wants to know. And they're like, okay, I'm like, great. Now, if you call, you fill out a form and I lower my voice and I imply scarcity of information. So what's happening is here is every time you apply a tonality, the person who's listening hears extra words, right?

But you're not saying the words, but they're hearing. Like I said, how are you doing today? He's saying, well, he really wants to know. They hear those words. They process those words unconsciously. When I say, hey, is Jordan Belfort? They're like, what? Do I know Jordan Belfort? So what happens is instead of them narrating against you, like when you speak to someone, you're listening and you're saying, well, what is this guy? Who is this idiot? Either they're narrating against you, their own internal monologue, or your tonality is so rich that they just try to keep

up and figure out all the extra words they're hearing in those first five seconds right if you do this right they'll be like oh good i'm doing good they're so confusing it's like you know you know what the spinning wheel of death is in a computer right when you overload the ram of a computer the random access mode the wheel starts to spin it can't process anymore what's happening is the human mind brain has got two two parts it's the conscious mind and unconscious mind

Conscious mind is what you're focusing on. It has very limited processing power. You can only see so much. The rest gets deleted and goes to your unconscious mind, which is based on patterns of behavior. All the patterns that we know. We know behavior.

what experts are supposed to look like and sound like, and we know what they don't sound like and look like, right? So what happens is when I start layering on all these tonalities throughout an entire presentation, I'm always switching and layering on, what's happening is I'm in control of their unconscious, their monologue, and the spinning wheel of death, they overloaded with extra words. So what happens, it defaults to their unconscious mind, and I hit a pattern that says, wow, this guy sounds like an expert.

I'm supposed to let experts control the conversation because I defer to experts because they can help me solve my problems. So by sounding like an expert and by hitting that pattern and overwhelming their ability to understand all the later tonalities, you're instantly taking control of a conversation.

Okay, and that's the first step of straight line communication is take immediate control of the conversation, right? And the way you do it is through use of tonality in certain words. And then once you do that, you don't use that control to talk, talk, talk, talk. You start asking questions.

And you ask questions in certain tonalities. I'm not going to say, so how much do you owe on your credit cards? They'll say, screw you. Say, so how much do you owe on your credit cards? Every question has got its own best tonality. So as you go through a sales presentation, right, you're applying, there are 10 core tonalities. You're applying them as strategic points in the sale. And when you do it right, it just sounds amazing.

You let people listen to, wow, that guy sounds good. Wow, he's an expert. That's why Leo sounded so good when he was pitching on the phone in the Wolf of Wall Street. I taught him how to sound amazing on the phone. Those were certain tonalities he was using, and he was speeding up, slowing down, all this sort of stuff, right? And here's the thing. You say, wow, this is really complicated. No, it's not. It's the easiest thing to learn because here's the deal. Every human being has used all 10 of these tonalities at some point in their life.

They just use them when they really felt that way. Like when you really felt empathetic and you felt sincere and I'm really sorry. We've all used that. We've all been absolutely certain about that. I'm so certain. We possess the ability, but the

But the question is, do you apply them at the right time for goal-oriented communication? Once you start learning how to do it and rewire your brain, it just opens up the spigot and your brain starts to do it automatically. So it's one of the easier things I teach people and it's incredibly powerful.

So cool. Off the top of your head, can you riff off of the 10 tonalities? I already know there are 10 now. Now I'm curious. Let's start with certainty, scarcity, right? You have certainty, scarcity. You have the reasonable man. You have utter sincerity, right? You have phrasing it to clatter like a question. You have the I really want to know tonality. You have hypothetical tonality. How many is that? We're seven.

That's seven. Okay, what else? I'll quiz you without warning. Yeah, there's 10 of them altogether. That's even, but reasonable man, got a sincerity, whatever. You can look them up on the website. Go buy the book, yeah. Ask Chad GPT. Let me give you an example, by the way. So when I close, I would say to you, you know, Bill, you give me one shot. You give me one shot. That's like certainty, right? You just give me one shot and believe me, you're going to be very, very impressed. Sound fair enough?

So that's three tonalities in one. It's absolute certainty into utter sincerity into the reasonable man. Sound fair enough?

I'm reasonable. There's something called implied obviousness, which is number eight, by the way. I'll get there eventually. The truth is I've been so busy with other companies, I haven't been really focusing on it that much. But they're intended and they're really powerful. When you use them the right way, it's like, you know, it makes it much easier to close. It really does. Incredibly. So cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I think...

That was one that just had such a profound impact on me. And again, I don't do phone sales, but I'm doing reels on Facebook and Instagram. I'm doing webinar. Like the same concepts are working, right? Even if you're not speaking on the phone, it's the same things. Like Instagram, you got three seconds to get them to stop the scroll. So same principles are there that's going to keep someone from hanging up the phone. I'll give you one better. Even like on a sales letter.

Right? Even the way you construct things where some things are in bold type, some things are a little bit less, then you have the story, then you break it up, you ask for the order, then you keep going. You might have a place to click here, then you keep selling more, right? And when you do a video, and there's a video on a lot of these landing pages, right? How do you sound on the video? Are you keeping someone's attention? Are you engaging? Do you sound like an expert? Do you sound sincere? Right?

Do you sound like someone that you'd want to actually have either mentor you, someone you would trust, someone you'd want to buy from, or at least find out more about it?

So, and you say, watch, you can say, do you sound sincere? Do you trust me? And do you want to buy from me and think I'm an expert? You're like, get the hell out of here. Versus do you sound sincere? Can you trust me? Like the way you phrase things is part of, but it's how the tonality that you apply either moves someone emotionally or doesn't.

And if you're monotone, people will tune out and they'll change the page. They'll click off the page. It's really important. Yeah, so good. So cool. Thanks for sharing that. Now we explain straight line persuasion. We explain what that actually means because you're tied to the entire sale. I love for people to understand that and we can talk about some of the pieces to keep someone on a straight line.

Yeah, so basically the idea of straight line persuasion is that essentially every sale is the same. That doesn't mean everyone has the same needs and values and pain points. What it means is that there are certain core elements that must line up in a prospect's mind before you have any chance of closing them.

Right. And three of those things are called the three tens. We call them the tens because imagine a one to ten on a continuum of certainty. Like ten means someone's absolutely certain and a one means they're absolutely uncertain. Ten, I think, is the best thing in the world. Best things is sliced bread. Let's use ClickFunnels. People that before they sign up for ClickFunnels, they think that ClickFunnels is the absolute greatest platform in the world. They love it. That's a ten.

Right. Oh, one would be it's the biggest piece of crap in the world. It sucks. I would never use it. It's like it's buggy. It doesn't. No one clicks on it. It's ugly. It's hard to use. Right. Ten means it's the greatest thing in the world. So here's a question. If you want someone to subscribe to click for us, where do you want them on that scale? As close to a ten as possible or as close to a one as possible? Ten. Okay.

Attend, right? Okay, so let's say that you get someone to attend and they're thinking that, right? Question is, will they subscribe, yes or no? People say, oh, of course. Well, the answer is not yes, it's not no, it's maybe. What if the person who's selling them ClickFunnels, or even you, by the way, let's say they don't trust you.

the owner of ClickFunnels, or the person that's trying to sell them. You think the person is going to steal my data. I can't trust them. They're going to lie to me that I'm going to get bad customers. So it's not enough that you love a product. You have to also trust the person who's selling you the product, the salesperson, right?

So in that, I'm continuing for the salesperson, a one to a 10. And 10 means, oh, my God, I love this salesperson. They're the most trustworthy salesperson in the world. They took the time to answer my questions. They're honest. They're forthright. They gave great explanations. And I just, I would let them watch my kids and watch my bank account. They're the most trustworthy person in the world. A woman would be, that's a snake in the grass. I wouldn't let, turn my back on them. They'd stick the knife in in two seconds.

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but that you're a one for the salesperson. Will you buy?

No way. If you love it that much, you'll find someone else to sell it to. You'll find the product somewhere else, right? So it's not enough to love just a product. You also have to trust the person selling you. That's the second 10. The third 10 would be the company that stands behind the product. In other words, there's a company that's going to have to deliver customer service. That's going to be with the long term. What's their reputation? Their reputation for being honest or dealing unfairly with people.

So in other words, those three core elements, right? If any one of those things is low on the scale, good luck trying to close someone. Now, they're not going to say, Russell, I don't trust you. That's not what they say. That's kind of in your face. So what people say is, sounds good. Let me think about it.

Let me call you back. It's a bad time of year right now. I don't have enough money. You get hit with common objections. When people are uncertain, when they're asked with making a buying decision and they're uncertain about it, they'll say, let me think about it. Let me call you back. So objections are essentially smoke screens for uncertainty. Now, sometimes they can be real like no money.

Sometimes people literally have no money, which is why when I'm training salespeople, we will qualify them financially. If possible, you always want to qualify people financially to make sure you're speaking to someone that if they like it, if it makes sense to them, if you get them certain, can they afford it?

If you don't do that, what's the point? You're wasting their time and yours. You tell them, oh, this amazing thing, it's so great, and you didn't even ask them if they could afford it. They're like, it sounds good, but I'm broke. What's the point of that? Right?

So there's sort of these rules about what questions do you ask? And this is all done on a line. So in other words, there's an open, there's a close. And the idea is that the sale has like the five points. In the first four seconds, you need to take control of that conversation by sounding like an expert. And that's using the right tonality and some basic words. Then you want to essentially immediately transition to...

to more of a consultative side where you start asking questions. We call that gathering intelligence, right? You don't want to just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, right? God gave you two ears and one mouth. You want to listen twice as much as you talk. So you want to ask questions, gather intelligence, identify needs, values, pain points, right? And as you're doing that, you're like, uh-huh. You keep your building massive rapport by asking questions using the right tonalities and also how you listen, right?

Are you a robot? They ask, uh-huh. Okay. Uh-huh.

Or you, uh-huh, mm-hmm, I understand. Oh, yeah, I understand. When you start showing the emotion, I understand you. I feel your pain. Sometimes people will answer something, and I'll then take it further and sort of clarify their own answer, show my command of the subject. And they're like, exactly, that's how I feel. That's what's going on. So this whole question, this whole questioning, this down intelligence, it's such a crucial part of selling.

Because if you do this right, by the time you've asked all the questions you need to ask, which means you've identified their needs, their values, whatever it might be, whatever the industry is, right? By the time you're done, they should be saying, wow, this guy's good.

He really cares. Man, this guy was thorough. He gets me. He understands me. Not just like he asked me three questions to close the hell out of me. Right. So sometimes people don't ask enough questions. You need to ask not too many questions, but you want to ask the right amount of questions. So you fully understand the picture. And then when you've done asking those questions, next step is they will Jim, Jill, John, you know, based on what you said to me, this program is a perfect fit for you. Let me show you why.

Now, if it is a perfect fit, if it's not, if you can't help them, say, you know, honestly, based on what you said, it's not really right for you. I don't want to waste your time. I think you should send them somewhere else if you can't help them. Like this idea, there's a transition here. You don't want to take everyone down the straight line to the end because why? If they're not financially qualified, if your product's not going to really help them, if they're better off somewhere, all you do is waste your time.

Waste the client's time and give a bad experience and give your company a bad name. So there's this transition point where after you ask all the questions, you say, well, is this person right for my product? Can I help them? And if the answer hopefully is yes, then you can say, well, listen, based on what you said to me, this is a perfect fit for you. Let me show you. Say, now, Jim, based on what you said to me, this is a perfect fit for you. Let me tell you why.

And they're like, great. I say now, and then I'm now in the main body of my presentation where I start essentially naming a feature but then expounding on the benefit, tailoring it to them. And I'm not going to go too crazy. I'm going to go maybe three, four key things. And then when I'm done, I'll explain the process. And now getting started is very simple.

Now, I'll give them a simple way to get started. It's a question of doing X, Y, Z. And believe me, Jim, the only problem you'll have is you didn't do this six months ago because you'd already have all the benefits. Sound fair enough? And then I shut up, right? Now, what can they say? They can say yes, they can say no, or they could say maybe. And maybe is a catch-all for all the common objections.

What else could they say? They can say yes, no, maybe, or ask you a question, right? So if they hit you with an objection, right, then I'm going to go about this. Now it's called the back half of the straight line where I start overcoming objections in a very low pressure, very effective way called looping, where you actually essentially take a common objection and you answer it and you use it as a, you don't just answer an objection and then close and try to close. That's a fool's errand. Why? Because objections are smoke screens.

So if you say to me, I want to think about it, and I say, listen, you don't really need to think about it. I know you're busy, but you'll go back to your busy life. You'll decide against it. Just give me one shot. Believe me. But the truth is the reason you said you wanted to think about it is you were uncertain that

about making, you didn't know enough about the product yet. You weren't sure it was the right decision. In other words, whether it was the first 10, second or third, it was something you were uncertain of. So I'm not gonna simply just answer an objection and then try to close you. I'm gonna answer objection, I'm gonna loop back and essentially pick up where I left off and start building more certainty for each of the three 10s. It's like essentially constructing a house, right? You don't do it all at once. The first thing is you put up the frame, right?

You frame the house, right? Then I ask for the order. You don't buy. Great. I go back. I put the drywall on. I install some electronics, right? I do it again. You don't buy. Maybe you're a little bit more certain. I loop back. Answer that. I loop back again. Now I put on the roof. I put on some nice decorations. So each time I'm looping back and building more and more certainty. And eventually, if you get someone certain enough in a way that's not offensive to them,

Right. They're going to cross over this thing called their action threshold, which is, you know, how certain does any one individual need to be before they say, you know, and I'll take action. I'm ready to go. Right. And it differs for every person. In other words, there's people like me. I'm a sucker. I buy stuff.

I am really easy to sell to. I really am. Right. So like, what does that mean? No, my, my beliefs are such that like my best decisions are made quickly. I trust generally the glasses half full. That's me. My dad, may he rest in peace. He was the exact opposite. He,

He was the toughest nut to crack. He hated salespeople, right? Didn't trust anybody, right? We call them Mad Max, right? He hated. So what does that mean? Well, I have what's called a low action threshold, meaning I don't got to be that certain. I got to be like a 7-7-7. Like I'm not going to do it if I fall because I'm not going to buy something I think is going to make my life worse. But if I'm reasonably certainly, ah, screw it, I'll buy, right? If it's not that much, man, why not, right? My dad had to be a 10-10-10 and damn sure of it.

Right. So they start running into these two different types of people. And that's why sometimes when you're trying to close, when I got they sound really certain they're still not buying. Why? I know they got the money. Why? They have a very high action threshold. So there are strategies we use with the straight line system that actually help lower someone's action threshold. For example, what is a guarantee? Money back guarantee lowers action threshold.

It allows someone to process it. What's the worst? Because everyone's saying, what's the worst thing that possibly happens? A question everyone asks themselves before they buy.

Well, if I can cash in my money back guarantee, I guess it's really not that much risk. So they start to process it and it lowers their action threshold. Another way is to just say to them, hey, what's the worst that can happen? Let's say your buy doesn't work. You put it out there, right? Well, you cash in your guarantee. You won't lose a penny. It's not going to put you in the poorhouse, am I right? They'll say, no. No, I guess not, right? Exactly. But on the upside, right?

If this is even half as good as I think it is, and you get X benefit and this benefit, and six months from now, you're feeling better, looking better, feeling better, and I future-paced them.

which is what people like my dad never do people with low with high access they never look at the upside and i future paste and paint the upside and as i do that they're experiencing what someone like me like a a low action i always think oh if i do this it'll work out great so essentially i'm using language to hijack their strategy of running negative movies

about their buying decisions. And I essentially hijack that movie, paint the positive picture, which they never do for themselves. And then I go into a call and say, John, you give me one shot and believe me, you know, you're going to be so glad you did this. Does that sound fair enough? And you shut up. And by the way, when you do that, right, it works really, really well. Yeah.

That is such a good map of the entire straight line right there. That was amazing. You know, so cool. I forgot, but other than that, everything's great. I'll add that in the show notes. We'll put them all in. So cool, man. I appreciate this. Okay. One last question and I'll let you go. Cause I know you're busy, but I'd also, you're working on, you know, I know you're in the forefront of this. Do you think that like,

In the future, I know people are testing out different AI sales tools and stuff like that. When you built your company initially, you trained a whole bunch of salespeople to go through this process and how to just speak to functionality. Do you think AI is going to get to the spot where someday it can replace humans to actually do a lot of this type of closing? So I actually do have a company that's working on that right now, and it's been going incredibly well. We're still in stealth mode, so I really can't talk about it because it's not ready to scale yet.

But I think the answer is yes, but I don't think it really replaces all salespeople. Okay. I think certainly it's going to replace some salespeople. Okay. But I think there's always going to be a need for a great salesperson that really, you know, that knows how to build long-term relationships with people, not just close. But I have an AI that's so good at closing. It's like me.

In an AI, it's like me, it sounds like me, doesn't sound like my voice, but it sounds like it uses my tonalities. We have our own voice. But again, you know, I'm taking this technology very carefully, very slowly, because, you know, you got to just make sure that, you know, one of the things that you know, this, I'm sure you went through this in the beginning of ClickFunnels, that it's not enough to have an amazing platform. You have to be able to onboard everybody correctly.

And if you can't onboard people and they still have any bad customer service experiences, it causes a big problem. So we have some very, very big clients using the system right now. They're getting incredible 50X returns. But, you know, we're about three months away from being able to really scale it. You know, we can have like almost not quite touchless onboarding, but...

Touchless to the point where, you know, you don't got to call. Let's say the AI itself can help you do everything. You'll be speaking to the AI and not someone there. The AI will be doing it for you. But it's really powerful. And I think that it's not just in sales. It's going to change everything. I'm sure you're already infusing AI into your platform. I'm sure you are. Powerful technology. I love it. I use it every day. I taught myself to code. Believe it or not.

Yeah, and it's incredible. And I think I would say everybody that's watching this should really, you know, get yourself up on how to use it. It just takes one person and makes them into five or 10. It's a mobile supplier. So I don't think it replaces everybody, but certainly it's going to be pressure.

on sales for sure and many other industries as well to be at the top of your game. Yeah. No, I agree. It's an exciting time to be live and playing and testing all these different things out. And like you said, if you're not using your business now, it's crazy. We had AI in front of our ticketing system and dropped our tickets by like 60%, 70% where AI is answering questions and then people can't get past that. It goes back to normal human. But like that –

You know, it's such a straight, it's such a, like a good barrier, just chaos and support, you know, that, that AI is able to handle for us. And that's just one use case, you know, it's pretty cool. And I think, I think also that, you know, with AI, you know, it never gets sick. It never comes in like. It can do, it can do in every language if you need it to. It's amazing. It's really stable up or down. It's like, it's got a lot of benefits. So it's a, and as good as my AI is today, it's the worst it will ever be. Yeah.

it gets better every day yeah so cool well thanks Matt I appreciate you spending time with me today and my audience and sharing this stuff I think everything you're sharing is applicable we have a lot of people who run phone teams in our community but also I think all these things are applicable if you're doing a webinar or a challenge or like all these the principles of persuasion and speaking and selling and resolving concerns like it Matt you can use the same things in all these different places and I think it's

super valuable. So I appreciate you spending time. And I want to tell everyone who, who's seen the movie, but not read the book, they should go read the book part one and part two. I think it'll give you a different perspective of you. And it's really fun. And I says it's an, you did a great job writing those books as well. So thank you. Thanks. Always appreciate you. Take care. All right. Bye-bye.

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