Lessons - How to Close More Sales | Ryan Stewman, CEO of Hardcore Closer

Hi, it's Scott here. On these lessons, episodes of my podcast, I'll be selecting my favorite lessons from various guests and episodes of Success Story. Today you're going to hear from Ryan Astuman. He's a best-selling author, podcast, or blogger, he serves as the CEO of Hardcore Closer. He has coached and helped over 20,000 clients. He has multi-million dollars in revenue both closed himself and through his clients. He's a full-time investor, he owns 30-plus companies. He's killed it in the game of sales and entrepreneurship. And today you're going to learn from Ryan how to close a deal. You know, it's funny because when I got started in this, that was all I knew with sales. I was a salesman for a mortgage company. So I taught Hardcore Closer, Closer is what mortgage guys are. They close mortgages, right? So that's where that came from. I'm this prison guy that was a, you know, a closer of mortgages, so I'm like Hardcore Closer, right? And that was what they called me at the office. It was like my nickname. So I registered it online. You know, this is 2012, I think, when all that came. But that's what they had called me at the car dealership I worked at for a short period of time. They, you know, I'd always been that in the mortgage. It's like, oh, that's the Hardcore Closer. It's just kind of a nickname that stuck. And what I know about nicknames is if you get a cool one, you better go with it because you can get a shitty one right after that. And it's ticked. So like, I'll take that one. Hardcore Closer. That's me from now on. Y'all heard them, right? So, um, but that was all I knew. But now that I've been doing this for so long, I couldn't even tell you the last time I actually closed the sale sale, like, like, to Ape. Somebody asked me how much level one of Apex wasn't the other day. And I didn't know if it was 2,500 or 3 grand, which is really weird because it's, hey, it's my company. But Drew B and Zach are my sales guys. These guys do, you know, a couple of million dollars a month in sales. And so I don't have to, you know, at one point, I was a social media manager for everything too. And now I've got Brittany. So I don't have to do that. So I say that because I still know a lot about sales, but I'm about to give you all the sales training you will ever need to pay for in about five minutes. But I'm not his hands on with that because is we make a progression from being employed to self-employed to the CEO of a company to ultimately selling or exiting or owning that company in a cashmowing force, right? That's there's never such thing as retirement. That's that's what it is. It's an exit, not a retirement. Retirements when you don't have shit to do and your board and money stops coming in and you go crazy and you go start another job exits where you're on to the next thing, right? And so for me, I'm at the CEO level right now, but as a CEO, I've had to have a different sales conversation than I did as a sales person. And I can tell you, sales just breaks down to two things only, man. Don't give a fuck what Grant or Jordan or any of those. I'm not shitting on them. I'm just saying, I don't have sales training to to sell you and a stop selling sales training because when I figured these two things out and I'm like, well, I can't literally sell that to anybody that's cheating, right? So it comes down to two things. Number one is empathy and listen, don't go all Gary Vee saying that shit on me. I've been saying it longer than him, but here's the things like empathy is I like Gary. I like you. I like messing with him because that's his thing. Empathy, why did she it's every time I say that I feel like I got to make sure that it's different? Right. So, um, but empathy just means that you listen. So if you're in sales, we are taught that we need to be talkers. You got to have the gift of gab. You got to have a blah, blah, blah. It's not true. Like, like you, the he who speaks the least earns the most. If you're in the sales conversation and you use the least amount of words, chances are they're going to buy from you because that person's talking to you because they're looking for a solution and they want you to know that the problem, they want you to clearly understand the problem. So they are articulating it to you. So how do you get empathy to empathy means for you, for them to know that you understand their problem. So you get empathy by listening, you get to listen by what asking questions. So that's the key. Talk less and ask questions because like you could call me as a loan officer and I know the second that you get on the phone, the problem is you need leads from realtors. That's what the fuck you called me for, right? But I can't just go, well, you need to buy my product because I already know your problem. I got to let you tell me that it all started in the fifth grade when Jenny kissed you and then ran off and kissed another boy right after and it ruined the way that you thought a life and like, I got to hear your whole life story so that you know I understand you. Everybody thinks we're unique. We're not. We're all the same. It's a different story to arrive at the same place, right? And so, but you got to hear that story so they think, right? That's how you create empathy. Once they understand that you understand all your missing components and competence works like this product knowledge. If you know your product inside and out and you are confident that it can solve their problem because they know that you listen to them. When you pair empathy and confidence together, they can't help but buy from you because you know their problem and you are 100% confident that you can solve it for them only of a fool wouldn't want to move forward at that point. But so many people never get to that because they're too busy talking instead of listening to where the customer see we live in the field's economy. Fuckers need to feel like they're listening to. They need to feel like somebody cares about them because everybody's swiping on social media, everybody's talking over everybody, everybody's interrupting people and trolling each other on the internet and shit like that. So when you actually have the benefit of having a physical, human conversation with somebody whether on the phone or FaceTime or in person, the whole empathy, competence thing just changes it. You know what I mean? It's like, hey, this person is listening to. I love it dude. That shit nobody listens to. That's damn good advice.