Sales Principles of Multi-Millionaire Entrepreneurs

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. This is one of those episodes that you really are grateful you didn't skip. In today's episode, Dave D is going to be hosting in place of Dan Kennedy, speaking with Brian Tracy. Now, Brian Tracy is going to be sharing a lot of different pieces about the sales process. Now, sales is 100% a learnable skill, and in this episode, Brian Tracy is going to lay out the 7-step sales process, including what you should be doing at the very beginning of your day in order to ensure you've got your sales hat on nice and snug and you are focused in the right direction. Let's listen in with Sales Principles of Multimillionaire Entrepreneurs with Dave D. and Brian Tracy.

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 that you live by.

Dan opened my eyes to what 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.

All right, thank you everybody. Welcome to another Diamond Call. This is Dave D., Chief Marketing Officer of GKIC, and I'm sitting in for Dan Kennedy. And I have a very special guest. I'm super excited to be talking to him and interviewing him, and you're gonna have the opportunity to ask him questions as well. You know him, I'm sure, as Brian Tracy. Brian— I've been studying Brian's materials for ages, basically have everything that he's ever put out. And he is a master of sales, he's a master of motivation, and he's truly a master of success. And Brian, one of the things you don't realize— I asked Dan, this was a while ago, we were having lunch together together a number of years ago, I said, "Who in the self-development field do you think is the real deal?" And the first name he said was Brian Tracy. He said Brian Tracy is the real deal. He teaches no BS stuff that really works. So thank you so much for joining us on the call.

Well, thank you. I've been such a fan of Dan Kennedy's for so long because he's got such an incredible mind. So it's a real honor to be with you and to maybe share a couple of ideas.

So happy to have you here. Okay, so let's get right into it because in the pre-call, um, you know, Brian, and listening to the material, what's really cool that he's the same as he is on the, on his recordings, uh, that is in person. He says, I want to give tremendous value here to the folks. And so Brian, you've been involved in sales forever, you've been teaching selling forever. Let's talk a little bit about what you feel differences are now in the sales process, that is, as it is today, as maybe it was 20 or 30 years ago. Are there any differences?

Well, the, you know, the bottom line is real simple. If you want to be successful in business, go and get a customer, and then go and get another one, and then get another one, and keep getting customers. And there is no other way. And it's amazing how many people, for a variety of reasons, usually fear of rejection, call reluctance, are always looking for other ways to get customers by sending them out anonymous emails and doing direct mail and, and all those things. But none of them work. The only thing that works is to go out to people, and here's what you do for a living: you ask for money. Your job is to ask people for money. Hello, my name is Brian. Give me your money. And if you're not asking people for money by 8 or 8:30 in the morning, then you're not working. The only time that you're working as an entrepreneur and business owner is when you're asking people for money. We say, I have a basic rule, I hope this doesn't offend anybody, but social networking is social not working. Because you're not asking people for money. You're just getting warm and fuzzy and sending little messages and killing the day and so on. But the only time you're working is asking people for money. So let me just give you a little bit of my background, Dave, and then let's ask answer some questions that will help people. When I started off, I did not come from a good home. We didn't have any money. I didn't graduate from high school. I worked at laboring jobs for several years, and finally I got into straight commission door-to-door sales. And I struggled and struggled and struggled, and one day I said, why is it that some salespeople are better than others? And I did something that changed my life. I went to the top sales guy in my company. I was making 10 times as much as anybody else, and I asked him what he was doing differently from me. And he told me, and I did it, and my sales went up. And I still remember, it was almost like a flashbulb in the face. It was like the sunrise. I couldn't believe it. He said, selling is a logical and orderly process where you begin from the beginning and you follow the steps. Since then, by the way, I've read hundreds of books. I've taught more than 5 million salespeople in 61 countries, and they've done tens of millions of dollars of research on the sales process.. And I've studied all the studies and the studies of the studies, and basically is why do, why do, why do people buy? Why do people sell? And if you don't know these things, then you'll struggle and struggle and struggle. And if you do know these things, you make sale after sale. So anyway, I began to read all the books and listen to the audio programs and go to the seminars, and my sales went up and up. And within a year, I was earning 10 times what I was earning. And then I began to teach other people, and many of those people became millionaires and multimillionaires themselves. I see them all over the world now. People come to me and said, Before I went to your course, I was struggling, and today I'm rich. I was at a seminar in Las Vegas, and I heard this great story. These two guys, but they're in their 30s, 36, 38, you could tell, really fit, sharp, well-dressed. And they said, can we talk to you for a second? I said, I said, I said, sure. So, Mr. Tracy, he said, when we first heard about you, somebody came to our office trying to sell tickets for your sales seminar many years ago, and we were the two lowest salespeople in the company. We had no money. We hung out together. And nobody in the company wanted to go to your seminar, but we borrowed the money to come to your seminar. And at your seminar, we never heard this before. We never heard that there was a sales process before. And you explained to us specific step-by-step, which I'll cover in a second, how sales are made. And then we got your audio program, and one program is all we could afford, and we listened to it back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Within a year, we were the two top sales guys in that branch. Within two years, we were the two top sales guys in that company nationally. In three years, we started our own company. He said, today we're both multimillionaires. We're rich. We live in beautiful homes. We have beautiful cars. Our kids are in private schools. He said, we brought 38 of our people to this seminar today. Wow. And I said, wow, congratulations. And these are neat guys. And I said, I said, wow. And I, and, and he said, we just wanted to thank you because We just remember going to that seminar the first time, it changed our lives. So I asked them this question. I said, I said, did you ever think about what might have happened if you hadn't gone to the seminar? And they both started like rabbits. They both started, their eyes went open. They said, Brian, he said, we talk about that all the time. The word that we use was, is traumatic. He said, the difference in our lives if we had not learned how to sell would have been traumatic. We just cannot imagine it. And so I pass that on. I tell every story for a reason, is that if you don't know how to sell today, you probably don't like selling, you probably avoid selling, you probably are reluctant to make calls, you're probably nervous and tense about selling, you probably look for every way possible to avoid selling. It's just because you don't know how. But fortunately, and this is what shocked me, light bulb going off, is that selling is a learnable skill. If you can ride a bicycle, If you can drive a car, if you can operate a modern cell phone or keyboard on your computer, then you can learn any sales skill. It's just a learnable skill. Just like if I said to you, I'm going to teach you 5 sentences and you learn these 5 sentences when you go to Mexico, then you'll be able to get along. Well, you could learn 5 sentences. You could learn any sales skill. So the sales skills— and this, this is years and years and years. I'll condense it down because I know our audience is very smart. They can learn a lot of stuff in a short period of time. There's 7 stages. Now this is what they multi-million dollars, some of the biggest companies in the world put up tens of millions of dollars to do this research and videotape 55,000 sales calls and then track them to see if they turn into sales or if they didn't. They interviewed the customer and the salesperson before and after. And what they found is that selling follows a logical psychological sequence. And if your selling process dovetails like fingers in a glove with the customer's buying process, then the sales just fall to the bottom all the time. You just make sale after sale after sale. And if you don't, you kill the sale. And it's amazing how many salespeople, not knowing that there's a logical process, go out and it's just like taking out a gun and shooting a wounded prisoner on the battlefield. They just go out and kill sales. They meet customers and they kill the sale. Meet customer, kill the sale. They meet customers, raise their hands through marketing, says, I'm really interested in your product or service. And what they do is they say, come here, and they kill the sale, right? Because they don't convert, because they don't know the process. This is what— and this is what really turned my life around. So selling has 7 steps. Step number 1 is to separate suspects from prospects. In other words, talk only to prospects, not to suspects. Suspects will talk to you and they're interested in you and they'll ask for more information and so on, but they don't want it, they don't need it, they can't use it, they can't afford it. And so they're wonderful people to talk to and spend time with, but they'll never buy from you because they're not— they're just suspects. So the first thing you do is you ask good questions to determine whether or not this is a genuine prospect. And a genuine prospect is someone who needs your product or service now. Not tomorrow, next— not next week, next— not next year when the market gets better, but they have an immediate need. One of the jokes I say is you sell fire extinguishers and your prospects hair is on fire. That's a good prospect, okay? It's because they need it. And when do they need it? They need it now. If they don't need it now, they're not a prospect. The second qualification is that they have a problem that your product can solve. Remember, all— every product is a solution to a problem of some kind, even an absence of something. So a person wants to be financially independent, that's a problem they're trying to solve. If your product or service can help them to move toward financial independence, you're helping to solve that problem. Because people are in constant mode looking for ways to solve their problem. The third step, the third key is that they have a goal that your product can help them to achieve. And all these are now, these are now. It's like saying to a person, I've got some, talk about needs or goals. I got some wonderful headache remedies. If you got a headache, this stuff will take away your headache. Person says, well, I don't have a headache. Yes, but these are such good pills. I mean, they take away headaches. No matter what, but I don't have a headache. Yes, but these will take away headaches. You really should have some of my pills. So there are people out there trying to sell to people who don't need, don't have a problem that your product can solve. The third area is goals. You've got to— is they have a goal that you want them to achieve. And the fourth area, which is even more subtle, is they have a pain that your product or service will take away. So those are the four things that you look for in a prospect. Now stage number two, is you have to build trust with them. They have to trust you. They have to believe in you. Every single prospect or customer has been burned 1,000 times, and so therefore, whenever they are approached with any offering, they are suspicious. They're cautious. They're careful. They've made mistakes too many times in the past. They bought the wrong thing, paid too much. They got a product that didn't work, found something that was better, got something and couldn't get it serviced. So they're very gun-shy. So you have to build trust. And if you can imagine a teeter-totter, as you build trust and credibility with the prospect by taking time to ask them questions and to understand them, their fears go down. As your trust goes up, the fear goes down. And finally, when the fear goes down low enough and the trust goes up high enough, the prospect is now open to listening to you. The third stage is to identify their needs accurately. Is take the time to find out what it is that they really want and need that you can offer them. If you talk about your product or service before you have built trust, you kill the sale. And if you start talking about your product or service before you've clearly identified a need, you kill the sale. See, so it's just be the same what I call the, the, the doctor of selling model. If you're going to see a doctor, doctors always do the same 3 things in order. First, they do an examination, and sometimes they'll take tests and everything else. And then they'll get the test and all the information back, and then they'll do a diagnosis, and they'll discuss the diagnosis, and you'll agree, yes, that's my problem, that's my pain. Only then do they move to prescription, which is the discussion of the prescription, the medicine, the course of treatment. Many salespeople say, hi, I'm Brian Tracy, here's my prescription, right? And kill the sale, because what you do is you kill your credibility. You destroy trust. You haven't even determined whether or not this is a good prospect. So as Shakespeare said, make haste slowly. The faster— the slower you go through the process, the more sales you make. So you ask questions, and your questions are organized, and they're thoughtful, and they're always open to the possibility that this person does not need what you're selling. So you're there not— you're not trying to sell. You're trying to ask questions to understand, like a doctor. Do you have a genuine need, problem, or goal that my product or service can solve in a cost-effective way? Then stage 4 is when you and the customer are both clear that the need, problem, or goal exists. Well, then you say, let me show you what I have and how it works. And you explain how your product or service will solve the problem, satisfy the need, achieve the goal. And only then do you come to objections. What about this? What about that? And there are always objections. And objections, the purpose of an objection is to minimize or reduce risk. Reduce the risk of making a mistake. Am I paying too much? Can I get it cheaper somewhere else? Why should I buy it now? Will it do this? Will it do that? And objections are good. Objections, if you get no objections, Dave, what the prospect is saying is I'm not interested. If the prospect's saying, what about this and what about that, will it do this or will it do that? What we have found in the research is that a good prospect, one who buys, will ask twice as many objection questions buys as one who doesn't buy on average. So objections are good. And so therefore you should think, what are all the reasons that a qualified prospect might give me for not buying? And then you develop a bulletproof answer for each of those questions. And then the 6th stage— sorry, the 5th stage is to ask them to buy your product or service, is close the sale. Ask them to make a decision one way or another. And there's methods and techniques. My programs on how to close the sale are the best-selling programs in the world, and none of them require— none of them involve pressure or manipulation or anything else. It's just basically asking the person to make a decision in a professional way. And then there's step number 6. I'm sorry, step number 6 is closing the sale. Step number 7 is to get resales and referrals from the same customer by taking such good care of them that they're happy that they purchased your product or service and they want to purchase it again and tell their friends. And, and I sometimes, I, I use an example, Dave, of going to a good restaurant. I mean, everybody has an occasion, and usually we go to a restaurant because somebody told us to. Hey, this is a really good restaurant. So you go there and it's a really good restaurant. The people are really nice and the food is really good and the prices are reasonable. And you come out and you say to the person you're with, hey, that was really great. And she says, he says, yeah, that was really great. We're going to come back here next time. You talk to me, hey, you got to try that restaurant. So this is what you— this is the kind of climate you want to take such good care of the prospect that, that they say, hey, that was a great experience. I, I want to, I want to buy from you again. What else have you got? And, um, and so that brings us full circle back to the prospecting. And your very best prospects are people who, um, have been recommended to you. And we're living today in, first of all, of course, a high-tech nation But I love the expression, it's called recommendation nation. Is today the key to really high levels of sales is really happy customers and who recommend you to others. Because the recommendation is about 90% sold before you open your mouth. If I say to you, Dave, I just read this really good book on marketing, you really like it, you're 90% sold because you respect me and I respect you. You just click on Amazon and buy it. I mean, you don't even worry about it. The sale is made. So these are the 7 processes, and what you need to do is you need to upgrade your skills in each area. I was talking to this gentleman. He brought me in to speak to a 600-satellite hookup worldwide that had 75,000 people on it. Biggest talk I ever gave to 75,000 people. 2,000 people in the live audience, 73,000 people by satellite hookup throughout the English-speaking world. And afterwards he said, can I, can I have, can we have lunch together? I said, sure. And he said, I just want to tell you, you know, you changed my life. He said, you maybe even saved my life. I said, why? He said, well, many years ago, uh, I was selling, and I've been selling for 6 months, I hadn't made a sale, and we had no money. My wife was working at the supermarket bagging groceries. We were living in the basement of my mother-in-law's house, which is not greatest place to live. And I wasn't making any sales. And then I got your program, and you talked about the law of cause and effect, is that if you do what other successful salespeople do, you get the results that other successful salespeople get. And if you don't, you don't. And nature is neutral. He said, well, I knew the effect that I wanted. I wanted to make sales and make money. So I listened to your breakdown of the sales process, and I just took each of the 7 steps, and I broke it down, and I looked at what I was doing each one, almost like repairing a piece of machinery on your workbench. You took all the parts apart and looked at each of the parts. And then I began to work on prospecting, and then I began to work on developing rapport, then I began to work on identifying needs, and I began to work on presenting skills, and I'm going to work on answering objections and closing and, and getting resales and referrals. He said within 6 months, he said, I was number 1 in my branch. Within a year, I was the number 1 in the state. Within 2 years, I was number 1 in the country. He said, "Today I'm worth about $25 million." He said, "I've got 3 national companies." He said, "Worth about $25 million." He said, "I've got 3 bestselling books, all based, which came out of my sales work." And he said, "It's because of that very simple principle. If you do what other successful salespeople do, you get the same result. And if you don't, you don't. And nature is neutral." When I first heard this, Dave, I thought, "Wait a minute. You mean nature doesn't care?" No, nature does not care about you. Nature is blind like justice. Nature says if you do what top people do, you get the same results, live in a big house, drive a nice car, and take beautiful vacations to Paris and Rome. And if you don't, you live in a small house, you drive a used car, and you take vacations, you know, to the local movie theater, and you worry about money all your life. So what do you want, to do what the top people do, or, or, or, or to, or to do what you're doing today? Well, Brian, you just gave like an entire sales course in, in 15 minutes.

Just unbelievable. I just want to make sure— I've been taking notes— I want to make sure that everyone has the 7 steps. So I'm just going to lay them out. If I'm incorrect, just let me know. Number 1, you had separate suspects from prospects. Number 2 was to build trust, and I want to get back to that one in a second. Number 3 was identify needs accurately. Number 4 is to your presentation. Let me show you what I have. Number 5 is overcoming objections. Number 6 is closing the sale, asking them to buy. And number 7 is resales and referrals.

Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

And so, and then what you're saying is to go through and work on each one of these individually, and that's exactly what you did, and become more proficient by following courses like yours.

Because you do a ton—

one of the things I really respect about you, you do a ton of research. Your stuff isn't, well, I think this sounds good. Your stuff is— no, we've done a lot of research into this, and this is what the top salespeople do, because you've got to be getting your advice from the right person as well. I was listening to one of your programs recently, and you were telling the story—

and I don't know whether—

what step this comes in, whether it be build trust or identify their needs accurately— and you were telling the story about someone coming into your office trying to sell you, and that they had done no research whatsoever into your company. Into anything that you were doing. Dan just wrote a Diamond Facts about the same thing. Somebody, a new bank, wanted to get some of his money, but they didn't, you know, go online.

They didn't check, check out his book on wealth or anything of that nature.

And so what, how important is research before you're meeting with the prospect?

Oh, it's so important because, Dave, the most important part of business is credibility. Theodore Levitt, who was the dean of the Harvard Business School, wrote a book called Marketing Myopia some years ago. And in there he said that the most important and most valuable asset that a company has is its reputation. And its reputation is how people think and talk about you and your company when you're not there. And your reputation, which is made up of your credibility, is how credible are you. You see, there's one question that people ask, and unfortunately we have the 80/20 rule, and you guys are all in the top 20%. But the 80% of business people earn less than $50,000 a year owning their own businesses, and sometimes substantially less. And there's a reason, there's several reasons for it, but the main reason is the top 20% of people focus on offering an excellent product or service. And this is 90%, maybe 95% of business success is having an excellent product or service to start with. You cannot use tricks to market and sell a mediocre product. If you have a mediocre product, the only way you can sell it is by cutting the price or by deceit or by discounts or by something. But if you have a good, great product and here's what I discovered and it basically became a main theme for me. I teach it all over the world, is 90% of your success is determined by having a great product or service in the first place. So how can you tell the future of your business? And the answer is very simple. What percentage of people, after they have consumed your product or service, say to the person next to them, geez, that's a great product, geez, that's a great service, geez, that's a great company, geez, those are great people? Did you see the Academy Awards yesterday?

Yeah, I did.

I saw part of it. Okay. Did you see the movie Silver Linings Playbook?

Uh, I had not seen that movie. No, I saw the other ones.

I didn't see that one. Well, run, don't walk. Okay. Because when I saw that movie and I saw Jennifer Lawrence, who won the Best Actress at the age of 22— she's been, she's been up for the award for 3 pictures and she got it at the age of 22. When I saw her performance in that movie, and I tell you, as I'm saying this aloud, it causes chills. She was unbelievable. Wow. I mean, you stood up in the theater and you said, geez, that was a great performance. Holy smokes. I mean, throw away the Academy or stop sending out ballots. Just mail it to her house, for heaven's sake, because there is no question in the world. Now, there's questions a lot of other places, but But that is what you must, as a business owner, be dedicated to triggering in the heart and mind and emotions of your customers. Not how you can get the most money, how you can make a sale, how you can promise things that you may or may not deliver, but how can you cause them to say afterwards, "Geez, that was a great product. I'm so happy I bought it. I want to buy it again." That's awesome.

I mean, that's exactly what Dan talks about. So Dan is always talking about Disney, making the comparison with Disney where you've got that wow factor where people— you're so good that people just can't help but talk about you or just can't help to talk about your product or service. So that's exactly what you're saying. And I think a lot of us, what we do is we get so caught up on, you know, the fun marketing stuff and on the tricky sales techniques. You're saying you really don't need any of that. What you need is a really good product. Find out somebody who really needs it, build trust, present it well, and then close the sale, and you're going to be successful.

And then back it 100%.

Just talk a little bit about that, reversing the risk.

Yeah, risk reversal. You know, one of the most successful stores in America is Nordstrom, and, um, and Nordstrom has an unconditional money-back guarantee for life. And a friend of mine who's a, who's a very wealthy gentleman who came from, from Sweden He was showing around a group of Swedish business people, retailers, showing them around Seattle where he lives. And he took them into Nordstrom's and he said, watch this. He said, and he took them, he went up to a clerk in the shoe department and he said, you see these shoes? He said, I got these shoes here about 2 years ago. And here's this Swedish businessman, they're all fluent in English, watching. And they've got a bit of a crack. You see it? They've built sort of like a crack near the toe here. And, and they just, they don't really look that good, and you can't take the crack away with, with shoe polish. He's very low-key. And the sales clerk at Nordstrom said, let me take a look at that, please. Took the shoe, took a look at it. He said, we're so sorry that this happened. He said, please choose another pair of shoes, um, of comparable value, and we'll wrap them up for you. And the Swedish business people said You could never do that in Sweden. You could never do that in Europe. People would take advantage of you. And no, he said no. People just want the product to do what you said it would do. They don't want you to cheat you. They don't want to bring it back. They just want the product to do what you said it would do when you sold it to them. And this is the essence of all of modern marketing, Dave, is people don't want their money back. They just want— you to fulfill your promise. You said your product or service would do this. They just want it to do that. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, Brian, one of my beliefs, and I teach this at the seminars that we do, is that— and you just nailed it— is that the majority of people are inherently honest. And they're not— look, yeah, there's going to be those people that buy your stuff, for example, and copy and send it back. But they're in such the minority that the extra sales that you make because of offering a great guarantee far outweigh that. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And not only that, you know what Nordstrom does? It's— I was talking to them and I said, well, what do you do if I bring something back? They said the supplier eats it. We, we only carry products that the supplier unconditionally guarantees for quality. Wow. And so, so, so it's an inconvenience for us, but whoever provided us with the product has to take it back. So now our suppliers have to be really, really fastidious about quality. I was in a restaurant the other day and they, they opened the bottle of wine and I said, you know, according to the statistics, 1 in 12 bottles will be bad. And it's for the way it was bottled, the way it was corked. If you have a case of 12, 1 of the 12 on average will be bad. That's why you always taste the wine. You never— even in a cheap place, you always taste the wine. You smell the cork and taste the wine. I said, what happens, you know, if I cause you an inconvenience, like this wine, something wrong with this wine? No problem, we just give it back to the supplier and they replace it. Wow, yeah. Because we will not buy wine unless the supplier absolutely guarantees the quality of the wine. And that's what all good business people do.

Yeah, that is huge. Now what about, Brian, someone who is in a, for example, let's say they're in a service type of business, let's say they're an attorney, for example. Well, they can't guarantee the outcome of, the case, for example, what can—

is there something that they can guarantee? No, they can guarantee that they will do everything that is humanly possible, right, in representing the client in the best way. They will be fastidious about detail. It's interesting, I've— if you've been in business, my friend Robert Allen says if you're in business, you're going to be sued, and you're going to be sued an average of 4 times in your business career. So suck it up and just get ready for it. So, um, the only thing that you can guarantee is that the lawyer will do everything possible to help you win. And what I found was that good lawyers— I studied this— over-prepare. They over-prepare. And poor lawyers don't. They try to get by with the minimum amount of preparation, and they come into court or into litigation unprepared. They, they demand all kinds of documents, but they don't even read them. And so if your lawyer is prepared and the other lawyer is not, the lawyer will eat them alive in front of a judge or litigator. And I've seen this happen where my lawyers have just eaten them alive, uh, because they weren't prepared. Uh, so, so therefore that's what a person offering a service— but that's a rare thing in your business. I think mostly, um, people just want you to deliver the service in a cheerful way, right? They just want you to be polite. They want you to be friendly. They want them— they I've studied this for years and I have just one thing is make customers feel happy. Just make customers happy. That's all you have to do is make customers happy. There's a great book that I recommend every single business owner read. It's called The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichold. And this was introduced to me by a senior partner of Bain and Company where he is a senior partner. And I'll tell you what. That's a book that's fallen off your chair on the floor in astonishment. Because he's done decades of research into customer satisfaction. And what he found was that you can take all your questionnaires and everything else and put them aside. There's one question that you need to ask. That's all. And the question is, based on your experience with us, on a scale of 1 to 10, would you recommend us to others? And if they give you a 9 or a 10, it's called a Net Promoter Score, NPS. The book is unbelievable. It's— you never— you read that book, there's some books you read and you're never the same again in business. And this is it. He said, if a 9 or 10, these people represent 85% of your repeat business and your referrals. A 7 or an 8, these people are neutral. 1 to 6, these people will be net detractors. A net detractor means that they will buy— they're on their way out the door. 6, 7, or 8 they're okay, but if somebody offers them something better or cheaper, they'll take it. But if 1 to 6, they're net detractors, is they're on their way, and they'll tell other people, um, how unhappy they were. And so, so, so the question is really simple. You say, on a scale of 1 to 10, what kind of a grade would you give us based on your experience with us? And if they give you anything less than a 9 or 10, what question do you ask? How can we improve that? You know, how can we get a 10? How can we get a 10 Next time. And the magic words— and this again based on enormous research— you never say, 'How's everything?' You ask people, 'How's everything?' They say, 'Fine.' Anybody who says 'fine' means I am in a 1 to 6 category. I'm on my way out and I'll never be back. I don't want to fight with you. I don't want to argue. Everything's fine. Like, you go to a restaurant, the manager comes by, 'How's dinner?' You say, 'Fine.' 'Good.' Walks away. And you know Couldn't care less. He couldn't care less. And I won't be back. The most— the most worst of all customers is the one that says nothing, goes away, and never comes back and tells all their friends, right? Yeah. So, so, so what you do is you say, how could we get a 10 next time? Just tell me what we can do. We want to get a 10. And, uh, and, and the customers will tell you. I say your customers will make you rich if you ask them. Tell me, Mr. Customer, what do we have to do to make you happy? And whatever it is, give it to them. Make them happy, and they'll come back and they'll tell their friends. And people say, oh geez, but won't they ask for their money? No. If you do not have enough confidence in your offering, if you're not aimed at making your customer happier than they would be without your product or service, well then you shouldn't be in business. Your whole goal is make your customers happy. And so that just becomes your number one question is, on a scale of 1 to 10, How would you rate us in terms of recommending us to others? What they found is the highest psychological level of happiness, customer happiness, is their willingness to risk their credibility and recommend you to a friend or relative. That's the highest level of satisfaction. And if you can get customers, you know, it's interesting, coming back to movies, but in movies you'll see when the movie comes out, they'll take half a page or a full page or 2 or 3 full pages and so on. In the first week. Now why is that? It's because they can't do it forever because they don't have enough of a budget. It's because word of mouth is what makes movies successful. They've got to get you into the theater. They'll do anything possible to get you into the theater— television ads, radio, anything— so that once you come in, you see the movie, then you go and tell your friends. That's where they make their money, right? They make their money on word of mouth, you know. And so, and in order to get word of mouth, get them into the theater the first time. But there's a rule. I used to write advertising. I worked in the advertising industry. It says the fastest way to kill a bad product is to promote it.

You know, Brian, that's funny that you say that because Dan talks about he got advice when he was speaking and Dan was much better at marketing than he was as a speaker. And one of the mentors, I think it was Kevin Robert, actually came up to him and said, "You better be careful that you're not so good at marketing because all you're going to do is let people know how bad you are to get out there." You're really good at marketing, you're not very good at delivering the speech, son. So you got to really work on that. So, Bryan, one of the things that you alluded to at the very, very top of the call, and I made a quick note of it because I wanted to get back to it, was you said social media is basically you're not really selling there. And so that really comes down to a time management thing. I think a lot of salespeople, a lot of business owners spend a lot of busy time thinking that they're working when they're actually not working.

How should a salesperson structure their day? Okay, here's the answer. This is something I just learned recently, is you have to— you have to ask, what, what is the purpose of, um, being in business? Why do you have your own business? What do you get up for? What's the reason? And the answer is what I call the 3 Ms: make more money. Now, now, how do you make more money in business? Well, you make sales. You sell stuff. So therefore, what should you be doing time you start in the morning. Well, the answer is first 90 minutes of the morning, do not check your email, do not check your cell phone or your messages. First 90 minutes you start off and you do nothing but value-added revenue generation activities. And then you take a 15-minute break and you come back and do 90 minutes more of value-added revenue generation activities. Everything else is irrelevant. If you're not doing those things, basically you're wasting your life, you're wasting your day, You're betraying your family who's relying on you, and you're betraying your own future. So what you do is you get up in the morning and you do things that make more money, that make sales. That's all you do. And if you wanted to take care of— then maybe 11 or 12 o'clock, check your email, and then that's it. And I have a friend who's very successful, self-made multimillionaire. When you send him an email, you get a bounce back and it says, thank you for your email. I check my email twice a day. Once at 11 AM, once at 4 PM. If you sent me an email between those times, I will get back to you when it's convenient for me. Meanwhile, I'm out making sales. How about you? Wow.

That is great. I think— because the other thing that I've read about the whole checking emails first thing in the morning is when you do that, you're handing over control of your day to someone else. Yes, you are, because you get caught up in it and you get focused on it. So is there some magic to the 90 minutes, Brian? Because you mentioned it twice, 90 minutes and a 15-minute break.

Yeah, well, 90 minutes, you need to take a break. It's sort of like physical exercise, and selling is very stressful. It's hard work. So therefore, give yourself a break. Get up, walk around, have a cup of coffee, go, you know, look at the sunrise or sunset or the horizon or something. So give yourself a break just like you would if you were working. Remember, your job is— first job is to make sales, your second job is to make sales, your third job is to make sales, and everything else is irrelevant. So a question I ask at the beginning of every sales seminar, well, almost at the beginning, I say, every minute of every day you ask yourself this question: is what I'm doing right now leading to a sale? I learned that when I was a young salesman, and I would repeat it over and over until it's just branded into my subconscious mind. If I'm doing something that's not making a sale, it's like I get a mental whack in the back of the head. Hey, that's not making a sale. Stop doing that. And people say, well, I'm making sales indirectly. I'm building relationships. No, no, you're not. You're just avoiding sales work because sales work is hard and there's a lot of rejection and failure involved. So I've got an answer for that, and I want to share it with you because it's— again, it saved my life when I was young. Okay, here it is. When I started off, I would knock on doors, and people say, well, you know, it's a numbers thing, numbers game. It's probabilities. The more doors you knock on, more people you call, more sales you'll make. Yes. And they say, and you know, you have to pay the price. The price is you have to get a lot of rejections before you get any acceptances. And so what people do is they developed this idea that rejection is a part of the territory. If you want to be successful, you have to bear it. You have to take it like lashes on the back, and it's just a price you have to pay. So people go out sort of with their back hunched, ready to take the lashes of rejection. That's right. Here's the insight. The insight is to change your thinking, is to reprogram your thinking. Instead of saying, I accept rejection as a price, what you say is, I I love it. I like to get rejection. The more rejection I can get, the more money I'll make. And so instead of being afraid of the word no, what you do is you collect nos. You just collect nos. How many nos can I get today? And what you find is there's a direct relationship— my favorite mathematical symbol is 1:1, ratio 1 to 1— direct relationship between how many nos you're willing to accept and how many yeses you will get. So one of the exercises I do is I say, imagine that I have a magic wand here, and I'll take out a silver pen, and I could wave it over the people in this audience, and I could give you this guarantee, is that 90% of the people that you call on are going to reject you, swear at you, slam down the phone, not respond to you, uh, tell you that your parents weren't married, um, and a whole bunch of other things. But 1 out of 10 will buy. Now, if I could give you this guarantee— it's wrapped up guarantee with a ribbon— and you had a guarantee that every 9 people you spoke to would say no in some way, but the 10th one would buy, what would you do differently? I'll ask any audiences, so what would you do differently? And you know what, they all answered the same thing. What would be your answer, Dave?

If you could wave the magic, what would my answer be? Yeah, I would see how many calls I could make.

I mean, you make that first night as fast as you could. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. Yeah, I call— I become like a calling machine. Many years ago, I was talking to a sales trainer for an insurance company, and he was— he would train new insurance agents. They got their license and so on, and then he would wrap up his talk, 5-day training, and he would say, now this is a numbers game, is if you will make 10 calls, you will get 2 prospects and 1 sale. And so your job is to go out and just keep making calls. And he said You mean I could make a— I could sell in the— in your first year, he said, you'll make $50,000. He said— so this young guy in the back said, you mean if I made one— if I could talk to 10 customers, I'll make one sale, and if I do that every day, I'll make $50,000 in my first year, which is a lot of money for him at that time, right? And he said— he said, yes, that's how it works. He said, well, sir, he said, what if I make 20 calls a day? That mean I'd make $100,000 in my first year? And he said, yes, yes, but don't— yeah, that is true. I mean, the numbers work, but, but, but just concentrate on 10. 10 is enough. Most people can't do more than 2 or 3. Mr. Teacher, he said, if I were to make 30 calls a day, could I make $150,000? He said, yes, yes, the numbers work, he said, but don't get your— how about if I made 40 calls a day? And he said, yes, yes, I said, but I don't want to talk about this anymore. Just concentrate on 10. And he got really sort of— he's a little pissed off. Because I had hung him up on his own petard, as they say. Right. So that sales guy went out and he became a calling machine. He made 40 calls a day, 5 days a week. First year he made $204,000 and broke every record. He became Rookie of the Year for his company. He was in the Million Dollar Roundtable the second year he was in business. He said he just found every single— he'd start early in the morning, he'd call when he stopped at a gas station, he'd prospect everybody working at the gas station, he'd prospect the waitresses in the restaurant. Talk to the person selling the tickets in the theater. He would knock on doors, starting— take the elevator to the top floor and knock on every door going down. He said he just was happy and cheerful. So this is what happened to me when I started off, is I made a decision because I found myself bracing for my first rejection, and then when I got it, I would be discouraged. But then I learned something, and it's called mental pre-programming. And in mental pre-programming, you can actually program yourself for the reaction that you want to have. So I decided that from now on, when I get rejected, I'm going to use it as a spur to greater effort. I'm going to use every rejection as a motivator to call on even more people. And I made that decision. I still remember making that decision. And the next day I went out and I, first thing in the morning, 8:30, knocking on doors. Person said, no, I'm not interested, don't want it, don't need it, can't use it, can't afford it. I say, thank you very much. I walked out and I had a smile as big as if I'd eaten a banana sideways. I was happy. And I went to the next place and they rejected me, and I was twice as happy. I went to the third place and I was laughing. And I still remember, I would be smiling and laughing and running from call to call, from door to door. And my sales just exploded. And I never feared making calls again. So you have to— those of you who are listening, you have to program yourself to look forward to getting as many nos as possible. Just collect as many nos as possible.

I love that saying, Brian, collect as many nos. I mean, that is, that's, it's, it's simple and it's brilliant though, because that's what you want to do.

How many nos can I get?

Because those are going to lead to the yeses. Uh, just, just, I love it.

I love it.

You know, one of the things that you, one of my favorite books and courses that I've ever taken, uh, is yours on goal setting.

Yeah.

And since we're talking about sales— and we're talking about numbers and everything like that. Let's talk just a little bit about goal setting. Then we're going to take questions from the folks. What type of goals should salespeople set? I mean, should it be just number of calls? I mean, and what is the proper goal setting procedure for a salesperson?

Well, it's interesting. I told you I'm just working on my new book on selling. I just did. It's a 12-chapter book. I do everything in 12 chapters. One of them is on goal setting. Professional sales planning. So what you do is this, and this is what I do when I interview a salesperson. I say, how much money do you want to earn? And I have to— I'm realistic. I know how much it's possible to earn selling my product or service. So I say, how much money do you want to earn? So let's say the person says, well, I want to earn $5,000 a month. I said, okay, that's— that is doable. That's— that's an achievable goal. You make a certain number of sales. And so what I would say to a salesperson is, how much money do you want to earn? How much money do you want to earn per year? How much do you want to earn per month? And then how much per week? How much per day? So $60,000 if you work 50 weeks, just for numbers, works out to $1,200 a week, works out to $240 a day. Divide $240 a day, works out to— divided by 8, uh, into 240 would be $30 an hour. $30, right. So therefore, if you want to make $60,000 a year, you want to make $30 an hour. Well, now there's only 3 things that pay $30 an hour in the sales profession or in the world of entrepreneurship, and those are prospecting, presenting, and closing. Finding new customers, telling them why your product or service is the best choice for them, all things considered, and asking them to buy. Now there's the 7 steps But the 3 core steps— so here's something very interesting: your weakest key skill sets the height of your income.

Well, let me repeat that. Your weakest key skill sets the height of your income.

The weakest key skill sets the height of your income. So if prospecting— if you're poor at prospecting, that will determine how much you earn. If you're poor at presenting, that will determine how much you earn. If you're poor at closing, that will determine how much you earn. If you're poor at getting referrals and resales, it'll, um determine how much you earn. So I always ask people at the beginning of a seminar to give themselves a grade of 1 to 10 on each of the 7 skills. But remember the 3 core skills. If you're not prospecting, presenting, and closing, you're not working. You're basically taking up space, but you're not working. Oh yes, but I'm on my Facebook and my LinkedIn. No, that's merely not— that's social networking. You can do that any time of the day or night, but during the day when there are customers to be seen The only thing you do is you prospect, present, and close. And your weakest skill sets the height of your income. So I have everybody give themselves a grade of 1 to 10, and I'm encouraging those of you listening, give yourself a grade of 1 to 10. So going back to your answer about goals, first of all, you set an income goal. This is how much I want to earn. Then the next question is, how much will I have to sell in order to earn that? And the more specific you can be, the more The greater clarity you have with regard to the numbers, the faster you will hit your numbers. So you say, well, I make $500 for every sale. And how many calls do you have to make to make a sale? Well, I have to have 20 calls to get 5 follow-ups to get 2 possibilities to make 1 sale, and I make $500 per sale. So that means you make $25 per call. You collect it when you make a sale. You get 19 nos, but you get $500 and you make a sale. So that means you have to make a certain number of calls in order to make a certain number of sales in order to make a certain amount per month and per year. Then you break your sales work down into sales activities. How many times will I have to phone in order to get how many appointments in order to get through to how many people? And just break it down because here's one of the great— one of the most important things I ever learned in business is that the outcomes are beyond your control. The person can buy or not buy based on 1,000 reasons, many of which you have no control over. But the activities that you engage in are totally under your control. And if you will indirectly control the activities, you will directly control your income.

Wow, fantastic. So I mean, it really comes down to math then. I mean, it's not magic. It's basically math, but it's also psychology. So Dan teaches that marketing is a combination of math and psychology. It sounds like selling is too, because you mentioned programming your mind so when you face that rejection you actually get a positive response for it. But then it comes down to, hey, here are the numbers, here's what I've got to do. If I do these things, I'm going to achieve the goal.

It's really quite simple. That's right. Rich DeVos once told me, he said, in life you have to do a lot of things that you don't really want to do so that you can do all the things that you really want to do. And so selling And I say to people, why is it that people are so uneasy, tense, nervous about selling? It's because they're not good at it yet. Once you're good at it, you have no nerves. And how do you become good at something? You just do it over and over again until the nerves stop. You just have no nerves about it. You just smile. Somebody says no, it doesn't bother you.

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