Zig Secrets: Sales Secrets From One of The Greatest Salesmen Who Ever Lived with Joe Polish, Dean Jackson, Mark Timm, Kevin Harrington, and Jason Fladlien - I Love Marketing #316

Master motivator and salesman, Zig Ziglar is one of the most important people any entrepreneur, business owner, millennial inventor, salesperson and more can learn from. In this special episode of I Love Marketing, Joe Polish, Dean Jackson, Mark Timm, Kevin Harrington and Jason Fladlin all examine the impact Zig has had on their lives and their professional careers. Stay tuned to the end of this episode to learn more about your free access to the ziggler vault@zigsecrets.com ilovemarketing that's ZigSecrets.com ilovemarketing if you'd like access to the full interview, the show notes and the special resources for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 316 that's ilovemarketing.com 316.

I'm.

Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish and this is the I Love Marketing podcast, Everybody.

It's Dean and this is Joe Polish. And welcome to what's Going to be. I would hopeful a very eventful episode of I Love Marketing. And the reason being is we've got a boatload of people that are all calling in from different parts of the country for this particular episode to give you some background. Yeah, so we've got Dean Jackson, who you just heard, we've got myself, we've got Kevin Harrington, who you know from Shark Tank, and a guy who sold billions of dollars worth of stuff on tv. We've got Jason Fladlin, who's one of the top webinar guys on the planet. We've got sitting and listening in Ben Hardy, who's the number one writer in the world for we've got Mark Tim, who's like a badass entrepreneur who I was talking with Mark and Kevin about a week ago, maybe even less than a week ago, and they basically informed me that they have acquired the rights to the most brilliant sales guy on the planet, Zig Ziglar's lifetime materials. All kinds of things that have never even been seen by the public. And they were telling me about all the millennials out there that have never even heard this. And if you've been in marketing or sales for any period of, you know that Zig Ziglar has been one of the most influential humans on the planet for teaching people how to close the sale, how to position yourself, how to make money. And, you know, has been literally one of the top people on the planet, one of the great speaker. And there's this vault that they have with this incredible knowledge of this content that has never been shared with the world and that they're getting ready to launch this as this entrepreneurial venture. And, you know, in Zig's career, what they've told me, he's impacted over 250 million people. And they want to impact 2.5 billion people on the planet with the materials, which is a pretty big, audacious goal. And so we were talking about this, and I said, you know, let's do an episode, because people that listen to I love marketing, for one, this is right up their alley. It totally is aligned with them. And I want to hear what you guys are doing and how you're doing it. And let's invite the I love marketing community to get involved in this. And so, Dean, before I turn it over to Kevin and Tim to give some background, introduce themselves however they want. Is there anything you want to say before we do that?

I can't tell you how important this is because we were. Both of us grew up in marketing, pre digital time, where we had to learn sales skills and traditional direct response. I had Ziggler on a constant loop in my car when I started out in real estate. 1988. Right. So 30 years ago. And that was always on a loop in my car listening to Zig, just getting so all that kind of positive reinforcement and learning the dialogues and getting confidence like that. I can't tell you what a difference it makes. So I'm excited to see what they're. What they're up to here.

Yeah.

And so Kevin and Mark, why don't you guys. I mean, you can talk about your own. You know what. What You've actually done this to give the listeners a little bit of background on yourselves. And then let's talk about what you. What you have a hold of, because there's some serious gold here. And we want. We want to share it with all the listeners.

Fantastic. So it's Kevin here. You know, I was introduced to zig Ziglar in 1975, which is. I was a senior in high school, and I remember I was an entrepreneur running a business. And Zig's book, See youe at the Top, came out, and I started reading Zig Ziglar and was just blown away with the mindset shift that. That occurred in me. Zig's, you know, one of his. One of his most famous quotes, and he's got a book of quotes, but it's his way of selling. And his goal in life was.

As.

He said, very powerfully, you can get everything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they Want. So his way of selling was problem solving and adding value and thinking of the other side first. And so this is how I started as a young entrepreneur getting the mindset shift from Zig Ziglar. And then in 1984, when I started the infomercial business, his book Secrets of Closing the Sale came out. And so I call Zig my mentor because for, you know, going all the way back to 75 and then 84, I've been using his principles, his techniques, his mindset shifts, his closing techniques in my infomercials and in my day to day life. So I found out Zig, God bless it, you know, the master of sales, he passed away five years ago. And I met the family of Zig Ziglar, the kids, and Mark Tim, who was a partner in the venture with them. And I decided, hey, Mark, we need to partner with Zig Ziglar's family in taking all of the assets and bringing them out to the market. Because, you know, I have two boys. One's 29, one's 20. My 20 year old is, you know, he's like, tell me about Zig Ziglar. You know, I'd love to hear and you know, everything that existed in all the databases, 31 books that he wrote and thousands of hours of videos and audios and some of which have never been seen before. We uncovered some amazing things in the vaults. These are videos that have never been digitized. So we are now doing that with all of the assets and bringing out the Zig Ziglar content assets now in a modern day time, showing entrepreneurs and people that want to learn more about sales and increase their sales how Zig Ziglar's closing techniques are timeless and are used in everyday life and still use. I use them in my infomercials, I'm using in my digital marketing. And I just got, you know, really excited about that. So we're relaunching all of his assets in a digital way. And Mark, as my business partner, maybe you could take it from here and explain a little bit more.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Kevin. And you know, for me, a little similar to Kevin, I actually heard Zig Ziglar was the first motivational speaker I'd ever heard in my Life. When I'm 15 and it was like he was just talking to me. Four years later, I'm at another event and I actually meet him and I get invited down to Dallas and I get to have dinner with the redhead. And at that point, man, I was hooked. I consumed every bit of content I Wore out the tapes in my car listening to Zig Ziglar. And I started applying everything I'd learned in my life. And that's why I think I ended up, you know, doing what I did. I've had 12 businesses. I bought businesses. I've sold businesses. I bought a business back that I sold eight years ago and sold it again. And I use the techniques that Zig actually planted, the seeds he planted in me. And I got to a point in life where I'm like, okay, you know, I've done what I. What I set out to do as an entrepreneur, but I haven't really done what Zig put inside of me to do. And that was to fully go all in to help other people with what I've learned. And that's where I connected back with the family. And you got involved with them and said, we've got to add a 0 onto that 250 million. We've got to, you know, introduce Zig to more people. And, you know, we connected with Kevin to do this. But here's what I got to tell you. In our research, our research, we've had market research come in and look at the brand, and here's what they found. They found that what people really treasure most today is trust. You see, there's not a lack of information out there. There's a lack of information you can trust. And although they found that Zig Ziglar is not the largest brand in the world, that's reserved for a few other brands that we all probably are using right now in here. But what they found is, is that they couldn't really find a brand that was more trusted than Zig Ziglar. And so at the top of the trust scale is Zig Ziglar, because he lived out that quote, you can have everything in life you want if you'll help enough other people get what you want. And he spent five decades helping other people get what they want, and therefore, they trust him. And we're at a day and age where trust is at the top end of the premium of what people value. And so we're taking, you know, the wisdom that impacted all of us on this call that's trusted for good reason. And we're now empowering people that are out there trying to crush it like we are, but they need that proven foundation that Zig brought to the table. And so we're basically taking content and we're packaging it and now delivering it in a way that people can, you know, consume it. And just to show you a Little bit of what we're finding in the appetite for Zig is, you know, Zig passed away five years ago. Kevin talked about that there was no Facebook page for Zig Ziglar. The outpouring was so huge that the family set up a Zig. A Facebook page. Now there's 4.5 million people following Zig Ziglar, who passed away five years ago. We started an Instagram page a year ago. We're adding a thousand people every single day, and we're at like a half a million on Instagram now. There's this incredible demand for this man, and I think it's because of the trust factor that he brings to the table. We just have to make it more accessible. We have to make it more consumable. And that's exactly what Kevin Harrington and I are doing with this venture.

Yeah. You know what's really interesting about this? I can't imagine how many millennials and Gen X's and Gen X's, Gen Z are actually probably not even aware of who Zig Ziglar is. I mean, they may. Well, I think I've heard that name because it's a unique name, but have no context of who he is. I've had the number one selling marketing program at Nightingale Conant. During all that period of time, Zig was one of the top authors. Who is the number one sales author in the world. I imagine that has to be Zig. And I know Brian Tracy, who's a dear friend and is also a giant Zig fan, sold more audio learning programs than anyone at Nightingale Conan. But I imagine no one even comes close, I would imagine, to Zig. Unless Kevin, are.

You know, I got to tell you that I've ran into a bunch of people out there that are huge, you know, you know, sales experts. And I heard one person say on stage that there's. That to his knowledge, there's almost nothing set on stage in sales that didn't originate with Secrets closing the Sale. And other people refer to it as the sales bible. I mean, so when you go back and really look at it, there's so many derivatives of that book that have spawned and been branched out of that that almost all of it can be traced back to that particular book. And not that there aren't other experts out there, but it often all trails, all paths lead back to secrets of closing the sale.

He had one audio that sold 12 million in one. You know, so, I mean, you know, he's. He's 31 books in dozens of languages. You know, I was in Brazil and I'm talking to somebody who had Portuguese audios of Zig Ziglar. So, you know, it's. He's all over the world, too.

Boy, you're back in the day. You're talking MC Hammer numbers here.

You know.

Yeah.

Let's have Jason Fladlin, who I consider literally one of the greatest marketers alive. He's so brilliant. I called him up when I heard this, and I said, we got to talk to Jason. And he told this great Zig Ziglar story. So, Jason, since you've not yet spoken on this episode, pipe in and do you mind sharing that story? Because I think it's great. And then we'll just continue to talk about Zig and what people can learn from him.

Yeah, I would love to. And you know, it's hard for me to remember the story even because, like, I have so many stories of Zig, but he was the first person I ever seen speak live. My only. My only birthday present one year is I had my mom take me to Peoria, Illinois to see him speak. And. And unlike you old dogs on the call here, I got into Zig after I started the digital marketing business that I created. So I didn't have any pre Internet experience, but what I did have was a library card.

So I went down there one day.

At this 89 Toyota Celica. And it's like, at this time, it's like 2004. So it's. It was already a pretty bad car. It had a tape player in it. And I went to the audio section, I said, listen, I want to learn how to sell. Because selling is everything in my opinion. Like, nothing happens until something gets sold.

Is.

Is a really wise saying that I heard before. And I went through and I looked at all these different audio programs, and there was Secrets of Closing the Cell by Zig. And I got that and I listened to that. Kind of like when Dean was talking. It reminded me of that, of me listening to it now. You know, at the time, I was so broke I barely could rub two nickels together for warmth. So it was funny listening to all this, you know, selling technique and powerful persuasion ability and just being in this, like, rundown position where I'm just trying to get an online business off the ground. And here was the dilemma I had, which is interesting because it's probably a dilemma a lot of people have these days, which is why I think some of this great knowledge gets neglected and not utilized, is, you know, two things are going on here. First thing is it's selling, it's not marketing. And so people are quick to discount it because they think one to one and I can't see the prospect on the other end. And I can't calibrate the message to what they're responding to. And you know, certainly. And sell in that portion. How do I generalize it and apply it to a one to many situation? And so a lot of people tend to say, I'm not a salesperson, I'm a marketer, I'm a business person. And I, for whatever reason, I guess I was lucky or I just intuitively understood. I'm like, if I understood it down to the essence of the one person, then I could get everybody. If I understood the one, then I could get. But there was no clear direct line. You know, Zig didn't say, well, here's how you use this on a webinar, because webinars didn't exist, you know, or here's how you use it on a webpage even, because back then web pages didn't exist. But here's the thing that Zig said to me that forever changed my life. And he says, get these little 3 by 5 note cards. It was in the book. He literally says this in the book. And he says, if you write down a close on these three by five note cards, you write down these closes and you memorize one a day. He's like, you'll be a world class salesperson. And I'm paraphrasing here, this isn't exactly. But this is my takeaway from that. And here's what's really funny. I said, okay, I'm going to write down the closes that I can fit that Zig gives word for word and secrets of the cell on these 3x5 note cards. And when I was done, I had a stack of them. And some of these closes didn't even make sense. Like, I'm not going to sell pots and pans. Why should I learn a pots and pans close? But I said, I better learn how to sell pots and pans, even if I never ever sell one. I just want to know the language patterns. I want to understand and I want to think like Zig and be like Zig. And memorizing is hard, it's tedious, it's boring, it's not fun. But if you write down one close a day on a note card, you can memorize that close by the end of the day. And then the next day you grab another note card and by the end of the day you've memorized that. So I did that for six straight months. And so in a six month period of time, and keep in mind, nobody's even given me appointment and I have nothing to sell to anybody, but I'm just wanting to learn how to sell. And I went right to the top with Zig to learn directly from him. And after six months, I was a walking, talking sales encyclopedia. But here's what I didn't anticipate happening. That happened. I could then take parts of this close from Zig and parts of that clothes from Zig, and in my mind, kind of audition different phrases for it because I'm not from the south like Zig is. So there's certain things he could say and get away with that I couldn't. But if I rephrased it and said it like this, with my own spin and my own personality, what would that sound like? And if I could stitch this close with that close, maybe I could create like this mega close between the two that could be applicable to what I was doing. And it was amazing the amount of work I could do on my own by having these raw ingredients that I could draw from. This is one of a thousand lessons I could share with you from essentially a book I got for free because I kept checking it out from the library that I learned that totally revolutionized everything that I did. And then when webinars came around, and this was about 2007, 2008, I said, well, here's my time. Because this is a personalized media. It's something that is fluid and dynamic because I can say something live on a webinar and get chat responses back, and then use those to kind of calibrate my messaging. And I was able to then take these new closes and adapt them to a webinar technology in a webinar setting. And nobody was selling like this at all, period. Because, you know, this is material from 1975, and nobody thought to look that far back. Everybody's kind of copying what everybody else is doing at the web on that time. And I was able to pioneer like, you know, in these days, like Joe, and many people think I'm the best webinar guy in the world. And the core, the core essence of that all came from Zig. Infamous closes. Once I learned how to sell like that, the rest of it was just filling in the blanks in terms of what else I got to put around.

It, what do I got to put.

Before it, what do I got to put after it. And now here's the. So here's the Funniest thing that happened of all is I'm at Joe's office right now, completely unrelated to anything that we were discussing with Zig when he looped Kevin Harrington and Mark in with this conversation. I'm down here for a Facebook training, but in order to prepare for it, they asked us, what are some authors that your people read? And I started flipping through this old book that I had from 2014 from. From the Genius Network annual event. And everybody lists their top three most influential books. So I'm flipping it through and I'm saying, what books are people reading? What were they constantly bringing up over and over again? So this could be potentially part of my avatar, and I'm kind of flipping through. I get halfway through this book, and there's a guy there who says, you know, Secrets of Closing the Cell is one of his top three books. I go, oh, who's that? And I look over and it was me. I forgot that I put that down. So immediately I took a picture of it and I sent it to Joe and I sent it. Kevin. I was like, ah, this is just so you guys know, we just had this conversation yesterday, and I found this today. And so it's funny. It's so funny how, you know, first of all, success leaves clues, right? And this was a great clue there. But it's funny. It's how everything is kind of all comes back to the source at the end of the day. And so, yeah, to me, to be even on this call is just an incredible honor. And I really appreciate you guys allowing me to be part of this today.

Oh, absolutely.

I think it's great. The biggest thing here, there's two things going on for all of our listeners. One, this goes to show you that some of the greatest knowledge, strategies, methods, processes, sales, closes have already been created. And you can utilize them in the same way that you could utilize tools if you simply knew what they were and where they existed. So, you know, part of this is, Yeah, I mean, Kevin and Mark, I want you guys to, you know, you're doing a lot with this materials, and I know a lot of the other marketing listeners would love to get this, especially the stuff that's never been seen before by anyone. So that's one thing. The second is this is about really, you know, what do you do with a business opportunity where you see a gold mine that's not being mined at all? And Mark and Kevin, you know, now have acquired all of this material, and they're like, you know, they're building a new business here, and you know, Kevin, for people that don't know, I mean, we've done I love marketing episodes with Kevin. Kevin has spoken at Genius Network. You know, everyone here is in Genius Network. So that's all great. Part of it is, you know, if you just think of the endorsement of someone like Kevin Harrington, because I don't know if there's any other person that has sold more stuff on television than Kevin. And so this is a master salesman. This is a master closer. And for him to say, out of all of the, you know, I mean, he's a. You know, he's been a shark on Shark Tank. I mean, he gets more deals thrown at him probably every 10 minutes than most people get thrown at them in their entire lifetime. And so for him to devote, you know, time and energy to say, yeah, I really want to build this out, that shows a great reverence for the value of who Zig Ziglar is and his materials and how useful this will be. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that, you know, are looking for, well, you know, what. What's the new thing? Well, sometimes the new thing is the old thing. You know, sometimes the new thing is taking something that is amazing, that already has existed, but it's never been put into a current form where people can access it. So I think, Joe, I think you're right on.

You're right on with that. I heard somebody once say that if you want to go to the True Wisdom books, you go back to pre Gutenberg for the real wisdom because of how difficult it was to actually document an idea, something that you had back then, right After Gutenberg, after the movable type, it became easier for books to even be created. Right. And I think that in 1996, we had another one of those moments with the Internet. You know, when you look back now, if you look at the career that SIG had of getting all of that, like, impacting 250 million people, pre Internet was a real accomplishment. I mean, that's something that is just, you know, unbelievable. And when you look at it, now that people think we're in a whole new era, you know, when you think about this is, well, it's a digital world. None of that stuff applies. That's old school, right? But I just had. You'll love this, Kevin, because it's golf related. I was doing.

I did a.

Recorded a podcast a little while ago, and I was just thinking, reflecting back. I've been in. In the business world. Got my real estate license in 1988. So 30 years ago this year. And I was reflecting on how much has changed over the 30 years and some of the things that haven't changed. Right. And I was looking at it that in golf, the technology and the driver technology and golf ball technology has improved the way that we strike the ball. So that in 1990, the leading driver on the PGA Tour was 279 yards. In 2017, the leading driver was 336 yards. So an improvement of 57 yards of driving the ball 57 yards further. But the thing that matters, getting the ball in the hole, the scoring, the thing that matters has improved by less than one quarter of one stroke over those 30 years. So all the technology, all that stuff has not fundamentally impacted the thing that is the most important thing, which is getting the ball in the hole, which is the equivalent in our business world of making the sale. The close. Right. You can't digitize the last hundred feet of it. You know, you've got. It all comes down to one person being moved in a way that convinces them that this is the right thing for them to do. And knowing those closing skills, you know, that that's where they really are. That's all psychology.

That's.

There's nothing digital about that. Digital is really the distribution method of the grounding of those real skills that, you know, you talk. It's not surprising that Jason, the one you know, has become the best webinar sales expert in the world. But on the back of being the best theoretical pot and pan salesman in the world through memorizing closes that were all analog and completely unapplicable to digital stuff.

Absolutely.

I mean, that was a great rant you just went on, Dean. I mean, you know, I mean, because sometimes I forget that you're actually bright and you say really smart stuff. That was really superb. The thing is, when people look back at advertising back in the 70s and stuff, as an example, I look at young Internet marketers like, oh, it's really difficult to try to construct a sales picture. It's like, for one, if you wanted to test an ad back in the 70s, you're using a typewriter. You're using an exacto knife. If you have, like, if someone mistyped something, you're using whiteout. It could take two or three days to set an ad in the 70s. And Kevin said he met Zig Ziglar in 1975. And now my introduction to Zig Ziglar. Aside from consuming probably hundreds of hours of audio, much of Zig's materials is Dan Kennedy, who I met Very early in the 90s, he took me to the first big stadium event that he was. One of the speakers at was Zig Ziglar. And waiting for Dan to speak, I sit back in the green room and I sat on a couch with Zig Ziglar for an hour listening to him get a pitch from some guys pitching him on doing an infomercial together. It was funny because I'm this young guy in my 20s, and Zig is saying, so what do you think of this? He's the nicest, most personable guy. He was asking me for my opinion on something, which I actually kind of had some good perspective back then because I was just getting introduced to marketing. But it's like, you know, he's up there. There was no Internet. I mean, you're up there selling. And when you have to drive somewhere to make a sale or pick up a phone call or you have to put, you know, if you have to hand write an address or put an actual stamp that you have to pay money for, that's completely different than the type of promiscuous marketing that people do today because they think email or social media or posting something doesn't cost them anything. So there's not as much depth like what you were saying, Dean. When you have to really think through being effective, getting the ball in the hole, that's all that matters in closing the cell. And so if we would really say, okay, every person listening to this, in order to really make money, they actually have to get someone to buy something. They have to consummate the sale.

That's it.

Someone has to do it. And who better to learn that from than a guy that not only taught it to more people on the planet, but actually his track record proves that he himself did it. He followed his own advice. He was so successful. And how does one access it?

And why.

And that's. That's why we're doing this call today. I mean, that's what we're talking about now. Now, Kevin and Mark, we've not mentioned anything about, like, what some of the closes are or any of that sort of stuff. Is there anything that you'd like in. I mean, we could talk for a week just on that. And frankly, I don't even know if we should talk about that stuff because you're. You're putting all of that together and people can obviously access it. But is there anything that you'd like to share with people about Zig that have been some of the most profound insights or ways that he went about producing A result.

Go ahead, Mark.

I'll let you take it.

All right, cool. So, you know, here's what I have to say, guys. All right? Number one, I am confident beyond any shadow of a doubt that right this very second, Zig Ziglar is smiling down on this podcast right now. He is, Absolutely. And Kevin and I, we very affectionately refer to him as Saint Zig. And there's a lot of good reasons why, because the things that are happening to, you know, that have happened to Kevin's life and happened in my life. As we look back and Jason, as you look back and, you know, Dean and Joe, you realize that St. Zig has been watching over this. You know, that he planted these seeds a long time ago, and he's watching over. And he's smiling right now because he's like, yeah, these guys finally get it. Because here's the deal. We could actually keep everything we're learning to ourselves and just make a ton of money. Like. Like, we've all done well in life, and we use the secrets that we learned from Zig Ziglar to do that, and we could just keep doing that. But I think we're all at a stage in life where we've got it. Like, we finally figured out the real message that Zig was leaving to all of us, which is it's one thing to lear learn it, but to become Zig Ziglar, to do what Zig Ziglar did, you've got to be all in on helping other people get what they want. And we just have come to the point. Kevin and I have come to the point, and I could sit here and talk about, you know, 50 closes that have made a difference to my life. And, Jason, I gotta tell you something, man. In the book, okay, just to go right along with what you said in the book, Zig says, do you know the difference between a stick figure a year? Salesperson? Now, remember, this book came out 1984. So six figures would be a sales guy today making half a mil. So what's the difference between a guy making a half a million dollars selling and a guy making, you know, 10th of that selling? And Zig says the average close of A guy making six figures in 1984 happened on the seventh close. The average guy making a tenth of that didn't know seven closes, barely knew three closes. And so the whole point is, is that, you know, all these people raise their hand and say, well, I'm not in selling, or, I don't like sales, or, you know, I've got my Couple closes that I like. Jason has crushed it because he knows so many closes. Because in secrets of closing the sale, here's what I will tell you, is there's over a hundred closes in there. There's not 10, there's not seven. There's over a hundred closes. Like most people don't even realize. There's a. There is a hundred closes, and there's over a hundred closes in that one piece of material alone. And so that's why when Kevin and I got together, we said, look, you know, we're at a stage in life where we got to start sharing this if we're going to honor Zig legacy. We can't sit on this any longer. We can't just benefit from it. Jason can't just benefit from it. And Joe and Dean and me, we can't just benefit from it. We got to start sharing it. And that's really the premise of what started all of this, is saying, it's time for other people to know. And guess what, guys, There are secrets. There are secrets that the masters had. That's why they were so successful. They knew things that we didn't know, and that's why they were so successful. And it's time for those secrets, particularly Zig speakers, to be told in a way that today's generation consumes, that today's business transacts. And it's all relevant, even though it was written decades ago. It's probably, if you want to be fair, it's probably more relevant today because real genius is usually decades ahead of itself. So Zig was really writing this content for today, not for 1984, but for today. And that's the piece that if people will open up their mind and say, oh, my gosh, that that was written in 1984, you know, that that's old content. No, it was really the genius of 1984, and it's the most relevant today. So that's what I would say. Rather than me unpack every close that's in there, I'm just going to unpack it and say the relevance of this content that we've put together that we're delivering in a masterclass with Kevin Harrington and Zig Ziglar is probably more relevant. Not probably, I'm confident is more relevant today than it was in 1984. And if you want to.

That's why I know if you want to go to one of the. Just the basic premises, Big would say one of the challenges that you run into oftentimes gets revolves around price. And so the problem that you have, especially in an infomercial, we're not sitting with the people face to face. They're watching this over tv. So we don't have a chance to handle their objections face to face because it's going on television. So Zig says you have to show more value than the price so that people can say, okay, I'm ready to buy. So the whole concept of but wait, there's more starts by. With Zig Ziglar's concept of you have to show more value to overcome any price obstacle. So wait, there's more. If you order in the next 30 minutes, you're also going to get this, and you're going to get this, and you're going to get this. That boils down to Ziggs value. Close that. It's just one of a hundred things. But it's, you know, this is. This is something that's. That's become, you know, part of our language now. But wait, there's more. And it's so, you know, and so sometimes in digital, when you don't know why somebody's not buying, you don't know what the obstacles are. If it happened to be on price, you can test offering some more value.

And this is.

But wait, there's more. So, you know, you could. You could go one by one through a hundred closes and analyze all these kinds of things.

Zig used to love it when someone would tell him no. I mean, what sales. What salesman likes to hear no? Okay. Why would Zig Ziglar like it when people told him no? You know why? Because that meant they could make a decision. Because the only person he couldn't sell to is someone who couldn't make a decision. If they can make a decision to say no, then he knew he could make them. He could help them see the yes. And so we're all afraid to get told no. Zig wasn't afraid to get told no that just told him he had a buyer. No meant he had a buyer. No decision meant he had didn't have a customer at all. And so. And that's the difference. We don't want to hear no. Today we're afraid of no. Today. Zig wasn't afraid to know that just said, I got a real. I got a real prospect is what he used to call it. I got a real one on the line because they just told me no, which means they can make a decision. I just have to get the value ahead of what the price is. And they'll turn that no into a yes.

I Think so many of those things are like philosophical stem cells. Like what you were saying, Kevin, about.

Just that added value.

I think for me, there's not been anything more impactful in my business life than Zig's quote of, you can get anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. And I think that that quote has been misinterpreted in focusing on using it as a hustle thing of get going and get out there and help more people right there get out and try and do that. But I think that I really took to the condition, precedent of it of you can get what you want if you help other people get what they want, but you have to help them get what they want first. And so one of the greatest questions that I've ever asked, and I talk about it all the time, is this, what would you do if you only got paid if your client gets a result? That's how I start with people when I'm trying to help them with their marketing is just to get them to think that thought, right? To think, what would I do if I only got paid if they actually get the result, even if they're not going to make that their offer, it helps them get in the right mindset that you've got to have an offer that you would feel strong enough to be able to. To make that offer to people. And that's a win, win situation.

You know.

That'S what I'm trying to say. That's exactly what I was going to say. You know, it's interesting listening to that because you've heard me tell that, that spin on that quote. Dean, I don't know if Kevin's ever heard me talk about that, but I have a friend named Martin Howey who came to my office during a genius network meeting. He goes, you know, we've all heard a lot of these, like, you know, people don't want a drill, they want a hole. Or you can get, you can get anything you want if you help enough other people get what. What. What they want. He goes, well, he goes, that's not always true. He goes, because you can work your butt off helping people get what they want. They won't do a damn thing for you. And sometimes, you know, people don't want to a hole. They actually want to stir paint. He goes, there's different applications. But we went into a discussion is like, well, it's picking. You can have anything you want. Because look, I have Genius Network. People know me as a connector. I am always wanting to Produce more than I consume. I want to be useful. I want to be generous. I want to help people. I mean, even this podcast episode is helping people. I mean, no one had to pay to listen to this.

I mean, we're.

You know, we put this stuff out for free. So we are helping people build and grow a business. How to become better at sales, how to become better at marketing. We're bringing enormous talent. I mean, like, we're doing it right now as we're talking to everybody. The thing when it comes to taking, you know, creating value for others is if you just go like, here's what I think the distinction is in what people have to understand about Zig and what you even said, Dean, making the analogy with putting, the goal of getting the golf ball in the hole is producing a result. And if you can get other people, like, you can have this perception of helping people, but you're not helping them at all if what you're doing is not giving them what they want. And if it's not leading to them. Like, if you're not able to close them and literally make the sale, not just show up. People confuse activity with accomplishment. We all know people that work all day long trying to build social media followings. I always love the analogy when websites first came out is what do hits stand for? You know, what hits on a website? Because that term used to be used a lot in the early days of the Internet. I mean, people still use it today. But I remember the first people like, how many hits did you get? How many hits did you get? And the analogy is how idiots track success. Because it's like, you know, yeah, you can have a ton of hits or you can have a ton of visits, but if no one ever actually buys anything, you haven't really accomplished it. So the thing is, if you want to be useful and helpful to people, but you're not able to close them, you really are not helping them. I mean, you may think you are, but if you have a great product or a service that will change someone's life but you cannot get them to buy it, then you haven't changed their life. You could spend hours, you can spend years in that vicious cycle. And that's why it's so critical to learn what Zig actually taught people, which was how to actually close the sale, how to make it happen. And if you do that, then you can get anything you want in life by helping other people get what they want and choosing the right person. And can I ask you, Kevin? Because, I mean, look, you're a master at this from having done it on television for so many years. Jason is a master of it in webinars. You know, when it comes to list selection, what did I mean? You've watched recently materials that Zig Mark was saying earlier, before we started recording this podcast that you've got this vault filled with things that no one has ever seen before closes and stuff. What do you believe Zig's perspective was from either you, Mark or Kevin on selection like list selection. In the world of marketing, we want to target the right audience. What were his thoughts not just on using closes, but on selecting the right person to present it to?

Well, yeah, that's a great question. You know, I, you know, I think about some of the products that I've been involved with. For example, take a Tony Little fitness guy, right? You know, people would, a lot of people that were overweight, you know, there's two ways to look at them. You can, you don't want to sympathize with them. As Zig would say, don't sympathize, but empathize. Okay, so you want to help these people solve their problems. And so you know, the person that is so overweight they can't ride a bicycle and you know, you want to help them, not just sell them a piece of equipment. Tony Little and this, this is now directly related to the empathizing instead of sympathizing, as Zig would say. Tony Little didn't just sell. When we sold the Gazelle, for example, we didn't just sell them the piece of equipment. We gave them a 1,800number toll free coach that would walk them through diet plans and all kinds of added value opportunities. Because we said you're now a customer for life and you have a 1, 800 number. You can call anytime that you need help. You have questions whether it's your activity schedule, your eating schedules, whatever it would be. So here again, creating the value chain that Tony Little did, because we're not just interested in selling a $300 gazelle or $400 gazelle, whatever the price is, we need to change these people's lives in a material way beyond just the piece of equipment. So we're not just going to sell them something. We need to create a lifelong customer. And now, now those people are now buying Tony Little's metabolic boosters and other things that because they become a lifetime customer, we've looked at that as a total lifetime average value situation. So too many people are interested in just closing the sale, making their commission, making their buck and moving on. It's the fast buck type people to do that. It's, you know, this. This 800 number business that Tony had cost him a ton of money to staff up for all these coaches, but he was willing to invest that money because he wanted people to truly get the benefit of all the things he knew about the other things they need in life besides just the gazelle.

Right.

That's awesome.

And. And I got to tell you guys, I mean, one of the things that. That really comes to mind when. When you ask that question is, you know, I'm sitting here thinking about Zig, and I'm thinking, what was Zig thinking? And here's what I can tell you. I've watched. I've probably watched more Zig footage than almost anyone on the face of this planet. And here's what I will tell you. Zig had no hesitation to say, I'm a salesman. Not only did he have no hesitation, he was so dang proud of the fact that he was a salesman. He went so far as to. He's got a. And I'm not going to even try to repeat that because it's in our masterclass, his manifesto. But he's the guy who said, nothing happens. Nothing happens until something gets sold. If you've got a passion that the world needs, you have to sell it. If you got a purpose in life that the world needs, you have to sell it. If you got a product inside of you that the world needs, you have to sell it. And so, for whatever reason, since the days of Zig Ziglar, all of a sudden selling has become this thing where everybody says, well, I'm not really sales. You know, I'm not really a salesperson. Zig would say, are you kidding me? In fact, he went so far as to say, you know, and it's a. It's a brilliant piece of content, and it's something that we offer in our masterclass. But he basically said, Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Martin Luther King, okay, what did. Those guys are iconic leaders, are our heroes, quite frankly, the heroes that we identify with. What did they have in common with Bill Gates, with Steve Jobs, with Jason, with Joe, with Dean, with Kevin, with Mark? What did they have in common? We all had one thing in common, and that is that they were some of the most incredible, probably the best salespeople that ever walked in this country. Because, I mean, think about it. George Washington had to sell a bunch of people to go up against the most powerful army in the world and basically say, look, here's the Deal. If I'm right and we win, okay, I'm not gonna pay anything. But if I'm wrong and we lose, you're gonna get hung. So here's the sign up sheet, all right? I'm gonna pass it around. You guys all sign up. And so, you know, I mean, Christopher Columbus had to convince Queen Isabella that he found India. No, actually that he found better than India, you know, like America was better than India, you know, and so these people were our heroes, but what they were was incredible salespeople. And he leaned into that and said, never, ever shy away from the fact that to get anything done, that this country wouldn't exist, America would not be America, if it wasn't for sales. And that's why he believed that selling was the most noble profession that there was. Because nothing happened until something is sold.

Absolutely. I mean, you know, I'd love to hear is your guys's perspective on just how do you even define sales? It may sound like a kind of a goofy question. And I of course, have, like, maybe an advantage because I have this wonderful definition that I asked Dan Sullivan, you know, years ago. I was just, you know, I said to Dan, I go, how would you define sales? And he just blurted out, getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result, that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. And I have said that definition, I mean, hundreds of times. And I've taught it, I've thought about it a lot. But what, what, what I, what I find really interesting. I even did a short video because I was asked the question when they were filming me for a documentary a few years ago, they asked me this question that never got shown in the documentary, but what it was was on B footage. And I have this kid named JR who literally goes through all my materials. And he was watching it and he took this little excerpt, it was a 3 minute and 50 second video clip where they asked me, is selling evil? And I responded with, like, why selling is so important. So if someone just typed in is selling evil into Google, they'll hear him my response, talking about it. Because this video has now been shown in universities, it's been shown in seminars. Tons of people have used it as a model of how to think about selling. And I say the quote, getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result, that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. The key word in that definition is good for them. Because if what you're offering people is Actually good for them, then you have to get them intellectually and emotionally engaged. And that's what Zig was an absolute master in doing. And that's why nothing happens, like you said, until a sale is made. Because if you don't get someone intellectually emotionally engaged, Martin Luther King did. Mother Teresa did. Every movement on the planet, good or bad, required someone to sell it. But if the key is good for them, then you can use selling and marketing in the most effective ways. There are no greater contributors to the world than people that have the ability to influence. Robert Cialdini is a dear friend of mine. I'm having dinner with him next week. He's been to Genius Network many times. We've done great interviews with him. Dean has known Robert and Bobette for many years. He's always talking about ethical influence, but it boils down to, you know, I mean, if Robert Cialdini. I'd love to actually talk to Robert about Zig Ziglar, you know, because Robert studied every form of influence from, you know, televangelists to salespeople to con artists, good, bad, and, you know, and he's really boiled it down to, you know, how you actually most effectively sell people on the spot, or what do you need to do in advance on his latest book, Pre Suasion, by looking at it. But name any sort of movement, cause, business, nonprofit, finding the love of your life. I mean, anything that doesn't involve selling. Everything that matters involves selling and who you become the best of terms of who you are as a human. The best qualities actually come out when you're selling. I mean, I think one of the biggest things that cause people to be ineffective is they don't sell themselves. They're not sold on their own ambitions. And I think a lot of reasons people give up and a lot of reasons people fail in business. A lot of reasons that they are scared is because they don't have confidence in their ability to be persuasive in their ability to sell. And if you don't know that skill, then how on earth are you going to make a business work? I mean, I don't know if there's ever been a situation except when someone so poorly mismanaged margins. You see these going out of business sale. Mostly they're having that because that's the last thing that they think they can do. It's like, well, we don't know how to sell it any other way. So we're just going to sell it because we're going out of business, which means we're just trying to. Whatever remaining pieces of flesh that are on this dream of a carcass called a business that we tried to start no longer exists. But, like, how many businesses go out of business because they're just so good at closing? I mean, it's like it never happens. I mean, you know, we just sold so much here that we just can't, you know, we got to shut the doors, got to close. You know, this business ain't gonna work. I mean, it's always because people can't sell. And so if there's anyone listening to this and you're struggling in your business or you want to make more money, like close more sales, I mean, it's.

It's not.

It's like get the ball in the hall, like beats. I mean, it's. That's funny though, is that going.

Going out of business is a great scarcity kind of motivator in a way.

Right?

There was a. There was a store in Toronto that used to. Right downtown, right in. Right in the middle of the city, they would have these big signs that would say going out. And then instead of saying of business, they would say for business. So it was going out for business sale. But everybody would look at it as like a yellow thing that said going out of business. You know, so everybody would flock there because it feels like they're going to get a good deal. But every weekend they'd have to going out for business. I think there's something, though, that you said that is very important because I think that sales is a loaded word and people attach so many deeper emotional meanings to it that I'm not. I'm not a sales. I don't.

I don't.

I'm not a sales guy. I don't want to sell people on anything or that we attach a negative thing to it. I don't know whether I told you this, Joe, just to talk about it made up an acronym for leads and sales. Because often, you know, I always try and justify things by helping people get down to the core unit of helping one person, right. And taking a very personal approach. So calling somebody a lead like leads seems like it's a depersonalizing thing. So I came up with an acronym for leads as an individual who's showing up with a label and it says, let's engage and do something. And then sales is showing all leads, easy solutions. And if you just take this idea that you use marketing to generate leads, people who are showing up, individuals on your website, in your inbox that are saying, let's Engage and do something because you've pre sued them like Robert Chaudheen would talk about. They've opted in for a book called the Adult Acne Cure that they're looking for a solution for that. Right, let's engage and do something. And sales being showing all leads, easy solutions, that just makes it so much more. It puts a positive approach on how you label what you're doing and allows you to be enthusiastic about it. That you're not trying. You're not trying to persuade somebody to do something that you want them to do. It comes right back to Zig's idea of helping enough other people get what they want that you. If you look at sales as showing somebody solutions to the biggest problems that are plaguing them, that you become a catalyst to something wonderful happening in their life for them getting what they want, that there's nothing more empowering than that as a thing to wake up excited about every morning.

I love it. So as we bring Zig back to the future, Mark and I were in Toronto this past weekend at a technology company and we're actually bringing Zig back through a hologram. And so we now have been on stage with Zig coming to life right there in front of you, and we're going to be carrying Zig around the world.

It's incredible. It's incredible.

You can send them on tour with Tupac.

We're gonna send him. We're gonna send him on tour with Kevin Harrington.

There we go. That's funny. I was on stage with Robert Ciobini in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The two of us went down there to the World Trade center in front of 2,000 people. And Mark and I are going back on February 3rd to Sao Paulo to the same group. It's going to be 3,000 people that are going to get Zig Ziglar oriented with the new programs that we're bringing out. Because again, this. Everything that we've got, all these assets are being digitized as we speak and brought back to the future so that anybody that's never seen Zig or seen them, you're now going to be able to see them on the Internet. And. And we're going to be doing amazing, you know, just bringing all these things back. And I mean, I just have to say, I mean, Jason is using Zig Ziglar in his daily life. I use him in my daily life. How many people out there that if there's a hundred closes, maybe could use 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 of those that they maybe haven't thought about and just test it. So this, this is, this is what.

We'Re going to be doing.

And for anyone listening today, I know, Joe, we've got, you know, we're going to be throwing out a lot of free content to the listeners of I love marketing. And, you know, we're looking forward to sharing this because as Mark said, we want to help people get what they want in their business by increasing their sales, increasing their profits, etc. That's what it's all about.

That's awesome. So why don't we do this? Why don't you guys give out the website? Because I know you got Zig Secrets.com and maybe Mark, we talked about different. Maybe you could do a forward slash. I love marketing. I think that would probably be good and we can even.

Yeah. Because here's the deal. Here's the deal. Listening to this podcast, okay, I can tell you right now, I'm sending our entire, you know, Zig universe to this podcast. I can just tell you right now I'm going public and saying I'm sending everybody here because everybody in the Zig universe needs to hear you guys talk about Zig. And everybody that's not in this universe needs to hear about it. So we're going to create a URL that Zig Secrets.com that's our main, you know, URL for our masterclass. But we're going to do slash. I love marketing. And here's what we're going to do differently. We're going to give you everything. Like, we're going to give your audience everything that we're creating, you know, for this ecosystem to basically give people, you know, every appetizer that we have for, you know, the Zig Ziglar vault, we're gonna put it all in the I love marketing.

Slash, I love marketing.

So that's a commitment I'm making. My team's gonna, you know, go crazy. But, you know, I just feel like everybody needs to hear this episode because.

You could listen to this episode go.

Out and hundred x whatever you're doing, because we just gave you the secrets. We just said it's not about chasing the newest shining object. It's about going backwards a few decades and saying, what is it that these guys did that they knew that nobody's using today or that people who are super successful are using today. You know, that I've missed. And what you've missed is nothing happens until you close the sale. You can have the most flashy email, you can have those flashy website, but at the end of the day, you still got to close the sale and selling is where it happens. And so zigsecrets.com Ilove marketing. We're gonna give them a an incredible cheat sheet from Kevin Harrington. We're gonna give them an incredible 14 lessons to sales success by Zig Ziglar. And then we're doing one of those free reports from Zig and Kevin about, you know, just the real pull the curtain back on where selling really happens. We'll put it all in that URL. Awesome.

That's awesome.

Cool.

And so thank you guys. And Jason, is there anything you'd like to add before we basically let everyone, like jump off this podcast and go sell something?

Yeah, check it out and you know, steal as many of the closes as you can.

Get the three by five cards out. I love that.

Like, I love that.

It's funny because I never thought about it till you said it, Kevin. But wait, there's more. We all have our own deviation of that, don't we? Because, you know, on a webinar, I don't have a limited amount of media time. Like, we don't buy 30 minute spots or 2 minute spots or even 60 minute spots. So we've done webinars that are 4, 6, 8, sometimes 10 or 12 hours long because. Because as long as they're listening, I'm selling. And as long as they're buying, I'll continue to sell. But we've always done it on a value added perspective of. But wait, there's more. Not literally those words, but new information, new decision was something that I learned from Zig. If I can give somebody new information, then their no decision can become a yes decision. And I mean, tell me that's not valuable for any business that's looking to do more business is that attitude shift then says, okay, if somebody needs new information to get a new decision, what new perspective can I give them to help them understand it or see this in a different light? Because if the light that they're seeing in it now isn't good enough for them to say yes to it, what light or what perspective would be for the right person do I have to provide to get them to say yes? And that's the whole subtle. It's a subtle shift in thinking, but it does everything to change how you approach a situation. Because if I look at it as if I give this person the right information, I have something that can change their life, then I will be able to help them change their life. But if I don't give them the right information to help them change their life, then I have failed them. Now it becomes how do I serve them? By giving them the right information. And when Mark and when you, Kevin, present them with an opportunity to get some new information, then I would take it if I were them. And I'm going to take it, too. And then we can help other people with this new information that we can provide to them them make better decisions. Which is essentially why pretty much everybody listening to this podcast started their business in the first place, right?

Absolutely.

Exactly.

That's great.

And Mark and Kevin, any famous last words?

Well, I'm just super excited. As you know, I've been known as the infomercial guy for all these years. And I'm really excited, Joe, to be involved with Genius Network and appreciate the time that from everybody on the phone here, from Jason to yourself to Dean Jackson and helping us get this message out, because it's a new digital age, and this is the way people want to consume information. And there's hundreds of millions of people out there that have not heard all of these techniques. And as Mark Tim said from the very beginning, some of the things that we've found in the vaults are never before released ever, that anyone has seen. And so when we share this with all of your people and the folks that are listening today, I think they're going to be blown away by the content and the new way that we're going to be delivering it. And, you know, we're just taking it, as I say, back to the future. And, you know, maybe sometime we can do a little hologram situation at one of the Genius Network events and have some fun with Zig coming on stage.

That'd be awesome.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, no, I would totally love that. And what I will say, too, is. And then, Mark, y', all, I'll go give you in a second. What I want to say is, as you're listening to this.

If you can.

Think of any business owner, male, female, young, old, whatever, that would benefit from hearing this or some young person starting out, I mean, this would be such a valuable episode to share with people because so many people are oblivious to it. And everyone could think of a business owner, a restaurant that you go to, any place, that if they just knew how to be more effective at selling, if they appreciated selling, how much better would they would they do? And in many cases, it would save their business. And so introduce this knowledge to anyone in your life, especially young people that have never even heard of Zig Ziglar before, because it could really impact them in a very beneficial way. So I just wanted to make that. Put that out there. So we'd love to have you share this episode with anyone that you think would find a beneficial.

I love that because I couldn't completely agree. I mean, I went on record on this call saying that the Zig Nation is going to share with our ecosystem, which is pretty big. And so, you know, the only thing I would have to wrap this up is I'm going to borrow something from my buddy Kevin Harrington, my business partner, and say the only thing that I have to say at the end of this call is, you know, is a book by Kevin. It's titled Act Now. And, you know, that's. That's actually the parting thought that I have. If something in this podcast inspired you, if you said to yourself, this is what I've been waiting for, this is the piece of information that's been holding me back. This is what's going to push me over the threshold. The only thing that's going to keep you from 100x in your business or 10x in your business or launching a business is whether or not you finish this podcast and act now. And so many people finish they listen to something. Go, man, that was a great record. Well, those guys really had it going, man. That was exciting. And they missed the next best thing they can do, which is act now. And so I'm committing to throwing everything in. I mean, like, we're not going to hold back. You go to ZigSecrets.com Ilove Marketing. We're giving you everything under the sun that we can think of to get you started, and then hopefully you'll join the ecosystem of the Secrets Closing the Sale masterclass. But all I want you to do is act now. Whether it's to share this with a friend that needs to hear this podcast or a young person that needs to hear this, or whether it is to take the next step in your business or whether it is to go to that URL. I don't care what it is. Just don't finish listening to this and do nothing.

Act Now.

Awesome.

Awesome. Thank you.

Okay, guys.

Well, I appreciate it. And to all our listeners out there, I love to hear your comments. Wherever you heard this episode, subscribe to I Love Marketing. If you've not already done so on itunes or wherever you listen to podcasts, please leave your comments and we will also put the show notes and anything else related to Zig Ziglar and anything that we do with these guys in the future, we will keep you in the loop on. And Dean, it would probably even be smart for us to set up ilovemarketing.com Zig and we'll just keep people in the loop as we go along because I'm sure this is not going to be be the only episode that we do with Mark and Kevin in the future. So.

What'S that?

It's not going out of style.

Exactly.

We're five decades and counting here.

Yeah. Ten years from now, we're going to look back at this as a historic event as we're flying around in spaceships and we're delivering, you know, VR experiences to people in, you know, through a hologram with Kevin in their living room talking with Zig Ziglar. So you never know where all this shit's going to go. So, yeah. Thanks, everyone. And yeah, again, we look forward to talking to you on the next episode of I Love Marketing. And we'd love to hear about your results that you get from what you have learned and applied from Zig Ziglar. So on behalf of myself and Kevin Harrington and Mark Timm and Jason Fladlin and Dean Jackson, thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of I Love Marketing. Make sure to claim your free access to the ziglar vault@zigsecrets.com ilovemarketing if you like access to the full interview, the show notes and the special resources for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 316 that's ilovemarketing.com 316.

It.