19 Secrets of Exceptional Results Selling (2 of 4)

Welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In today's episode, we get to continue into part 2 of the 19 Secrets of Exceptional Results Selling, a course created by Dan Kennedy. Now, this course has been split into 4 parts, and this is part 2 of 4, which means if you missed the last episode, you will definitely want to go back and catch up before jumping into this episode. This is a course I have combed through personally over and over, and I can tell you that the ideas you will learn inside of just today's episode will take your business to the next level if you apply them. Now, in the last episode, we talked about whether there are personality types that are more likely to succeed in sales, whether persistence in selling is actually valid, why salespeople hate cold prospecting, is neurolinguistic programming the The magic pill? And is positive thinking really helping your sales? All these answers and more were in the last episode, and each one for almost 3 decades now has changed lives. So in today's episode, you may hear a story or you may hear an example that is a little dated. You can take today's reality and plug in the exact same news, the exact same facts, and these facts will ring truer today than they did when it was originally recorded. So if you haven't listened to part 1 already, definitely go there. And if you're returning, welcome back. Let's jump into the 19 Secrets of Exceptional Results Selling, part 2 of 4.

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

The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril.

They're not really lessons. They're kind of laws. Laws that you live by.

Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

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

Now, do you have any special thoughts about selling in tough times?

Well, if you're going to achieve high levels of success in selling, you've got to be able to get positive results under negative circumstances. Just about every sales field cyclically overpopulates during boom times and thins out during tough times. The consistent, secure high performer can get results regardless of circumstances, and I find that much of this is purely attitudinal. Many salespeople eagerly look for circumstantial excuses for poor results. Then if they happen to have a good day, week, or month, great, but if they don't, they've set up their excuse safety net. Unfortunately, by focusing thought on the excuses, they virtually preclude experiencing successful results. Anytime you offer your subconscious system a choice of goals, one positive, one negative, the negative one is perversely most likely to dominate. The exceptional achiever correctly ignores things like talk of recession, distractions like Desert Storm, Waco, O.J., or whatever comes next, his own ego and other emotions, and difficult selling environments. He ignores all of that and has consistent confidence in his story, his selling skills, and his batting average. I have often sold in negative conditions of one sort or another. The only time I can think of when I was unable to prevail was in a seminar, a group sales presentation about 50 miles from Cape Canaveral the night of the Challenger disaster. People showed up physically but just were not there mentally or emotionally. After about 20 minutes that felt like slogging through a swamp, I gave up, gave everybody a gift, and sent them home. But other than that, no set of circumstances has ever derailed me. I began my selling career calling on badly neglected accounts in an abandoned territory where I was met with open hostility about half the time. I sold to people who started out our meetings by calling me and the company I represented everything imaginable. Very recently, I had a successful sales event in a city with a prolonged 35% unemployment rate. I believe that through the force of will, personality, confidence, and concentration, you can triumph over virtually any and all circumstances. And the biggest negative selling circumstances, incidentally, occur in or are magnified in our own minds. Which brings us to rejection versus refusal. If you feel rejection, you cannot achieve exceptional results in selling. I believe the number one reason for mediocre performance and failure in selling is ego. Because a person with a falsely inflated, forcibly pumped up, and therefore fragile ego just cannot stand being told no. When somebody says no to such a person, he or she takes it very personally. And as a result, selling becomes very painful because even under the best of circumstances, there are more nos than yeses. And we will naturally, instinctively, subconsciously do anything to avoid pain. If you're this type of a person, you'll settle for maybes to avoid pain. You'll hide in paperwork to avoid pain. You'll avoid the tough prospects. You'll become a procrastinator and an avoider. My friend and colleague Bill Brooks helps sales-oriented companies' managers deal with this in hiring with an assessment device that goes far beyond optimism. It measures not only selling aptitudes but also selling attitudes.. And it determines: Can he sell? Will he sell? And will he sell here with these products, this clientele, in this environment? You see, there are lots of people who certainly can sell but won't, or can and will but won't in a particular situation. A person can, for example, have all the skills, know-how, and even natural talent to sell but still fail simply by avoiding opportunities to sell. If this person cannot resolve the emotional issues causing avoidant behavior, no amount of sales skill or skills training will help this person. So rejection or refusal is a big issue. When you're told that you've presented a dumb idea, do you translate that to being called or perceived as a dumb person? Can you debate the merits and demerits of your idea without viewing its acceptance or rejection has personal triumph or defeat. Right now, there are two types of selling situations where I get lots and lots of refusal. In one, I represent clients, projects, products, and ideas to the infomercial industry in situations where a big corporate parent is desired, and maybe 99 out of 100 such pitches go nowhere. I get told no just about daily. Last year, one company said no to me over 60 times. But this year they've said yes twice, and just one of those may be worth a mid to high 5 figures in royalties. The other situation: I sell my books and cassettes from the stage. At big events where I'm usually the last of 6 to as many as 10 speakers working with a tired audience, I'll typically average $15 to $20 per person, which by the way in our industry is very good. And in an hour I may sell $25,000 to as much as $75,000 of my products. Which certainly sounds very good. But here's the other side: 900 of 1,000 people are listening to me at my very best for an hour, then turning their backs on me, saying no, and walking away. If I take any of that personally, I'm dead in the water. And by the way, at about a dozen really big events last year and this year, where I'm the very last speaker, usually after a final famous person. The crowd has been waiting all day to hear that other person, like President Bush or Coach Holtz, and as I take the stage and start talking, thousands of people are walking out because it is so late in the day. All during my presentation, people are bailing out. If there are 10,000 people at the event, I may get to speak to 3,000 of them. 7,000 reject me, but I cannot think about that. I have to be focused on selling to those that stay. The most powerful edge you can give yourself in selling is control over your own emotional responses to refusal. When someone fails to accept an offer that I've presented, it very rarely has anything to do with me as a person, so it just doesn't warrant an emotional response. In person-to-person selling, I think you also have to expect a certain amount of resistance and refusal. Only because people feel they appear to be easy or foolish or impulsive or unsophisticated if they say yes too quickly. People say no much like you and I automatically say, "No thanks, I'm just looking," when approached by a sales clerk in a store. Smart clerks learn to ignore this knee-jerk response, and smart sales professionals learn to ignore the first few nos.

Are there some fields where your methods just don't work, don't apply, or aren't appropriate? What about selling business-to-business? Now, for example, to professional purchasing agents or to top executives?

I'm often asked, actually challenged, about most of my methods working in to-consumer sales and marketing but being somehow inappropriate for business-to-business marketing. But actually, more than half of my life is involved with business-to-business, not consumer marketing., and my suggestions apply here equally well. For starters, we really ought to get the entire term business-to-business out of our minds because businesses do not buy anything. People inside businesses buy things, and people are people. The talented actor Wesley Snipes was asked, "Do you consider yourself an actor or a black actor?" He answered, "I guess I'm a black actor. When I get out of bed naked in the morning, I'm black first." first, then I go to work where I'm an actor. Well, when your prospect, whether he's a CEO, an executive, an HRD professional, an engineer, a purchasing agent, when he gets out of bed naked in the morning, he's a person, a human being, a big skin bag of emotions first. Then when he goes to work, he's also a CEO or a purchasing agent or whatever. Consider the professional purchasing agent or mid-level executive or department manager. The individual who may authorize purchases to a certain level. When the rubber meets the road, there are only two factors that will finalize his decision and inspire him to action for or against your proposition: personal gain or fear of personal loss. Note the word personal. Sure, you and he need to cover all the other ground—the savings to the company, the increased productivity, the faster service, the response costs, but ultimately this individual is putting some percentage of his own career capital on the line. If he is switching to you from some other vendor, he's risking personally. If he's doing something new and different, he's risking personally. So you must address personal issues. In the gain category, this individual must see the opportunity of increasing his career capital. Of getting favorable recognition from his superiors, of getting approval from peers, of making his own job easier, of being freed from some worry or aggravation. But all of this is rarely enough. There's also the fear of loss category. What might this person lose personally by not acting? For example, if the bandwagon effect guarantees that some key competitors will soon be using your product Your product will be getting lots of publicity. Your product will be seen at major exhibitions. The buyer who procrastinates will lose a timing advantage, lose the prestige of being one of the first in his industry to implement, lose introductory discounts and incentives. Right now I'm involved in marketing very sophisticated, innovative software to certain programmers, and the company salespeople have made me aware of the huge importance in this market of not getting behind the innovation curve, of not showing up at a meeting and being unable to discuss the latest, the newest, the hottest. This fear is important to the advertising, marketing, and selling of this product. You may have noticed a term I've used several times: career capital. I believe I've coined this term. It means roughly the same thing as political capital. It's said that each president has a store of political capital, which he either uses wisely or squanders. For example, early in this administration, most political experts argued that Clinton squandered a lot of his political capital on the gays in the military issue, eventually winding up with an embarrassing failure, stonewalled by the military and Congress, roughed up by Sam Nunn, and finally going back on a campaign promise to the gays and appearing to much of the American public to be weakened by the whole process. Well, like politicians, I think every executive, every manager, everyone in a corporate bureaucratic hierarchy has career capital. If he's able to use it, that is invest it wisely, it multiplies and as dividends produces increased influence, promotions, raises, and unshakable security. If he squanders it, it diminishes. When such a person says yes to you, he is investing some of his career capital. He may not enunciate it as such to you or even to himself consciously, but he nevertheless senses that this is what's going on. When you understand all this, you see that the sale of even the most sophisticated, complex business product or service, supported with mammoth analysis, statistics, logic, facts and figures, will still require the triggering of an individual's personal emotions.

Now, one of the bullet points or highlights of your seminar listed in your brochure is, I quote, "The most significant behavioral trend of the '90s that sales professionals must deal with." What is it?

We are a nation of cynics. Richard Nixon taught us to a man that our elected president will look us square in the eye and lie to us through his teeth. At the time, it was a big shock to our entire society. Now, the idea that our elected officials lie, cheat, and steal is accepted as the norm. It's so accepted that Chicago cheerfully reelects Dan Rostenkowski, that our country elects Bill Clinton, a man who's never seen a lie he won't try. We've learned we can't trust our religious leaders either. From the fall of Jim and Tammy and Jimmy to the Catholic Church's shameful pattern of protecting child molesters, there's disillusionment everywhere. How about big corporations? Well, Exxon trying to cover up the extent of the Valdez damage, airlines going bankrupt, giants like IBM, once the equivalent of guaranteed job security for life, laying off thousands and eliminating thousands of jobs. As I'm recording this, we have very big companies like MetLife caught up in the kind of consumer fraud actions that historically have been the province of fly-by-night operators. Heck, we've even had a network news program rigged demonstrations of trucks blowing up. Banks— the savings and loan scandals changed the way we look at our banking system. Heroes— I recorded this just a week or so after O.J. Simpson was driving up and down the L.A. freeway with a gun in his lap. Now, what makes you think anybody should or will believe in you? This is not a place to let your ego get in your way.. It's just not enough to insist that you are a trustworthy, trusted, persuasive person. Don't invest your self-esteem in being believed by prospects. Smart strategy assumes that every statement, every fact, every promise, every benefit, every assertion will at best be questioned, at worst be disbelieved. Then equip yourself with appropriate weaponry. I'm about to reveal to you an attempt to sell you on the single most important, most powerful selling weapon that exists, period. I know that's a big claim, but I believe it wholeheartedly. If I could have only one selling weapon, this would be the one I'd choose. If I had to sell mute but could have this weapon, I could still sell. Here it is: proof. If you will substantiate your sales presentation as thoroughly as the top prosecutors and top criminal defense attorneys try to substantiate their cases and arguments, you will be on your way to assembling enough proof. In selling, we prove our cases with facts and figures, physical demonstrations, pictures, testimonials, references, and guarantees. And of these, testimonials can be the most powerful. Which do you depend on more, logic or emotion? Presuming you're selling to human beings, You depend much more on emotion. There are 5 emotions, 5 E-Factors, that control buying behavior and most other behavior. Number 1, love. Number 2, pride. Number 3, fear. Number 4, guilt. And number 5, greed. Not necessarily in that order. The more of these you can hit with your selling case, the better. Let's take a product from TV, the "where there's a will, there's an A" videos. Books designed to help kids get better grades were the sales made to the parent. Number 1, if you really care, love. Number 2, picture yourself congratulating your son or daughter on a straight-A report card, finally having a report card you can brag about, pride. Number 3, tougher and tougher for kids to even get into a good college. Grades are more important than ever, fear. 4. It's hard to work, to compete in the business world, have time for your spouse, and still have all the time you'd like to give to your son. Guilt. 5. Let's talk about grades and scholarships. Greed. You see, I can hit all 5 E-Factors. Make no mistake about this. Logic is what the buyer uses to defend his decision after he's made it. E-Factors are what makes buying decisions and actions happen. A lot of people, particularly in business-to-business marketing or selling sophisticated products or services, want to argue this. They want to be above it. They want to be fact presenters. They're wrong. The exceptional salesperson always weaves the E-Factors all through his presentations. If you read the account in Napoleon Hill's writings of how Andrew Carnegie was finally sold on retiring and on selling and merging his companies, you'll see all the E-Factors hard at work, even though Carnegie, America's first billionaire, was as hard-nosed and tough-minded and heartless a businessman as any. Called the "canny Scot" by many, he was renowned for his shrewd judgment, tough negotiation, and stubbornness. At the time, this transaction was the largest financial deal in American history. Industry, and without Charlie Schwab's savvy use of the E-Factors, it never would have happened. I suggest you find and read the story. John Sculley, former CEO at Apple, got sold—actually conned by a con man—into a very embarrassing and costly business deal you may have recently read about. Sculley certainly should have known better. He should have done more investigation and analysis, but the con man used the E-Factors in such a powerful way, Sculley virtually ignored logic. In this case, the axiom pride goeth before the fall. While Sculley was desperately eager for a way to rebound and recreate his reputation as a biz whiz after leaving Apple, his pride was in control. And he was afraid that opportunities might not come his way, so fear was in control. These two stories, decades apart, but both about shrewd, sophisticated business leaders, simply demonstrate that no one is immune to E-Factor selling, that everybody is very susceptible to E-Factor selling, and that the E-Factors haven't changed and won't change.

If a sales professional is going to acquire new skills, or say a single set of new skills, what would have the biggest positive impact on his earning power.

I kind of grew up in the advertising business and had some understanding of advertising before I began selling for a living. Then I discovered the specific differences of direct response advertising, and I'd have to say that my ability to use advertising instead of prospecting, although that's a bit of an oversimplification, makes all the difference in the world. The greatest single waste of of a salesperson's time and energy is in the area of prospecting. When you streamline, shortcut, and simplify that, you really have impact.

Now, here we are doing a program about selling, but you're talking again about advertising. Why do you keep coming back to advertising?

There's a very good reason. In fact, I'm going to describe to you and read one of the most productive ads of a subscriber's of mine, Rory Fatt, because these days advertising, marketing, and selling are often and should be thoroughly integrated. You see, separating these functions really doesn't make much sense. The attraction of prospects and the way those prospects are attracted is a control factor in how effectively they can be sold and how they should be sold. If I can enhance the quantity and quality of the leads you get, I can automatically improve your closing effectiveness without changing anything you do in closing. If I can provide those prospects without you doing prospecting, I can switch more of your time over to selling and automatically increase your income. So your understanding of an ad like this is of paramount importance. So this is a one-column, full-page advertorial that's an ad made to look like an article in the publication in which it runs. Now here's the copy: Businessman infuriates local restaurant owners by giving away hundreds of free dinners. Vancouver is known for its wide number and variety of restaurants. As a result, we have seen many types of restaurant promotions to grab our attention. However, Rory Phat, president of Simple Salmon Incorporated, takes the cake. He's giving away free dinners. Hundreds of them with no end in sight. What's even more astonishing is that he hasn't put any restrictions on who can get one, only that you must live in Kitsilano, False Creek, Fairview Slopes, or the West End. These are his target markets. He has limited it to one per household. What Simple Salmon does is provide home delivery of fresh frozen meals. Just throw them in the microwave or in the oven for that matter. And his selection is endless, from his chicken cannelloni marinara, meatloaf extravaganza, teriyaki chicken with rice and vegetables, chicken with broccoli and rice, Thai chicken with rice, many low-fat items, vegetarian, pizza, Mexican, the list goes on and on. The convenience, no added preservatives or MSG, no wastage, generous portions, "are more than worth the $5 to $6 cost, and best of all, they taste delicious. This probably accounts for the fact the phone is ringing off the hook. Our biggest problem right now is trying to keep up with demand." Although he has only been in business about 2 years, he's just recently gotten aggressive with his marketing. When asked about his controversial promotion, he responded, "The restaurant owners think I'm crazy." He later stated that although his marketing is angering local restaurant owners, his products and services are so good it is paying off. Quote: What we're offering our customers is an alternative to ordering pizza, Chinese, going to a restaurant, or grocery shopping with all the related mess and hassle. Our customers demand convenience with a capital C. We deliver at their convenience, take checks, Visa, or cash, and most importantly Fatt adds with a grin, quote, all orders after the free dinner come with a free gourmet cookie. Our customers are extremely busy people. For them, we get rid of that 'my fridge is empty, what am I going to eat tonight' feeling, end quote. If this concept interests you and you live in Kitsilano, Fairview Slopes, West End, or False Creek, you can get a free dinner coupon and a mouth-watering brochure by calling 732-1321. Or if you prefer, they have a 24-hour free recorded message with more information at 877-4701. Don't be surprised if you get voicemail. They're very busy. Leave a message and you'll receive the free dinner coupon in the mail. Now let me make this very important point. This is a pure direct response ad. It is not attempting to do anything, but get the correct response. And that's the only kind of advertising you ought to run. Now, you're a critic of traditional advertising, aren't you? Well, comedian Fred Allen said that advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission. In his book, Getting It Right the Second Time, Michael Gershman quotes a study demonstrating that no more than 12% of all advertising is remembered and ever acted upon. I often test audiences. I'll challenge them to name the correct battery advertised by the little pink bunny with the drum. And about 20%, sometimes more, name the wrong battery. Currently, there are funny TV commercials airing for a beer where cows surf and the lady host of a cooking show combines with tag team wrestling. There's full body contact golf, and all these commercials are very funny, but my own quickie survey of 20 people failed to produce even one who could name the brand of beer being advertised. Considering all this, how could anyone not be a critic of traditional advertising? To quote the critic, "It stinks, and all the ad agency folks can get together and give each other awards all they like, and that won't change a thing." It still stinks. So I'm certainly not advocating that salespeople start using traditional advertising. Instead, I suggest to you this test for a valuable ad. It delivers a clear, simple, single message that prompts a direct, immediate response, so it is 100% measurable. If an ad fails that test, which 90% of all business, industrial, and consumer advertising does, Don't run it. Now, if a salesman in any field will take the time to learn how to do this kind of pure direct response advertising, he will revolutionize his career. Why? Because he will have qualified, interested, responsive prospects to sell to without doing prospecting.

Now, earlier you referred to positioning instead of prospecting.

What is positioning? I mean positioning yourself so so that good qualified prospects find out about you, or at least have the feeling of discovering you, and seek you out to obtain your expert assistance in solving their problems. Sales resistance goes up or down depending on whether they find and come to you, or you find and go to them. So I mean you have to position yourself somewhere you're likely to be found. Examples? Well, the financial advisor, or the chiropractor, or the real estate agent, or the psychic, it doesn't matter, who gets his or her call-in show on talk radio, uses that to plug her book available at local libraries and bookstores, and to plug her monthly seminars. Now that's a very simple answer, but it's formulaic. A CEO sees my article about infomercials in Target Magazine and reads it. At the end, it offers him my complete book on the subject. He calls and gets it, reads the that book. Here's what's happened. First, he feels like he has found me. Second, because my article was in that magazine and because I've written a book, I have expert status. Now when he calls me, he never thinks in terms of me selling him anything. His sales resistance is very low. But if I get on the phone and cold call 20 CEOs and get to him, even though he has an interest in my service, and I pitch him on the phone to get the appointment, and then I go in on that sales call, his sales resistance is very high. Personally, I don't want to be in a situation where there's a lot of sales resistance.

Now, in your book on No BS Sales Success, you conclude by talking about takeaway selling.

What's that? Well, wasn't it Groucho who said, I don't want to be part of any I don't want to be part of any club that would have me as a member. Takeaway selling is what you get the opportunity to do if your positioning is correct and you have enough lead flow. Then you get to make it a bit difficult to get to you and to get to do business with you. There's a rough equation of value to ease or difficulty. Which do you perceive as better? A hair salon where you have to make an appointment a week in advance and you have a stylist who takes care take care of you every time, or a walk-in, no-appointment haircutter store? Well, as someone with a lot of insider experience with that industry, I'll tell you that your perception may not be reality, but that doesn't matter. Which do you perceive as cheaper? As I said earlier, nobody goes to see the wise man at the bottom of the mountain. So takeaway selling embodies some exclusivity, some difficulty of getting you. And some urgency. Tell me more about takeaway selling. In my No BS Sales book, I use the example of a very successful real estate agent with an unusual listing presentation. And if prospects balk at her close, she says something like this: Well, different approaches are right for different people. You may be more comfortable with a more conventional agent, somebody who will sit here day after day at open houses, be around the office whenever you call, and not be so selective about taking clients. Then she opens her address book and says, "I can recommend several good agents of that kind." Now that's pretty tough, but she has set it up right from the very beginning, which I fully describe in the book, so invariably the prospect backpedals. "No, wait a minute, we want you." See, takeaway selling is positioning from start to finish. It basically says, 'I'm picky about who I accept as a client. Can you qualify?' I didn't invent this. In major cities like New York and LA, there are apartment buildings you can't go rent an apartment in. To be allowed to rent or buy there, you have to be sponsored by an existing tenant. You have to pass a vote of all the tenants. You have to jump through hoops just to be permitted to buy. In Hollywood, you can't just roll into William Morris and say, 'Hey, here I am, represent me.' You have to prove to them that you are a viable, desirable client. Many doctors, hairstylists, therapists, and attorneys have what we call waiting list practices. Why shouldn't you carry this air of exclusivity over to your business? And the point is, if you have enough deal flow enough new prospects being magnetically attracted to you, you will have to say no to some. And the truer that position becomes, the more ardently you'll be pursued. Takeaway selling is very powerful psychologically. Everybody wants the tickets they can't get into the club that's most exclusive, to bypass the peon line at the city's most popular nightclub. We all want in. Stepping back from a prospect draws him to you. Stepping toward him drives him away. Try it as a little physical experiment. In conversation, suddenly move away from the other person and watch as he moves towards you. But step closer to him and he'll step back. The same thing happens psychologically. So I want to be positioned from the very beginning with credibility and celebrity as someone clients eagerly pursue.

Not as someone who pursues new clients. But what about the person not in that position at all?

You know, he desperately needs new clients. Well, these cassettes were built for salespeople already doing well but seeking breakthroughs to truly exceptional success. But I'll give you one basic example as an answer to your question. While you were out of the office briefly Suppose, hypothetically, a really hot prospect called— somebody whose name you recognize and who you would love to get an appointment with. When do you call the person back? Immediately? Later that day? The next day? I'm here to tell you that even if you have no one else to call, nowhere to go, and nothing to do, you do not dare return that call immediately. You just cannot appear overeager or too easily accessible. You might think 'Hey, I'll demonstrate how responsive I am, how good I am at providing service.' Well, that may apply after the sale, but not before. If that sounds gimmicky, I'm sorry, but I've just told you the truth. The prospect's respect for you diminishes if you are too easy to get to. Personally, I'm to the point I don't worry about this much. I will, for example, return a call quickly to a new prospect if I can. But I rarely can. My positioning has become my position, so most return calls from non-clients wait 3 days to a week or get delegated, at least to schedule a phone appointment.

Now you just said that your positioning became your position. I think that's important, isn't it?

Well, sure. First you decide on, define, stake out, and courageously proclaim a position. Then you've got to behave behave in the way a person in that position behaves. You also have to work like crazy to validate the position. And before you know it, the positioning you've created for marketing purposes becomes your actual position. If you read Reese and Trout— now Reese is a subscriber of mine— read their book on positioning, The Battle for Your Mind, and their 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, and you gain a deeper understanding of positioning as strategy. Then if you read psychological authors like Dr. Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics, Jim Newman, Release Your Brakes, and prosperity consciousness authors like Catherine Ponder and Stuart Weil, you see that positioning is also a powerful application of self-fulfilling prophecy. Then if you really study the works of Napoleon Hill and their meaning, you'll discover what I call the dominant thought principle, the secret Dr. Hill referred refers to at the beginning of Think and Grow Rich. Link all three of those together and you'll know what to do and how to do it for positioning to quickly become actual position. Unfortunately, I think society, academia, even corporate America insists on conditioning people that they have to be positioned by somebody else, by some third party. Someone else has to recognize and point you. You do certain things, then you get recognized, get an award, a promotion, a degree, a title. Status follows achievement. But if you follow that pattern in the entrepreneurial environment, you'll starve. In real business life, the opposite. That's the way it works. The super successful person decides on his status first, then backs it up with achievement. Let's take an insurance agent who wants to specialize in dealing with CEOs of family-owned businesses. Conditioning says he goes to a bunch of classes and seminars, takes courses, and somehow gets somebody to certify him as such an expert, or more correctly, has prepared to be such an expert. Then he goes and labors for years working with one, then two, then three such clients, and gradually, ever so slowly, that community takes notice of him, and finally, maybe some association or media proclaims him an expert in his field. You should live so long. In real-world selling, here's what the smart agent does. He prepares himself as best he can, then he proclaims himself Minnesota's specialist in advising CEOs of family-owned businesses. Then he gets busy doing things that go with and support that position. He writes a book, gives a lecture, a seminar. He starts sending out news releases to the media to get interviewed as this expert, and he narrows all of his marketing to support this position. And then he is that positioning.

What is the fastest way a sales pro can improve his income?

Well, how would you like to know the number one secret to at least doubling your income from selling almost overnight? It's not a very difficult or mystical secret. Here's all you have to do. You get 2 eyes of newt, 1 black garter snake, a bottle of olive oil, a book of chance— I'm kidding. What you do is you double the amount of time you actually legitimately spend selling. How do you do that? Well, one way is to delegate whatever non-selling activities you can. One of the most successful real estate agents I know— not a broker, an agent— has 3 assistants working for, a personal assistant getting clothes in and out of the dry cleaners, cars washed, paperwork ferried around town, gifts bought, restaurant and travel reservations made, a sales assistant picking up prospects, returning clients' phone calls and filling out contracts, and an office assistant keeping records, placing ads and doing mailings. Another way is to systemize and automate your prospecting with magnetic marketing. Systems save time and free up key people. Like you. Also, get militantly tough about valuing, protecting, and investing your time. If you want to inject some discipline into a campaign to lose weight, keep a diary and truthfully write down every single thing you eat, nibble on, or drink that has fat or calories in it every day, day by day. You'll eat less. Keep a log and an account for every minute of your time. That's a mirror that will change behavior. If you can double your true selling time, I guarantee you'll more than double your income.

What is the most important time management tip you can give to the sales professional?

Bill Brooks and I co-authored one book on time management. He has also written his own and recorded a cassette program for Nightingale-Conant on time management specifically. For salespeople. Here's the big secret that he and I agree on: the objective or purpose of time management should be to increase the amount of time spent on planned accomplishments. Bill further notes that an important aspect of time management is identifying what not to do. I find that success is proportionate to your ability to give more time to those things you do and enjoy best and less time to those things you do poorly and dislike doing. Now if you assemble those pieces, here's what you get: escaping the least productive in favor of the most productive by plan. And the key word in all of this is plan. Do you have a true plan for selling for the month, the week, the day? But while all that's important, it may not be the most important thing I can tell you about time. I think everybody must budget block, set aside, and invest some time every week in thinking. Stopping doing and just thinking. You can't afford to keep running so fast and so hard that a year from now you are trying to do better only by running a bit faster and a bit harder. That's the rat on the treadmill method. You do max out, and you will burn out if your aorta doesn't blow out. So let me say this again: you cannot afford to keep running so fast and so hard that a a year from now, you're trying to do better only by running a bit faster and a bit harder. Instead, between now and then, you need to discover or invent a really new, different, non-time-intensive way to sell more, and that has to come from time invested in thinking.

How does a salesperson waste time?

Well, that list is almost endless, but a big issue is talking to people who cannot say yes or no. Only time invested with decision makers counts. It's that simple. Of course, the best way to get to decision makers is to get decision makers to come to you. In business-to-business selling, lead generation ads in trade journals, business magazines, airline magazines, Wall Street Journal, association newsletters can be used to get top decision makers to raise their hands. Sometimes two-stage direct mail The first wave of letters into a company is just to get a response from the right person. Then the second set of letters is directed at that person to set up the appointment under ideal conditions. By far, the best way to get a decision maker's favorable attention is with a referral from or an endorsed mailing from another decision maker of comparable status in the same or related industry or in the same community. What else can you tell us about time? Now, every top sales pro has activities to take care of that have very short-term relevance and impact—today, tomorrow, next week—and most salespeople only deal with these. But top pros allocate a certain amount of current time to set up success months from now, and they allocate current time to matters that will yield success years from now. Short-term, medium-term, and long-term development simultaneously. If you do less than this, you really mortgage away your future for day-to-day results. To be exceptionally successful in selling, you must get past the point of going to bed tonight with no real certainty of where tomorrow's sale may come from. It's a version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You have to get past or above, if if you prefer, using 100% of your resources to meet survival needs. In general, that's food, shelter, defense. In selling, today's sales and tomorrow's appointments. If that's still where you are, you really need to go through all these cassettes several times, specifically focused on extracting the ideas that will move you beyond survival behavior. I'll add, by the way, that some people get so good at survival behavior, they cannot step up to success behavior.

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