Interview with a Sales Coach Expert (Aaron Chong): Episode 2

if I can discover it by myself and I go and learn and follow the path, then I was like thinking,
everybody should be able to do the same because you should be stuck in some place. I know it was
not true. I was like, consumed by my own I didn’t know.

Then I started teaching other people. And after Pandemic happened, there’s a lot of virtual events, multi speaker event, right?

So they invite me as well. I was like, okay. So I went and give a talk and there’s a lot of good reviews. A lot of
people said my stuff was like, worth much more than whatever they’ve been paying for or one of the
life-changing.

I was like, Why are people saying that? Until this year in 2022, where it gave me the
biggest confirmation of whatever I’m doing is the right way, and actually, it’s helping people because
one of the biggest cable TV in Malaysia, Astro, they had millions of viewers every single time. And a
lot of subscribers, they invited me to their Astro Business Talk.

I was never having the idea that when I started sales right after college, because I was C+ student, I never thought it would come to this. It was never my plan, but somehow it ended like that. I’m glad that it ended so. That’s why I think this is one of the reasons that we’re talking here today.

 Nice.

-Beautiful. -What a fascinating story. 

Today, I think they are all like officially I’m training more than 10,000 people because of people are
coming to my webinar, which is I conduct every single week. So there are people that have changed
their lives. And I’ve seen my students who are non-performing, with 0 sales why I do this is because
it feels good.

At first, I didn’t know what was the feeling like when you are teaching other people.
But when I see my students sending messages to me and their face light up and it felt like:

‘Aaron, you changed my life.’

That kind of words, right? It meant so much to me.

And only I know right now that I’m a person who yearns for recognition from other people. And for my effort that I put in for other people, when they recognize this effort, when they recognize that I helped to change
their life, it makes me feel good.

So suddenly I had this new epiphany of having this new purpose in
life. I was like, oh, okay.

This is something that is fun to do and it’s helping other people. And I feel good about it. More importantly, because sometimes we go to a job and we feel like we are doing something good, but it may not feel fulfilling.

-That’s awesome. I mean, that’s one of the key values that Tony Robbins talks about, right? Which is contribution.

-Right. If you’re making an impact, if you making a contribution, life is just so much more exciting rather than just accumulating money for the sake of it, right?

 -Yes. And I didn’t know that, but the thing is, I didn’t know that before I get to do it.

 -Nobody could have been able to explain to me what it feels like. I believe when Tony Robbins talk about the contribution to other people, if you have never been there and you have never done that, you don’t know what it feels like.

I was doing because I took up a challenge from my mentor because he helped me in my
business and I was like, He requested me to do this and he said you should help more people. And I
took up the challenge.

Then I know what he meant by helping other people, by sharing my
knowledge. Right? Because now I know there are a lot of people that do not know about that
exactly. And they found a new way of selling, so it makes their lives easy, happier, from no sales to
doing millions of sales.

 I got one student that actually did 0 sales in the past 7-months and she came
and learned she’s in property, She got a ‘show cost letter’, meaning the company is going to fire her
because she has not been performing. And she was very down and she has depression because she
had some family problems as well. And one of her members passed away, very close. So she was like
all depressed.

So after she learned from me and she went from 0-20 million in just 5 months.

-Wow, that’s That’s amazing.

 So when she did that, then she was like, telling me how I sparked that forward and keep on moving, and she’s still performing until today. And that’s what I live to see.

 So I really like that part of the training and coaching when I was like wow. And that’s why continue to do
what I do. And when you say, why should people listen to me right? I think this question I shouldn’t
be blowing my own horn, actually, but I would rather say just a question for you to ponder. If you
are an audience, right?

 If you are listening to me. Would you want to listen to someone who has been a trainer his whole life training in sales? Or would you want to listen to someone who has been a sales person his whole life and tell you about
their experiences compared to a trainer that is trained to train in sales? Which one would you say-

-I personally prefer the real-life experience because I know it works.

-Yeah. For me it was like the same thing as well, because I had students that told me, Aaron your training is very much different from the training that we attended. And I said, Why you say that? Because it’s practical. I can use it immediately. The rest of the training is more to motivation and talent.

And I had one of these students that tells me very vividly that I remember, he says, the better sales training outside there.

Why? Because the other sales that he has been through, because he had been in sales for about 15-
20 years. I think, they only talk about the results. You can get the goals. After you hit the goals, you
hit the quota This is the incentive, this is the gift that you can get.

This is whatever reward that you can get. So they’re talking more about that and motivation, oh, you should be doing this. So they don’t have all these kind of more practical, more, I would say technical, practical things that  they actually do as a process to get to the goals.

They motivate them with what they can see with the carrot and the stick. Right. So that’s what normally
people do. They always show the carrot. They don’t show the process of how to run to the carrot, how to actually run fast to get actually get a carrot. Right, right. So there’s no strategy to get the carrot. It’s just more about here’s the carrot, go and figure out whatever you want, go and get it now. Here’s the carrot, if you are able to do this,
Get 10 more carrots.

So it’s things like that, you see? Yeah. You need the strategy to get the carrot in the first place. Right. Otherwise you can keep running for the carrot and never get it. Yeah. I think strategy is very important coupled with the strategy in sales, I would say, unfortunately, it’s not like business strategy. Business strategy can be very big picture and it can be executed by many people.

But unfortunately, in sales strategy You have to execute it on your own. With sales strategy, the
most important part is the tactical things that comes with it. Right. You must, you must have a
strategy and you must have a way of executing strategy coupled with what I call the most important
thing is your principle.

That’s the guiding star. That’s like your GPS.

-Nice.

-Which you explain more on the webinar, right?

-Yes, definitely. On the group.

More about some of the principles, some strategies and some tactical things so people can come in and get a big
picture first. Because you can’t feed people like all the technical stuff and they don’t know what the
principle is. And if you just do it, it will be something wrong. And they don’t know what is wrong,
they don’t know how to fix it.

-But I think the cool thing is that even people who attend your webinar, your free webinar, they report results straight away like a few days afterwards and they send them to me, right?

-And I’m just mind-blown, I was mind-blown as well Who go to free webinars they don’t get anything?

 -They just get a bit of hype and a bit of excitement but then there are no real-life results, but where’s yours
I actually see people who say ‘Hey, thanks Aaron, use your technique for the free webinar and I’m getting all these results’  So what’s happening?

-To a certain point I was like doubting, hey Aaron, are you giving too much? But you know what, that’s where I know that I’m doing something right, you now? if you can understand it, it’s very simple for people who have
experience, right?

 They can understand and they can willing to change, they’re willing to adopt a new way then they will get results actually. And that’s what we are trying to do. I would say that’s one of the principles that I will always carry whenever I share, is to add value first, to people so that people even in sales I have this principle of every of my student.

You should be adding value to people And of course a lot of people will talk about things like oh, you keep on giving value, then there would be people that actually take advantage of you and they won’t buy stuff from you just because they just keep on using you. I would say that’s true.

I’m not saying that won’t be people like that, but we need to know generally 80% of the population are nice people. It’s just that too that you meet these strong people. So you need to know how to filter them off. Just cut them off in a more polite because you need to protect yourself. Don’t just keep on falling into the rabbit hole and just keep chasing it hoping that you get the sales because you treat other people nice. So here’s the
thing.

I would say in a certain point when you add value, filter your own people. Filter the customers that
are actually good customers. Generally 80% of the population are. So don’t lose hope. You’ll meet
people that actually be a very good customer to you.

They’ll keep on buying from you because they know what value you can bring. But of course you need to set up boundaries as well. As a person, as a salesperson. But for me, I would try to always do one thing within my best ability and capability to add value to over deliver.

Wouldn’t you? Like a person, the salesperson will always over deliver and you know that he has full
integrity and knowing that he has your back, whenever you got a problem, you go to him and he will
actually help you to solve the problem regardless of the company policies, right?

 -Yeah, of course.

You go to a salesperson or customer service person and they say, our company policy doesn’t allow
us to do this. And you’re like, yeah, it’s like, why? I mean, I just want to get this fixed sometimes.
It’s very simple, right?

If you think like a customer, sometimes what the customer wants is, I want to get my problem fixed.

I’m not here to find trouble with you. But that doesn’t also mean that there won’t be people that come here and act like a ‘Karen’, just like, come here  and say ‘think I deserve every single thing and I’m not
treating you nice’. 

 There are people that are like that. But having said that, there are more 80% of the people that are generally nice. They come here, they want to get the problem solved in an amicable way.

They just want to get it solved.