19 Secrets of Exceptional Results Selling (4 of 4)

And welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. This is part 4 of 4 of the 19 Secrets of Exceptional Results Selling. This is part of a full-on course that Dan Kennedy created almost 3 decades ago and has changed thousands of lives. This is a one-of-a-kind special series that we are doing on the podcast where we give you access to one of the most powerful trainings Dan Kennedy has created. Now hopefully as you have listened through episode by episode, you've been able to grab principles that will change your business today. These evergreen principles can and will change your business if implemented. And if you haven't listened to the previous episodes, as somebody who loves this course and who is very jealous that you get it for free, I highly recommend listening to all of the episodes in in sequential order. In today's episode, Dan Kennedy closes the course by talking about the biggest don'ts of selling, including how to ethically manipulate and remove a prospect's objections before they even arise. And then at the very end, Dan Kennedy will outline the steps of his million-dollar sales presentation. These steps have been the backbone for thousands of successful businesses. Listen in, take note, and let's jump back in.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy.

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Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

What other mistakes do salespeople make over and over again?

Well, here's a little checklist of don'ts. Don't sell if you're not sold. If you're not 110% sold on the truth and veracity of your promises, the superiority of your product, the value of the proposition to the buyer, do yourself and your company a favor and look elsewhere for work. Get yourself into a situation where you passionately believe in what you are representing. Don't prejudge. Qualify, but once you are face-to-face or on the phone with a prospect or in front of a group, don't let yourself judge them negatively regardless of how they look, talk, or behave. Just do your very best presentation and let it stand on its own two legs. I spoke last year, last guy on a program, in a terrible facility, a big metal exhibition building at a fairgrounds. No air conditioning, a hot day, the faint smell of livestock in the air. People had been sitting on hardwood benches all day. The sound was bad. They couldn't see my visuals. A few people actually hollered and heckled. Many were noisily leaving while I spoke. Now I could have let my performance slip. Assuming that I was doomed anyway. But that's what you can't do. I gave it my very best presentation, I stuck with it, and I had terrific sales that day. Years ago at a seminar, I had a guy sit in the front row, put his feet up on the table in front of him, and read the newspaper during my entire presentation. Then he bought a $500 package. And I could tell you dozens more. So once you're there, give even the unlikeliest prospect your best shot. Don't sell your way out of a sale. Some people just never learn when to shut up. Asking questions and taking the prospect's buying temperature frequently is pretty important. Listening is critically important. Many people will be ready to buy before you've given your entire presentation. When they're ready, wrap it up. On the other hand, don't quit too easily. Few prospects fall in line without trying out a few Objections, stalls, and excuses.

Let's talk about objections. What if I say, "That's too expensive"?

Well, price resistance is often a mask for "I can't afford it." And when that's the case, it usually means you're not qualifying prospects enough before getting in front of them. But it also means you lose if you handle it as price resistance. Now, if the prospect is honestly objecting to your price, one of several things, or all of them, may be true. The prospect did not seek you out and invite you in, or you didn't include a sufficiently convincing value build in your presentation, or you didn't prove your case beyond a shadow of a doubt.

What do you mean by value build?

Well, the prevention of price resistance is setting up a scenario where the perceived value is so far in excess of the cost that your price becomes an irresistible bargain. I call it selling money at a discount. If I offered you a $10 bill for a dollar and you had the bill authenticated and you had no doubts about the validity of the offer, everything was on the up and up, would you buy a $10 bill for a dollar? Well, certainly. And if you could buy as many as you wanted only within the next 3 hours How many dollars could you come up with? You've got to admit that's a pretty easy sale to make. Doesn't require much product knowledge. Sure doesn't require neurolinguistics or 26 different closes. So what you want to do is build the value of what you are offering way, way up. You can do that with apples-to-oranges comparisons. For years, I've sold audio cassettes by talking about the tuition price you'd pay if you attended the seminar on which the audio cassette is based. Heck, everybody knows an audio cassette is about $10. In my industry, Nightingale-Conant set that standard, stupidly in my opinion, with uniform pricing for most of their products and massive advertising. So 6 tapes, $60. But 6 seminars, well, even at a very low public seminar price of say $49 a seminar, that's $300 for 6, plus the cost of travel and time away from your business.. Then you can do added value. To stick with my example, let's say that I add a literature critique coupon to the package, a service we usually charge $100 or $200 for, free. Now we're at $400 or $500. Now when I drop to, say, $99, it's a bargain. But in reality, it's priced at double the Nightingale-Conant norm. You can also do that, and you get this and this and this. Ginzu knife thing. If this is done well, it wipes out a whole lot of price resistance. Cadillac's using it now in TV ads. For $499, you might get a couple days' enjoyment at this resort. For $499, you might get from here to there one time in an airplane. But for $499 a month, you can have 30 days of enjoyment and go from here to there as often as you like.

What if you have a product with without any competitive advantages over the others and the competition is fierce and willing to cut prices, what do you do?

Well, first of all, live by cheapest price, die by cheapest price. There will always be somebody willing to beat your lowest price. Quite frankly, if I had to sell by price, I'd quit. It's a no-win strategy. And in every industry where everybody jumps on this, everybody winds up losing. Look at the airlines. They've literally driven each other into bankruptcy with their stupid price wars. The fast food industry. First one started the cheap 59-cent and 99-cent value meals. Now they've all got them. Hasn't helped anybody. It's just decreased everybody's average sale amount. This is stupid. If you can't find a better sales story than "we're cheapest," I feel sorry for you. About price wars, by the way, In the old days when there were barbers, two barbers across the street from each other, one puts up a sign, $5 haircuts. The other guy puts up a sign, $3 haircuts. The barber back across the street puts up a sign, dollar haircuts. Finally, the last sign, we fix dollar haircuts, $5. You know the adage, I'd rather justify my price now than apologize for quality forever. Me too. Second, if you haven't got any real competitive advantages, Please go get some. And if you really can't find or create competitive advantage in your core product or service, then change the entire game, the rules of the game, so there's no level playing field, no way to accurately compare you to a competitor. Last year I had a guy in one of my seminars who owned a commercial cleaning company. On contract, their crews come into your offices at night, empty the wastebaskets, vacuum dust, and so on. The guy's getting killed by low-priced competitors. So we talked about reinventing his business. Now the contract he sells includes all that ordinary cleaning and maintenance, plus monthly expert cleaning of all the typewriter, word processor, and computer keyboards and screens, fax machines and copy machines, and quarterly cleaning of the ventilation system filters and of ceiling tiles, and a perk program that gives all the client company's employees special discounts at local car wash, carpet cleaning company for their homes, dry cleaners, and so on, with new supplies of coupons every month. So he's changed the game.

Now what about a business where price is negotiated and you've got a tough customer?

What do you do? Fred Herman is, to my knowledge, the only sales trainer ever to go on the Johnny Carson Show, billed as America's greatest salesman. Carson handed him an ashtray and said, "Sell it to me." Fred held it up and fondled it a little bit, looked at it, and muttered to himself about fine quality glass. And then he asked Johnny, "You know, if you were to buy this ashtray, what would you pay for it?" Carson named a price and Fred said, "Sold." I know several top performers in the automobile business who take that approach. They get the customer to give them a number. If they can write the deal at that number, like Fred, they say sold. If they can't, they now have a piece of paper with the adjusted sticker price all the way at the top, the number the customer gave them all the way at the bottom. Then they go through an exercise of making concessions and adding value, then asking the customer to make a little concession so the two ends can meet in the middle.

Alright, how about, "I have to talk it over with," then you name it, my husband, wife, boss, committee, whatever.

Well, let's separate the business situation from the consumer situation. If you get the, "I have to discuss it with my boss," and so on, stall. If you've done a decent job of qualifying and if you're an invited guest, that'll be a lie about half the time. He does not have to talk it over with anybody. He does have the authority. He's just lying. Because when you're not thoroughly sold, any excuse is as good as any other excuse. Guy goes next door and asks to borrow a saw. His neighbor says, "Nah, I can't lend you my saw. You see, it's a magical saw and it was given to me by Thor, who appeared in the forest before me and he bequeathed this saw to me and to me alone." and made me take a blood oath never to lend it to anybody else. The borrower's insulted. He says, "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. If you don't want to lend me the saw, why didn't you tell me it was lost or rusty or you needed it today? Something simple and believable." Because, his neighbor says, "When a man doesn't want to loan out his saw, one story's as good as the other." So you've got to probe for the real objection. After I speak, I inevitably have a guy, order form in hand, who says, "I want your materials, but I didn't bring a company check. I have to get my boss's okay, and he's not here." 'Can I take this form with me and send it in?' 'No,' I say. 'If you want to buy later, you'll have to call in, get a catalog, and buy at the regular price of $538. You can only get the $268 price and bonuses right now.' 9 out of 10 then say, 'Well, I'll use my personal credit card and get reimbursed later.' But if it's real, then you've got a challenge. You probably got trapped meeting with the wrong guy, and that's something you want to fix in the future. For now, you can offer to come back for a meeting with everybody, set up a teleconference, somehow stay in the game directly. If you can't get that done, you hopefully have great sales tools, video brochures for example, so you're in control of the communication even if you're not there physically. And you still want to have some reason for urgency and a mutually agreed time and method for follow-up. Now, in consumer selling, If you're selling anything substantial with one spouse present and one spouse absent, you're wasting your time. And this is a positioning issue from the beginning. If they're eager to meet with you, you're in control and it'll be on your terms. Now, if you want to get tough, you'll say something like, 'You have all the facts here in front of you and I'm here now. What could you possibly ask this other person that he or she would know that you can't ask me and we can't discuss right now. And I've done that kind of selling. But if you're going to get into give and take over stalls and objections, which I'd much rather preempt and prevent than do, but if you are going to do it, then you ought to drain all the objections and box in the prospect before responding to any. The guy says, I can't afford it right now. Instead of dealing with that, Nod and write down 'afford it' and say, 'What else?' He says, 'Well, I'm not sure it'll work in my business.' Nod, write down 'will it work for me?' and say, 'What else?' 2 or 10, eventually the prospect will say, 'I guess that's it.' So if I understand it, if we could resolve these 6 concerns of yours, then you'd be ready to join. Is that correct? If he agrees, you should have him. Then you go back, deal with each concern, cross it off as you go.

Well, isn't that awfully manipulative though?

You bet it is. And persuasion is manipulation. Anybody who claims they're going to sell non-manipulatively is going to go hungry. Every choice you make as a sales pro is, or should be, made with its effect on the prospect in mind, and that's manipulation. I experimented enough in a year of speaking to determine that my sales were much higher if I wore a conservative two-piece suit than if I wore a sports jacket and slacks. I always wear a suit. That's manipulative. Manipulation is not good or bad, ethical or unethical in and of itself. Just as contrary to some opinion, a gun is neither good or bad in and of itself. Intent and actual usage determine good or bad outcomes. If I use manipulation to sell you a service that saves your company $50,000 this year, makes you a hero with your boss, and gets you a promotion, that's good. If I use the identical manipulation to sell you a new roof for your leaky factory at a too-cheap price, we then use substandard materials, the whole thing falls apart in 6 months, and you get fired over it, that's bad. But very, very few people confidently make buying decisions purely through their own initiative. If you think you can be a fact presenter and let people make up their own minds, you will not be in sales very long.

Now, do you believe in canned responses to objections?

I prefer prevention. The automatic close happens seamlessly without the interruption of objections. That's how top, top performers make most of their sales, and that's what you want to aspire to and work toward. The need to handle objections is the giveaway that you haven't mastered the prior steps in the sales process or that you're working with resistant prospects to start with. But setting that aside and saying, yes, we're going to get and have to deal with objections, then I will always try and teach draining the objections and then canned responses. You know, in the entertainment business, there are very, very very few individuals who can come out on stage wholly unprepared, wing it, ad-lib, interact with the audience, and be successful. Robin Williams, Jonathan Winters, we can count them on two hands tops. But there are a great many superstars who do just fine with scripts. Superstars of selling have carefully scripted their presentations, memorized those scripts, and practiced those scripts.

Aren't canned responses restrictive?

The opposite. They provide freedom. When you are closing and responding to objections, two basic things are going on simultaneously. You have to be reading the other person, and you have to be lining up what you are about to say next. If you are 90% free to figuring out what you're gonna say next, you can do a better job of concentrating on what the prospect is saying verbally and nonverbally, deciphering, translating, extracting meaning. I'm not suggesting you be a little robot, though. You use the planned, canned, ingrained responses as your solid as a rock foundation.

What about buyer's remorse?

Well, it's not a sale until it sticks. In direct marketing, we have a tool called a stick letter that goes out after a product shipment to deal with buyer's remorse. You'll find a sample of one toward the very end of my book, "The Ultimate Sales Letter." So a sales pro knows that his job has not ended with the conversion of prospect to buyer. It has to extend to prospect to buyer to secure happy customer. At the very least, you want to use a "Congratulations, and boy did you make a smart decision" letter. Way back at my first selling job, I was smart enough to do this. All day long, I would sell store owners on putting in racks of books. Each representing a fairly significant financial commitment. And quite frankly, I used hard-sell, slam-bam, tough-closing techniques. Then every night in my motel, I'd take the long-form letter I had copies of, really a sales letter, jot some handwritten extra notes on it to personalize it, and put it, the guy's receipt, his rack assortment diagram, and my card in an envelope, hand-address the envelope, and mail it the very next day. Compared to the other reps, I had very few fallouts. My friend Gary Halbert insists that how you follow up immediately after the customer's first purchase is one of the most important tasks in the entire sales and marketing arena. His stick letters are usually dollar bill letters. As you can see, I've attached a nice crisp dollar bill to this thank you letter. I've done that for 3 important reasons. And so on. I'm always amazed and dismayed at how rare it is for me as a customer to get so much as a simple thank you note after I buy something. Last year, I'm told that a shoe department salesman at a Nordstrom's department store earned over $200,000. Without even doing a lick of investigation, I can promise you that that guy is nothing like the Al Bundy shoe salesman we see on TV. I can guarantee you he follows up every sale with every customer immediately and thoroughly. You see, it shouldn't be just dealing with buyer's remorse. It should go beyond that into the whole issue of TCV, total customer value, the relationship. There are very few businesses anymore where the slam-bang-next approach to selling makes any sense. It just costs too much in money, time, and energy to get a new customer.

Let's summarize. The 19 secrets for exceptional results in selling are: Okay, here goes.

Number 1: Being there by invitation as a welcome guest, respected expert, and trusted advisor. Number 2: Integration of advertising, marketing, and sales with emphasis on lead generation advertising and magnetic marketing. Number 3: Master direct response advertising just as you master salesmanship. Number 4: Use the positive power of negative preparation. Develop presentations and techniques that prevent stalls and objections, and have quality answers prepared for potential stalls and objections. Thorough preparation frees you to concentrate on reading the other person rather than worrying about what you will say next. 5. Mental and emotional control so you gain the power of total concentration. Only you know if you are experiencing 100% concentration on the sale in the moment as you sell. If you are not, you need to determine why you lose concentration and work at improving in this area. Number 6: Personal influence. I've yet to talk about the specifics of personal influence, but in general, oddly I suppose, relationships matter as much as results in satisfying clients and customers. So human relations skills matter as much as anything else in selling. Number 7: Proof. The mightiest weapon a sales professional can wield is an overwhelming quantity and quality of proof. Substantiate every promise, every claim. Prove your case. Number 8: Understanding and utilizing as many of the E-Factors as possible as frequently as possible. Number 9: Find opportunities to create and use apples-to-oranges comparisons, reinvent your business, and otherwise highlight your strengths against your competition's corresponding weaknesses. Number 10: Diagnosis, detection, customization, then prescription. Only the lowest levels of the selling profession involve force-fitting one standard solution to every customer situation. People prefer that which is designed specifically for them. Number 11: Discipline yourself to talk constantly and only in benefit language. If you quantified and measured it, what percentage of your conversation would be customer-oriented versus salesperson or company-oriented? What percentage would be pure benefit? 12. Have a carefully prepared and practiced million-dollar sales presentation that you have confidence in and rely on. Pros do not wing it. Amateurs wing it. 13. Hate settling for think-it-overs. Celebrate the quick, decisive, definite no just as you do a yes. It is the maybes that waste your time, disguise your true effectiveness, and sap your energy. 14. Be a courageous, assumptive closer. Remember your ABCs: Always Be Closing. If what you're doing isn't moving you and the prospect toward the close, is there really a good reason to do it at all? 15. Use the yes or yes alternate close. Avoid offering up a yes/no decision. 16. Look for every opportunity to increase the time invested in selling and to decrease the time spent doing anything and everything else, and measure your progress. Every percentage point swing from non-selling to pure selling activity may represent tens of thousands of dollars of added income to you. Number 17: Invest your time wisely so that you address today's short-term responsibilities and opportunities, but also take care to create the future you desire. Number 18: Pay as much attention to the customer after the sale as you do in making the sale. This will not only prevent buyer's remorse, it will create lasting positive relationships, repeat sales, and referrals. 19. Do everything with sincere enthusiasm. If it's not important enough to do enthusiastically, maybe you shouldn't be doing it at all. Remember, prospects hear your words. And see how you look consciously, but they subconsciously sense your true attitudes. Attitudes communicate.

On this, we've asked Dan to talk you through the highlights of the million-dollar sales presentation he currently uses for his own products while speaking.

I start with a promise statement. If you own a business or sell for a living, suck it up and stay in your seats for another 55 minutes. I promise you'll leave with enough practical 1, 2, 3 action strategies to at least double your income in the next 90 days. And at the very end of our time together, I'll give you one complete action strategy you'll be able to take with you and use and see income from it in just 15 days.

All right, now explain the purpose of all that.

Well, first of all, consider the setting. I'm often either the speaker right before the lunch break or at the very end of the day, and people are tempted to leave, and people are leaving. So I want to do something to get them to stay and pay attention. But that only seems unique to my situation. Even in one-on-one selling, the prospect is tempted to leave, and does leave mentally. You don't see him get up and physically walk out of the room, but his mind certainly wanders. So just as an ad needs an attention-commanding headline, a sales presentation needs an attention-commanding opening sentence. Second, there are strong, specific benefits promised. This opening statement is like an ad for my presentation, and the heart and soul of a good ad is a great promise. This is a very important technique. If you don't grab them by the throat and compel them to pay attention from the very beginning, when are you going to get their attention? Okay, what's next? Next, I go through about 3 minutes of credibility building, which I won't bore listeners with here who already know me. But basically I'm saying, here are 3 or 4 really good solid reasons for 'You're paying close attention to me. Here's proof I can help you.' Then I start to create agreement with a problem. There are any number of proven reliable sales presentation formulas. One of my favorites is problem solution. I believe that making a sale gets easier if you create agreement, mutual pain, mutual understanding, and emotional angst about a problem, then be the white knight with the solution. After all, if there's no problem, why buy a solution? So in this case, I talk about how people feel about marketing and prospecting. For business owners, I talk about being advertising victims. For salespeople, I talk about cold-call grunt work.

I got the phrase "mutual pain." What does that mean?

Well, this is tricky. In selling, I want my prospect to know that I really do understand his situation. That I've sat where he's sitting, struggled with what he's struggling with. But I also need to establish the advisor position, essentially a superior position. Look, I've shared your pain, but I've found a way out. That's the point. So in this case, I paint the picture of being an advertising victim. Only a victim could paint taking the big black checkbook out of the center desk drawer, sitting across the desk from some media salesperson, not knowing if he's telling the truth, whether you're making a good decision or a bad decision, how you'll measure the results, but writing out a check anyway. A shared painful experience. And so we tend to trust somebody who has clearly experienced what we experience, and we tend to distrust those who haven't. But then I make a big global-size promise of the solution. In this presentation, I tell a quick funny story about me, with me as the goat, that summarizes the problems and delivers a big promise of a solution. After that, I say that the solution consists of 3 parts, 3 big steps, and we're going to look at all 3 of them. And because getting people to remember things with pictures is helpful, I say we're putting together a 3-legged stool. That sets me up so later I can call on that picture repeatedly. Now we've got one of the 3 legs screwed onto the stool. Now we've got 2 of the legs, and so on.

Now there are a lot of little nuances in just that chunk of your presentation. I jotted down story, summary of problem, promise of solution, and picture.

Right. Well, story— well, people perk up when you tell a story. We were conditioned as kids that this is a good thing. Hey, please tell me a story. Jesus taught in parables, stories. The summary— I just want to keep reestablishing problem, solution, problem, solution, problem, a solution.

Now you go on with the first of these three parts, right?

Yes, but I think it's pretty important to emphasize that I very carefully built a foundation here. I've made and reinforced very appealing promises, given them credibility, established a sense of rapport with the audience. I've set up the framework or the skeleton for the entire presentation so it'll be easy for the audience to see each step completed for them to know where we are. Now I'll go ahead with the 3 parts. My presentation has 3. There's no magic there. It could be 2. It could be 5. It just happens to have 3. In each case, so in part 1, I describe a feature, really a tool they ought to have. I tell a personal story that illustrates it, and I give a couple case history examples. In other words, I deliver the same basic piece of information about 5 times. I call this technique internal repetition. It's important because information heard and seen only once has virtually no impact, but information heard repeatedly has substantial impact. We know that from education, but it is just as true with persuasion. When I close that section, I go back to my illustration. Now we have one of three legs screwed onto the three-legged stool. I go through the same thing with the second one. And with the third, and then I tell a story that goes all the way back and ties 1, 2, and 3 together.

Now that's a lot of repetition, isn't it?

Yes, and it's necessary. The trick is to repeat without being redundant, to tell the same thing differently X number of times. By this point, I'm hoping they are convinced that I know and understand their situations, that I know what I'm talking about, and that the little system I just described to them could work for them. I want them to understand it but still not be able to do it. Then I problem-solution all over again. The new problem is the inability to use my solution after just one quick introduction to it, bridging the gap between ideas and implementation. Then I whip out the solution-solution, my product. Solution-solution? Yeah, think of it this way. For every problem, need, or desire, there is a generic solution a generic solution and a brand name solution. A hot summer, kids home from school driving you crazy, hard to relax. Well, the generic solution is your own backyard swimming pool. You have to buy into the generic answer before you'll choose between a Shasta pool or a Bluebird pool. That's solution, solution. In my presentation, I'm first of all selling the idea of using direct marketing and direct response advertising in place of traditional advertising and prospecting. I have to get that mental shift made first.

Now your commercial starts.

That's right. The core sales presentation, the sales presentation within the presentation. In direct response advertising, it'd be the offer. I use strategies we've talked about earlier in these cassettes. I use apples-to-oranges comparison. I value build. I price drop. I start by talking about 5 seminars that teach everything I touched on. And that attending those 5 would cost X. Then I say that we've condensed the seminars to tapes, so you get them for the lesser Y amount. That's an apples-to-oranges comparison. Then I add value with premiums and ultimately arrive at a value of Z. Finally, a price drop to about half of Z, then my guarantee, more proof, and a close.

Now I caught 2 things: proof and what happened to the yes-or-yes close.

I use a lot of proof. 3 different times during the presentation I introduce testimonials. I also use a statistic of 96% satisfaction in connection with my guarantee. And I do use the yes or yes. I actually offer 2 products, a low-priced and a high-priced, and then a yes or yes close.

And you call this your million-dollar sales presentation.

Exactly why? Well, last year I sold nearly a million dollars worth of my products. This year I'll do more than a million from the platform with just this presentation. Over almost a 3-year period, this has been refined. Little tweaks here and there, but the building blocks, the components, are decades, maybe centuries old. I didn't get the tape-to-seminar-tuition value comparison from anybody else. To the best of my knowledge, I invented it in 1981. But the idea of switching The switching apples to oranges comparison is something I'd heard about a number of times. Now this is all very formulaic with time-honored selling formulas like AIDA, attention, interest, desire, action, and problem solution.

So when someone decides to create their own million-dollar sales presentation, what do they do?

They learn and adhere to these proven formulas. You can't just wander around or put things in any order you choose. You start with choosing one of the classic sales formulas for your master outline. Next, decide on the generic proposition you want to sell. What general idea do you want the prospect to agree with? Like, our diets are inadequate. The foods we get at supermarkets and restaurants are overprocessed, stored, and nutritionally deficient. So for optimum health, nutritional supplementation is necessary. And failure to get proper supplementation can lead to disease and premature aging. That's a generic idea the prospect has to agree with before you can sell them any kind of vitamins, food supplements, a juicer machine, or a kit for growing herbs in the backyard. Here's another one: Back injuries in the workplace can be prevented through education and ergonomics less expensively than they can be treated and rehabbed. Failure to prevent them can only lead to increased workers' comp insurance costs, lower productivity, and lower worker morale. That's a generic fact you need a prospect to agree on before you can sell his company safety equipment and apparel like back brace belts, videotape courses on proper lifting, new kinds of ergonomically correct furniture, or consulting services. So what's the idea you need to sell? With that in mind, you go backwards and create a presentation that successfully sells that idea. It will have features and benefits, facts, all kinds of proof, a powerful opening, and a summary close. Once that's built, you can build the second attached presentation for your particular brand of solution. And unless there's a strong reason for doing otherwise, I'd put a yes or yes close on the very end of it. Package A or Package B. Of course, in a million-dollar presentation, every word choice Every turn of a phrase, every benefit, every little thing is important.

Now, do you practice this?

I'm told that Yul Brynner performed the lead in The King and I on Broadway and Off-Broadway more times than any other actor. Yet most afternoons before the next performance, Yul Brynner was in his room practicing. The pro has his million-dollar presentation so ingrained you can wake him up in the middle of the night, start him any place in it and have him finish. He still practices. Who else practices? Pro football players practice the same pass routes, same offensive blocking schemes, same defensive rushing schemes over and over and over again. Pro basketball players stand at the foul line and practice. However, don't misunderstand. Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect. I practice my presentation as perfectly as possible at least twice before every actual presentation. And still after 3 years, on any given day, I forget a phrase or a sentence or a voice inflection that should be there and that makes a contribution to the sale and kick myself when I realize it. So I say practice. There are people who can wing every sales presentation, run on raw talent and accumulated intuition without a planned and practiced presentation. Quite a few salespeople are good enough to sell that way. I am too, but very few can get exceptional results that way.

Now what about the argument against canned presentations?

I think it's a foolish argument. Only in one-on-one rather than group selling, I think the experienced, savvy, and talented pro can spontaneously deviate from the planned and practiced presentation based on his read of the individual prospect. He can use his wisdom based on experience experience to drop this, add that, spend more time here, less time there. He certainly has to respond to questions and objections, so he needs to be flexible. He can't be a robot in one-on-one selling. But flexibility is one thing. A completely undisciplined approach is another. A pro will always have two presentations, sometimes three presentations. The presentation he planned to give, the presentation he actually gave, and the more perfect presentation he wished he gave. But the amateur always has two: the one he gave and the one he wished he gave. Think of it this way: you may have to make as-you-go changes in your game plan to adjust to changing game conditions, unexpected actions by the other team, whatever. Yet no pro coach would ever go into a game without a game plan. I'd add, if you deliver a canned presentation like a canned presentation, That's disastrous. If you're going to recite it to them in a monotone, who needs you? We'll send a letter. You need to build your own million-dollar canned sales presentation, then make it uniquely your own with style and enthusiasm.

Now, how important is enthusiasm delivery?

It's everything. As you know, dogs can't decipher words at all. They operate entirely based on the tone. You can say bad dog, and the dog will cower. But you can say bad dog and his tail will thump and he'll be happy and excited. Above all else, selling is a similar transference of feelings. Tone of voice, voice inflections, and body language make or break sales. Imagine going into a team's locker room. They're down by 3 touchdowns at halftime, and you deliver the famous Knute Rockne speech, read in a dull monotone, looking sheepishly at the ground, shoulders slumped over. If you're going to pull that speech off, you better put everything you've got into it. By the way, my friend Coach Bill Foster told me a great story about the late Jim Valvano. Early in his coaching career, Valvano was coaching some small college basketball team. I don't remember where. And for his first big game, he decided to use the great Vince Lombardi's "Three Things" speech. You know, "Three things: number one, God; number two, your country; and number three, the Green Bay Packers." And so, Valvano listened to that speech over and over and over again, memorized it, and then went in and told those kids at that small college playing basketball, "There's 3 things: God, country, and the Green Bay Packers." It is important to internalize your own speech. Frank Betker wrote one of the best books on selling ever, "How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling," and it's all about enthusiasm.

How does a person become enthusiastic?

Well, not by marching around the table singing the company song or some equally silly superficial behavior. I think enthusiasm is based on what I call the Big Four: self-image, self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-discipline. Self-image is what you see when you look in the mirror. Do you see yourself as a winner, as a top pro, as a trusted advisor, as someone deserving of trust, respect, and superior earnings? Self-esteem is how you feel. You feel about yourself and your selling role? Is everything congruent? Are you presenting good, valuable, ethical propositions you can be proud of? Are you deserving of success? See, you can run a guy through all the pep rallies you want and tell him, be enthusiastic, but if he's lugging around a lot of guilt for screwing around on his wife and neglecting his kids, is selling an inferior product, and sees himself as a pest to others, he ain't gonna stay enthusiastic very long. 3. Self-confidence. That's where the planned, practiced million-dollar sales presentation fits. A tool he has real confidence in. He knows that with that presentation and his skill, he can sell with the best of them. 4. Self-discipline. The ability to get off his duff, out the door, and into action. The discipline necessary to practice and to stick with the million-dollar sales presentation. Given these 4 things—being enthusiastic, is natural.

I also want to ask you about personal influence. I mean, what you call the 7 factors in dynamic personal influence. What is dynamic personal influence and how do I get it?

Personal influence is the ability to move people on the strength of your personality alone. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan are the US presidents of our time who clearly possessed this. Iacocca could be put in this category. If you build your own list and look at these people for their commonalities, I think you'll wind up agreeing with my list of 7 key factors. Number 1 is celebrity. Being perceived by those you deal with most as having celebrity status is an immense advantage. Number 2 is credibility. Being recognized by those you deal with most as someone who is respected and trusted. And number 3, expertise. Legitimate, extensive, superior knowledge about your subject. When you combine those 3 elements, you have a very solid foundation for personal influence. You have the advantage of being paid attention to and accepted. Number 4 is mastery of the E-Factors. Personal influence is entirely based on mastery of your own emotions and appeal to others' emotions. Number 5 is a good sense of humor. This year I've appeared as a speaker on several programs with former President Bush, and I'm pleased to tell you that he has and exhibits a healthy sense of humor about having lost the election and his situation. George and Barbara Bush's new home in Houston is their 15th home, which he says Barbara chalks up to his not being able to hold a job. And he notes that people he easily beat on the golf course when he was president seem to have suddenly dramatically improved their games now that he is no longer in the White House. It's my opinion that had President Bush exhibited this good humor while in the White House and while campaigning, it would have made a positive difference in the public's willingness to forgive his errors and entrust him with another term. Taking yourself and your circumstances too seriously is an obstacle to relationships. Number 6 is independence. Personal influence comes more easily to the individual who does not need constant reassurance of his competence and importance from others. The salesperson who needs to be liked, who has a Willy Loman complex, is prevented from having a dynamic personality. He's a marshmallow and a chameleon. Most people with great personal influence are willing to offend some in order to completely win over others. And number 7 is a bias for action. The decisive individual is admired, respected, and followed.

How does a person get these factors working for them.

Awareness is the starting point. Which do I have and exhibit? Which are absent? What are my real strengths and weaknesses in these 7 areas? Then you pick the characteristic you want to develop or strengthen and go to work. Read about people who represent that characteristic. Find how-to materials that help. Be very conscious of your behavior in this area. Every one of these things begins with conscious awareness and effort and only gradually becomes subconscious automatic behavior.

Okay, finally give me the fast start toward exceptional results. What should we do to get the greatest possible value from these audio cassettes?

View this as a cafeteria. Go back through the tapes and isolate the one thing of paramount overriding importance to you and your career. You have to build the bridge from the ideas and information I've provided to the implementation only you can provide. Pick something, one thing, set up a 30-day plan of daily actions to get that idea thoroughly integrated into your selling activity. Get it solidly in place, then pick something else. And I like to break each thing down backwards in 30 daily steps. If on the 30th day from now this is how things will be, what has to happen on the 29th day, the 28th day, the 27th day, the 15th day, the 10th day, tomorrow?. But the most important thing is to avoid setting all this aside to return to later when you have more time. You won't be back. Right now, today, you have to isolate the specific improvement you want to work on first and get to work.

Thank you for listening to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with Dan Kennedy. If you love hearing in on these lost Dan Kennedy talks and speeches and calls, then please let someone else know about this podcast. That's how you can help it to grow. And the more it grows, the more free Dan Kennedy we can bring to you. Also, Dan would love to give you the most incredible free gift ever designed to help you make maximum money in minimum time. And this free gift comes with almost $20,000 in pure money-making information for free, just for saying maybe. You can get this gift from Dan right now at noBSletter.com. Not only do you get the $20,000 gift, you also need a subscription to 2 marketing newsletters that will be hand-delivered by the mailman to your mailbox each and every month. One from Dan Kennedy and one from me, Russell Brunson. To get this gift and your subscription, go to NoBSLetter.com right now.