What do Alex Hormozi and Eminem Have in Common?

In this video, Matt watches a video where entrepreneur Alex Hormozi shares his sales tactics that Rapper Eminem inspired him. Will Matt find this sales tactic helpful at all?

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video:

I learned this tactic from Eminem that he used in rap but actually makes sales way more effective. He always used to talk about owning all the negatives. You wanna say every negative thing you possibly can about yourself so no one else can. But as salesmen, you can actually stack the deck in your favor using all the negatives and then reversing it into positives. Here’s how it works. It’s all around the word “but”. Normally if you’ve ever heard people like “oh he’s saying something good. Where’s the ‘but’”, because everyone is trained to emphasize what happens after the word “but”. But when you’re persuading, what you can do is rather say good thing but bad thing, you flip it. So you say all the bad stuff. “Our program is really long. It’s very difficult. It’s complex ‘but’ it works better than anything else you’ve ever tried.” Second half the sentence becomes magnified because of the damaging admissions that “but” amplified.

Matt’s Review: 

Alright, Alex Hormozi. I guess that’s how you say it. He’s actually somebody that I have a good amount of respect for. I think he’s done some really good stuff. he’s grown some good businesses, he’s put out some good content and I think his point here is valid. You don’t wanna try and make a sale by just talking about the good things and hoping people don’t necessarily notice the downsides or the drawbacks. It is helpful to be able to say “Here’s what we do and here’s what we don’t do” or “Here’s what we can’t do” or “Here’s this reason that some people choose not to work with us or buy our service or buy our product”. One because if it’s really not a good fit then you don’t want people to buy it and then be unhappy or disappointed or have their expectations unmet and now they’re leaving you a bad review or they’re canceling your service or whatever the case. Right, you wanna be clear on what you can and can’t do so hopefully the people that work with you or buy your product are the ones that are the best fit for. But also if somebody’s trying to decide, it’s better to be out in front of what their potential objections are gonna be, which is basically what he’s talking about. In sales you give somebody the reasons that you think they should buy and then they come up with “yeah but this” but the price is too high. The guarantee isn’t good enough. The process takes too long. It doesn’t come in black. I wanted it in red or whatever. If you have an answer for those objections then you can overcome that resistance and potentially still make the sale. What he’s suggesting is just before they even get a chance to say “yeah but this, yeah but that” you line it all up and bring it out in the open so they don’t even have the chance to use that objection whether they say it or not. They might say I’m not interested because one of those reasons that you didn’t bring up and hoping they weren’t. If you bring it up, to begin with, then if they were thinking it you’ve addressed it. If they were gonna say it you’ve already answered it. And it hopefully gets to the point where at least when they make a decision to go ahead or not, they have no reservations. They have no reason to hold back because everything’s been talked about. 

So I think he has a good point. In the sales process in trying to convince somebody or something or trying to explain something, it doesn’t hurt to bring up what might be perceived as negatives or drawbacks. Address them give reasons for them, give differentiators, and then people can make a decision with all the information instead of just hoping that they overlook it or don’t think about the bad things that other people might have said or that that might occur to them after the fact.