Secrets of Superstar Salespeople

Hello everybody. Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. Today we get to listen as Dave D and Steve Clark talk about sales. Now, whether you are a beginner or you are an advanced salesperson, this is going to be an excellent rule stick for you to be able to see where you lie, where you can grow, and understand some of the key mistakes that come with sales and how to upgrade your game. Now, Steve Clark is an author in his own right, but he's also a coauthor with Dan Kennedy on the book Secrets of Peak Performers. And they're not just talking about the things that are wrong with sales. And this, this is why sales education fails and how to be able to fix that. Obviously, we're going to talk about the myths and the lies about selling, the cardinal sins and mistakes, the first steps to getting better in sales, and what are the characteristics of superstar salespeople. See how you measure up as we discover the unvarnished truth about sales success and failure. Let's listen in.

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 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. This month we have the topic is the unvarnished truth about sales success and failure, what it really takes to become a high-income sales professional. And my guest is superstar salesperson, superstar marketer, Steve Clark. And when I say superstar, he actually is. He is the winner of the Marketer of the Year at the 2011 GKIC Super Conference. He's the founder of the New School Sales Selling, a business development consulting firm that provides sales training and consulting to small business owners, entrepreneurs, and sales professionals. Since 1980, Steve has sold pest control services, pots and pans, security systems, vitamins, laundry detergent, life and health insurance, annuities, mutual funds, and on and on and on and on. One of his proudest accomplishments is he's raised over $1 million for schools in Northwest Florida. He's also the author of Profitable Persuasion: Proven Strategies for Sales and Management Success and the soon-to-be-released Ultimate Book on Sales. He's a co-author with Dan Kennedy of Secrets of Peak Performers and The Ultimate Success Secret. And he's also a frequent national and international speaker whose income ranks in the top 3% of all sales and marketing professionals worldwide. In addition to all of that, as CEO, he's also— I didn't know this, Steve— you're also a licensed U.S. Coast Guard captain who sports fishes out of Florida. So Steve, I'm really excited to have you on the call and welcome.

Well, thank you, Dave. I'm glad to be here.

You know, so for years and years and years, sales trainers have, you know, been traveling around the country, Steve, and they're pitching different— using gimmicks and things like that and pseudo-psychological tactics and all that kind of stuff. And there's been thousands and thousands of books written on selling. But the truth is that, as you and I both know, that all all of these efforts put together, um, have not prevented mass failure from those entering the world of selling, right? I mean, there's— selling is a great profession if you know how to do it, not a great profession, uh, if you don't know how to do it. So you really boil it down into a system, uh, that you can really teach to anybody, and that you do teach, and that people get real-world results with. One of the things I'd like— I want to talk to you about before actually get into the questions, Steve, is a little bit about your background, because you've been selling forever. And I noticed that one of the things that you said there were pots and pans. So tell me a little bit of how you got started in selling.

Well, my first experience selling was selling as a response to an ad in Boys' Life magazine when I was 13 years old for flower seeds and greeting cards. And you would sell so many of those and you would win a prize. So being a Boy Scout, I was Got Boys' Life, and I looked in the back there and got those things and decided I wanted to win some of those prizes. So I clipped out the coupon, sent it in, and I was on my way to selling. And that's when I got my indoctrination into door-to-door selling at the age of 13. And, you know, from there I just went on to sell various kinds of things. In my junior class, I sold more candy bars than anybody in our junior class of 252 people. Then I went on to college and kind of got away from the whole thing of selling and worked in education for a number of years. Then I got into the professional selling business in November of 1980 and went to work for Orkin Pest Control and started selling pest control services. One day I walked into a life insurance office and sold them a pest control job, and they offered me 3 times more money than I was making to start selling life insurance, so that was an easy decision. I did that for 8 years, and then from there I worked for a private company out of Nashville covering an 8-county area in Florida doing fundraising for schools, and that's where I raised that million dollars in that 8.5-year period of time. After all of that, I decided that I was tired of making money for somebody else. I would hang out my own shingle and get into business for myself. At the age of 45 with zero clients and zero income, I plunged into the world of sales training and consulting and started the business 16 years ago and have been doing that ever since.

Wow. You know, one of the things that's really cool, and I've seen this and I'm sure you have, when Dan does a seminar, he'll often ask how many people were involved in door-to-door selling or selling in person. Almost all of the successful people at some point told basically your story, right? They've all been involved in selling. So one of the questions I want to ask you is, there's a lot of— we have so many different types of members, and I think selling has got a bad connotation to a lot of members, particularly a lot of members who are professional services providers such as doctors and lawyers and those type of folks. You know, they don't feel that they should have to sell. That is kind of maybe beneath them. How would— what would you say to those folks who've got that type of feeling?

I would say to them that their professional training that they got in college to be a service provider misled them and did not square with them on the fact that as good as they were at what they did, that they were going to have to learn how to sell their services to other people.. And that just hanging out a shingle and being good at what you do is not enough. You can survive that way, but you cannot thrive unless you embrace the concept that you are first of all in sales and marketing. And just being a good attorney or being a good dentist is not enough. That, that's your ticket to be in business, but the real success comes when people not only accept but embrace the fact that they're good at sales or that they need to be good at sales and marketing. Accept it and don't resent it. Then embrace it and go to work to be as good as they can at sales and marketing.

The truth is also, Steve, that selling is one of the most noble professions that there is. I think people think of selling as the used car salesman in the plaid jacket, right? The fast-talking guy. You and I both know that isn't true. Isn't the truth. So let's talk about— I've got some questions for you. You said that sales training does not work, and yet you're a sales trainer. So clarify that for me.

Well, there are a couple reasons for that. One is who is involved in sales training, and the other is the way sales training is conducted. Let me touch on the part of the who first. If you are a business owner, if you are an attorney, if you are a dentist, whether you have the natural psychological and emotional skill sets to be an outstanding salesman or not, if you're going to be successful, you still have to sell. However, there are folks who are more predisposed and able to benefit from sales training more than others. So on the one hand, If you put the wrong person in sales training, there's going to be limited success. And I equate that to the idea of taking an offensive lineman who weighs 260 pounds and trying to make him into a wide receiver. Even with all the best coaching in the world and all the motivation and all the practice, there's still going to be limited success if you take that person and try to make them into something they're not. So yes. On the one hand, if you own your own business or you are a service provider, you must engage in some sort of training process to get better. If you're a business owner and you have salespeople, you have an option of only hiring and recruiting people who do have the talents that can be developed into superstar salespeople. So part of the failure in sales training en masse is that we have a lot of people that are in sales that really should not be in sales. In fact, Herb Greenberg has written a book. He's the co-developer of a testing company called Caliper, and he's written a book in which he says, you know, 55% of the people who are in sales should not be in sales at all. They don't have the emotional psychological skill set to ever be really outstanding. And then 25% of the people who are in sales are misfits. Cast their square peg in a round hole selling a tangible when they're more suited to sell an intangible or inside sales where they'd be more suited to do well in outside sales. So part of it is the who that's in sales. The other part is how the sales is conducted, the sales training is conducted. And everybody wants the quick fix. Everybody wants to go to the seminar and learn how to sell. And one of the most famous sales trainers of all time, a guy named David Sandler, wrote a book entitled "You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike" at a seminar, which is a great title. And you think about it, the only way you learn to ride a bicycle is at the age of 6 you get on that thing and you fall off of it dozens of times and you finally get the hang of it, and then you run into a ditch after 10 yards or hit a telephone pole or whatever, and you get a lot of bumps and bruises and scrapes, but you keep on trying and you keep on trying and you keep on trying. Until you finally get the hang of it. Well, selling is the same way. You can't send somebody to a seminar or give them a book or an audio CD series or a set of videos and plop them in a room and let them go through it once or twice and think they're going to be very good at it. There needs to be ongoing reinforcement virtually every day that a person is in the sales profession. They need to be practicing their skill And if they're not practicing their skill to get better, there's a regression backwards. So most sales training fails because it doesn't provide the kind of reinforcement that is necessary. And if someone does have salespeople, another reason it fails is there's no accountability by the people who send folks to sales training. There's no accountability. There's no reinforcement. There's no ongoing role-playing back at the home office, so to speak. And it's all left on the shoulders of send these people to the seminar, give them 3 days of shot in the arm, rah-rah, and they'll come back and they'll be superstars. That's, you know, that's incredibly naive and doesn't work at all.

Absolutely. So let's talk about some of the things that are taught, that have been taught for years, that many people just accept as reality and truth because they've been taught for years and over and over again. Let's talk about some of those that are really myths and they're lies about sales and sales training.

Well, we kind of touched on that a second ago, that anyone can be trained to sell. To a certain extent, that's true. Anyone can be taught to do better, but not everybody can be taught to become a superstar. Another one is people confuse motivation training with sales training. True sales training is really about blocking and tackling and getting down and practicing scripts, rehearsing scripts, role-playing. And, you know, at least half of all sales training that is successful incorporates a heavy dose of role-playing. Most sales training is camouflaged under the idea of motivation training. Motivation training, there is a neurological thing that happens when someone is all emotionally jacked up and the endorphins kick up. They last about 8 hours. Everybody's real excited about it, but after that it wears off. Well, that motivation training lasts about the same amount of time, so there's no permanent change just from motivation training. I think motivation is great if it's a byproduct of fundamental skill training and what I call drilling for skills. So that's a myth about let's send people to get them motivated and that really constitutes our sales training. So I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about what is and what is not sales training. I think another concept is it's learning to sell is easy. Folks think that anybody that has a gift of gab that's an extrovert can be taught to sell. Not true at all. I've done a lot of things in my life, and I would say that learning to sell is probably as hard a thing as I've ever done to be really good at it. It ranks right up there with learning to be a great copywriter or other skills that folks that are members are taught and learn about. So it's not easy. It requires a significant amount of effort. Another myth or lie is that extroverts are natural-born salespeople. Not really true because extroverts like to talk. Their natural tendency is to want to talk. I remind people all the time that they have two ears and one mouth, and that's a pretty good ratio that they should keep in mind when they're selling. And the reality is that the introvert really has the natural advantage because the introvert really has learned and through their natural personality tend to be better listeners, and selling is really about listening more than it is about talking. So that's another big myth is that extroverts are natural. And I think another big myth is that all sales training is pretty much the same. If you've seen one, you've seen them all. And I see this from folks all the time. I've been to a sales training program. I went to that. I went to this program or that program or I bought these CDs. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, know all about sales training. And that's really not true. If you dig down and look at it and really get pretty granular about sales training, you'll find that there's big differences between what folks teach in sales training. So again, that would be— that's a myth. That everything is all the same. If everybody thinks you're all the same, then it's like, you know, I don't have to get any more of it because I've already been there.

Right, exactly. Going back to your comment about most sales training is really motivation is brilliant. Jim Rohn, the late great Jim Rohn, had a wonderful saying. He said, "Motivation is not enough. If you take an idiot and you motivate them, you end up with a motivated idiot." Motivation isn't enough. You actually do need to have the skills and practice the skills. Like you said, drill and rehearse and constantly get out there in the field and really do it. Sales training is not something, like you said, that you do one time. It's like going to the gym. You don't expect to go to the gym one time or go to the gym for 3 days and be in great shape. For the rest of your life. That's just not how it works. So it's the same thing with sales training. So let's talk about some— go ahead, Steve.

I had someone say to me on that point, a client said to me, and the sales training that I'm doing, you know, it's a weekly kind of thing. And I had a salesperson say to me one day, and had been coming to class for, I don't know, well over a year, he said, "When do I have to quit? When can I quit coming to these classes?" I said, "When you you've learned it all and you don't need to know anymore or don't need to get any better, then I guess you can quit. And you be the judge of that. He said, well, I had—

I'm not there yet.

I have to— I think I have to keep coming. And I think, you know, that was a smart response.

Absolutely, absolutely. Let me ask you this. Do you— I mean, you kind of touched upon this, but let's say that I'm not a natural-born salesperson, and there probably isn't a natural-born salesperson, but— but can anyone be taught? So let's say I am, you know, I just got my degree and I'm hanging out my shingle. Can anyone be taught to be a good salesperson?

I think with proper motivation and practice and coaching, just about anyone can become competent. It may take them a little bit longer. It may be a little bit harder for them. But, you know, selling is an acquired skill. We were all born upside down and naked. Nobody comes out with any natural advantage necessarily. But yes, the answer, the short answer is yes. Now, how they have to do that is they have to sit down and I would suggest they get competent coaching from someone who can help them develop the proper scripts help them deal with situations, scenarios, and literally write out, script out scenarios of when this happens, this is the response that I have, this is the response I should have when they ask me this, this should be the way I answer that question, and so forth and so on. And if they will put forth the effort, they can greatly improve their skills, which will greatly improve their results. And I'll give you an example of how I did that one early on. You know, if you think about all the questions you get in sales or all the objections you get in sales, they're the same things over and over again, pretty much said in maybe a slightly different way by different people. So what I did is I started— I got me a set of 4x6 index cards, and I began to write down what they said to me on a sales call. I would come out of a sales call and I would write down the question somebody asked that I didn't particularly handle very well, or the objection they posed that I didn't do a good job of dealing with. And I would come out of there and I would write that on a 4x6 card, and then I would turn the card over and I would write out what my response would be to that the next time that I heard that. And I began to collect a series of these cards, a stack of these these cards, and I began to refine my answers. And I actually punched a hole in those cards and went to the hardware store and got me a key ring and put them on a key ring and carried them in the front seat of my car. And as I was driving around, I would look at those cards, or stop at a stop sign and look at those cards over and over and over again, just like I did when I learned multiplication tables in the third grade using flashcards.. And I got so good at that that there wasn't anything somebody could ask me. I was like, just ask me a question. Just state an objection because I'm going to eat your lunch because I know my answers better than you know yours. And that's really how somebody has to get. And not only do you develop the competency doing that, you develop tremendous confidence. And of course, that's what people are really buying from the salesperson is their confidence.

Absolutely. So what are some big mistakes, or as you like to call them, cardinal sins that salespeople make that really hurts them out there?

Well, the biggest one is they talk too much. Most salespeople want to tell you what they do and how they do it and how long they've been doing it and who they do it with and so forth and so on. I call it vomiting on the prospect. So the big mistake is they talk too much. To go along with that is they don't ask enough questions, particularly powerful, penetrating questions that get to the heart of the matter of what is your issue and how is that impacting you? How long have you had that issue? And most importantly, what happens if you don't resolve that issue? So that is a huge mistake. That's a huge mistake that they make. Another one, and this is a cultural, societal type thing, is most people are uncomfortable talking about money. Most salespeople, if you think about it, when do they bring up money in the conversation? Early or late? Usually the salesperson doesn't bring up money first. It's usually the prospect who brings up the money issue.. So most salespeople will wait until they're asked about the money and then they will stumble and fumble over the whole money issue because they are really uncomfortable talking about money. And that has to do with the fact that most of us were taught in Western society that it was rude to talk about money. And particularly asking people how much something costs or how much money they make or so forth. And now we get in sales and we have to ask people those questions very directly. And if we're nervous about it or we're anxious about it or we're hesitant about it, then it comes across as we're unsure, and the prospect doesn't understand that we have a psychological issue we're trying to deal with. They just interpret it as, I can't trust this person. So that's a huge one. I tell people all the time, if you have that issue, then, then start going to restaurants in which they don't have prices on the menu and just ordering and getting comfortable with this whole concept of money. But that is a huge issue. Another big issue, another cardinal sin that salespeople have is not gaining clarity on a call. In other words, there's no agenda. When you think about it, have you ever had a salesperson show up to you and talk to you with a written agenda? No. Okay. Now a sales call is nothing more than a meeting of two business people, two or more business people together. Well, every good business meeting has an agenda, does it not? Correct, absolutely. All parties know what's going to be talked about ahead of time, in what order they're going to be talked about, and most importantly, what is going to happen at the end of that meeting in terms of next step, if there is in fact a next step. So salespeople just show up and throw up. They don't have an agenda. The prospect doesn't know what's going on. So one of the huge mistakes is not having that agenda. And having what I call a clear agenda with folks and then going through that agenda and then on the back end setting another agenda for a future discussion if in fact there's going to be another discussion. And if there is going to be another discussion, we need to know what we're going to talk about, who's going to be there, how long the meeting's going to be, and most importantly, what decisions are we going to make at the end of that next meeting. So if it's done properly, salespeople just have a series of small agreements all along the way, and at the very end there's no big close.

Absolutely, you're 100% right. And the other thing that, Steve, that the agenda does when you have that, you show— you're showing respect for your prospect, and in turn your prospect's saying, this guy's a professional, this guy has prepared. And so it builds the trust Right away, and also it sets you apart from 99.999% of every other salesperson. As you and I both know, trust is a critical component in closing the sale. It's one of the biggest things. Your agenda idea is just amazing. Let's say I'm just—

Go ahead. Yeah, absolutely. I can't tell you how many times I've had clients of mine use that. That's something I can teach somebody to do in 1 hour. I can teach them that concept in 1 hour. Give them the sheet, I give them the agenda and say, "Put your letterhead on it and use it. S&D, use the agenda." I can't tell you how many times I've had clients go out and report back to me the next week that they used it. I can't believe how impressed my client was. My client said something, my prospect said something like, "Boy, you're really prepared for this call." I said, "Well, you know, what we're talking about here is if you want to differentiate yourself in the marketplace, one of the chief ways you can differentiate yourself, because it's hard to differentiate from a product standpoint, but one of the ways you can really differentiate yourself is the process you use to sell. And this is part of that process." So your point's well taken.

It's a huge differentiator. Absolutely. So let's just say I'm just Okay, I have never taken any sales training before. I'm in business for myself. I mean, I'm not a— I don't consider myself, quote, a salesperson. So I have my own business regardless of what it is. But I get this, I'm listening to you. Yep, I have to learn how to sell. It gives me unbelievable leverage because what I'd like to say is, you know, selling gives you like the greatest leverage because you can instantly increase your income without spending a penny more on marketing if you just learn how to sell better.. But let's just say I'm getting started. I know I need to do this. What are some of the first things that I should do to start learning, to start getting better?

I think to sit down and if you go back to Dan's Ultimate Marketing Letter and you look in there where he talks about what keeps people up at night. What issues do they have? What concerns do they have? What's causing acid to bubble up in their esophagus at night? And really get in tune with what are the issues people are having that my product or service would solve. And then begin to focus a set of questions on— that would uncover those kinds of things when you talk to someone and then when you have discussion with someone, just work from a set of pre-prepared questions, just like a physician does when they're doing an exam. Everything's written down, nothing's left to chance. And I tell people all the time, it's okay to have your written list of questions when you're talking with someone and let them know, let the prospect know, hey, I've got some questions to ask you, they're so important I wrote them down, and really begin to ask questions and let the conversation flow from there. And as you uncover questions, as you ask people questions that are emotional in nature and that are personal and that reveal issues they have, what you're actually doing is you're bonding with that person much like a psychologist is doing with a patient. And that creates tremendous trust and you just ask those questions. The conversation flow as it may, and then at some point, simple as it may be, you transition to asking, is that something you'd like for me to help you fix? So it could be— that's an oversimplification, but that would be something somebody could do right away is sit down and start formulating a list of questions that they could ask to uncover what is this person's—

or what are this person's issues. I think that's a great place to start. Start. Again, just to review what you just said because it was really important. You said go to Dan's book, The Ultimate Sales Letter. He's got questions in there which you would— and by the way, copywriting is nothing but salesmanship in print, so it's basically the same thing except you don't have the interaction with the person when you write a piece of copy. He's got a list of questions in there. Start at those as a starting point. I love that you said write them down so you don't have to worry about it. I think, Steve, a lot of sales training at least once, you know, I've been taking sales training forever. A lot of it's like you're almost trying to trick the prospect, right? You know, it's got that kind of feel like we're trying to be tricky. We're using these tricky closes, and it's not like that in the real world. That's not what professionals do. And so it's fine to have your list and just say, "Hey, these questions, I love what you said. These questions are so important that I've written them down." And again, it shows that you're prepared, and it takes away all of the pressure from you to having to memorize them. All you're doing really is you're just talking to the person and finding out what their needs are. You're not trying to trick them into buying something that they don't need, correct?

That is correct. One of the other things I think along those lines is to accept that it's okay that not everybody needs what you're selling. There may not be a need, and you're not there to try and foist your stuff onto people. You're really there to help people and find out if they have a need for what you're selling. If they can afford what you're selling and if they have a sense of urgency to want to do something about the particular issue they may have.

So relax.

I just tell people all the time, breathe. It's okay to breathe on a sales call.

Relax and let it happen. Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the things that you talk about is that selling's changed. And you have a specific date that you talk about. You say that selling's changed since 2008.

Why 2008, and how has it changed? Well, you go back in history, and you alluded to the fact that I've been selling for a period of time, quite a bit of period of time, actually since 1980. You know, 2008, we had a tremendous meltdown in the marketplace, and everybody was in a sense of panic, and the stock market went way down, and, you know, we had a whole bunch of problems. Problems and the housing bubble occurred and unemployment started to rise and so forth and so on. And so before that time period, there was a lot of money in the marketplace with people basically using their homes as ATMs and buying all kinds of stuff that they could not afford. And when that bubble burst, all of a sudden the excess money that people had had access to went away. And not only that, there's some panic and fear that set in in people. And when people are in panic and fear, they tend to withdraw into a cave and hide and not venture out, and particularly not want to invest or spend any money. And they start deciding, well, maybe I would like to have this new big screen, but I don't really I don't really need one, so I think I'll make do with what I have. And that sort of mindset has permeated across the landscape of every industry and every product category. And people are watching their nickels and dimes a lot more now. They're much more discerning in their willingness to invest. And the bottom line is it has become harder to extract money from the market place post-2008 than it was prior to 2008. The 20-plus years that I sold prior to 2008 was easier than it has been for 2008. And even in my business, it is more difficult. I'm still able to do it and do it successfully, but it requires me to be better at what I do. It requires me to go back to basics and make sure that I'm covering the fundamentals And even though I teach all this stuff, I go back, interestingly enough, Dave, I go back and listen to some of my own training to go back and refresh myself to keep myself fundamentally grounded because I just flat out have to be better than I was a few years ago in order to grow my income.

Absolutely. So, you know, you talked about, it's been a thread that's been running through this interview, is, you know,— things that salespeople do wrong, miss, like they've got to be a fast talker, but rather they've got to be a good listener. So that's a characteristic of a superstar salesperson. What are some other characteristics that someone can develop to become a superstar salesperson?

Well, they— I think that the single most important one is personal accountability. Someone must be willing to accept the fact that the results that they get in their life is 100% of their own doing. You are where you are and who you are in life because of the stuff you've either done that you shouldn't have done, or the stuff that you didn't do that you should have done. So it's a behavioral thing. You have to accept responsibility that I've not— you know, I tell people all the time, from a health standpoint, I've never accidentally eaten a cheeseburger in my life. So everything is behavioral. I have to accept the fact that where I am is because of what I did. Now, once I accept that and I don't make excuses for it or externalize or blame the economy or my parents or, you know, whatever— once I'm willing to do that, and that's a huge thing, by the way, in this society, is to accept 100% 100% responsibility for one's own station in life. Once I do that, then there's hope for me. If I don't do that, if I have not adopted that and I tend to be one who makes excuses, then I will externalize all of the failure I have in life, particularly from a sales standpoint. I'll blame the economy. I'll blame my lowball competitors for buying the business. I'll blame the prospects. I'll call them stupid. They don't understand. And on and on and on, which means there's no hope for me because I've not identified the problem, which is me. So that's number one. Secondly, if a person does that, they've got to be a self-starter. They can't have somebody come wake them up every morning and get them out there and go to work. And then they have to be very resilient. You know, selling— there's more failure than there is success in selling. You will call up many more people and talk to many more people who don't buy from you than do buy from you. And in fact, at any given time, no matter who it is and what you sell, there's a small percentage of the market that is ready to buy today, probably down in the single digits. So there's going to be a lot more experience that you're going to come away not making a sale than having made a sale or certainly having called on people who aren't ready to by. So there's got to be great resiliency, and that one is huge. If you're the kind of person that gets sidetracked, if you internalize disappointment and it takes you 3 weeks to get over that, and you go to the curb and suck your thumb and feel sorry for yourself, then there really isn't any hope. You got to get back up. When you get knocked down 9 times, you got to get back up. Dust yourself off and get back in the race. And the shortest period of time between discouragement and the next call is going to be huge. And, you know, a lot of folks, you know, a lot of folks are easily discouraged. It doesn't take too much to discourage people. So those listening to this, realize if you'll just make another call, if you'll just hang in there and make one more phone call, talk to one more person, person, you will be far ahead of your competitors because they've already gone home. You know, they checked out and they went to Holiday Inn at 3 o'clock. They're still not working. They're over there at happy hour at 3. If you just keep working, you've got an advantage over them.

So let me ask you this. Let me just interrupt you there because I want to get a little bit more clarity on this. Okay, so basically you're talking about, you know, handling rejection. What are— and I understand the concept, but how would someone— how does someone go about— are there any techniques, strategies, things that you teach that help to do this? Because we could say be resilient, but how do you become resilient?

Well, I think have realistic expectations is a start. Just realize when I got in sales, I thought everybody was going to be glad to see me. I thought I had a great thing and people would welcome me with open arms. And after I got a few doors slammed in my face, I realized that not everybody was excited about what I do as I am. So I think that's realistic. It's just like direct mail. You realize that not everybody's going to respond. In fact, a small percentage is going to respond. So having that realistic expectation and then trying to separate seperate what it is you do from who you are in terms of not taking things personally. Now, easier said than done, but I think if you can compartmentalize, if you can practice this personal discipline of compartmentalizing what you do and realizing that just because someone doesn't take you up on your invitation to buy your product doesn't mean they don't like you or that you are a bad person. And I think, you know, we have a lot of folks have great difficulty with separating those two. So I think just understanding that and being reminded of that is helpful. Now, this sounds self-serving and it is, but it's also true. People who come to me week after week and they come to our training and they get to lick their wounds and tell their stories, about what happened to them, and they get encouragement from everyone else who says, hey, happened to me too, no big deal, we're all in the same boat here. And if you're involved in some environment like that where you're getting group support, it's almost like group therapy for salespeople. It is helpful. I actually had a CPA say that to me one day. He said, I thought I was getting involved in sales training, not group therapy. And I said, well, what's the difference? He said, I guess any group Really. So it really is helping people weekly, letting them know that it's okay, it happens to everybody, and you know, let's just keep moving.

So give us a couple more, or you know, we're running up against the clock here, but give us a couple more characteristics of top salespeople because that was just brilliant what you just talked about.

Well, certainly self-confidence. Is up there. In fact, if you're looking to hire someone, I tell people all the time, give me a guy who played quarterback in high school and who was successful, and I'll give you a really good salesperson.

Hmm.

Someone who has that, what I call quarterback swagger. Or if they played middle linebacker and they like to hit people, that kind of works too. They just have that self-confidence, you know, the So that is a huge personal characteristic. It can be taught, but it's very hard to teach that. You'd much rather have that going in. So that would be one. The— what I call a utilitarian— it's not necessarily what I call, it's what's called in the industry as a utilitarian attitude, meaning a motivation The motivation to make money. Every top performer that I've ever met was motivated to make money. Now they may not have been motivated to make money for money's sake, but money is the way in which you keep score in sales and in business in terms of how well you're doing. And whether you want to give it all away or spend it on yachts this is irrelevant, but that is the way in which you keep score. All the awards are based on that. All the accolades are based on that. Inc. 500 list is based on that and growth and so forth and so on. So if you— if you're not motivated to make money and money is not important to you, then it's going to be awfully hard to get yourself motivated to go do what you need to do in order to become a good salesperson. And I tell folks all the time, if you're happy with your income and you are only looking to grow incrementally, then this may not be for you. It's only for the people who significantly want to grow their income and get better. And that's an internal motivation. And folks either have it or they don't have it, certainly in varying degrees.

Steve, I want to thank you so much for joining us on this this gold CD.

It was fantastic.

Thanks, Dave.

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