The 3-Step Process You Can Use to 100x Your Sales
The Amplified Impact Podcast
May 20th, 2023
Today, I’m stoked to share with you the three-part framework that helped us raise a whopping $25 million at Invictus Capital.
And let me tell you…this simple process has worked wonders for all my other businesses too.
Now, this three-step process is all about getting inside your consumers’ heads and selling them on your product or service before they even open their wallets.
I’ve run all sorts of businesses in my time, from a window washing company to a manufacturing company that produced rock climbing holds.
And while the price range for these businesses varied wildly, there was always one thing that remained the same: we had to sell our customers on the benefits of our products before they were willing to part with their hard-earned cash.
But it wasn’t until I started Invictus Capital, our real estate private equity company, that I really had to fine-tune this process.
We were bringing in passive investors for large apartment complex deals, which meant we had to raise massive amounts of capital…think $10, $15 million.
And let me tell you, convincing someone to invest $80,000 or more is no easy feat, even if they’re wealthy.
So, we spent a lot of time figuring out how to sell them on the vehicle, ourselves as the pilot, and the deal itself…the destination, if you will.
So, buckle up and get ready to learn how to sell the sizzle, not just the steak, and take your business to the next level.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“The best advice that I have for trying to sell a product, again, is not to sell the features, but try to sell me on the benefits.” – Anthony Vicino
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Invictus Capital: www.invictusmultifamily.com
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up, guys? Welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to talk about the three part framework that we’ve used at Invictus Capital to raise $25 million of capital. And then all my other businesses sell tens and almost hundreds of millions of dollars of products. It’s a simple three step process that you have to sell in your consumers mind before they’re going to be ready to give you money for your product, your service or whatever. And this took me a lot of time to figure out, mostly as it pertained to Invictus Capital as we were raising large sums of money from investors. So before this, for a little context, I had been building businesses like a window washing company where it’s like, hey, this is $300 to wash your house, right? That’s a big ticket item for some people. But if you own a house in the neighborhoods that we were washing windows, that’s not like a ton of money. So it’s a pretty easy sale.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:00]:
Then Escape Climbing, which is a manufacturing company that produced rock climbing holds. Those holds can be a couple of $100. We sold things that were as cheap as $1015 all the way up to tens of thousands of dollars. Once you put the whole order together, because if you’re selling to a gym, let’s say they’re going to order $50,000 of holds to put on all their walls. So, like, quite a gamut of range of prices that somebody could be buying a little bit easier in some cases to make the sale. A little bit harder, in some cases to make the sale. When we started Invictus Capital, which is our real estate private equity company, we started bringing passive investors into our deals so that we could go out there and buy large apartment complexes. These are buildings that they were worth 510, $15 million.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:47]:
And to go and purchase something like that, you need to usually bring around 30% to 40% of the purchase price in the form of your down payments, your Capital X reserves, your operating reserves, like, a lot of money. So if we’re going to go buy a $10 million building, we need to bring around $4 million dollars. Now, we in the past, when I was buying real estate, would just use our own money. But at a certain point, a lot of people were asking, how do I invest with you? I want to do this alongside you, my family, my friends. And then also you run into the issue that if you’re buying really big real estate, you run out of money. So what we started doing is pooling resources with investors. We bring investors into our deals to go buy these big, big assets. So we started this in 2019, and since then we’ve raised $25 million.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:32]:
And the average investment size is right around $80,000. So an investor coming into one of our deals gives us $80,000, and the minimum investment is 50,000. So just for a little bit of context, Those are really big numbers, even for really wealthy people, right? That’s a lot of money just to give over to somebody. And so we spend a lot of time thinking, okay, how do we go through this sales process in a way that can take somebody who might be a complete stranger to us at the beginning of this relationship and nurture them to the point that they will feel comfortable and inclined to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars alongside of us? Okay, so as we were going through this, there’s really three things that I realized we needed to sell. We needed to sell the vehicle. We needed to sell ourselves as the pilot of that vehicle and we needed to sell the deal or the destination. The trip itself. You hear a lot of times people say, don’t sell the trip, sell the vacation.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:44]:
When it comes to your product, it’s about selling the benefit, not the features. A lot of times we’re like, oh, look at this really cool phone. Look how thin it is. It’s only 2 mm wide and it has 42 gigapixels of cameras and you can throw it really far. I don’t know. Obviously not a tech review. So we’re naming all the features of the phone, but what people really care about is hey, it fits in your back pocket. It’s not bulky.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:13]:
It’s easy to hold on to. It flies real good. I don’t know. So we’re trying to sell what are the benefits, not the features of the thing. Right. So when we think about that from this context of trying to sell somebody a real estate investment, a lot of people make the mistake of going into that relationship and saying, hey, would you like to go to vacation on a Hawaiian beach? How does it sound to sit on the beach 80 degrees, sip of my tie while looking at the waves crash over and the sun’s setting? It’s going to be beautiful. How’s that sound? And you’re like, Hell, yeah, that sounds great. I want to go to Hawaii.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:51]:
But the area that a lot of people fall short, especially in this real estate syndication multifamily apartment space case, is you can sell the deal, which is, hey, do you want to make a ton of money? That’s the deal. That’s effectively what the deal comes down to. Says, hey, do you want to make a lot of money? Most people say sure. And you could even say, hey, I’ve done this a lot. I’ve done this 23 previous times. So give me your money. I know how to do this. And they’re like, okay, I trust you as the thing, and you’re going to make money, and you seem to know what you’re doing.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:22]:
But the very first thing that you have to sell is actually the vehicle. And this throws some people off. Sometimes if you’re selling a product that’s a little bit more esoteric or like New or niche, then you need to spend time here first and foremost. And so what I mean by this is if we want to go on a vacation to Hawaii, that sounds awesome. However, you now have to sell me on how to get to Hawaii. And it might be really obvious to you that the best way to get to Hawaii is we hop on a plane, right? However, if I have never seen an airplane in my entire life, then just imagine how confused I’m going to be when we show up to the airport. You show me this big metal thing, and you’re like, we’re going to get inside of it. It’s going to go real fast.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:11]:
I’m going to take us up in the air, and we’re going to fly over the ocean, and then we’re going to land. I’m going to be what are you talking about? You sound like a crazy person. Granted, I’ve been living under a rock somehow. I don’t know what an airplane is. But for the purposes of this example, if my only experience with traveling anywhere is horse and buggy and ships and trains, then a plane is going to be very confusing to me. And the confused mind says no. And that’s how this particular product that we sell an investment in a real estate, private syndication, for most people, it’s a vehicle they’ve never heard of, right? So we actually have to start our education there, and we have to educate. Okay, what is a private placement? Why real estate? Why apartment buildings? Before we can sell anything else about how to make money and all that good stuff, we really need people to understand the airplane that we’re getting into.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:05]:
And this is going to be the same if you’re moving into a new world of maybe like AI integration and you’re trying to help companies integrate AI into their businesses. You need to probably take a step back and help them understand the vehicle before you can get to the features and the benefits and all that other good stuff. Or even you, you have to sell this new vehicle. And a lot of times our products, if you’re in some kind of commoditized space like headphones, you don’t probably need to sell me on the vehicle of headphones if you’re just a different version of headphones, as we currently know. However, if you’re trying to disrupt headphones and you’ve come up with this new ring that I can wear on my finger, and it’s going to vibrate into my bones through conductivity, and then I’m going to hear the music inside my head, well, you can’t just sell me headphones like you normally would. You’re going to need to sell me on that vehicle for a bit before we can get to the place of me being like, yeah, those headphones sound good. Here’s my money. Okay, so you need to be looking through that lens.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:08]:
Does your consumer actually understand your vehicle do they actually, in a lot of cases they do, but in many cases they don’t. And for a lot of you that are struggling to make sales, it might be because they do not understand your vehicle yet. Now, the next thing that they have to understand, once they understand your vehicle, they have to understand you as the pilot. They have to understand you as the competent resource that knows what you’re doing with the headphone, the bone conductivity, and that this isn’t going to actually just destroy your bone density and hurt you and you’re not going to get electrocuted or whatever. Right. They have to trust you as the trusted individual piloting that plane. Okay, I trust that this plane is good, but you behind the wheel I don’t know about, and this is very important in my space specifically, where we’re dealing with millions of dollars in investor capital, they need to have a high degree of trust in us as operators that we know what we’re doing. And in your space, again, it might not be as important.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:05]:
However, it is way easier for Sony to sell you their product because you know them as the pilot, you know the product that you’re going to get from them. Right? And so this is where brand comes in. This is where testimonials and reviews come in. This is very important for getting somebody to the point where they’re going to be willing to buy your thing. Because if I have two choices between my Sony noise canceling headphones and this no name Chinese knockoff, well, they’re the same price. I’m just going to go with the Sony. It’s a known quantity. To me, it’s a safer bet.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:39]:
Now, if the Chinese knockoff is like half the price, well, maybe that can be part of your sales equation. However, it’s still much easier to make that if there’s some brand awareness behind it and if you can position yourselves, here’s why we’re a better company at half the price of Sony. Here’s the unique manufacturing process that we use and how long we’ve been doing it and how long we’ve been serving this area or whatever, right. It’s much easier to make that sale once people have confidence as you as the company or the individual, as the pilot of that vehicle. And then finally the last thing that you’re going to sell is the actual product. Right. By the time that if you’ve done a good job of selling the vehicle and you as the pilot, the selling the product is actually quite easy. This is the thing that we’ve seen in the real estate game is we spend so much of our time educating on the vehicle and us as pilots that by the time we actually have a deal that we present to our investors, they have such a high degree of trust in us and confidence that the deal.
Anthony Vicino [00:10:39]:
It’s just a yes or no. It’s not this really hard decision making matrix that they have to go through. In a lot of cases, it’s a very quick pitch, hey, here’s the opportunity, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then 30 minutes later, they’re in, right? So if you’ve done those other two things, it sets it up very easily to make the sale. However, circling all the way back to what we’re talking about before, the best advice that I have for trying to sell a product, again, is not to sell the features, but try to sell me on the benefits. Help me understand how this thing solves the problem. In a lot of cases, your consumer does not realize they have a problem, and yet you’re trying to tell them that they do. And nothing pisses people off more than when you ask them, why are you grumpy? You seem upset.
Anthony Vicino [00:11:24]:
What’s wrong? You look tired. Did you get enough sleep? And they’re like, I was feeling fucking I was feeling good until you said that. And now you’re asking me why I’m grumpy. That makes me grumpy. You’re telling me I look tired. That’s what makes me tired of your shit, right? So assuming that somebody has a problem that they do not agree or do not recognize as a problem is a surefire way to lose that sale. So the very first thing that you have to do is convince people or help them understand that they do, in fact, have a problem. And once they do understand that they have the problem, your product is the solution.
Anthony Vicino [00:11:56]:
Okay? So that’s the best advice that I have there is never assume that the consumer understands that they have a problem, because in many cases, they don’t. Now, in many cases they do, which makes it much, much easier. But make sure that you correctly identified which problem they have, because a product can solve ten different problems, right? And for most of us, it’s not about selling me on this phone isn’t going to be about telling me all the ten problems that this phone solves. I probably have one or two big problems I’m trying to solve. And if you can figure out what those two problems are and then zero in on that and forget all the other benefits and just zero in and say, we are the best in the world at solving these two things, you’re going to have a much higher conversion rate getting people to buy your products. So that is the three part framework that I think through when it comes to selling products. When it comes to getting investors into our deals, it’s about selling the vehicle, selling ourselves as the pilot, and then selling the product itself. Hopefully, this brought you a little bit of value.
Anthony Vicino [00:12:57]:
I’m curious. What are you trying to sell? What’s your product? Let me know in the comments. Shoot me a DM. I’d love to help brainstorm some ways to increase your effectiveness as a salesperson. I don’t have a program or anything around this. I’m just genuinely curious to learn more about what you guys are doing out there. So hit me up. Whether that’s on Twitter at Anthony, Vasino or on Instagram at the Anthony Evacino.
Anthony Vicino [00:13:20]:
And as always, people, I appreciate the hell out of you. I’m looking forward to seeing you back here tomorrow, but until then, stay hyper focused, my friend.
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