The Small Book From the 1930’s That Reminded Me Why I Love Selling | #Sales - Ep. 85

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Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com/podcast. That's sellingonline.com/podcast. This is The Russell Brunson Show. I'm going to show you one thing I found cool in this book as I was leafing through initially. Here here in the middle, there it is. The shading from the paper like bled into the actual page. You can see it's been here for, who knows, 70, 80 years. It's interesting 'cause there's actually a sales principle here that I don't know whoever owned this book cut it out and plugged it in here. And this is a principle that has been super powerful for me as I learned sales. What's up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome back to the vault. Today I'm gonna share with you guys a book I'm a little embarrassed this book only cost me $20.10, but that's okay. You can still find gems in the cheap books as long as they're written before 1940. So this is a book written in 1930 called The Romance of Selling. And I bought this book and I love this book because for some reason in the world as a whole, selling is looked down upon. I remember as a kid growing up and going to college and going to school and people were like, what are you gonna be when you grow up? And people go, I'm gonna be a doctor, I'm gonna be a dentist, I'm gonna be whatever. And it was always fascinating to me because I never heard someone bragging about, I wanna be a salesman, I wanna get into sales, right? That was never a thing people cared about. And then fast forward when I got into business and I started learning like how to make money, I realized there are different skill sets. I had to learn marketing, then I had to learn how to sell. And I started realizing that all the people I met who were extremely wealthy, extremely successful, like the one common thing that all these people were really, really good at is they all knew how to sell. And I started realizing that like the person in the room that makes the most amount of money is never the technician, right? There's this concept people have like, I'm gonna go to school and typically teach you how to be a technician, teach you how to be a doctor or a dentist or a teacher or whatever the thing is, right? But in any business, like, the person that makes the most amount of money is the rainmaker. It's the person who makes the money, who makes the sales, right? That's the person who makes the most amount of money. In fact, I always talk about in, if you look at any business, right, there's a couple different pieces, like key players that are involved, right? There is the entrepreneur starts a business, right? And that's the person who puts in the risk. And so that's the person who has like the big ups big downs, right? But they don't have a ceiling on their income. Then you have the technicians who do the actual, the thing, right? They're the person that they're teaching or they're drilling the teeth or they're whatever, the chiropractor, the, like they're the technician who does the thing, right? And they're usually, they don't have the risk. They have the skillset, but because they don't have the risk, there's always like a ceiling on their earning potential, right? And then again, the last person in the business is the rainmaker. It's the person who actually makes the money., right? And that person typically doesn't have a degree. There's not typically— you don't go to school to get a degree in selling, um, you know. And but that's the person who doesn't typically have a ceiling on their— on how much money they can make, right? There's no ceiling because the more they sell, the more money they can make. And so for me, it's like you've either got to be the entrepreneur in business because you have no— like, you have unlimited upside, uh, or you've got to become the salesperson. And a lot of times the salesperson, the entrepreneur, is the same, the same person. But For me, like, when you think about selling and the romance of selling, it is the thing that moves the business, the thing that produces the revenue, it's the thing that makes the doctor actually, like, useful. It's the thing that makes the dentist, makes the person with the skill set actually useful because if nobody shows up and gives that person money, then nobody gets paid. And so it's actually the most important part of every single business is the selling. And so I think about the romance of selling, I want people thinking more about that and like not looking down upon sales or sales positions or anything, but understanding like it is the key. It is the most important part of the equation. So if you want to learn how to do anything, you got to learn how to be great at sales. I'm going to show you one thing I found cool in this book as I was, uh, leafing through initially. Here in the middle, there was like this little bookmark. If I can find it again— there it is. Now I learned sales differently than most people, right? Most people, if they're doing sales, they learned on the phone or maybe they went door to door or they, you know, whatever, they sold cars at a car dealership, things like that. My first version of selling that I learned was different. So I went on a mission for my church for 2 years and I went to New Jersey and for 2 years I was knocking on doors, literally selling religion, which of all the things you can possibly sell, I think is the hardest sell. Like my sales pitch on the door, approach was, you know, we talk to someone like, hey, this is our offer. Like, I need you to give up alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, all premarital and extramarital sex, and 10% of your income for the rest of your life. In exchange, you may get salvation if you don't mess it up. Like, that was our sales pitch. That was like what I learned going door to door for 2 years. It was hard, like knocking on doors and getting rejected, door slammed in your face. I had people like siccing dogs on us. We had like, uh, like all sorts of chaos and craziness. But one of the things I learned through the process, which literally is crazy because it's the message from this little piece of paper— I'll read it first and I'll explain it. He says, nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm. So it's the real allegory in the tale of Orpheus, which I don't know that story, but it says it moves stones and charms brutes. It is the genius of science and truth accomplishes no victories without it. So it says the power and contagious is enthusiasm. It's one thing that I learned is like when I would go and knock on somebody's door and I'm trying to share my faith and my belief with people, when I was scared and nervous, other people just shut me down, right? But when I had enthusiasm at what I was sharing, like this is the most exciting thing in the world, and I started getting into it, I got excited, and I would meet somebody, it would shift everything, like the enthusiasm I would walk in the door with, right? When I came to some enthusiastic, hey you guys, what's going on? Like we've got the most exciting message in the entire world. Like then people listened, they started paying attention. And I remember when I got back into, you know, got home from my mission, and then I had a chance to like starting my business, things like that. Again, I was very shy and awkward, and I remember having my first opportunity to actually sell something at an event, right? I'd been selling things online through email, wasn't me ever talking, it was just like sending out emails and that's how sales were made, right? And I got invited to speak at an event and I'd been to an event before and I saw people selling from stage. And you know, these people on stage were very charismatic and at the time I wasn't, I was nervous, I didn't know how to do these things. And I would watch 'em and I would like, what were the people that like inspired me to want to go run to the back, right? And I started paying attention to that. And I would notice that the people that were having the most success, people I connected with, like they had, they had enthusiasm, they had excitement, they had more charisma. I remember if you look at the early videos of me, like I look, my first couple times on stage I'm wearing a tie, I had a shaved head, and like my eyes look like half asleep, like I'm tired, I'm talking like this. And I was like, I realized like, I just, I felt tired, I looked tired, I was like I'm not engaging people. And somewhere along the line, I thought it'd be really smart for me to create my very first infomercial. And by the way, it was one of the biggest mistakes in my business, I lost a whole bunch of money, didn't sell a single product in the infomercial, creating the infomercial and I remember we went on set and I had a co-host on the infomercial and this guy was like, you could tell he was a co-host for a lot of infomercials. He had tons of energy, he was talking over the top and I was so embarrassed. I was like, this guy is going crazy. And then he would do his whole thing and I would deliver my line. And I remember he'd cut, he's like, no, no, you need more energy. So I'm like, okay. So he'd do his whole thing and then he'd cut to me and I'd be like, da da da da, right? I'd do my line. And he was like, he cut again, he's like, Russell, you have to understand. He's like, if you're on TV and your energy and your enthusiasm is at this level right here, you sound normal. He's like, if you come in normal, you're gonna sound boring and half asleep. Anyway, super awkward. And so we try again, and then he would do the whole thing, and I'd come in and try to be like as much energy, enthusiasm as I had. And I remember one time he's like, he's like, don't you believe in your product? He's like, you've sold me on the product. Like, like, study— like, I'm more excited about this than you are. Like, where's your enthusiasm? I'm like, I don't know, I just feel uncomfortable. And so anyway, all said and done, we filmed the infomercial. I do my version of it. I'm trying to talk as excited as I could, but you know, with the constraints of me feeling stupid. And then when the infomercial came out and we watched it, it was crazy, 'cause sure enough, just like he said, when you watched it, he seemed normal and I seemed half asleep. And the infomercial bombed, it didn't make a single sale, but it was a powerful lesson I learned. And so I remember when social media came about and I first started doing social media, I realized, I remember that lesson he kept saying. He's like, if you talk normal without enthusiasm, you're gonna sound boring. On TV, but if you come in with a lot of energy, you're gonna sound normal. And so when I started doing social media, first times I'd go live on Periscope back then, I was like, what's up, this is Russell Brunson, and I started at that level, and then people watched it and it sounds normal. And it's funny to me to this day because I still get people who, every time they see me, they're like, Russell, how do you have so much energy? I'm like, what are you talking about? Every time I see you, you got so much energy. I'm like, oh, well the reason why is 'cause the only time you ever see me is when I'm about to go live on TV, right? I'm clicking live on Facebook, I'm going live on a webinar or something,, but when I show up, I show up with enthusiasm. It's one of the most important things of selling. If you don't show up with that level of enthusiasm, if you're not excited about the product, nobody else is gonna be excited. You have to bring that excitement, that energy to it, right? You're bringing a product, you could be bringing a book, like, hey, you should buy this book, it's awesome, versus like, this book is insane. If you wanna learn how to sell, and like, that level of enthusiasm gets people to actually desire the thing you want, right? People desire more energy in their life. They're trying to get energy from caffeine, from coffee, from parties, from like, they're craving that, right? Everyone wants to be this different vibe. They're trying to raise up that level. And so when you're the person who comes in with the enthusiasm, the excitement, right, they wanna plug into that. There's a sales concept that's really powerful when you're doing group selling, right? If you're doing even small groups, whatever, but the concept is this. The person in any room who has the most certainty always wins, right? Everyone comes in this room and everyone's looking like, who's got the most certainty? Whoever's willing to step up into that, right, have the most certainty, everyone else is like, that's the leader, and they're gonna plug in that person, right? So if I'm speaking at an event, I have to come in with more certainty than the other speaker, I have to come in with more certainty than the audience members. The person with the most certainty wins in a situation, right? And so if I'm going into a selling situation, I have to understand that. So it's enthusiasm, it's certainty, like those things will clean up so many of the other sales things. If you're not as good at creating the offer or whatever, but you come in with certainty and enthusiasm, People are looking for people to plug into. Jay Abraham once said that people are silently begging to be led. He said they're walking around with like a cord on their umbilical cord looking for somebody to plug into. And so if you wanna be a leader, if you wanna be successful in selling, you've gotta be the person who comes in with those things, 'cause that's what's gonna get people to want to plug into you. And that's how you win, that's how you sell, that's how you get people to buy into the products and services that you are promoting and that you're selling. Now if all you salespeople out there want to get my notes on this book, The Romance of Selling, There'll be a link down below. Click on that link and you can go get a copy of my notes. Other than that, thank you guys so much for being here. I appreciate you. If you got your best sales technique, drop in the comments down below, and we'll see you guys on the next video.