SFR 182: Causing An Identity Crisis...
Boom, what's going on everyone?
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It's Steve Larsen, and today I'm gonna talk to you guys about the most important shift that must take place in every sales message for it to be effective.
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I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
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The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt? Completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.
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Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.
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My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
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What's up guys? I'm excited for today. I've spent the last few days at Russell Brunson's Inner Circle - which is a lot of fun.
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The way it works is we all get up, and we'll give, we'll teach for a little bit cool things that we've all been doing. And then we'll ask for whatever we need, right?
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And so I got my slides done, I was super excited about it. Honestly going to Inner Circle's like Christmas morning for me. It's probably the place I like to spend the most time, and I just absolutely love it.
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It was right before and Russell sent me a message, and he goes, "Hey did you want to teach some of your offer creation stuff for a little over an hour? I got a little spot to fill. We could give you some extra time there, and honestly, I'd love to see the stuff." \xa0I said, "Sounds good."
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So I was like, "Oh crap, I gotta remake all this stuff." So I went and I remade this cool presentation to go through and share a lot of these things.
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And one of the stories in there, I wanna walk through it, I wanna share with you guys the most important element in a sales message.
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Now a lot you guys know, I talk about door-to-door sales a lot. For me, that was like one of the best educations I ever had in my entire life - door-to-door sales. I did not see that at the time. I did not know that at the time. But I was hoping that I would learn sales in the toughest environment - which was literally one of the major reasons why I did door-to-door.
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I know I bring it up a lot, but it's because it was so impactful for me. Now a lot of you guys know too that I've told this story right in the past, I'll get to this whiteboard here I have in a moment. But in the past, what's been fascinating is I was so obsessed with products, right?
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I would write eBooks, I would put things together, and I was, "What product can I sell? What product can I sell? What product can I sell?" And it led me down this path of learning what products are cool... BUT it also led to actually having zero cash in my pocket...
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So back to the door-to-door thing; I had the exact same fixation when I was doing door-to-door sales. I would go around and for the first half of the summer I was the number two salesman as a first year.
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I was good, right and I'd be closing people. I was like, "Pest control, pest control, pest control, pest control, pest control."
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Customers started asking things like, "ell does it kill bug? Does it kill my ants? Does it kill the wasps? Do you guys take care of the mice? Do you do this, do this, do this...?"
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The technician came after me and obviously fulfilled on that and I just was selling it, I was the sales guy obviously.
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And what was funny was that when you look at the way I was selling, the first half of the summer for me, I was getting two to three sales a day - which as a sales guy, door-to-door, for that price point - that's not bad. That's not bad.
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If you do that consistently, that's pretty good.
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What's funny though is that about halfway through the summer it shifted from going from two to three sales a day to two to three sales a week. I was wrecked. I mean it destroyed me.
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If I did not do so well the beginning half of the summer, my wife and I would have been bankrupt by the time we hit the end of the summer. We pretty much broke even the rest of the entire summer. And I was like, what happened here? What's going on?
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One of the major things that I was getting distracted on was the product itself.
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About two months into the beginning of summer, people started asking me questions: "Does it do this, does it kill that? What about this, does it do that?" Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah, and I ended up falling in the rabbit hole, and I shouldn't have.
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I got on this huge spree of learning about the product more: "Oh these are the chemical compounds inside of our pest control. Oh, this is the organic version and the chemical compounds of that one. Oh, here is why it works on wasps. This is why it works on ants. This is why it works."
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And I got so far into the why - literally down to the molecular level. I knew exactly why this pest control is killing that bug... because it is jacking up their nervous system... right! Weird details that don't matter.
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I got so obsessed over it.
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It was not until afterwards, when I started learning about sales that I found out that I was talking myself out of the sale.
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Anytime anybody asked me a question where they just needed a simple answer, "Does it kill my bugs?" "Yeah." But I was like, "Yes, booof!" And I'd just like barf all over him. "Here and this and that, and this and that, look at me, I'm smart, look at me I'm smart!"
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I went back to college and I started learning more about eBooks, I started trying to sell things online. I started getting more into the internet game. And I got back to that same fixation - believing that the product and what made the product is what did the sale.
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Now there's this interesting stat and correlation, even at ClickFunnel's high ticket selling. A lot of internet marketers, a lot of business owners today, they try to not have their high ticket salesmen know that much about the product...
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It's not because they're trying to be shady or sneaky or anything like that, it's because there's a danger that salesmen will start to talk themselves out of the sale.
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They will literally start explaining all the features. They will literally start explaining all the little details, and it ends up killing the sale.
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So I went in, and I got to teach a little bit about this and tell different stories about it to the Inner Circle.
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There's one specific concept about the sales script that I wanted to walk you through.
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First of all, I just wanna make the point, people don't buy because of the product. They buy it because of the sales message. They're completely separate activities. They're completely separate disciplines. Sales message versus a product.
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And for so many years - the reason why I knew it took me 17 tries, (it's something like that), to have a successful product is because it was the first time that I actually decided, "Holy crap, I'm still gonna make a sick product. I'm gonna make something that's totally awesome, but I'm gonna first fixate on a sales message that gets people excited." Then make a product to fulfill what that sales message is talking about - in that order.
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That's one of the biggest reasons why my stuff started working!
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So we got that split, 'kay...
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Product versus sales message. Very different. Super unique roles. Very unique responsibilities. Very unique in the way you create them. Very different disciplines themselves on how to make them. Product creator versus a sales scriptwriter, very different.
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Sales script though, that's why they buy it. They don't buy it because of the product, they buy it because of the sales script. Have we established that? Sweet, okay.
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Now what I wanna do is I'm gonna take that sales message, and what I wanna do is I wanna identify inside of this... it's one of the major key reasons why somebody ends up purchasing.... And it's one of the key reasons why the sales message is more important than the product.
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And again, I'm not telling you not to go create awesome products.
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Check this out though:
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If we got a red ocean over here... (So for you guys on iTunes... I'm just gonna draw it, and all I'm gonna talk it out here, so you guys, you're not missing out on anything, right?) For me drawing it helps me explain it, that's the reason I use these whiteboards in these videos now so much, 'kay. Just so you know...
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I got a red ocean over here on the side, and let's say over here, I'm trying to lead them over to this blue, right? Here's the blue ocean. Can barely see that - there we go. There's the blue ocean over there on that side, and there's a bridge.
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There's basically a bridge that happens to get them over from one ocean to the next.
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And what I wanna talk about, and the purpose of this and the reason I wanna do this episode is to teach you why they actually start moving towards the blue.
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Guys, most people are lazy. They're not ambitious, they're lazy. So, what gets a lazy person out of their comfy couch over in the red ocean where they are more than taken care of? There are so many providers, there are so many companies selling that red ocean.
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Lots of times that red ocean person is highly taken care of, right? They're highly, highly taken care of. Because that person's willing to believe more for them than that person. Does that make sense?
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The task of getting someone off their duff and over to a blue, that's not an easy thing. And that's the reason why I'm doing this is because I want you to understand what causes an individual to get up and start walking to the blue.
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What gets them up over here - \xa0and even better, what gets them to run? What gets them to spring over to... do do do, there's a little run. (So I never graduated past stick figures, I don't really intend to.) But anyway, what gets them to run over to that blue?
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That's literally the purpose of today's episode, and that's why I'm trying to share this with you guys.
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So let's look at sales psychology here for just a moment in general...
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If I walk up and I'm like, "Hey what's up? Hey, buy this marker." The first thing that you're going to do is you are going to talk about, I'm sorry. The first thing you're gonna do, internally you're gonna start questioning how good the marker is itself. That's usually the first thing that a person starts to do.
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What I'm going through here is typically the order the brain experiences the sale in.
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The first objection that somebody typically has
is the product or vehicle itself. So that's the first thing, right. Number one usually is a product base.
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Why would I get up and off the couch if I don't even think that the blue could have a possibility of being awesome, or what I need, or cool? Does that make sense?
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So the first objection, they're not even gonna get up out of their chair and over in that red ocean, they're not gonna get, right, out of their chair, they're sitting over there in that boat. Whoo, whoo, right, that red ocean over there. They're in their boat - they're in a nice houseboat. They're not gonna get up and start walking over to that driver wheel until they at least know that the blue ocean is even worth checking out, right?
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That usually leads to product based objection. "Well, is that marker any good? Well, when I erase that marker, is it gonna be helpful? Well, does that makes sense? Well, well, well, well, well, does that make sense?"
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So, now that's the super key to understand, the first objection is usually about the product.
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The reason somebody will abandon the red and move to a blue is because literally... there's a lot of reasons. But one of the biggest ones is just fear of missing out. FOMO. It's one of the fears of missing out. "Oh there's something better over there. Oh it's a better deal over there. Oh there's something over here...."
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This blue ocean is all about creating things that are different, not new. Does that make sense? It is a new ocean, but one of the easiest ways to create a new ocean is by creating things that are different, not better. That's what I was trying to say. You're trying to be different, not better. Anyway, that's the first thing.
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The second thing, the second thing that people have a crisis over, the second thing that people have an objection over, has everything to do with their internal beliefs. Identity, is what I'm talking about.
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Usually it has to do with insecurities and identity. So insecurities, insecurities and identity. Meaning they're gonna say, "Oh you know what, Steve? I prefer chalk anyway, so. And that's a little bit of a product based one...
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There might be someone who's like, "Well my grandfather used chalk and his grandfather used chalk, I will never use a marker..." you know what I mean?
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It sounds silly, but people are doing that with your products - you understand?
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A lot of this is subconscious, and when you go in to address each one of these things, and the way the brain experiences a sale, it makes you a way better salesman - a way better marketer, a way better product creator, and a way better blue ocean creator.
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I'm gonna come back to what gets somebody to actually start moving across here. It's the major key of this entire episode. I'm trying to help you guys understand...
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The third thing that people have an objection/identity over is a lot about resources. \xa0A lot of external things, things that are away from them: "Oh, that does seem cool. Oh, you know what, that product, I do believe that product is really good." And if I can get them to there, they graduate to the next one, right...
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If I get them to understand the product is really cool, then they graduate to internal based objections. Their internal based objections; insecurities, identity crises. "Well, it doesn't represent me to do this... it doesn't represent me to do that."
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I really wanna get into tough mudders and Spartan races and things like that... I'm really excited about that. Why? I'm convinced that that's a cool product, BUT it's really because I believe that's part of my identity. "I've never done one." Fascinating, isn't it?
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..."But it's me. I'm a tough guy," right? And that's kind of what people start to do. "I'm a tough guy." Therefore that fits my identity, therefore I'm gonna start moving towards it, right?
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People might say, "Okay, but what time are the races at? Oh, but what kind of shoes should I have? Oh but what kind of training should I do ahead of time? Oh what...?"
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Does that makes sense? It's a resources based category. It's external - So I'm gonna say resources.
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So those are the three, right? Those are the three. You're gonna have usually in this very order.. this is the order that the brain experiences it. And the brain does not move on to the next one until it feels like it has been justified. Until it feels like that objection has been answered.
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You experience them in this order, and you graduate them in this order:
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First I'm gonna have a product based objection.
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Next I'm gonna have an identity based objection, right, an insecurity, "I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, there's no way I can do that. My family's never done those kinds of things before, I should not do that as well." Does that make sense?
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I hear this a lot of you guys when you're like, "But my father was poor and his father was poor, and their father was poor, and therefore I will be poor." It's like, "Wait a second, that is an internal insecurity." That's an identity insecurity. That's is an identity based false belief. That makes sense?
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"I've been a farmer, therefore... "(I'm just picking on whatever, 'kay?) "I'll go to college because they went to college." Anyway, it's a very hard one to break.
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The third one is that resources based one: "I don't have enough time, I don't have enough money, I don't have enough energy, I don't have enough support from spouse."
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Those are things that are away, things that have nothing really to do with the product that you're trying to sell. But they come up as excuses. Does this make sense? (I need more stories in this as I'm telling it, I can feel it right now. 'Cause I'm going straight to fact, which is not good. But I'm trying to help you guys understand this piece of it, 'kay?)
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The most hard one to break is the identity based one. This one right here. Product based insecurities = they're not that hard. Everyone's seen a new product they've never seen before. We are conditioned, guys, America is buying things and the world is buying things at a faster pace. Increasing on an increasing rate, right?
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We buy stuff, we're used to seeing new products. It doesn't take a long time to get over product based objections. It doesn't. If your product's great, it takes a little product education, right? And because it's new, that's usually a big section inside of something like a webinar. This is secret number one, the product based objections right there. But it's not altogether that hard.
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The path is not altogether that challenging to break someone's beliefs about the new product that you're trying to sell them to...
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The challenge comes, right and the third one as well...
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Resource-based objections, man every product has resource based objections!
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It doesn't matter whatever you're selling. You're gonna hear the objection, "Well it's too expensive, I don't have time enough to do that. I don't know if my wife's gonna like that. I don't know if..." Right! Every freaking product has those objections.
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The third category, resource-based objections are the easiest to break. But they're often the ones that people go to the first when they write their scripts. Isn't that funny? It should be the third thing, not the first...
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'Cause you get into a features battle if you keep going into the resources one too much.
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Anyway, the most challenging one, the most challenging one for people to overcome is number two. It is insecurities, and specifically, identity.
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Guys the thing that gets people off their butt from a red ocean and sprinting to a blue, is identity.
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The easiest way to create the feeling needed to get up out of the red and run to the blue? Some of you guys might kind of cringe when I say this, 'kay? Please don't think less of me. "Identity crisis," 'kay? The identity crisis...
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If I can have somebody experience somewhat of an identity crisis and realize "I have to be over here in this blue ocean, I have to." It melts tons of resource-based false beliefs. It melts tons of beliefs about product itself.
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If I can affect somebody to have an identity crisis, they will leave their security.
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For them the red ocean is security. They will leave a security of a red ocean and their identity - and be like, "This is who I am."
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Guys, so much of humanity, we're all in this identity discovery. We all are trying to discover who we really are in this life, right? You understand that you can use this for really crappy stuff... you could be totally unethical what I'm talking about with this. You have to understand though, that this is the hinge in a sales message.
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If I can get somebody's identity slightly challenged by using that red ocean, right, they're gonna jump, and they're gonna sprint... they're gonna run over to that blue.
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It's kind of like, there's a lot of people who will go through the Funnel Hacks webinar at ClickFunnels... they will buy Funnel Hacks, and they'll get six months of ClickFunnels.
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They'll go through the onboarding process to get their free Funnel Hacking t-shirt, and they will never log in again. Ever. They'll never log in again...
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Why? Why would somebody do that? Identity. Why? "Because I'm a Funnel Hacker." The cost of being a Funnel Hacker and having that t-shirt is worth the $97 a month to them.
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"You're right, Russell, I hate websites. I hate VC funding." Think of all the rocks that he's throwing, right? Those are part of the identity = things that we are and are not: "I will not take on VC funding. I will not take on debt. I will not, right! I will bootstrap it, I will do it the right way, I will not cheat."
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All those phrases we've all heard before - that is "identity" - what we are and what we are not.
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And when you can clearly identify an identity, right... When you can get people to shift and remove and destroy and shed their old identit. And as they buy your product, take on a new identity... That is one of the easiest ways to sell stuff. Seriously, it's one of the easiest ways.
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There was a headline, a very famous headline that said: "My weird Funnel currently making me 17 grand a day, and how to ethically knock it off in less than 10 minutes." That was the headline. When I saw that, I was like, "Cool, I'm sold." But when there was an identity shift involved in it, I had to buy it. Does that make sense? I was sold on the product, right?
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I can't remember what I was selling... This has happened multiple times in my life. Especially, pest control was a great example. I would go in and I would sell one spouse, but I would not close them, meaning I had no cash in hand.
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The person was sold, they're like, Awesome, totally want it, why don't you just come on back." How many of you guys have done this, right? "It's totally awesome, oh this product seems so great Stephen, I'm super excited about it," I'm like, "Yeah, it is great. Okay, just sign here." "Well, I've got to talk to my spouse." That is a resource based! I did not get there, they're only 2/3 sold. I could not get past that last objection.
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The person was sold, but they're stopping on resource-based objections, right? And I would come back, and I'd be like, "Sweet! Oh, this sale's a drop in the hat, sale's a drop in the hat, sale's a drop in hat. And I would come back, and I walk back, and it was like an abrupt, rude, very forceful "No." I was like, "Huh?"
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That happened all the time.
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If I did not close them there, I hardly ever closed them on the followup, EVER. \xa0And a lot of it had to do with my own skill at the time. ( I'm way better now.) But that's part of the whole reason of it.
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If I can get somebody to actually shift their identity, shed their identity and move forward, man, guys the game's so easy.
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A lot of you guys follow me because you like what I've done. A lot of you guys follow me because you've actually lived or are living the same kind of story that I've gone through. You started with nothing, you didn't have much, right? You were trying to bootstrap it the whole way, you're working in wee hours of the morning, or super late hours of the night...
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I know like 90% of you guys listening to this right now, watching this right now, you're in that category or you have been in that category. It's what makes me attractive. Why? "Identity." That's the whole purpose of this episode. I'm just trying to help you guys understand that...
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So start thinking through ways you can give yourself and give your customers a brand new identity.
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I call my people a specific title. That's the name of our group, right? They shed their old... I call them The Mavericks. Renegades, I call them a lot of different names, 'kay? But it's because it's who I am. Man, I'ma fighter, I don't care ruffling feathers, I love breaking rules, 'kay?
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And I attract people in that way, or I attract people who want to become that way, right? And what it's doing is it's making them shed their old identity.
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And what happens when someone takes on a new identity? A lot of resource-based objections seem to get dwindled somehow. They're not as important as they used to be.
Even if you don't totally understand everything about the product itself, a lot of those vehicle-based objections start to melt away.
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Identity shift is the hardest but the most important thing that you can focus on giving your people inside of a sales message. That's what I'm trying to say. That's what I'm trying to get out to you guys so you understand a part of it.
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I love ClickFunnels. It is so part of my identity. Do you know how hard of a sale it's going to be for somebody if they decide to try and get me out of using ClickFunnels? Like "Good luck.." you know what I mean?
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Do you imagine getting me out of it? "No." I don't care. It is so ingrained in my identity.
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I'm pretty sure if you peel back my heart right here, there's gears, right? There's a red gear and a blue gear. And that's what's keeping me going. And it's because of that. I've taken on this identity. And my identity got seated as part of the product itself.
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I want you guys to understand that part of it...
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So start thinking through ways, and if this is a little bit more of a technical one, relisten to it... Listen to this episode several times, there's a lot \xa0that I dropped in there.
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I'm trying to help you understand what gets somebody to abandon the red. Yes, a good product can do that. Yes, overcoming objections for resources, that can totally do that as well. But the one thing that they will not sidestep \xa0is their identity.
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The one thing that will get them running is their identity.
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I really wanna go do these tough mudder things. I'm super excited about it. Do you know the buying frenzy I have been on the cusp of because of that, right?
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How many you guys have been there? When you're like, "Man, I really need something new in my life..." or "Man, I really need this..." or "Man, I really need variety..."
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We've all been there before. Watch yourself. You're having an identity crisis!
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"Oh. I didn't want to just be known for the guy sitting behind the desk." It's what I'm freaking going through, right?
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I really wanna go do other things. \xa0I'm very aggressive in nature, physically. I lift super hard every morning. "Why?" It has as much to do with my identity as anything else. Does that make sense?
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Half the reason I joined the army was because of identity, right? My belief that I'm a tough guy is what sold me into joining the military...
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Watch what you've done in your life, and start seeing like, "Oh it's part of my identity." As far as positive and negative. "It's my identity, it's my identity 'cause of this, identity 'cause of that. Identity, identity."
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Identity is freaking huge, and we are all in a constant pursuit to self-discovery. And if you aid in that self-discovery process in the middle of your sales script and literally have an identity shift inside your sales script... That is what gets somebody to get off their butt and start running to a blue ocean without even totally knowing what is all about the product.
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Not even having totally all their objections about resources answered. Does that make sense?
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This is a huge deal.
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Anyway, hopefully this helpful to you, and it's kind of a deeper episode again, but if you like this, please share it, okay. '
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...Cause then from there, then we go in and we start matching products sideways and we go create a purple offer from there. And it's just this big old mapping guide, and it's very formulated - it's awesome.
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Anyways, guys, I am very thankful for each one of you. Thank you so much for the follow as well.
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We have the OfferMind which will be coming up soon. We have 397 tickets sold. They're free tickets that we gave away when you got the book through my link - which is awesome! I appreciate it. 397. What? Holy crap. It was gonna be like a little 30, 40 person thing. This is now a real event. I'm super excited!
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The same AV crew that ClickFunnel uses for their events have just agreed to come in and do it for us as well. So it's super exciting - this is a legit event. I hate bad stages, I hate bad lighting, I hate bad audio, video, I hate bad sound and music. It's gotta be loud, I want it to be a rock concert. Anyway, so I'm super excited they just agreed - it's gonna be super awesome.
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It'll be here in Boise. For those of you guys who are not in it, just be watching, we'll be releasing out more tickets soon. We're mostly just getting a head count right now. We have 397 tickets given away so far, which is awesome. And not many told me they can't come. So it's gonna be cool. It'll be loud, it'd be fun. Don't plan on sleeping! I'm excited to see you guys there.
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So anyway, guys thanks so much.
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Hopefully, this episode was helpful, and I'll talk to you guys in the next one, bye.
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Whoo! Hey, there's more marketing resources than there are seams of the sea - am I right? Okay, maybe not - but there's a lot.
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How do you know if you're paying for good ones?
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Recently I went through my business bank statement, and I counted 51 internet tools and resources that I use to run my business every day. And actually keep my team size small.
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If you wanna see the list, I actually filmed an individual video teaching you why I use each tool and the strategy behind it. And then I dropped the link straight to the source right below it.
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If you wanna see the list and see what you can use yourself, go to bestmarketingresources.com. That's bestmarketingresources.com.