The Game with Alex Hormozi
Closing Made Easy: The Triple A Framework Explained | Ep 810
Fri, 20 Dec 2024
Welcome to The Game w/ Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned and will learn on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Wanna scale your business? Click here.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition Mentioned in this episode:Get access to the free $100M Scaling Roadmap at www.acquisition.com/roadmap
Chapter 1: What is the AAA framework in sales?
I've been teaching sales for 13, 14 years now. I've taught a lot of salesmen and I realized that I was missing this one piece. I call it the AAA framework. Okay. So basically there's this gap between when someone presents an obstacle, which is anything that's not a yes after you've presented price. Okay. So if you present a price and you said you want to buy and they say anything that's not sure.
All right. That is an obstacle or technically it's an objection. They said, no, what I realized is the best salespeople. And I had this as a pro tip at the beginning as just like two bullets. And I was like, oh my God, this is the whole training. And I just, I've been doing it for so long. And the best salespeople do it so subconsciously.
Like we question all of our beliefs, except for those that we truly believe in those we never question. And so it was like, this is such an unconscious competence for me and the best salespeople that I've never heard anyone teach it. But basically the AAA framework looks like this. If you look at a study of the salesman who closed the most sales, Do you want to know what they all have in common?
It's the people who ask for the sale the most times. You might think, wait, if somebody asks for a sale a lot, that sounds like really douchey. Yes, which means there has to have something else that allows them to ask more times. And so the objective of closing should be you asking for the sale as many times as you possibly can while maintaining rapport.
Because if you lose rapport, you can't ask anymore. right and so then the question is how do we solve for maintaining rapport so that we can ask as many times as we want and say it is you know forcefully as we can right how can we cut through the and so that is where the aaa framework comes in okay so the the three a's are Ready for it? Acknowledge.
Whatever someone says, hey, I need to think about it. Totally understand you need to think about it, right? So you're acknowledging what they say. Doesn't necessarily mean you need to agree, but you acknowledge it. Now, there's a couple of reasons we acknowledge first. First is when you acknowledge what someone says, you build rapport. People love that somebody else is listening.
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Chapter 2: How do you handle sales objections?
And when you say back to them what they said, they're like, oh, this guy cares. Right? right? The second thing is that when you acknowledge what someone says, you can take seconds to do that. And by taking those seconds, you buy yourself time to think about what you're going to say next. All right. So rather than having, and this is where I think you lose rapport.
Otherwise it's just, someone says, I need to think about it. And then you go right into an obstacle overcome. It sounds like a sales response, but if you say, Totally interesting. You think about super reasonable. All right. So first day is acknowledge. Second day is associate. So you associate their response with buying behavior. All right.
Chapter 3: What are the key steps in the AAA framework?
So what they thought was a step away from you, you actually say, you know, it's funny you say that. That actually makes you just like John, who I talked to earlier today, who was just like you. And he ended up buying blah, blah, blah, blah. And so there's three types of associations you can make.
one is you just make a generically positive association so you just say that's a smart question that's a great question super reasonable all right things like that you just say it makes sense that you'd ask that question okay that's just a generic positive that's what i would consider the the lightest version of this the second version is you talk you create a foil which is basically you create a fictitious straw man or somebody who's just right next to them that's just like them that asked that exact same question but then bought
right i like to do two of these so one is either somebody who just bought earlier today or you remind me of janet who i was talking to six weeks ago she had the exact same thing and today she just lost 30 pounds that makes you just like our biggest success stories all right so you can either associate with buying or you can associate with the people who get the best results so this works for any type of overcome so if someone says like hey this is a lot of money i say
Chapter 4: How to build rapport during sales?
that's amazing and people are going to be in shock they're like what do you mean it's amazing i know it's amazing it's good that's a lot of money because it reminds me of janet so janet was uh what if i share a story with you yeah okay cool so janet was somebody who's just like you same age same thing has two kids
Chapter 5: What are effective ways to associate with buying behavior?
she said it was a lot of money do you mind if i share with you what i told her right now so here's the thing is that when you create a foil you're not saying the hard truth to the prospect you're saying the hard truth to the person next to the prospect you're saying the hard truth the person just like them but not them so then you can be brutal
to this fictitious person that doesn't exist who's right next to them and say like i said the same thing to janet but you know what if i tell you what i told her and then she ended up losing all this weight yes cool sure it's actually amazing that it's a lot of money for you because it means that you're going to be more committed the thing is is that you've always known what it takes to lose weight the problem is when you haven't done it right and so the thing is the fact that this is a lot of money like you've bought things before right they've tried to lose weight it hasn't worked you told me that this isn't this right hasn't worked but i don't think you bought something that was enough that it would hurt for not to work
And so that tells me that you're actually going to be committed to it. And so if you're actually committed to it, do you have any doubts that if you actually do this, you're going to hit the goal? No. All right. Well, then you should be more convicted than anyone. Again, I'm not telling her. I'm telling her about Janet, who's just like her in every way.
The last way is that you can appeal to authority. If you have status, you can then say, hey, I had a similar situation. I used to believe the same thing. Do you mind if I share something with you that a mentor told me? You can say that, but they have to care a little bit that you have status.
Now, if you're an 18-year-old trying to sell 40-year-old business owners, not going to work because they're like, I don't give a fuck about your beliefs. So what you can then say is you appeal to somebody else's authority. So you say, it's funny you say that. Alex just told me this thing this morning. Can I share it with you? Right.
So if you have a sales team and you have authority, you can train them by saying you can appeal to me. I can be dad. Right. Hey, it's funny you just say this. Alex, let me this thing this morning. Mind if I share it with you? Right. So I'm just being the messenger. I'm not. And he said it not about you. He said it in general. Right. So in all of these situations, we're not insulting the prospect.
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Chapter 6: How do you appeal to authority in sales?
We're attacking the idea that someone else said who's just like them. The point and the importance of AAA, and then the third A is then you ask, right? So then you ask. So you acknowledge what they said. Totally makes sense. I understand you say that. I think it's really smart. Make the association. It's just like X, Y, Z person. And then you say, do you mind if I share this story, right?
And then you go make your explanation and you make this and then you ask for the next sale again, right? You move on to the next. That will allow many of you, I retrained my team on this AAA concept and across the board, all close rates went up.
So I see that as effective teaching is like, if you just get up front and you talk a lot and then nothing happens, then I'm like, well, they didn't learn anything. Their behavior didn't change. But by simply doing this, it also allows you to avoid these pitfalls and these traps. And so there are trap questions that come up that you never want to answer.
So I'm going into a side quest on sales, but let's just roll with it. A lot of people will ask questions that there is no right answer to. So let me explain how you know that there's no right answer. If you don't know what the right answer is, then it's the wrong answer. So for example, if someone says, well, how many times a week do I get to be on a call with you?
Chapter 7: What are common pitfalls in sales?
in your community and you're on the phone, what do you say? Now, an inexperienced salesperson will just answer the question, but that allows the prospect to determine whether or not your answer is up to their standard. And then they choose to buy or not. No, no, no, no. Like a lawyer never asks questions that they don't know the answers to.
The person who's asking the questions is in control of the sale. And so if they ask you a question, that means they have now taken control of the sale, which means that they're now selling you. No good. So instead, when someone says, hey, how many calls a week do you have? You say, how many were you looking for? Hot potato right back to them. Because you want to be like smoke.
You never want to answer questions unless you know what the answer is correct. Now, if they're like, well, I would hope that I'd be able to hop on once a week. You're like, perfect. We already got that. Got that taken care of. Now we can move on to the next thing. Ready to buy? Ready to rock and roll? Ready to start on Monday? You have an idea on you, right? We move forward for the sale.
And so with each of these, you always pivot that way. So it doesn't matter what the question is. You can always answer a question with a question. And sometimes it's as simple as why. It's almost always a why. So I'll give you one that used to stump my trainers. They'd be like, hey, how many certifications do your trainers have? I'd be like, well, which ones are you looking for?
And they'd be like, ugh, right? I'd be like, well... What I can tell you is that we have this one, this one, this one. And so we have three different certifications that will cover you for this thing. What you then do is you ask for the intention behind the question. So let's say somebody wants a feature you don't have. So let's say they're like, how do I get one on one time with you?
Do I get one on one time? This is very common. And by the way, anything that someone tries to object to that has to do with features is actually a preference objection. All right. So this is what this means. So I used to call them fit objections. I've now switched to preference because I like it better and it works with how I'm explaining this.
So a preference objection basically states that I want your outcome my way. And so every objection where someone says, I don't want to buy your thing because I don't get one on one calls with you. I don't want to buy your thing because I don't get email support. I don't want to buy your thing because it doesn't have this PDF that I was hoping for. Right.
And so basically it's them saying, I have this preconceived notion. Your thing doesn't match my preconceived notion. And because of that, I will not buy. But it really means I got on the phone because I wanted this outcome, but I want it my way. And my way includes a PDF. My way includes calls with you.
But if you ask for the intention behind the question, you don't have to overcome or have that specific feature. You can answer the intention. And so if someone says, hey, I want to have calls with Alex, then my team, instead of saying, of course, if they asked how many calls with Alex I get, they wouldn't say none because then the sale's over.
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