Why Hormozi Got My $5,000 and Hard Rock Didn't

Everybody's trying to get better at selling, which is great. If you get better at handling objections, get a better playbook, understand your processes, and do the right training and the right execution, how you sell matters. But there's something that might matter more in your business if you just look at it a little differently.

I'll share two sales processes that I went through in the past week. Both should have been pretty easy sales. One was, one wasn't. I'll break them down very quickly and then highlight what I mean and how you can incorporate this into your business.

The first sales process I experienced was at Hard Rock in Cabo, from their vacation club. I took my family to Hard Rock last week. It's our fourth time there in the past year and a half. Why? We live 30 minutes away, so it's a pretty easy staycation. They've got bowling and pool and foosball and all sorts of shit for the kids to do, and then they've got a ton of stuff for the adults to do. And it's right next door to Nobu. So it's just a good, fun Cabo spot, and we go there periodically. We spent a week there last week, and I was able to do some high-level strategy work while the kids played. We get some vacation time, all that jazz.

So we get there and we walk in, and the vacation planners are there. They've got a membership, a club or something, and I'll get to why I don't know. The vacation planners approach and they're like, "Hey, this is your fourth time here. You're a perfect fit for our vacation club and the membership." And I said, "Okay, great. Cool."

And I'm probably an easy sell for this, right? Because we live down the street. If I can save some money or get a better experience or something like that, yeah, I'm game.

They ask me to sit down for 90 minutes to go through a sales pitch to hear how I'm a perfect fit for this thing. And I'm like, 90 minutes is not how I want to spend 90 minutes of my time. So I said, "No, I think I'll pass."

They end up offering to comp a dinner experience that we'd bought for us and our kids. It's a pretty cool thing called Awaken Your Senses, and we've done it before. So we've bought this thing, and they're like, "Hey, we'll comp that," or something like 75% off, "if you go to this 90-minute deal." And I'm like, "I'm good, man. Thank you, but it's not worth 90 minutes of my time, frankly." And then I've got to commit to it and make plans around it, and that's not why I go to Hard Rock, right?

"How about $500 off your next stay?" And I was like, "I think I'll pass, but thanks." I'm polite about it, respectful. And they're following me to my room.

I said, "Listen, I'm actually interested. I'm genuinely interested. Do you have any way you can just give me the information on what it is, tell me what I get and what the price is? I'll probably buy. But I don't want to spend 90 minutes of my time listening to somebody pitch me." And they say, "No, you've got to do 90 minutes while you're here or it doesn't count." And I was like, "All right, listen, then I'm not interested."

Ten minutes later, the phone rings. It's the guy who's been talking to us, and his manager has agreed to comp the food experience and give $500 off the next stay if we just do 90 minutes.

And I was like, "Listen, man, is there any way for me to buy your stuff without spending an hour and a half?" Which, by the way, is not an hour and a half. It's 90 minutes, but you've got to plan your events around it. And I'm there to not plan shit. But we've got to plan other events around it, and I've got other people with me. So I said, "Listen, is there any way you can get me the information so I don't have to invest 90 minutes?" No. You're asking me for the same investment. Just 90 minutes is the same ask. I said, "No, I don't want to give you 90 minutes. Do you have any other way for me to buy your shit than giving you 90 minutes of my time?" No. All right, cool. So I leave.

The second sales process: I get a text from Acquisition.com, Alex Hormozi's company. I have history there too. I've gone to the Scaling Workshop. I've done what they call the BAM a couple of times. I've worked with this team to help me build my business and things like that.

So I get a text, and it says, "Hey, we're opening up a new style of workshop. It's coming out tomorrow. Keep an eye out." Then I get another text: "The workshop is live. Click here to check it out."

I click the link from my phone at the time of my convenience. I go to a video of Alex breaking it down. I don't remember if it was 10 minutes or 15 minutes, whatever it was. "This is what the workshop is. This is what it covers. This is who it's for. This is who's not a good fit. This is what to expect from getting it." Blah, blah. I get all the details I need at my convenience, delivered in the format of my choice, basically.

And then it says, "Go ahead and book a 10-minute call to find out more and book your workshop." All the times are available, and it's 10 minutes. There's one on Saturday, which I'm sure is not convenient for the salesperson, but it's convenient for me, because my Monday through Friday is pretty slammed. So I book a 10-minute call on Saturday. I think this was on a Monday.

I get a text the next morning, which is Tuesday now, that says, "Hey, this is Oz from Acquisition.com. I see you're scheduled for a call on Saturday. I see you've done the Scaling Workshop and the BAM a couple of times. Are you just looking for dates for the workshop to see if they align, or do you need more information on the workshop?"

And I said, "I actually just need dates. I just need to know what the workshop dates are." He replies a few minutes later and gives me the dates. I check my schedule, check with my wife. Works perfect. I shoot him a text: "Hey, I'm good to go." He shoots me a link. I pay $5,000. Boom. Just like that.

I didn't have to hop on a call. Didn't have to spend 90 minutes. Didn't have to go through their process. The process itself is already designed to be buyer friendly, right? It's 10 minutes. There's a bunch of information up front. They're very straightforward on what it is, what it's going to include, and what the benefits are. The times they offer are plentiful, right? Saturdays. I've hired enough salespeople to guarantee you that having salespeople work on a Saturday makes it harder to hire salespeople. Maybe not if you're Acquisition.com, but it makes it harder. That's a choice they've made to make it easier for me.

And then within that process, somebody says, "Hey, this person has bought from us plenty of times. Their price sensitivity doesn't seem to be too high." And they just asked me what my preference was. I gave them my preference, and just like that, I spent $5,000.

Now, I'm not sharing this to say, "Here's the perfect sales process. You should do exactly what Acquisition.com is doing." You probably shouldn't. I'm sharing this because there are two companies talking to the same person, and in this case with a similar purchase history, right? Both of them have the same purchase history on me. I've bought about the same number of products. I've probably spent roughly the same amount of money, a little bit more with Acquisition. All the data is there to say who this buyer is, what their preferences are, and how they work.

One company chose to use it, and one company chose not to. One company chose to design their sales process in a way that was efficient for me. One company chose not to.

And to come full circle back to my original point: so many companies are focused on how to get better at sales. And you should be. I don't want to diminish that, by the way. It's what we do at MSP Sales Partners. We help you get better at sales: sales training, sales coaching, sales execution, sales playbooks. Those things matter. But one thing that a lot of times matters more than getting better at sales is just making it easier to buy. Understanding who your customer is, understanding how they buy stuff, understanding how you can make it easier for them to buy, and changing your process to one that captures more of the revenue that's already sitting right in front of you.

It's a classic A/B case, because I'm probably an easy customer for Hard Rock. They could have sent me a 10-minute video and a link, and I likely would have said, "Hey, this is cool. We come here four times, six times a year. We can go to Hard Rocks wherever the hell we want. Excellent. We travel a lot and we take the kids, so awesome. This works out." Probably an easy sale. But the process created friction, and their insistence on me adhering to their process is what cost them the sale.

I'm as big an advocate as anyone of having a good, solid sales process. I'm as big an advocate as anyone of being disciplined with your execution and your process. But at some point, you've got to think about the customer. How do your customers want to buy? That's the point of the sales process. The sales process is not there to force everyone into your way, unless you're capable of generating unlimited demand. And that's not the case, I can guarantee you, because if there were a company that could, it would be a company like Acquisition.com, with as many loyalists around that brand as possible. And their process is still designed around the way people want to buy.

So that's my lesson, my takeaway from this whole thing. If you're selling MSP services, IT services, anything B2B, stop and think for a minute. Who's our ideal customer? How do they actually want to buy stuff? When we typically engage them, what stage of the process are they in? And how can we make changes within our process that make it easier for them to buy?

This isn't necessarily going to work for a cold audience, right? If you're talking to a cold audience, perhaps you want them to go through the call first, go through some steps and some qualifiers and things like that. Perfectly fine. But make those steps easy. Make those steps efficient. Make those steps desirable.

A 10-minute call is a hell of a lot easier of a commitment for me to make after watching a 10-minute video than sitting down for 90 minutes when I have no fucking idea what I'm going to buy. Are you pitching me something for five grand? Something for 50 grand? Something for 500 grand? I have no fucking idea. But you're asking for 90 minutes of my time. That's the cost I'm going to invest up front, and that cost is fixed. That 90 minutes is fixed one way or the other. And since I don't even know what I'm getting into, I don't want to do it.

This lesson can be applied to cold traffic, warm traffic, upselling, new customers, and existing customers. It comes down to: How do our customers want to buy? What makes it easier to get them to buy? If you can engineer that into your process, get disciplined about the process, and make some obvious judgment calls along the way, chances are you end up being the company that sells stuff, like Acquisition.com, and not the company that doesn't, like Hard Rock in this case.

Hope it helps. Adios.