Chris (00:02):
Hey everyone, it’s Chris and you are in for a huge treat today. Joe Marcoux was one of my first sales coaches ever back when I was selling treadmills, and what he taught me improved not just how many treadmills I could sell, but he also taught me a lot about how to run a business. For example, how to put customers first. One of the first questions Joe asked me back when we were selling these treadmills was what time is your store open in the day? And I said, Oh, it’s open nine till six, Joe. And he said, why? Why are you open nine till six when the people who want to buy expensive treadmills and want to come to your store work from nine until six and they can’t come in? And I said, well, I don’t know. I hedged around and finally I said, Joe, it’s because I don’t want to work from six till nine in the morning.
Chris (00:46):
And then five until nine o’clock at night. Hilariously, after I opened the gym, those really became my hours. And of course it was different when I was working for myself, but Joe’s message was basically like, find out what your clients want and just do that if you want to get ahead. Today, that message is going to be carried through. Now this call is all about sales training and what gym owners need to do. The bottom line is that it’s our duty to save lives and get people fit and part of that means facing the uncomfortable truth that you’re going to have to convince people to get fit, that they’re not just going to come to that realization on their own. You’re going to have to convince them to spend money, that’s not just going to be obvious to them, and you’re going to have to overcome their squirming little lizard brain that objects to spending money on themselves. What we’re doing is not just taking their money. What we’re doing is convincing them that they are worth it, that it’s important for them to spend money on their lives. Now that takes commitment from you as a coach and a gym owner. It takes practice to get good at it and it takes a shift in mindset so that you’re not feeling like this stereotypical image of a used-car salesman. After all, we’re selling something that in the right hands is the most important thing in their lives. We have to get good at that. Today, Joe is going to tell us how to do that. You’re going to love this guy. You’re going to love this interview. Welcome to Two-Brain Radio. I’m your host Chris Cooper here every week with the best of the fitness industry. Got a sec? We would love to hear from you. I write emails to my mailing list every day and it’s a highlight when somebody takes the time to respond. If you’ve got feedback on my show or a guest you’d like to hear on Two-Brain Radio, email podcast@twobrainbusiness.com and don’t forget to subscribe to Two-Brain Radio wherever you get your podcasts. Joe Marcoux, welcome to Two-Brain Radio.
Joe (02:35):
Thank you so much Chris Cooper. It is great to be here.
Chris (02:40):
Yeah, man, I am thrilled to have you here and we’re going to learn a ton of stuff today too. As I said in the intro, you know, Joe was one of my first sales coaches ever, but the stuff that he taught me was more about how to run a business than it was about just how to sell stuff. And so we’re going to take a deep dive into that here. But Joe, maybe we should start with just what’s your bio and experience?
Joe (03:01):
You know what, I started off in the world of fitness equipment and exercise equipment sales back in 1989. And I just had a thing where even in grade school I had a thing where I knew that I was going to be involved either in physical fitness, possibly being in some kind of educational aspect. But I also had a penchant as we say in French, a pension for business. In fact, it was literally in eighth grade, I did a business work experience as being a physical educator, as a phys-ed teacher. And I knew right then and there, OK, well this is not where I want to be. I don’t want to work in schools and I definitely want to be in business.
Joe (03:53):
But I had this thing where I loved exercise, sports and helping people. Fast forward into after my first year of university, I got the opportunity to go and work in a specialty exercise equipment fitness store. And then two years later I decided to open up my very own at the age of 20, which I think of that though now, I have children today that are in their twenties and I can’t fathom the idea of them opening up a business. But I was 20 years old and I opened up a business, but then by the age of 25, I did a merger with a company called Fitness Depot. And at the time they only had seven stores across Canada and we quickly went from seven to 38 in roughly 18 months. And so I learned in that in that timeframe, you know, what was good and what was bad.
Joe (04:46):
And obviously, I mean, I had owned my own business for five years. So I mean, and I was making way, way too much money for my own good as a young person. Honestly, like at 22 the amount of money I was making was ridiculous. And I was selling products that I personally could not afford myself. And that’s something that a lot of people, even today when I’m doing training with some people, the staff of some of these stores, because they can’t afford the products themselves, they can’t sell those products. And whatever mental barrier I had back then, it wasn’t about that. For me, it was what’s the quality? And I believed in my heart, and you know, what was my why? I wanted to help people build a quality of life. And I want to inspire people. In fact, as I move this, you can see on my vision board to this day, that little piece of paper says my mission is I inspire and empower people to choose to build a better quality of life through the benefits of total health and exercise.
Joe (05:43):
I’ve had that up on my vision board whenever I switch my board, that is still a piece of who I am. So whether it’s through sales of exercise equipment, through health clubs, through now electric bicycles has been a niche that I’ve really worked at. However, it’s sales in the sense of helping people build a better quality of life through the benefits of exercise. If I’m working with people that are in that same space or that ecosystem of some kind, it matters to me. It resonates with me. I’m going to help people crush their business. So that’s basically my background. I started in retail and then where you and I met after I had sold the shares of my business, I became a representative for a division of Pro Cycle Group and they had a company named Bodyguard Fitness.
Joe (06:34):
I was their Canadian sales manager. So we met back in 2000. Which dates us and I’ve got a little bit of gray on the face now. And then after five years with that company, and the reason I resigned from that company is they changed my commission structure four years out of five. And this is what they said to me. They said, Joe, you just can’t make that kind of money. And for anybody listening or watching this, I will tell you this, as a sales person, there’s literally no reason why you shouldn’t be able to make as much money as you want. That’s one of the things that I love about the vocation of being a salesperson. If your belief and my belief is I’m helping people with the products and/or services that I’m providing through the sales process, then I should be able to make as much money as I want.
Joe (07:27):
And that’s the beauty of it is that, you know, as I learned to continue to hone my craft, and I have coaches of my own, I mean I pay for people to help me be a better sales trainer and sales coach. And in fact, I did a speaking engagement just a little over a month ago and I had the CEO of that company say, wait a minute, you mean the coach has a coach? And I said, it would be silly for me to say, yeah, you can hire me as your trainer or coach or come over to workshop and then yet I don’t have people helping me be accountable. I mean, I pay somebody a lot of money to put my feet to the fire so I can continue to grow my business and that’s what people do with me. So yeah, after everything that I’ve gone through, I’ve learned that accountability is by far one of the best ways to grow my business and grow myself as a person.
Chris (08:22):
- Well, we’re certainly going to come back to that point. So you mentioned, you know, you got into fitness because you wanted to help people. I think most of our listeners are in that same boat, but what they didn’t count on was like, I’m going to have to convince people that they need fitness. I’m going to have to sell this thing. So why do entrepreneurs need help with sales?
Joe (08:42):
You know what I think most of us as entrepreneurs, we have our hearts in the right place. The unfortunate thing though is that the acquisition of the skills of selling consistently evolve and the idea that, oh, well, because I am who I am as a, let’s call it a personal trainer or a gym owner or a person who sells exercise equipment. OK. In any of those three examples, if you don’t learn how to create and define to your leads what you are differentiating value is, and to be able to vocalize it in such a way where it is persuasive and not manipulative, politely persuasive and influential, so how can I influence someone while I still want to create impact? And of course create income. If you don’t learn these skills and you don’t put a systemized approach to it, you’re just flying by the seat of your pants. And I mean that was me in my early twenties and I quickly found out thanks to some great lessons from actual customers that if I built a system, I could template it. And that’s how I grew my business back in my twenties to be able to get into the Depot, which then they grew the business as a group.
Joe (10:07):
We went from seven to 38. You don’t do that in 18 months without having systems and being open to change. So entrepreneurs make the mistake because I meet with a lot of entrepreneurs, Coop, and they’ll tell you what they’ve been in their stores or in their personal-training facilities or they’ve been personal trainers for years and they can’t grow because they’re working in it and not working on it. And then the problem is that a lot of people don’t even measure their metrics, which do you want me to jump in on that? I’ll be very quick cause there’s so much when it comes to sales, a lot of people don’t measure the amount of traffic flow that they have coming in and the problem with that is that OK, I mean just get a counter. If you have a location, how many people walk through the door? Then the next step is if you’re in the electric bike business, the way I see it is how many people actually test rode the bike or if you own a facility, how many people signed a waiver and came in and did you give them a free trial to try your facility or did you give them a free trial to do some one on one with them or a group? If you count the number of people that walked in and then you count the number of people that actually signed on for a free demo, then the next metric of the basic three are how many people did you close on the first visit and then if you measure that, if you just measure number of people walking in, number of people who demoed and number of people you close, you have a baseline.
Joe (11:39):
The problem is most entrepreneurs, they don’t have a baseline. All they look at is their bottom line or their profit and loss and they’re just looking at, well, I got this many sales and then I asked them well, OK, so what’s your goal for next year? I’m going to grow by 20%. And then when I ask the question how are you going to do that? They have no idea. They can’t give me a—they don’t know how. And it’s like, OK, well if you’ve got to drive more traffic, then you’ve got to get more of this quality traffic to demo the product, and then you have to ask for the sale. And then within that, there’s all these other factors from a sales perspective that if you don’t realize that we’re always selling, always selling, and that’s the fun. There’s a stigma that we have as human beings that, Oh yeah, you know, salespeople are slimy, they’re manipulative and that’s not it at all. If that’s your belief, then that’s exactly what we’re going to be. You’re going to be stuck in that belief. And that is unfortunately the biggest problem with entrepreneurs. We need to be able to understand that our job is to help people. If that’s where your headspace is at, selling becomes easier.
Chris (12:53):
So you mentioned earlier that you know, mindset is actually a huge part of your program and I think maybe this is the time to dive into that now because a lot of us do have that image of the slimy used car salesman, right? Where does that come from? And how do we get over it?
Joe (13:08):
So I think where it comes from is one of the things, one of the exercises that I like to do is I like to, when I start, whether it’s Army of One sales training or another program I have is called SOS, which stands for sales objection system. One of the things that we do is we will create a customer avatar. So we go through our customer avatar and I post certain questions that helps the audience define who their specific customer is. What we end up finding out is most people have had an experience where they’ve purchased something and regretted it. They have buyer’s remorse or they’ve been, unfortunately been in a situation where they’ve been misled and they purchased something that was either a bad investment or a waste of money or something to that effect. And then unfortunately every salesperson gets lumped into that bad experience and emotions drive memory.
Joe (14:07):
So, of course, now all of a sudden you get this emotional response where, Hey, I don’t want to get stuck with slimy salespeople or back in the day of, you know, car sales, like everybody thinks the same thing, right? When you think of a slimy salesperson, we immediately see the used car sales salesman or the electronics. You know, you go to Future Shop or Best Buy, Future Shop back in the day or Best Buy. And that’s truly not the case. And so one of the things that as salespeople we have to remember is when emotions go up, intelligence goes down. Emotions go up, intelligence goes down. And this is both from the buyer perspective and from the seller perspective. So as a salesperson, I have to remember, I have to be cognizant of the fact that there are going to be times when I have to ask for the sale.
Joe (15:03):
And for a lot of people that’s scary. And this is where entrepreneurs make the mistake. Or their team make a mistake or any commissioned salesperson and make that error that, you know, they’re not emotionally prepared for rejection. And the truth is it’s not a rejection. It’s an objection. So there’s a difference, right? The average in terms of that no, times that you’re going to hear no before you get a yes in most transactions is five. Most people don’t even get to one. Most people don’t even get to one, Coop. So what ends up happening is, you know, you could do a great presentation or demonstration, but you never get to that point where you’ve asked for the sale because you know, you’re crapping your pants, you’re too afraid for somebody to say no.
Joe (15:54):
And the truth of the matter is no just means no for now. Because what we need to do is create value. If I, you know, Warren Buffett says value is what—price is what you pay, value is what you get. So you know, if I can create more value than the perception of the price, then the sale gets made, and so in the world that you’re in specifically, how do you do that? It’s about creating relationships, right? It’s asking the right questions, showing you care. It’s not about the products or the equipment that you have in the facility. Hell, man, you and I both know you can have workouts with no equipment. And great workouts with no equipment. It’s just what’s my systematic approach and then what are the objections that I’m going to end up hearing often and then having that emotional resilience or having that emotional intelligence to be able to handle it so that I can manage my own emotions as a salesperson and have the intelligent response, and this is where everybody screws it up.
Joe (16:59):
They screw it up. And I’m telling you, I do four to eight-hour workshops handling objections. And I’m telling you, people walk out of that and their sales will skyrocket. And I offer a hundred percent money back guarantee on that. I mean, you will walk out understanding what your emotional issues of sales are when you walk out of an SOS.
Chris (17:22):
So that’s interesting, Joe, all the stuff that I’ve learned from you, I’ve never heard you put it that way, which is that we’re carrying a lot of emotional baggage as the salesperson into that interview. But also what I love was an objection is not a rejection. I think a lot of us really confuse that.
Joe (17:38):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean we, and again, it’s emotional response. So there are times in our lives where we’ve maybe even asked a question whether it was, you know, it could have been in the classroom, in front of an audience with other children, and you ask what would would’ve been, you know, maybe a silly question for the teacher, and then all of a sudden you get berated publicly and now you’re afraid to ask questions again in the future. It’s just the way that we’re wired. You may have asked somebody out on a date when you were a young teen and now you know, I mean, knowing what I know now as an adult, right? I mean we all say this, had I known what I know now, I would have had way more dates, right? It’s the same thing.
Joe (18:24):
I mean, and I can tell you, we will all get more sales just on the premise of asking, never mind knowing the statistics that I’m going to be told no four times or five times before I get to a yes. That’s it. And that’s the average. I mean, there’s some people with a sales cycle that’s months before they get to a large sale. I mean, I’ve done sales where, you know, the invoice was just shy of half a million dollars. That doesn’t happen in a 30-minute conversation. This is a process. Whereas when somebody is walking through the door, Hey, it’s no problem if they say no, just means no for now.
Chris (19:02):
- So you know, that’s a huge barrier to sales, emotional baggage and fear of rejection. I think another one is that people believe that the product is just going to sell itself. And I think that I’m probably most guilty of this. Like if people come in and they try my class, they’re going to understand its value automatically and I’m going to sign up or you know, if I write this article for the newspaper, they’re going to think I’m an expert and they’ll pay money to just be around me.
Chris (19:29):
In the product side, you’ve been selling some of the best products in the world for decades now. How much of that is true, that the product sells itself?
Joe (19:38):
You know what? It’s a great statement. When you combine—I’ll put it this way, you can have excellent product and bad people and your sales aren’t going to be all that great. You can have phenomenal people and mediocre product and it’s not going to be all that great either. When you have the best of both worlds, so of course if your product in your case being a class and/or training systems and/or nutrition and training programming, which of course is an acquired skill, when your skill level is super high and your emotional intelligence and, and sales approach are super high and you’re a good person, you care about people. I mean, I go back to “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek and you know, on my new book that’s coming out, that’s my first chapter.
Joe (20:36):
What is your why? When your why resonates with the why of your customer or your prospect and your product is awesome, I mean, yeah, through the uprights, you’ve got a winning combination. So the product will not sell itself because people buy from people. And again, I’ll use Simon Sinek as the example. People don’t buy what you sell, they buy why you sell it. People don’t buy what you sell. That’s your excellent product. They buy why you sell it. So you are the why, right? Because you are bringing that passion, that energy, that social aspect, that community to your facility. Those are some of the intangibles. I mean, in the bicycle world for example, somebody could come in and look at a bike, what they don’t see at point of purchase in the retail stores, they don’t see the after-sale service.
Joe (21:32):
They don’t see the opportunity to go out on group rides. The social community, they don’t see that point of purchase. You have to be able to define that and create that differentiating value. Otherwise tell you what somebody could go online and just click an order and get it delivered in a couple of hours. Right? And that’s the differentiating value that you need to understand how to define and explain eloquently without taking up too much time. Because that’s the other thing too. We need to be able to—when I look at the ability that these devices, these mobile devices that we have, and I can literally order anything that I want, my heart’s desire and have it delivered within two hours to two days by clicking, and I can make that decision to purchase literally within seconds, we need to be also take your sales time and time collapse it. And that’s another part that salespeople tend to talk too much as opposed to asking the right question. Entrepreneurs will tell, tell, tell, and telling is not selling. Selling is truly asking the right questions, right?
Chris (22:39):
Yes. So everybody in the Two-Brain group, even listeners to this podcast who are not in Two-Brain, I’m sure you’ve heard me say stop barfing on people. I got that phrase from Joe because somebody would walk in the door and they’d see this $3,000 treadmill, right? And I would think like, oh, the product sells itself. And they would say, why is this $3,000 when I can go to Sears and buy it for 1100? And I would just go through the spec sheet in my brain. I would vomit all over them for an hour and then they’d leave and go buy it from Sears. So tell us more about that Joe. Like tell us more about that mistake, telling is not selling.
Joe (23:13):
You know what, when you’re looking at wanting to sell, whether it’s your product or your service, think of it from this perspective. And we get caught up in it because what ends up happening is the customer asks you a question and as a professional and as an expert and somebody who’s passionate about the service and or product that you’re offering, you jump in in telling them what the product differences are and now you’re going what versus what. And if I’m going this product, which is a quality product, versus product that you saw at a different store or online, what versus what is spec versus spec. And now it’s just a race to the bottom and you know who wins the race to the bottom? Nobody. So when somebody asks you a question, the key here is to acknowledge and then ask a question so that you can take control of the conversation.
Joe (24:03):
So if somebody says, why would I join your facility? The answer, the answer to that would be, well, I can appreciate that you’re doing your research. Or you can say, Hey, you know what? I appreciate the fact that you’re asking that question. How important is it for you to have great results? What I’ve done is I’ve acknowledged and then I’ve asked a question and now they’re going to say something to the effect of, well, it is important for me to have great results. Then it’d be OK, so this is your first time in our facility. How did you hear about us? Because these are marketing questions and metric questions I need to measure. And then have you ever had the opportunity to have an experience within our facility yet? Clearly if it’s your first time here, you haven’t,
Joe (24:41):
so are you ready to try? And using the word try gives them the impression that they can, you know, they can return the product or they don’t have to necessarily join. So you know what? Why don’t you just give us a try? Does that sound good? And I’m asking questions. So in the case of, for example, where you want to show off your expertise because you do know everything there is to know about, let’s say the example of a treadmill and you start barfing specs. The real key would be, Oh, is this your first time in the store? How’d you hear about us? You ever tried this treadmill before? You know what? Just for fun, those three words are my baby, just for fun, hop on this. I want you to try this. OK, you ready to try this? Yeah. OK. Press that button right there and get them to do it and get them involved, right?
Joe (25:22):
Because one of the key things to learning, you know, tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I might remember, involve me and I’m going to understand. So I can show somebody how to do a squat or work with a kettlebell. And when I get them to pick up the damn kettlebell and get them to start swinging it, that’s where they’re going to start understanding how to do it. And say, OK, wait, we’re going to pivot here. We’re going to adjust this an, you know, it’s the same thing in the sales process. I am going to get people involved. And how do you do that? Ask questions. Don’t tell them about your product, ask questions because they already have the answers. Does that make sense?
Chris (26:02):
Yeah, it does make sense. There was a great book called “Built to Sell” a couple of years ago, where Dan Pink said, Hey, like your client’s coming in, they already have all the knowledge.
Joe (26:13):
Sure. For sure they do. Yeah, for sure. I’ve been in stores where people would say, why would I buy this one when I can get this one online for half the price? And that just opens up the what versus what. And so if you bought online, you can’t get any service and it’s like, wait a minute. You know, as opposed to saying that you could, you could say, Hey, you know what? I appreciate that you again, acknowledge, ask a question, Mr. Customer, I totally appreciate that you’re doing your research. And I think that’s great. Let me ask you, how important is after-sales service to you? And they have to answer the question and for anybody who is purchasing a product, service is generally a critical component. In fact, they’ve come into your place of business because they want you to convince them to buy local, right, and then it’s just like, why would I join your facility when I could buy this program online and just do it following YouTube?
Joe (27:14):
It’s like, wow, are you kidding me? In my mind, that’s where I’m going and it’s like, Hey, you know what? I appreciate the fact that you’re interested in getting some type of exercise and some type of fitness. How important is it for you to be able to have a community of people that are going to be there and share the energy and lift you up and make sure that you’re accountable to coming back every time you’re supposed to work out. Are you aware that accountability is a way for you to maximize your results? We already know the answer is yes, but if I told them, you know that blah blah blah, if you come across as defensive, it truly comes across as offensive, right? It’s like when somebody says, well, your product’s too expensive.
Joe (28:02):
Most people will react because they’re emotionally attached to their belief, which is your product is great. So the reaction is what are you comparing it to? And that comes off as offensive and as opposed to saying, Hey, you know what? Thanks for letting me know how you feel, Coop. Acknowledge, then ask the question, what are we comparing it to? And notice I didn’t say, what are you comparing it to? I’m making this—instead of being exclusive. I’m saying, what are we comparing it to? And that shift of just one word makes all the difference. Have you ever—let me ask you this, Chris, what has more power? Thanks, I appreciate it. Or thanks, I appreciate you.
Chris (28:45):
Oh, the latter.
Joe (28:46):
Right? One word, all the difference. And in sales it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.
Chris (28:59):
It’s interesting because most listeners to this podcast probably are selling the most expensive, you know, exercise program in town. They’re not selling at $12 a month access fees. So that price objection is one that actually does come up a lot. So Joe, like there’s a lot of knowledge already here. I really like for us to take something away that we can practice. And so one of the things that we were talking about before we got on was what you were calling emotional resilience. So maybe we can just dive into that for a little bit.
Joe (29:41):
So to practice handling an objection or the emotional resilience aspect of it kind of goes hand in hand and I mean, I’ll give you a tool that will help in that. Think of the most common objection that you run into. And if it’s the price objection, what you need to do is you write down the objection, whatever that objection is and how it’s thrown at you. Then what you need to do is it’s a two-step process. Step one acknowledge. So how would you acknowledge that objection, and then step two, ask a question. I mean I can’t make it any easier than this. Acknowledge, ask a question. Cause what happens is is that when we hear the objection, we get emotionally distraught. So what you need to do is with a partner or you know, whether it’s on the phone, better for it to be alive, by the way, and this only takes, I swear to you, five minutes a day. I mean it’s like brushing your teeth. If you were to do this on your biggest objection, what’s going to happen is that objection is actually never going to present itself. I find it really interesting, when we’re emotionally prepared to hear this objection, then it seems like the objection just fades away and it never, it never comes up. Or if it does come up, you’ll be instantly prepared for you know what? Wow, this program is just way too expensive. Thanks for letting me know how you feel. What exactly were you comparing it to? And it’s reprogramming your brain so that you don’t have that emotional response. Now, let me be very clear. We’re not taking emotion out of the picture.
Joe (31:34):
That’s impossible. When we need to do is we need to practice this and repetition is a way to mastery. You have to practice this on a regular basis, and this is where when I tell people, hey, when you come to a workshop, this isn’t pixie dust where you know, you come in, you suck at sales, and then you leave and all of a sudden you’re, you know, going to the hall of fame. I’m going to give you tools just like I gave you right now in one brief example that with practice you’re going to get so good at it that you’ll see dramatic results to your sales. But it has to be ongoing, because sales is a perishable skill. If you don’t practice them, things go bad. And then as you know, people go back to old habits and bad habits, no different than in exercise.
Joe (32:22):
This is the way I’ve always done it. OK. And how’s that working out for you? So the emotional resilience piece, it really comes down to this as a salesperson and as a trainer, I come down to this, write down that objection that that’s bugging you the most. Step one, acknowledge it. Step two, ask a question. So again, I’m using the example of your product’s too expensive. And to me, it just comes out of my mouth. Thanks for letting me know how you feel. What exactly are we comparing it to? And I get, you know, a variety of objections that come up. You know, I need to go home and talk to my wife and that’s a classic or I need to go talk to my significant other or you get, I want to go home and do some research.
Joe (33:11):
Now they’re talking to you, the expert. So I’m going to go home and do some research. I really appreciate that you want to be well-informed. What is it specifically that you want to research that you and I didn’t get a chance to talk about today? And you know what really happens is if you’re not prepared with those scripts, that’s where the emotional reaction comes in. And then you say things that you regret later. I mean, and that’s the emotional memory that you get all frazzled. So with practice, and this is where you start off with a script, you’ll learn the script and then you master it. And every master was once a disaster. If you think, I know all this stuff just by, you know, I learned it from other people. I learned the SOS system from some other trainer that I was working with 25 years ago.
Joe (34:04):
I repackaged it and repurposed it so that it works for me and my people. And now people pay me thousands of dollars to be able to have massive increments to their business, because I shined it up in such a way where I made it even simpler. You can’t get any simpler than two steps.
Chris (34:21):
Well, so what are those steps, Joe, let’s talk about SOS.
Joe (34:25):
So that’s exactly what I just covered with you. So the sales objection system is a two-step system. It’s write it write down the objection. Step one, acknowledge. Step two, ask a question. Now there’s exercises that we’ll do for example, in a workshop where I call breakthrough exercises where it needs to get to get done in the silence of a room where, and I say that whether you’re a room full of people, whether it’s six people or 600 and again it’s the question of being able to hear that little voice in your head.
Joe (35:06):
And the one I’m talking about is the one right now where you just had, what little voice that like we have constantly, we’re always talking to ourselves and it’s that little voice that we’ve been designed from inception, from thousands of years ago to always keep ourselves safe. If you want to break out of your comfort zone, that’s where you get into the money zone. And you know what? There’s a feeling of this isn’t safe. You just got to keep stretching. It’s no different than when you do a stretching program and you want to be able to do the splits. You’ve to keep practicing and keep practicing and keep practicing, and it’s discomfort, it’s not pain, it’s discomfort. Well, once you get to that point, then you get, regardless of your age, Hey, guess what? I am now able to do the splits. Well, Hey, guess what? I’m now able to sell for millions of dollars’ worth of whatever it is that you listeners are selling, whether it’s training or whether it’s product, it’s actually easy. It’s just a question of small gains daily.
Chris (36:05):
OK, so if you’re talking to a gym owner and you’re saying you need to get reps, you need to develop this emotional resilience, pick one objection that you get. What exactly does that look like? Like you’re saying five minutes a day, are they roleplaying or are they doing it in the mirror? How’s that work?
Joe (36:22):
if you’re solo, obviously, and I mean, my new book’s called “How to Be an Army of One in Sales,” if you’re a solo-preneur, then absolutely you have to do it in the mirror or on the drive out loud. You have to, you know, and this is a thing, I mean there’s practice—it’s like having a band. You know, you and I, before the podcast started, you asked me if I was still playing music and it’s interesting. Occasionally I’ll get together with people and we’ll play music together. Well, here’s the thing. If you’re a musician or if you’re in sales with people, you need to practice on your own and then when you get together with the band or your team, you rehearse. But if you haven’t practiced, then your rehearsal’s going to suck. And then when you go to game time or gig time or show time, you’ve done your practice alone, you’ve rehearsed with the group and now you’re out on stage and you’re crushing it. That’s how all the greats are great. They’d practice, then they’d rehearse and then it’s show time. So there’s no difference when it comes to sales. Even if you’re a solo-preneur you practice in the car. Then at your place of business, before you unlock the door, you rehearse as people are there and you’re standing at your counter or your chair or wherever it is, you role play it so that it becomes part of muscle memory and then it’s game time and it will just flow.
Chris (37:42):
That’s amazing, Joe. That is such, such a great place to leave it because I’m not sure that people understand the difference or even when we mail them a scenario deck, if they’re a solo-preneur, they’re saying like, well, how can I do role playing? Am I going to use my dog? But that was a great illustration of the difference between practice rehearsal and show time. All right man. So Joe, where can people learn more about “Army of One” and the SOS system and you?
Joe (38:11):
You can go to Joe M a R C O U X as an X marks the spot dot-com. So joemarcoux.com. You can follow me on Instagram at @joe__Marcoux. Yes, that is two underscores. Those are probably the two best places. I’ve got a lot more content that’s coming out for general sales. And then the intent that I have for the listeners and I’m going to put it out there so that we make it happen, Chris, is that, we work together. I’d love to be able to have the opportunity to do something for your group and really help level up their game. I’m really lucky that I’ve had the opportunity from different trade associations to call me in or different manufacturers call me in for their annual dealer meetings. And it’s not just about sales, it’s also about coaching. It’s about consulting and motivation. That’s all part of it. Zig Ziglar, who I’ve seen live when I was younger, used to say that motivation is like bathing. You gotta do it daily. And so is your sales practice. You gotta do a daily if you want to excel.
Chris (39:16):
That’s awesome, Joe. Thanks so much for coming on and sharing a little bit of knowledge and some advice for gym owners, man.
Joe (39:22):
Yeah. It’s my pleasure. I hope I get a chance to come to back in the future.
Chris (39:26):
Absolutely.
Joe (39:26):
Right on, Coop.
Chris (39:31):
Thank you for listening to Two-Brain Radio. I’m Chris Cooper and I’m here every Thursday. Every Wednesday. Sean Woodland brings you the best stories from the fitness community. Every Monday we’ll bring you marketing tips and success stories from our clients. Please subscribe to Two-Brain Radio and share this show with any friends we can help.
