Business Podcast | Soft-Selling In a Hard World, the Importance of Developing a Win-Win Relationship With Your Customers, Don’t Use Dirty Sales Moves, The Brown Van, the HOA & A Special Interview with the Legendary Sales Trainer Jerry Vass

Audio Transcription

I’m gonna beat all of their competitors prices or I’ll give you the mattress for free. How’s that sound? You look good. Let’s sell some mattresses. Sales for me, you know, it’s what makes the world go round. And it’s my life. When I step out onto this showroom floor, it’s my time to shine. It’s my time to nominate. This is my coliseum and I’m the gladiator. So, look out. Hey! Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. it Excalibur. Hop on up Mary. Oh no that’s not necessary. A lot of these guys out there they’re dishonest you know but I believe in truth in sales. This is a limited edition which means it’s a collector’s item which means that it will appreciate in value. So really think of this mattress as an investment into your financial future. I just love making people smile you know if at the end of the day I’ve made at least one customer smile, then I’ve done my job. I’ve succeeded Yeah, I need them to buy something as well of course because they don’t pay me for smiles but I Would be rich if they did Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show But this show does in a world filled with endless opportunities. Why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrivetime Show starring the former US Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zuckner. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hooks. I break down the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s the CNC upon your right knee, yo. And now, three, two, one, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. All right, welcome back to the Make Your Dog Epic Tulsa Dog Training Podcast. It is a blasty blast. I am actually very excited about today’s show because we’re joined here with Tulsa dog training expert J.T. Lawson, the owner, the manager, the man behind the scenes that makes makeyourdogepic.com Tulsa work. If you’re looking at Make Your Dog Epic Tulsa, you’re going to find quickly that you’re going to run into J.T. Lawson. You may speak to him on the phone. You may meet him for that first dog training lesson. Again, that first dog training lesson is always 50 cents. He always beats any competitor’s price. He always is the highest rated and most reviewed Tulsa dog trainer. And he’s always getting ongoing dog training from dog training experts. And there’s more. You have a chance to win a trip to Hawaii just for booking that dog training lesson. And JT, it’s kind of a dark show, kind of a dark topic here today. There are some people out there, we’ve all seen Tommy Boy, that struggle to sell. We’ve seen Tommy Boy, we’ve seen the movie. Tommy Boy is a break salesman and he struggles to sell. And he wants to sell, he gets nervous, he gets flustered, he gets worked up, and the deal turns to crap. And so the problem is his father from the movie, if you watch the movie Tommy Boy, his father, let me skip past this commercial, his father wants to hand over Callahan brakes to his son because it’s a family business. And so he’s trying to get his son, played by Chris Farley, to take over the family business, but the son can’t sell. So the son ends up trying to resort to any possible sales technique possible to convince the ideal and likely buyer to buy from him. And this happens a lot in the dog training industry too, where somebody wants to convince somebody to hire their dog training service, but they’re not willing to do the first lesson for 50 cents. They’re not willing to beat any competitor’s price. They’re not willing to do a money back guarantee. They’re not willing to get the ongoing training like what you get, and they’re not willing to give a triple weight to Hawaii if somebody schedules with them. So they start actually doing dirty sales techniques that insult the intelligence of the potential buyer. And so on today’s show, what’s going to be awesome is on part two of today’s show, I’m going to play an incredible training from Jerry Vass, who’s been my… Have I talked to you about Jerry Vass? A little bit. Oh my gosh. Jerry Vass, I interviewed him before his death. He wrote a book called Soft Selling in a Hard World. His whole strategy, his whole mindset behind being a sales trainer was let’s create a win-win relationship with the customer. Let’s sell the service. Let’s solve a problem for our ideal and likely buyer, and let’s solve the problem with our products and services, and let’s not gouge people with the prices and let’s not engage in hard-selling sales techniques, okay? So let me play this clip here because this is what happens if you run into a sales guy Who’s off his game and he’s trying to convince you to buy something. Here we go. Just trying to say is that Our new brake pads are really cool. You’re not even gonna believe it like Let’s say you’re driving along the road with your family and you’re driving along Then all of a sudden there’s a truck tire in the middle of the road, and you hit the brakes. Eee! Whoa, that was close. Ha ha! Now let’s see what happens when you’re driving with the other guy’s brake pads. You’re driving along, you’re driving along, and all of a sudden the kids are yelling from the backseat. I gotta go to the bathroom, Daddy! Not now, damn it! Truck tire! Eee! I can’t stop! Ahh! Help! There’s a cliff! Ahh! Hey! And your family’s screaming, Oh my God, we’re burning alive! No, I can’t feel my legs! In comes a meat wagon! Woo-woo-woo-woo! And the medic gets out and says, Oh my God! New guy’s in the corner puking his guts out. All because you want to save a couple extra pennies. To me, it doesn’t… Get out. Now. Sir. Do you validate? Now. Okay. Thank you. So, I want to get your reaction to that because that’s so similar to the moves, the dirty moves being used by a lot of Tulsa dog trainers. Yeah, so there’s tons of dirty moves I’ve heard of. Give us the top three. Top three, one of them is the dirtiest one is the dog’s life. Saying basically, if you don’t get training, your dog will not come when called and then it’s going to get hit by a car. So then you’re like, oh my God. So this package is six grand. However, is that all your dog’s life is worth? Is it not worth six grand? Because if you don’t sign up, then basically it’s not worth six grand. It’s the gist of how they say these things. So that’s a super dirty move because they’re basically saying your dog’s not worth six grand and you think your dog should die rather than spend six grand on the dog. And they do. I know they do it. And let me tell you, this is full disclosure, folks. If you look me up, my name’s Clay Clark. You look me up here. I have done training with Hewlett Packard. I’ve done training with UPS. I’ve been training with Valspar Paint. I’ve done training with O’Reilly Auto Parts. And the big time companies, you know what the big time companies do? Let me tell you what the big time companies do. They deliver a product that’s such a good deal. It’s so hot. It’s so incredible that you actually want to buy the product. So let me do an example like In-N-Out Burger. Have you been to In-N-Out Burger? I have, yes. It’s an incredible place, great burgers. Yeah, it’s a great burger, yeah. And if you’re eating it without the bun or eating it with the bun, either way, it’s incredible. And you’re like, how is this so good? Why can’t I do this in my backyard? Arrgh! And you want to do it that good, but you can’t because you’re not In-N-Out Burger. Yeah. And you’re like, there’s got to be some addictive chemical they’re adding to it. But then they show you it’s open. It’s open. You go there to make your order. You can see the people making the product. You notice this? Yeah. They don’t hide it. This is rare in restaurants. Normally, you can’t see the people making your food. You see the homeboy making the potatoes back there. Have you seen this? Yeah. You see the homeboy making the French fries using fresh potatoes, making the French fries right there. Yeah. It’s kind of like the Krispy Kreme style. Have you been in a Krispy Kreme? Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Where it’s like the glass and then you see the donuts going up and down the conveyor belt and you can see all of it. You can see the people working. Yeah. It’s incredible. You’re like looking in a glass house, a glass box. It’s incredible. And so they’re not trying to hide what they’re doing. Now when you go pay for that thing, you’re like, I just spent an hour of my days working for this hamburger. I’m going to enjoy the crap out of it. I mean, because you just have those thoughts. Yeah. Because it’s not cheap. Another example, Mercedes. Mercedes. A lot of guys get Mercedes. They drive by. Ladies go, hey, hey, hey. You know, single ladies, hey. You’re like, what’s up? Because you got the Mercedes. You think that’s the move for dating women. Turns out it’s not the move, but you’ve got to understand, people treat you differently if you’re in a Mercedes. Yes. Hey, what’s up? How are you? How you doing? How you doing? Hey! How you doing? How you doing? Lamborghini. People go, hey, hey, hey, hey, guy. You’re the Lamborghini. They’ll start to call you. You’re the guy who drives a Lamborghini. Wow, they treat you differently. Yeah. But Lamborghini, Mercedes, they don’t apologize for the price. Now also another brand, Honda, an incredible product that’s designed to last a long time. Honda vehicles, Honda motors, Honda engines, they last a long time. You and I, if you’re anybody out there, I know people that have owned a Honda, and they start to say, I kind of want my Honda to die. I’m like, what do you mean you want your Honda to die? It’s got 300,000 miles on it, it runs like I just bought it yesterday. The car will wear out, you will wear out, your body will wear out. You’re going to be in your 60s before the Honda you bought in your 30s wears out I mean a Honda is an incredible vehicle and again, they don’t apologize for making a profit. No, but but small small Minded individuals small-minded now Maybe dog-sized mind people they begin to think well, you know what I’m gonna do I’m gonna come up with three dirty sales moves and I’m gonna relentlessly train my team on how to manipulate people into buying something they don’t want. And then that’s the culture. That is a culture. With us, our whole goal is that you’re so wowed before we even get there that you’re like, oh yeah, I’m in. So that’s why we come out for that first lesson, which is 50 cents, which is less than a dollar. And then we will work with your dog in front of you, which is huge, because a lot of these places won’t. You will see firsthand how we train your dog, and that our goal is obedience, but never at the expense of the dog’s personality. Because if I get Fluffy to listen to me, but it’s at the expense of Fluffy’s soul, what’s the point? We have to train the dog in a way where the dog’s personality is still there, so we like to say it’s the same dog, but now it’s all ears. And then we are going to be the highest rated, most reviewed. We’re going to beat any competitor’s price. We are going to offer a money back guarantee just for signing up for that first lesson you entered in for a chance to win a trip to Hawaii. And then there’s just no, and then you have ongoing group class forever because we want to be there for you for the rest of the dog’s life. And then that’s also why, and we have ongoing learning, so we’re always learning from new trainers because You want to be? Qualified not certified so in a dog training world everyone certifies himself, so I want to be qualified I want to learn from all these great trainers throughout the United States So I can figure out the best way to train your dog And I want you to be so loud by the end of it I don’t have to do these dirty sales moves. People do the dirty sales moves. Yeah. They do. I’m not trying to cut you off, but let’s be very clear. This is a real thing. On part two of today’s show, we’re going to do an in-depth training from Jerry Vass, where Jerry Vass, sincerely, if you’re out there, if you’re a business owner, you’re wanting to be a business owner, his training is so good, but it should be called a soft sell. It’s a win-win. Yep. And one of the other dirty moves, real quick, that they do is the same as a car salesman where they’ll leave and then go quote-unquote talk to someone and then come back so you’ll be like oh I got to talk to my wife and they’ll be like awesome give her a call real quick I’ll be right back I’ll make a call and then they’ll just walk out the door and then they’ll sit outside and pretend to make a phone call for a while and then they’ll come back in and they’ll say awesome do you have a chance to talk about it and then you try to say I couldn’t get a hold of awesome no worries I got another phone call to make, I’ll be right back. And they’ll just keep doing this until you just eventually say yes or hey, get the heck out of my face. And they actually will, they’ll train people, though, they’ll say, don’t stop asking until you get kicked out of the house. Yeah, they do it. It’s a move. That’s why we tell people, try out our competition. And that’s the third move, because you wanted three, that’s the third one is that they will literally not leave until they get a definitive yes or a definitive no. So there’s no I gotta think about it allowed. So if you’re like, hey, I have to think about it, my husband’s out of town, it’s his dog and he’s really passionate about it, they will not leave no matter what it is. Or if it’s like, hey, this is actually my daughter’s dog or hey, I really gotta think about it, this is more money, that daughter’s gonna be, whatever it is, they’re like, well, I’ll give you a little bit, I’ll come right back inside. Or they just keep asking, they’re like, what would be the issue with this? What would be the issue with that? And they’ll just keep going nonstop trying to get you there. I want to ask this because if you were going to prioritize, you talk to people on the phone every day, and that’s a great thing about, there’s so many great things you do, but that’s one really great thing is you get people on the phone that call you, they go to makeyourdogepic.com. They fill out the form. And these folks, they’re wonderful people. And they’re saying, hey, I have a question or two. And you talk to them. You answer the phone. Bloop. They call Make Your Dog Epic Tulsa Dog Training. This is your Tulsa dog training expert, JT. You answer the phone. And then people are going to ask you some common questions. So I want to just kind of go through real quick here. What are what we would call those the hot points, or the points that most resonate with the common denominator points that most connect with potential buyers doesn’t matter to does it matter to people that you offer a money-back guarantee all one hundred percent because people are used to that in the doctrine world it’s it’s huge so uh… that not not many trainers offer that a lot of trainers uh… will say while you get we get you know if it or they’ll offer and not actually abide by it so they’ll say yeah you know money-back guarantee and then at the end they just don’t abide by it, and they just won’t give you your money back. Does it matter to people that you’ll beat any competitor’s price for a similar service option? Absolutely. Because a lot of people, I mean, they’re trying to find the cheapest way to train their dog in a high-quality way. And so with us, not only do we offer, in my opinion, one of the best products or training services, because I’ve been and keep going to so many different trainers. So now we’re really nailing it down and we have a system and we’re always growing and learning. But also we’re guaranteeing those results and we’ll be anyone’s price. Now again, I’m going to go to makeyourdogepic.com. I click on the contact button and what you’re saying right now is if I schedule my first 50 cent lesson with you, which is less than a dollar, I’m actually entered in for a chance to win a trip to Hawaii, which you’re going to give away in January. Why do you throw that in as sort of like a bonus fry? It was almost like you went to In-N-Out Burger, you got the burger, right? You got the fries. You ordered the burger, you ordered the fries, you ordered the milkshake, and they delivered them. They said, here’s the milkshake, here’s the burger, here’s the fries. And you’re like, this is incredible. But then they go, oh, by the way, by the way, here, just a little gift for you, a little gift, here are some bonus fries. And they give you some extra fries for your little guy, for the kid, for your cousin, for your nephew, for your kid. Why is that such a powerful wow moment? For us, we always want to over-deliver on absolutely everything. So we just want to over-deliver on everything. And what better way to do it than to send somebody to Hawaii because it’s a great place. Have you been to Hawaii before? I have not. A lot of our people tell us it’s a life-changing experience. Yeah, I mean from videos and other people who have been, it sounds phenomenal, but my goal is to send somebody before I go. So we send people to Hawaii, but I’ve never been. Now this is a big, you know, so again, if you schedule, when you schedule your first dog training lesson with Make Your Dog Epic, you are entered in for a chance to win a dream vacation to Hawaii. And again, you have the first lesson for 50 cents, wow, which is less than a dollar. You’ve got the highest rated and most reviewed. Wow, you’ll beat anybody’s price. You have the money back guarantee. I can’t think of any reason why people wouldn’t book with you, given your soft selling approach, but I do want to have one final question for you. What’s another dirty move? Give me a bonus. Just one more dirty sales move you’ve seen dog trainers use. You’ve identified the top three, but there’s got to be another dirty move. I’ve seen them, JT. I’ve seen them. I’ve seen them. Yeah. I’m learning from all these different dog trainers, so I’ve seen the moves also from the inside perspective. Yeah. And one of the other moves is because a lot of these trainers will do like that first lesson or something at the house or or they’ll do it at their shop where you got to come to them. Depending on what car you drive depends on how expensive their packages are. So I’ve heard this. So if you go hurt and they walk in and you have a Mercedes like we’re talking about or you have a Lamborghini or whatever they’re immediately charging more. And they’re doubling it up. Or when they have these things, they know that they’re gonna be able to charge more, so they make it seem like your dog is worse than it actually is. So you’re like, yeah, my dog jumps on people, it runs away, and it steals stuff off the counter. They’re like, wow. So your dog, you’re telling me, possibly your dog could get hit by a car because it doesn’t come. Your dog could kill someone because it jumps on them and knocks them over. And your dog could eat medicine off the ground because it just steals anything you drop. Wow, you know, we’re going to have to fix this and it’s going to be expensive. And they get real serious and real, and they make everything seem way worse because they know they can charge more. Real serious? This doesn’t work. They don’t do that. No, they do. It’s gross. They don’t do that. And they not only do it, but they train their other people to do it as well. Oh, come on. And that’s just how they’re all trained. No way. Yeah, it’s gross. It’s gross. Okay, now again, have you seen my brown van? Your brown van? Have you ever seen it? I’ve seen the white van. Have you seen the brown van? No. Do you know about the brown van? I don’t know if I know about the Brown Van. OK, let me tell you, folks. I’m going to make you watch. I know about the old DJ van. I’m going to, in a minute, I’m going to play this audio for the listeners out there. I’m going to play this little sample of it. And on part two of today’s show, we’ll do soft selling in a hard world. Then part three, I’m going to make everybody watch the video if you want to, folks. No pressure, but you should. And so the Brown Van, do you know about the Brown Van? Do you know about this? No, I really don’t. OK, my wife told me, she says, I don’t think you should drive the Brown Van anymore. And I said, what? I built this massive company called DJConnection.com. It was paid for. I didn’t know anything on it. I was in a great spot financially, and I had a van that was paid for, and I liked it. It was like a nostalgic thing from when I had the DJ business. And my wife’s like, honey, it’s missing a door. And I said, I know it’s missing a door, but it doesn’t mean I can’t park it in the driveway of our gated neighborhood. Didn’t it also have no air conditioning and stuff? Yeah, none of that. Yeah. And so what happened is one of my DJs named Marquise, who’s probably listening to today’s show, he somehow came back from a show and he said, hey bro, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I think I ripped your door off. I’m like, how do you rip the door off? The sliding door? How do you rip it off the van? And I was so pissed. I was so irritated. I was so mad. I said, you know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna stay up all night and we’re gonna record a song about how my brown van is missing a door and my wife wants me to throw it away and I’m not gonna throw it away because I’m not, I was just so frustrated with the situation because the Homeowners Association, it was like a tornado of events, the Homeowners Association, they said, if you don’t get rid of that van, we’re gonna start fining you. Because I parked it, when you pulled it into the neighborhood, you know, you pull into the neighborhood and there’s the brown van without a door. And I used a white table, you know you get those white plastic tables you can buy for like 60 bucks at Lowe’s? I used a white table as my door. That’s phenomenal. What’s happening? Yo this song goes out to the 1984 Chevy Brown van. I posted a video with it, you’ll see it. Deloitte. Yeah. We set up all night. No door. No. Tinted windows in a huge frickin’ side show Mario and Dreddy when I drive my ride I’ll straight drag race ya Like I got an Icarus on my side Sometimes I just have to pinch myself As I’m running about the ground my HOA tell me that I can’t drive my brown van, my Homeowners Association, they’re not gonna tell me that I can’t drive my brown van just because you ripped the door off. That’s not gonna happen. And some Marquise is like, that’s true, we’re not gonna let that happen. Just because I ripped the door off doesn’t mean your HOA can tell you what to do. And I’m like, exactly. And my wife can’t either, you know why? Because we’re men and we’re staying up all night and we’re recording the brown van song. So the moral of the story, men and we’re staying up all night and we’re recording the Brown Band song. So the moral of the story, because I’ve got three morals in today’s story. You ready for the moral? Yeah, I’m ready. Okay, moral number one, soft selling in a hard world. Why is it important that at Make Your Dog Epic that we do soft selling in a hard world? Why is that a tenant of what we do? Because it needs to be a win-win. We all need to win and we need to over deliver. So just so you know, secret sauce, Napoleon Hill says if you over deliver, soon you will be overpaid. And that’s why we’re doing it, because eventually, so we’re over-delivering, under-charging, so eventually, soon we’ll be overpaid. But we just want to have that high value and that win-win for everyone, because we want to over-deliver. Second is, you’ve got to create, you mentioned it, I want to just hammer it. One, we’ve got to have a soft selling in a hard world. Two, is you’ve got to develop that win-win relationship. This is big. Third, super important for everybody to just really lock in and focus on this idea. Don’t use dirty sales moves. Yeah. Can you explain why? Yeah, because it’s gross. It comes off as insincere and gross. I mean, there’s not another word for it other than gross. That’s why we don’t want to do any of those moves. We’re there and we’re excited to help you. Our goal is more freedom through dog training because a dog that’s trained gets more freedom. But I don’t want to do that through dirty sales moves or whatever. I actually want to get you to your goals and I want happy dogs and happy customers because then there’s more happy dogs and they get more freedom as they’re more trained. Because my personal dog, he gets to go with me everywhere because I know no matter what’s going on, he’ll listen. So it’s a great thing. And you know what’s great too is when you do that, it’s the law of reciprocity. People begin to tell other people about the great experience they had with Make Your Dog Epic Tulsa Dog Training, and then it just grows and grows and grows. And pretty soon you look up and you have a thriving business. And so if you’re out there today, I encourage everybody out there, if you have a sound mind, and I know you do, go to makeyourdogepic.com, makeyourdogepic.com for Tulsa’s Best Dog Training. And when you do, just make sure that you mention or you question or you ask about or you’re aware of that first lesson is 50 cents, which is less than a dollar. They’re going to beat anybody’s price. MakeYourDogEpic.com are going to beat any Tulsa dog trainer’s price. Third, it’s the highest rated and most reviewed. Fourth, the ongoing training that JT Lawson and the team are receiving from outside dog trainers is next level. I mean, you’re going to see a combination of the focused based training, the positive reinforcement training, the latest, greatest approaches to training, always improving. It’s like a basketball player, always refining his different skill sets, his different shots, his ball handling skills. It’s like an artist always improving their ability to perform music or art. It’s just, you’re always, it’s a craft you’re working on. And then finally, there’s a little bonus fry, bonus fry, books, Bonus Fry, folks. Bonus Fry, a chance to win a trip to Hawaii just by scheduling your first dog training lesson at makeyourdogepic.com. JT Lawson, I know you’re a busy guy. I appreciate you carving out time for us. And folks, schedule that first lesson there for 50 cents at makeyourdogepic.com. ♪♪ Two men, 13 multi-million dollar businesses, eight kids, get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show. Thrive Nation, there are very few legal ways to get rich quick. Your chance of finding one of those opportunities is very, very slim, or about twice the odds of getting hurt in a commercial plane crash, twice. Now, the bright side is that getting rich slowly is actually fun and will yield you thousands of adventures in the process. And on today’s show, we are interviewing a guy by the name of Jerry Vass, who wrote a book called Soft Selling in a Hard World, where he explains in great detail that there are only three ways to really make exceptional money as an entrepreneur. One, you got to work in a place where no one else wants to be. I had a buddy of mine years ago that was an Alaskan fisherman fishing in Alaska. Sounds like a lot of fun. No it’s not. I had one of our employees years ago that worked on an oil rig out there in the Gulf of Mexico. Rumor has it we have a couple of podcast subscribers located in the Gulf of Mexico who listen to each and every show. And I know you guys probably don’t enjoy the time away from your family and living on a floating city that smells like oil, but you get paid well, right? The second way to get rich is you can perform work that no one else wants to do. Sales. No one seems to want to do sales. I like doing sales, but a lot of people fear sales. They’re scared of sales. They just don’t know how to sell. When you can’t sell, your business will just go to hell. The third way to get rich is to do work that no one else can do. Steph Curry can do that, and you’re pretty awesome at it. Leonardo DiCaprio could do that and he’s pretty great at it. Oprah, I don’t know how many people could do what Oprah does. Serena Williams, Venus Williams, I mean there’s a lot of people out there that are LeBron James that can do things that I frankly can’t do and that’s why I like to pay people with that kind of skill. I like to watch them. I like to vote with my dollars and say, yeah, Brad Pitt, you’re a better actor than me, Mr. Tom Hanks. You’re better than me. I like to pay to watch your movie.” So, again, the three ways to get rich are you can work in a place where no one else wants to be, you could do work that no one else wants to do, or you could perform work nobody else can do. And it’s really the last two conditions for making extraordinary money that we’re going to explore on today’s show. You see, learning to sell softly isn’t only about money, it’s about enjoying the process of sales. This little manual called Soft Selling in a Hard World is all about reality. It’s about a survival guide for the strange mastering of persuasion. It’s kind of a strange road to learning how to master persuasion. It shows you the mechanics. Soft selling in a hard world teaches you the mechanics needed to sell well. That’s what the book is about. The book is designed to teach you the specific tactics, not the strategy, to walk you through the step-by-step process that you need to take. And the whole system, what’s great about it, is you can learn the whole system and implement the system and write all the scripts and utilize the system in a way where other people can do what you can do. You can make yourself repeatable and duplicatable. So you can create not just a job, but you can create a thriving business that can create both time freedom and financial freedom for you. My friend, selling is the highest paid profession in the world. I mean, our leaders in politics, business, and research and the arts, they’re all great salespeople. It’s just a lot of times you don’t realize that they’re selling. I mean, you see presidential candidates, heads of companies. I mean, Steve Jobs was legendary for his annual presentations. Warren Buffett, you don’t think of Joel Osteen as selling, but he’s trying to convince you to become a Christian. He’s trying to share with you the love of Christ. You might not think of Oprah as a salesperson, but she’s trying to convince you to tune in and watch the show again. You might not think about President Obama as a salesperson, but he’s trying to get you to devote for him was trying to get you to vote for his Ideology so if you’ve ever struggled to sail to sell you ever struggled to sell well This show is for you, or if you’re very good at sales But you’ve ever struggled to teach a team of people with no experience to sell. That’s where the magic is. Can you teach an army of people to sell well? If you’ve ever struggled with learning how to personally sell or how to teach an army of people to sell, you are going to absolutely love today’s show. As I interview a great man, a wonderful friend of the show, Jerry Vass. Jerry Vass, at the age of 83, is now retired, enjoying the high life there, living in Florida, enjoying his home in Jacksonville and the fruits of his efforts. But he decided to come on to the show. My friend Jerry Bass decided to come on to the show and to share with us the answers to so many questions that I had as a result of reading his book, Soft Selling in a Hard World. If you don’t have the book, get it today. Get out a pen and pad. You’ve got to get a piece of paper. This is a show where you gotta take a lot of notes and I would encourage you to get soft selling in a hard world today. With any further ado, my exclusive interview with Jerry Vass. Also, just a quick disclaimer, I apologize for the audio quality of this audio only interview, but his phone was kinda cutting out a little bit. We tried to edit it the best that we could. And so with any further ado, here’s Jerry Vass. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to another great conversation. On the Thrive Time show today, Chup, I could not be more excited to have the man that I would consider the godfather of systemic sales. You see, back in the day, Eric, I started working in the world of commercial real estate. One of my clients wanted to go into commercial real estate, and before we exited Fears and Clark, we actually had the commercial real estate listings for one-third of downtown Tulsa. That’s roughly 33%. And do you know what sales book we used to build our scripts, our systems, our process, the entire system that we used at Fears and Clark when representing Canbar Properties and roughly one-third of downtown Tulsa. Do you know what system, what book we read, Jeff? What book was it, Clay? Soft Selling in a Hard World by you, Mr. Vass. How are you, sir? I’m perfect, thank you very much. And I want to tell you, I’m flattered by all of this. I’m not used to doing this anymore, because I’ve been out of the training business for ten years, because I had old and my mind went, took a vacation. So that was the best kick. Well I appreciate you and you are much sharper than I am. I aspire to be half as sharp as you think you once were. I mean you are, your book is amazing. The book, Soft Selling in a Hard World. In that book, Jerry, you wrote, if you aren’t selling up to your potential, you probably don’t understand that selling is a game. Most people don’t. Those who do make 85% of the money become executives or run their own successful businesses. This book is about fulfilling your potential without resorting to motivational and inspirational beliefs. As in sports, you find that certain mechanical moves need to be mastered before your inspiration or genius can shine. Like a dog, a dog can be inspired to chase a car, but doesn’t know what to do with the car once it’s caught it. This knowledge is about what you do when you catch the car. That thin slice of face-to-face time with the buyer, when persuasion really occurs. Jerry, I’d love for you to expound on this. That’s such a beautiful excerpt from your book. I’d love to get your thoughts on it. Surely. Well, I use the word game in the sense of a professional sport. And just as any professional sport, one has to understand the game, develop and polish the skills needed, and have a plan for the big contest. In selling, that translates to getting your story together, getting your tools ready, and practicing your delivery, and putting it all together under pressure and from a prospective client. You may hear someone say, ìYou know, if my job doesnít work out, I can always sell.î Youíd never hear them say, ìIf my job doesnít work out, I can always be an NFL quarterback.î Right. Right, right. And I think the preparation that you teach in your book is what allowed me to be successful. Because, Jerry, when I was sitting down meeting with somebody about listing their commercial real estate, they would ask me directly, how many other listings do you have? And I would tell them, we have this many listings, and they would say, what makes you different than the competition? And I had it all on a one sheet. I had all my sales presentations. I had all my testimonials, all my statistics. I had a system for it, I had incorporated all seven of your selling moves and it helped me be proactive so that I could lead the conversation, build rapport with the buyer, find their needs, deliver benefits supported by facts, and close deals. Jerry, in your book, Soft Selling in a Hard World, you wrote that sales is a profession identified with the worst of its practitioners. On behalf of that group. I apologize for anybody who I did a presentation on years ago, not the best. Because they sell so well, the public doesn’t identify those that are at the top of the cultural heap. The politicians, the movie stars, the talk show hosts, the televangelists and the business leaders, the world doesn’t view these people as salespeople, as outstanding salespeople. They’re rarely caught practicing the selling trade. The best of them are so good that people simply like their quote-unquote personalities because people easily confuse skill with personality. When you study the best, you find that they make many mechanical selling moves right. Is this due to practice or coincidence? Natural talent or learned response? Only they know for sure how much is talent and how much is learned. The results are the same. They convince, move ideas, create change, and solve problems. We love them for it, and we reward them with the best our culture offers. Fame, fortune, cool clothes, and a big house. Jerry, share with us about what great selling is and what bad selling looks like. Well, great selling is problem solving, pure and simple. You find the buyer’s real problem and working with the buyer to solve it. You work together. To do that, you have to ask intelligent questions and listen intently. Bad selling is vomiting your stuff, talking, pitching about your stuff, and seeing the whole transaction only from your own point of view. Successful selling is explaining well what you do from the client’s point of view. As in any activity, when someone is really good at what they do, it looks easy, even effortless. It’s transparent. Whether it’s running a podcast, playing tennis, skiing, or selling, we all think we can do that. I can do that. Until we try and learn how difficult it is. Oh, the one thing, Eric, that happened to us years ago is we were approached, Jerry, by the Scripps Radio Network. They produce HGTV, the travel channel, and they said, Clay, we’d like to have you produce a show that we’re going to air in various markets throughout the United States. Now I had heard a lot of Rush Limbaugh in my life, a lot of Glenn Beck, a lot of Tim Ferris, a lot of Gary Vaynerchuk, a lot of the big names, and I have been a production person. I ran an entertainment company, so I’ve done a lot of audio production. And I realized going into it how hard it was going to be because I’ve been up close to it. But I can’t tell you how many people have listened to our podcast and have told me that they tried to produce a daily podcast for about four days in a row. Maybe. And they ran out of things to think about or talk about because they weren’t aware of the level of preparation needed. So I think it’s really hard when you don’t know. And that’s what I love about your book, Soft Selling in a Hard World. Everybody needs to own a copy of it because you break down the science of how to sit down with the prospect and build rapport. And it’s very specific about what questions to ask. You break down how to listen intently. Then you explain how to find their problems, how to find their needs. Then you teach how to solve the problems, how to support it by facts. The book is so linear, and it breaks it down where I think the world looks at people who are great at sales and says, that’s probably natural. Natural talent. But it’s not natural, it’s a system. And Jerry, we work with hundreds of business owners all over this great country, and we often find that many of them seem scared of making sales calls. What would you say to somebody out there listening right now who is an entrepreneur or who wants to be, who’s afraid of picking up the phone and making sales calls? Well, I have told them often when I sit down with management, I say, ìLook, you have a right to be scared because poor selling skills down the line are a message to your market. Itís your message to the market. And it is a waste of your money and you trash the market as you go.î No business and no person likes rejection. The real problem is that all salespeople, and I stress all, I include owners and managers here can see the upside of every possible transaction. Quote, this could mean $10,000 to my company. And they also sense the downside, no sale, wasted time, expense, and they don’t have the skills they need to control the downside and weight the transaction in their favor. Most of the time they don’t even know such skills exist. And they often confuse personal magnetism with selling skills and a signed contract with being liked. Neither of those is true. What is true is that buyers would buy from a donkey if he could solve their problem. Chuck, that’s why I’ve done so well. People are buying from the donkey. Yeah, we’ll use that word. That’s a good word to use. Not the other one. Only I can self-deprecate myself. That’s you deprecating on me. That’s just mean, isn’t it? In your mind, Jerry, why does it seem like so many business owners are scared of rejection when it comes to sales? They fear the word no so much. Why? Because the real process is unknown to them. They are walking into a situation thinking, I have a good product, but they don’t know one thing about the client personally and very little about the client’s business. So what would you say to a business owner, I see this all the time, they want to delegate their sales to an employee without actually using the script themselves first. Like they want to delegate the sales process to an employee when they personally have not used the system and or created a system. The owner wants to delegate their sales to an employee without them actually first creating and using the proven systems. What would you say? Well, not to be cute, but you know I’ve run up against this quite often. I just say, ìLook, youíre an idiot.î Because if you owned a major sports team, you wouldnít put a player on the field just because you liked him or her. Youíd insist on training and practice and lots of it. Managing salespeople is one of the most difficult aspects of running a business. I mean, Iíve been in business since I was 17 years old. Iím now 83, so you can count it up. Partly because salespeople take their cue from management and many managers are not themselves trained. We’ve often trained salespeople where the managers would not come into the room with them and so the salespeople ended up knowing more about sales than the managers did, which caused conflicts in sales because the people are going, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. And the manager’s going, no, this is what we’re going to do. The more years involved they are with their product or service, the shallower the presentation becomes. The senior sales person is often the worst person to teach others down the line. They’re often product-oriented, make a few new calls, and shelter their old connections. So they don’t like being told they don’t know what they’re doing. Business has changed now and businesses that keep on selling the same way will eventually fall behind. You know, Jerry, in Soft Selling in a Hard World, you wrote a statement that blew my mind the first time I read it. And I just kept reading it again and again, it says, there are only three ways to make exceptional money. To work in a place nobody wants to be, that’s one. To work in a place where nobody wants to be, that’s one. If you’re writing this down, Thrive Nation. To work in a place where nobody wants to be. Two, to perform work nobody else wants to do. Or three, to do work that nobody else can do. So as we’re kind of thinking about that, Chuff, I DJed hell gigs at the Holiday Inn Select, Jerry. I was a disc jockey. Seven days a week at the Holiday Inn Select for impersonators. So one, I was doing work in a place no one wanted to do it. Two, I was doing work that nobody else wanted to do because no one else wanted to be a DJ seven nights a week for impersonators who pretended to be Neil Diamond and Michael Jackson. And then three, I did work that nobody else could do because who knows how to host four shows in a row that are exactly the same saying exactly the same jokes and pretending like you care while bringing the heat every single every single time Jerry people would pour in I’d say folks welcome the incredible holiday and select you guys are in for a treat we’ve got Neil Diamond in the flesh and everyone’s going you know and I had to tee it up every time I was like is Ed McMahon I mean so it’s so true. That is such a true statement. So I ask you, Thrive Nation, how are you going to get rich? Now you have to perform work that no one else wants to do, to perform work no one else can do, or to work in a place nobody else wants to be. Jerry, talk to us about the importance of facing the reality that these are the only three ways to get rich, unless you’re a unicorn example. Yes, or a drug dealer, or a liquor distributor or something. These are financial conditions we all cope with daily. This book is about dealing with the second and third ways of doing what no one else wants to do and what no one else can do. As you have said, people are scared of selling, and many don’t have the skills to close deals. Learning to sell well allows you to bravely meet both of those conditions where you both want to and can do. Jerry, I love when you write in your book, you say, this book is about mechanics. I’ll preach it. It is designed from the street up tactics, not strategy. You won’t find any magic here, there is none. There’s no underlying motivation or belief. Here’s my favorite part. It says, it isn’t about something larger than yourself. You don’t have to believe in it to make it pay. You don’t even have to believe in yourself. You just have to use mechanics. Jerry, I want to pile on there, Chuck, because when I was selling commercial real estate, I didn’t care about commercial real estate. I would say the vast majority of the business ventures that I’m involved in right now are in industries and things that I am 100% dispassionate about. But my friend, why is great selling really just about mastering the mechanics of sales? Well, done well. Selling is a profession, and learning a profession isn’t something that happens naturally or in a vacuum. It takes an awareness of errors and learning from those errors and correcting the errors and in doing so you eventually learn the profession. Persuasion as a profession is no different. It requires attention, troubleshooting, and practice. Jerry, I think that it seems so simple. You’re almost like, is that it? Is that it? No, but listen, it’s not Thrive Nation, it’s not a one-time event, it’s a process. And so, Chuck, we have our sales meetings every single week at Thrive, every Tuesday, Jerry. Because of you and your book, Jerry, you caused this problem. We train our team every single week, and in that meeting we record the calls, and we play back the calls of actual sales presentations. We watch actual videos. Yeah, and while reading the script at the same time. And while the actual salespeople, Jerry, are in the room. So the salespeople actually get to watch themselves physically presenting on video and on audio every single week. And we do it every week. Jerry, for somebody out there that wants to do sales training like one time, why does it require ongoing training? Could you share that? Why does sales require ongoing practice? For the same reason that football players have to practice every Saturday and several times during the week in order to stay sharp, there are only so many responses that are available to the buyer, both in role plays and in reality. And when you hear them enough times, you go, I know what to do with this. So it takes a surprise out of the transaction for the seller. And you just get better and better. And I have to say, having your sales meeting once a week and doing role plays, I did that with, I owned a brokerage in Telluride, Colorado for 30 years. And I role played my people every Monday morning at 7.30, much to everybody’s pain. and we control 30% of the total market, two of us. And so it’s one of those things where you go, when this comes to this, this is what you do, this is what you do. You run down, you go for the long pass, or you go for the short out or whatever. So practice and all of that is a very serious and rewarding activity for the business owner. So Jerry, can you explain to the listeners why you believe that sales is, that soft sales is a learned skill? Why do you believe that? Well because it doesn’t come naturally to us. For 30 years we taught a course in unnatural acts and because the stuff is just not a natural response, it is a learned response. So for the soft sell, one has to put away the ego and let the buyer do the work. Believe it or not, it is very difficult for people to allow the buyer to do the work. We live in a culture that tells us we sellers are the center of the universe and to sell well, one has to allow and encourage the buyer to be the center of his or her own universe. Salespeople should talk more than 40% of the time. The buyer should talk 60% of the time. Great salespeople are all above average listeners. We taught people to do shortlist presentations in front of committees and buying groups and so on. We taught them how to give a mission statement, open with a probe, and then sit back and watch the action, rather than talk and talk and talk and do slide after slide, and get into slide depth. So we teach this. Basically, we did a course in civilized conversation, which is allow those people to do the work. I love it. I love it. I totally believe in the rule of conversational generosity. Let the prospect, let the buyer talk the majority of the time. Now, Jerry, there’s another knowledge bomb from your book that I highlighted and underlined multiple times. And it read, if you have a world-class idea and you want to give it away for the good of humanity, you will have to sell the concept. And if you can’t sell it, you’ll be stuck with your idea, poorer for your brilliance and generosity. It seems unfair, but even freebies must be delivered with a certain salesmanship or the receiver does not perceive the true value of the gift. Jerry, why do so many people push back on the idea of learning how to sell effectively and resort to saying dumb things like this product is so good it will sell itself? Well because they love this illusion, it is a cultural thing in my estimation. It is maybe two percent of the time it’s true that something will sell itself, but if your stuff sells itself, and it’s not really selling, it is order taking. We all love the idea of the financial miracle, winning the lottery or unexpected inheritance from a rich aunt, and we’re all looking for the magic bullet, whether it’s weight loss or closing deals. Those are myths too, and they’re fun, but selling is a skill. There are no shortcuts to getting good at it and no quick fixes. It may not be the fun you’re looking for, but the profession is very lucrative. The highest paid people in our culture are salespeople. I agree with that. I think that there are many people out there that want to go into the marketplace and they want to just state, my product is the best, therefore it’s going to sell itself. And Jerry, in your book you write, puffery is hot air. Webster’s definition, Webster’s dictionary defines it as flattery, publicity, exaggerated commendation, especially for promotional purposes. In selling, it is claims that are unproven as stated. Typically, puffery words and phrases are, we’re number one, we’re the best in our business, save big money, a lot, high profits, and the fastest, etc. Can you explain for our listeners the profound difference between attempting to sell using puffery versus attempting to sell using representation, benefits, and facts? Well, in a downscale market, we buy puffery all the time, but I happen to be in the executive sales training business, and so we were teaching people to sell at the very highest levels, which of course also works at the lower levels. The less sophisticated the buyer, the more likely they are to buy puffery. But buyers view puffery as lies. They may not be intentional, but the buyers don’t believe them. First, they make all salespeople sound the same. So everybody in your business then sounds the same. And when you get killed on a price negotiation, you have no defense. And second, they set up conflicts with your buyer. I want to ask you this, Jerry. This is not about the sales process, but it’s about you, the sales wizard. How long did it take you to write that book, Self-Selling in a Hard World, which is the Bible of sales. That thing is amazing. How long did it take you to read that or to write that thing? That thing is awesome. Well, probably around six months. It’s a funny story. We don’t have time to do it here. Someday when we’re sitting over drinks, I’ll tell you the funny story about my book. It was one of those things. I wrote it as part of a software program I was developing at the time because I had my own bit rich scheme about how to build a playbook on a computer. We were developing that in the very early, early days and that book was just part of a package of teaching people how to fill using computers it was really an ancillary program an ancillary project i’m sorry this larger idea which the larger idea failed but the book was residual out of that it is now sold about i don’t know eighty thousand or so it’s been on the market for thirty we figured out that thirty two years or something it’s been on the market. It’s been backlisted a long time. It’s kind of one of those books there that I run into a lot of high-level salespeople that have read the book. Oh, yeah. But it’s not a book that everybody… If you’re listening to this podcast, you should own the book. But if you’re working for a company and you’re selling burritos and you have no curiosity about how sales works, you should read the book, but you probably won’t because it would require a lot of work and thinking. But that book is awesome, soft selling in a hard world. Jerry, I want to go back now to asking you some of these questions about specifically the closing move. Can you share with us what the closing move looks like to you? Sure. Actually, the closing move is the last move of the seven selling moves that is explored in depth in the book. In fact, most of the course that we teach or used to teach had to do with covering seven selling moves. It took three days. It just encompasses this entire idea of how to do persuasion from the buyer’s point of view. In selling, this move is called the close. This is the move that scares everybody to death. And it’s not just you. It is where people go, my God, what do I do now? In selling lore, this is the scariest move. However, this seventh move is the simplest move at all. But only if you have set up your whole meeting from your first words to solve the buyer’s problem. The actual words to close can be as simple as, well, how do you see us working together to solve this problem? Or where do you think we should go from here? Or something along those lines, and let the buyer do the work. Now we often get a comment when we teach this, well, they never said yes. Well, they were never required to say yes. It was all assumed that they would say yes. And if they answered this question, where would you like to go from here, you don’t need yes, no. It just doesn’t come to that. You know, with our wedding photography company and then with real estate, people ask me. They would look up Fears and Clark online. And by the way, if you’re out there at Thrive Nation, take the challenge, type in Fears, F-E-A-R-S, Clark, and then Kanbar. Maurice Kanbar there, Jerry, is the guy who invented Sky Vodka. And after selling Sky Vodka for $600 million, he purchased one-third of downtown Tulsa, and he asked me to list and market his properties for him. And people would ask me all the time, Clay, when you’re signing all those leases, what did you say to close the deal? How’d you do it? I said, well, I, one, I’m using my Jerry Vassum of sharing. So I’m never going to say, well, do you want to go ahead and lease the space? I’d say, well, how much space do you need after you’ve looked at it? You want 12,000 square feet or 10? There you go. There you go. I’m sorry I stepped on your line, but that’s what I was looking for. I would say that. And then I would say, now, OK, 12 or 10. OK, 12. OK. And then when would you like to move in, ideally? The 1st or the 15th? OK, great. And we need a security deposit here. Do you want to do debit card or credit card? Okay. You want to sign right here?” And then I would walk in to the office every time. And Braxton was there, and Buena was there, and Tonya was there, and our team was there. And every time they’d go, did you get the deal? And I’d say, guys, this deal was kind of tough. And so they could only pay with a credit card! And I would just get a deal every time. I would close every deal. I am not kidding. I went Jerry in 2007 when I ran my company DJ connection as a result of your book soft selling in a hard world I went the entire year We booked 4,000 weddings and of all the appointments we set I only had one person say no the entire year whoa one Shannon and Clark you still remember him. Oh, yeah Shut me down Jerry. He said everyone in town’s using you so I decided to use somebody else. Well, go ahead. That move works. Now, Jerry, you write in your book that trickery in clothing is like trickery anywhere else. It’s short-lived. What do you mean by this? I mean, people teach, and I won’t drop names, but you know who they are, you say, well, there’s the puppy dog clothes, and there’s this kind of clothes, and there’s this reverse clothes, and there’s, and I’m going, no, that’s bullshit, I’m sorry. That is not right because it takes away from the buyer’s attention. The buyer hates that kind of stuff because they know all of these tricks. And so because they know the tricks, the tricks fall flat and it just turns the seller into this shuck and jive guy. Instead of being somebody that you would want to do business with, you go, well, if you shuck and jive me here in this transaction, what’s he hold for me down line when we’re in a serious business? That’s why trickery doesn’t work very well. If you are in low street sales, pots and pans and that sort of thing, perhaps you can get away with it. But if you’re going to be a legitimate, professional salesperson, don’t use trickery. I love the phrase, shuck and jive. Chuck, I’m going to begin using shuck and jive and shenanigans as words on the show more often. I agree. Hold me accountable. Why have I not said shuck and jive for a long time? You’re practicing shenanigans and you need to cut it out. Jerry has a better master of the English language than I have. That’s the whole issue I have here. Now, Jerry, I want to brag on Paul Hood, who’s on the show today. Paul and his company, hoodcpas.com, if you’re checking it out. By the way, we’re number three right now on the iTunes charts. No puffery there, Jerry. In the business section of the iTunes charts. We’re number three out of 530,000 podcasts according to the Wall Street Journal in all categories. I’m talking comedy, sports, I’m talking about comedy, sports, business. We are number 26 as of the time of the recording of today’s podcast. So Paul’s been a sponsor the entire time and Paul, over there at Hood CPAs, if somebody comes in, and they meet with you, and they do a consultation, you have multiple packages that the customer can choose from. Can you kind of explain, not necessarily all the specifics, but about the idea of having multiple packages and just letting the customer choose the options when you go for the close? You bet. One of the reasons we did that, it kind of ties in with Jerry’s book, is Law of Clarity, where he says if you can’t explain your product to a 10-year-old, then you don’t know your product very well. You’re not a very good salesman. And so what we have is we basically try to break it down into three decisions. And also so that they, it’s not a decision between yes and no. It’s a decision between which of the three do they want. And they go from a very basic, comprehensive where we’re just doing some consulting type work and meeting with them once a month to the next style. Maybe if it’s a business, we’re doing accounting plus all the consulting. The third one would be if we’re doing payroll and accounting and consulting. But it breaks it down to where, all right, Mr. Potential Client, which of these three do you want? Which best fits your needs? We’re doing textbook, the soft selling close. That’s right. Now, Chep, I want to teach Jerry a word here on this next question. Jerry, you brought us back to Shuck and Jive and Shannigans. Yeah. So I’m going to give you a word. I’m a huge New England Patriots fan, and the word I would like to teach you today is wicked awesome. Wicked. Wicked awesome. And that’s one word. And if anything is great in Boston, it’s wicked awesome. It’s not hyphenated. It’s just wicked awesome. So Jerry, I would like for you to break down your wicked awesome bonus move on page 119 of Soft Selling in a Hard World. You write about this wicked awesome move called cross-selling. What is cross-selling all about, and why is it so wicked awesome important? Well, it’s wicked awesome important because many, if not most, salespeople have several things to sell. After the buyer’s first agreement, because you’re going to be closing incrementally. And after the first agreement, the salesperson now has a proven performer in the buyer and must move on to the second and third sale and so on. Some businesses can’t even survive without cross-sells. And successful cross-selling cuts across the cost of sales and increases profits. And you run into it very often when you buy something, you say you want an extended warranty with that, or you eat fries with that burger, you need to add on accessories for that car. Well, that’s where the real profit comes. And so add-on sales really is the profit center for many of these businesses and a way to survival for them. You know, Best Buy… The cross-sell always starts with a probe, too, by the way. It always starts with a question. And so, you can just continue on. I remember I was trained early on and I was selling mutual funds in one of my many careers. And I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know a damn thing about mutual funds. I didn’t know anything about that business. But I was taught how to sell it and I went out and I just kept selling until I ran out of things to sell. I finally had to shrug my shoulders and say, well, that’s it for me. I’m done. I don’t have anything else left. So cross-selling can be pretty high adventure, particularly on high-end stuff like high-end real estate. I’m talking business buildings and that sort of thing because I taught that for 30 years. And these people are making a million and a half, two million, three million dollars per sale. They practiced all the time, all the time. And when they practiced, they were serious men because there was serious money involved and these were serious, bright, educated people and they were wonderful to teach. Now this is something I want to hammer home on here because, Chuck, this great selling doesn’t, as Jerry has mentioned in his book and then on today’s podcast, great salespeople don’t even look like they’re selling, Paul. It’s happening. And I’ll never forget this, Jerry. I called the book a cruise with Karen Wheelock. And if you’re out there and you know Karen Wheelock, say that Clay Clark is bragging on her, because she was good. And if you are Karen Wheelock, Clay Clark is bragging on you. Oh, you’re the best, Karen Wheelock. So I went to book a cruise, you know, and Karen says, well, great. Yeah, and I said, how much are the cruises? And Karen said to me, this is, the first cruise I went on, I insisted on being the cheapest price possible. And I had a small boat, got motion sickness the entire time. So the second time I call and I said, Karen, how much do you charge? How much would it be? And she says, Clay, do you, let me ask you, what are you looking to do here? What’s the big occasion? And I tell her and she’s, oh, oh, so you’re gonna surprise her? Oh, really? Well, so let me ask you this. What are some of her favorite activities? Next thing you know, she’s got the probing questions going on. Next thing you know, Jerry, she booked an appointment. She got me to commit, not to buying something, but commit to the appointment within 72 hours, kind of within that window of time when I’m still interested. I met with her and she just continued asking me, if you’re gonna be here, don’t you want at least have like a balcony or don’t you want to get this room service or what about tickets to that? Have you thought about a catamaran tour? And Jerry, somehow that $1,000 cruise, I feel like that $1,000 per person cruise turned out to be about $5,000 per person, but it was wicked awesome. It was really good. So the cross sell, I mean, that is, whoo. And one thing, Jerry, that you’ve talked about is during your years working with thousands of salespeople, you’ve noticed that salespeople will instantly freeze up and seem to almost have kind of like a panic attack. I’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. A salesperson has almost like an anxiety, immediate panic attack. It’s like their brain shuts off as soon as a buyer inserts any objections whatsoever. Why is it that most salespeople need to learn to overcome objections? Well, quite frankly, if you can figure out what the problem is in the objection, you’re about halfway to an answer just on that part without doing anything. So when you hear an objection, the first thing you have to do is figure out what the real objection is. English is a very complex language, and what you think you heard and what the buyer really is saying can be quite different. So the first move is to ask a question. Something simple as, why is that? Or help me understand why you say that, or what is going on here, et cetera. We’re now assuming salespeople have playbooks, so they will have practice the answer to this objection. But it takes practice, and you’re on the money having people practice, particularly in front of recording devices, cameras and so on, because people cannot simply believe how bad they are until they see themselves on camera. It’s just humiliating. I mean, I watch myself on camera and I just hang my head and cry. Now, Jerry, you’ve written much about how salespeople can truly make a fortune if they understand that the profits are in solving the problems. I repeat, Chup, the profits are in solving the problems. Chup, I’m not sure if I’m communicating. Maybe my mic is cutting out. You say the problems are in solving problems. Chup, do you get what I’m saying? The profits. Let me try it in Spanish. El Profito. El Profito. El Profito. In El Solving El Problemo. Right. So, all right. So, can you talk to us about what you mean by that? Sure. When we circle back to the top of our talk today, selling is problem-solving. When selling to executives, there are really seven business problems that seem to be universal, as we discovered in learning from our students. They’re outlined in detail in my other book, Self-Selling to Executives, and they pop up over and over again. They are to acquire and manage capital, acquire and manage people, find and fill markets, meet and exceed the competition, improve quality and lower costs of production, maintain sufficient and predictable cash flow, maintain control and predictable overhead. When you’re selling into this stuff at the business level, life goes pretty well. People are not going to argue with you. They say, ìLook, weíre here to help you pick one, cut your overhead, or meet or exceed the competition, or find and fill a new market, or acquire and manage your people or your finances.î So when you hit the business level for upscale clients, that’s where the money is. And really, selling becomes consulting at that point, where you really are genuinely bringing value, true value, to your client. I want to make sure that the listeners get a specific example of this. Okay? So, Jerry, if somebody out there listens to our podcast and they reach out to us for business coaching, here are just some of the problems that we can solve, and I’ll just kind of list them out, and Paul, you can chime in if there’s something I’m missing out on, but. Hey, I got a quote here. It’s a business guru. If you got a problem, you’ll all solve it. Check out the moves while my DJ revolts it. Thank you for quoting Vanilla Ice, the early 90s rapper. Business guru. Jerry, are you a big fan of Vanilla Ice? Were you a big fan of the early 90s rapper Vanilla Ice? Yes, uh-huh. Okay, nice. There he is. So this is the thing, though. People say, what do you guys do? Well, we do all the search engine. So what’s the problem we’re solving? How do you get to the top of Google? So we’re getting you to the top of Google. We help you make a workflow. What problem does that solve? It helps you create time freedom. Paul, sales scripting, what problem does it help for you when our organization helps you with sales scripting? How does that help you, Paul? Well it helps by creating a duplicatable system that can be scaled so that’s all not all dependent upon the top salesperson me. Videography what problem does that solve Eric for our listeners out there? Yeah we’re oftentimes educating the customer on who we are what we sell and we’re showing them happy previous clients and testimonial videos as well. A lot of our clients can’t afford a videographer right? They can’t do it so we do the videography, the photography, the web development, the sales scripting, but we have to think about it in terms of the buyer. What are the problems we’re solving for you? And the problem for you, the average buyer, is you have a small business and you don’t have the ability to, you don’t have the money to hire a full-time videographer and a full-time photographer and a full-time web developer and a consultant to make it all happen. And so for $1,700 a month, month to month, for less money than it costs to hire a $10 per hour employee, you get all that stuff. And so that’s, but I think, Jerry, a lot of us, we can become so experts of what we’re, we can become such an expert and a guru of our industry that we can’t explain it to anybody. And that’s why I love the chapter of your book where you talk about the importance of positive self-talk and really sharing with yourself on an ongoing basis, this positive, intentional self-talk and coaching yourself up so when you head into the presentation you’re saying, ìI can do this. I’ve got it. I’ve prepared. I know what I’m doing.î Jerry, can you talk to us about the importance of being intentional about what you say to yourself as a salesperson? Yes. Yes. Because all of us, I mean I have never met anybody who sold who didn’t have fear at some level. I’ve walked in many, many boardrooms to sell our services, and I knew exactly what I was going to do and how to control it because I had studied it and written a couple of books about it and all of that, but even then, it’s pretty easy to get tense in those things when it goes out of control. When suddenly the answer to a question ends up over in left field someplace, you’re looking at it and going, what the hell do I do now? It’s easy for us to talk ourselves out of selling when all we can see is the stress of it. Preparation, knowing exactly where you’re going and where you’re taking the buyer can change that. There are many more problems than problem solvers. So it’s kind of incumbent on the salesperson to keep their eye on the problem. What is the problem? You could continue to go, what is the problem? And if you know what the problems are when you walk in, I mean, I would open with those. I would go into the boardrooms of big firms and my opening shot, I would just take a look around the room and say, ìHey there, my name is Jerry Fess, and when your people walk in to sell your services, they donít know what theyíre doing, and so they have one rec right after another, often three recs before they get to the end of the first sentence. And they go, whoa, because you can prove it. There it is. And they know it. Somewhere in their heart, they know that I am telling them the truth. Let’s take the accounting business. 90% of new businesses fail within three years. That would be my opening shot. 90% of businesses fail within three years. So right away, it gets the attention of everybody in the room, and you can prove it. And it’s provable, and it’s researchable, and it’s all there, and it scales down, or up, depending on your perspective. It scales up to that 10% is remaining, but it’s like half fail within the first year, and there’s some long-term ratio that goes like that. So, and more fail within the second year, but by the third year, there’s only 10% left. And it’s pretty easy, once you’re aware of it, it’s pretty easy to watch it happen in real time, and somewhere in your heart of hearts, you know it’s true, okay? So when you have a reputation as a problem solver, the opportunities just naturally flow your way. It isn’t effortless, but it’s certainly at a greatly reduced effort. Salespeople and managers worry a lot about losing clients. I’ll tell you, when you solve a client’s problem, you can’t get rid of them. They stick to you like glue. This is so true. If you’re out there, there’s one gentleman that I met here about two months ago, Paul, at a conference. And he said to me, he says, I am a, this guy was in Florida, okay, in Florida. I won’t give any more details. I just say he’s in Florida. And he said, what I do is I’m a social media marketer, Paul. And I said, that’s cool. So what kind of problems do you solve for your ideal and likely buyers? What kind of problems do you solve? And he says, well, what I do is I generate leads. And then I said, do you? That was my question. Do you? Is it provable? And he said, well, yeah. So it’s like, how does that work? He said, well, you pay up front for the first three months. You’ve got to pay for the first three months. And it was a huge fee, Jerry. It was like $6,000 or something. And I said, okay, and then what happens? He goes, well, then if you want to cancel, you can after like the third month, because it’s only like a thousand a month after the first three months, the big upfront fee. And the guy, I said, well, could you show me an example of maybe a client you’ve ever worked with where they get leads, maybe just one? And he’s like, well, Paul, there’s kind of too many to name, you know, I mean, it’s got a lot of them really. He’s fishing around and I wasn’t trying to, I was trying to help the guy. And then he pulls me aside at our workshop and he goes, I gotta be honest with you, I’ve never actually done this for people before. And I said, well, dude, that move doesn’t work. What you should say is, hey, I’m a social media marketer. I believe in my product and you’d be my first client. And so I’m gonna do your first month for free. And then if you’re happy, then I’ll charge you this much per month. But you have to be direct and honest, you’ve got to use facts, but you also have to get in front of the decision maker or you’re not going to have a conversation anyway. So the decision maker, Paul, if someone’s trying to go to Hood CPAs, they go to hoodcpas.com, they listen to our podcast, and they show up at your office, the chances of getting to you, unless they have an appointment, are pretty slim, probably none, because you are a decision maker, therefore you’ve set up systems in your life and processes to make yourself unreachable. So Jerry wrote in his book here, he said, Jerry, you write, in your book, the decision maker is often as elusive as true love. Can you explain this, Jerry, why the decision makers like Paul are always so elusive. Because they hate salespeople. Because salespeople waste their time. And our view is that you should be able to go in, make a complicated presentation, close the deal, and be gone at the executive level in 15 minutes. So that means that everything is quantified, it is provable, there it is, you have a lead, you got a story. The problem here is that salespeople spend a lot of time talking into a receptive ear, which often has no decision-making responsibility. It’s because salespeople often prefer to meet someone at a lower level who’s more interested in the features of what you sell, and salespeople are often intimidated by executives who are interested only in benefits. What is in this for me, for my business? That’s all they’re interested in. And so that would then dictate that you would walk in and say, my business is to increase your bottom line, your net profits by 2% annually. That’s what we do. Well, we can discuss that, you know, and because we’re talking the executive language. So people are, they don’t understand that executives are not interested particularly in features. That’s for the people down the line, the kind of computer or the app that they’re using or some relationship that they have with them. That’s not what they’re talking about. They’re talking about the wrong stuff. Once you know what your product or service does for buyers and how you impact their company, you are way less likely to be intimidated or willing to waste time with someone who can’t say yes. Here’s a question. How are decisions like this when you’re talking to anybody in the firm. I mean you are talking to the receptionist or you’re talking to the janitor. You’re asking questions. No decisions like this made inside this firm. I had a really good person today that asked me that, Jerry, a very skilled person. And for our Christmas party, it’s going to be $55 a head this year for the party every year Jerry it always is going up inflation You know it’s always going up there this year. It’s $55 a head. We have a staff all in between Z and I they’ll probably be 400 Getting closer to 500 people there this year There’s a lot of people and if you take four or five hundred times 55 That’s a large number and so a person asked me today. They said how our decisions made For you guys your holiday party within thrive. How do you do that?” I said, well, my wife decides the budget for the party. That’s what my wife does. She decides that and so you got to talk to her. And I think it’s so important because if you would have been pitching to me, I don’t care how good the pitch is, even if I would have loved it Jerry, I don’t have the budget authority within our organization. We decided that 18 years ago that my wife would make all final decisions on that holiday party, because I always want to swag it out and spend money on things we shouldn’t be buying. And Vanessa is very good with the budget. And so that’s such a wise question. Ask people, who is the decision maker? How are decisions often made? Jerry, that is so important. Well, if you ask them who the decision maker is, they’re going to say, that’s me. That’s me. And so you have to come in a side door on that, how are decisions made. My view is, in asking questions in probes, you start every one of them with how. I love it. Everyone. And once you’ve mastered how, you can move on to some other things like maybe what and who. How is so good! It’s so good. Okay? So anytime you ask somebody, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to correct you, but this is what I do. When you have decisions made inside the company, you’re going to get a different answer from who is the decision maker. Well, I’ll say this. I’m not going to argue with the sales wizard. I want to make sure we get this. The reason why we’re doing this podcast and this next question I have for you, Jerry, ties into this is once you’ve read your book, right, three times, okay? Once I’ve read the book three times, once you’ve read your own book, Jerry, 400 times. You have to make a playbook then and you have to write down the specific questions because you just pointed out you would prefer to ask how, which is a great question. And the thing is, off the cuff is a bad way to go. The pros prepare. They gotta have a playbook. So you and I are having a conversation here, but you’re gonna, after you’ve read that book and you’ve outlined and you’ve taken notes, you have to make an actual playbook because you and I both know the devil’s in the details. Can you explain what it means for salespeople to truly make a sales playbook? Right. Well, it’s on a basic simple theory that if you can’t write it, you can’t do it. Self-selling is an action plan, and writing comes first, then practice on the street. The playbook is a working document. It changes over time as your business, your products, your services, your competition, all change right in front of your eyes. So, after each call, make notes of what didn’t work and what you would change, and schedule regular reviews of your playbook for review and upgrading because it’s you know life is a continuous upgrade path here. It becomes an archive of the best of what you do. It’s also an excellent teaching tool if you’re called on to train new hires. So we have found that it keeps you from making as many bad moves in a live presentation. Oh, it’s so good when you take the time to do this. It’s so good. Thrive Nation, take the time to make a sales book. Now, Jerry, why do you think that most people never do take the time to make their sales playbook. None of our listeners, but other people on other planets, other parallel universes, other countries, not our country, other planetary systems, they will listen to a podcast like this and then they won’t actually make the sales playbook. What’s going on, Jerry? Why won’t people ever take the time out to make the playbooks? Well, they don’t understand, this is my assessment, they don’t understand the importance of the act of the creation and design stage. Actually, what happens is people learn a great deal about their own business in the act of putting down the words and what they think they say. what you think you say, when you write it down, it changes in front of your eyes. It’s like studying for a play where you read the words and you say the words and do the words over and over and over on the script and then one day they change right in front of your eyes because you go, ìOh, I got it.î So that’s what a playbook does. It allows you to get it. When building it, you’re going to eliminate puffery and develop proof statements and quantify your benefits and find the unique benefits that you sell and design a mission statement for both your firm and the upcoming call. You’re going to develop each of the seven selling moves, which we’ve only touched on briefly here, as explained in the book. That is the seven selling moves. It’s really the central theme of our three-day hard selling course because we end up developing a selling book, if we ever did, in class and then sent him home to do homework. There was two or three hours of homework every night in order to work on the playbook. So it’s kind of a pain to do. It is time consuming and it will tax your brain because you have to shift your thinking over to how does the buyer think about this. We know what we think about it. How do they think about it? And you will eventually develop a return on investment for the buyer of your services or your products delivered. So the ROI at the higher end of selling, when you’re selling larger ticket stuff, the return on investment becomes a very critical thing we can say, we can say look you’re going to give me a dollar and I’m going to give you ten dollars back within 90 days. Well I mean that takes away, it takes care of a whole lot of selling problems right there and you can prove if you can prove that, which we could in our case, we can, you say you know it becomes. I want to, this, this, these final two questions, I’m very, very, very passionate, Chef, about this next question because I falsely believed, Jerry, for a decade previous to knowing you, from age 18 to about age 20, I guess it’s age 17 to age 27, age 26, somewhere in that time frame, I believe that sales was about motivation. So I would send my team to sales conferences all the time. And I would go to these motivational conferences. Now let me tell you the kinds of things they would teach. And when I took notes, Jerry, I’m a note taker, these are the kinds of things they would write down. They would say, everyone stand up right now and say right now, if I can conceive it, I can achieve it. And they’d bounce the beach ball. The music’s playing. And they’re saying, everybody now! And everyone’s yelling. They’ll have you stand up on a chair and say, I can’t sell. And they would talk to you about feeling it. And they would talk about aligning your vision, Chup, with your goals. And they would talk about the power of discovering the infinite knowledge that you could find by tapping into the universal knowledge. They would never call it God, but it became almost like a religion, Jerry. There’s all this motivation. And I went to one conference and I met these people and I thought, why are all of the jackasses here? And then I thought to myself, why am I here? And then I realized I also was a jackass and I was going to the Jackass Festival and I kind of liked it for the first four or five times because it was a jackass festival. But over time I realized all of those people were always looking for the new get rich quick move, their companies weren’t working, and things were going to hell because none of them could sell well. So if I’m out there saying, okay, I’ve been to all those conferences, I’ve been to all those woo woo things, I’ve walked on hot calls, I’ve watched all the motivational, Jerry, you’ve seen it, all the videos, I’ve done trust falls with my team, I’ve gone to ropes courses. I’d like to get your thoughts on how sales people can overcome their fears and the best way to train your team. Well, it sounds to me like you have much of this ball of wax well under control, but it reminds me of the thing, the question about, they ask the violin player, the violin player asks, how do I get to Carnegie Hall? And the answer is practice, practice, practice. And in sales is the same way, and it is not a glorious, it is not a glorious motivational-driven craft anymore. You can be a motivated football player and it doesn’t keep you from getting your head knocked off out there. So I feel the same way. If you know how to defend yourself with knowledge, then you can defend yourself in every circumstance that you run into except earthquake and bombing, but you’re never afraid. I was terrified for years and I’ve been selling for 150 years. Fear doesn’t exist well in the face of extensive preparation. It just doesn’t. The way you work your people, and I think it’s the way you’re working them, which is you find a buddy and you role play every presentation. You don’t wait for a perfect presentation. You just start using the skills and perfect them as you go along because it is a lifetime skill. It isn’t something you’re going to do for a year and then leave because if you go for a year and leave and you know your business, you’re going to make yourself $100,000 or $150,000 and nothing makes you feel quite as good as having a nice fat bank account and there’s no time like the present to begin to do that so do it now and I absolutely agree with the motivational ideas because I think people do need motivation and particularly people who work alone, they get bummed, they get disappointed and they get disappointed greatly in sales because they don’t have the skill to close deals that are walking in their door every single day. And those people turn around and walk out. I owned a real estate brokerage in the mountains, and I trained my people. People would come in and say, well, we want to see what’s for sale. And I had to train my people to say, well, come back to my office and sit down here and talk to me about that.” And the first question from our side was, ìWhat would you like the real estate to do for you?î And that then began to greatly narrow the inventory about what you were going to talk about. And you just went along that whole line and you qualified, qualified, qualified, until I got two or three properties that we could look at that will do what you want. You didn’t guess. You asked those questions. It’s so powerful. Yeah. Well, this is out of my experience of that I had in some trades and some of them worked and some of them didn’t. Actually, I’m a man known for his failures more than his successes. Well I think your biggest failure is agreeing to be on our podcast. That just shows a lack of judgment there, but thank you so much for making one more poor decision. I agree. I agree. All right. So far this has been miserable. Okay, well Jerry, I have a final question here for you. You’ve literally worked with thousands of salespeople all over the world. Why do you believe that most people just try to make things up on the fly as opposed to implementing a proven path? I think a good part of it is laziness. I mean, there are two things. These are harsh words, but it has to do with laziness because it’s work and with a big It’s time consuming and people often do not even know that there is a proven path other than whatever the senior sales people told them who gave the new boy everything that he knew, which really wasn’t very much on how to make the sale happen. The guy has been doing it for 30 years and so he is wired, he’s the number one guy in the company, and he is wired to accounts that he has been courting for 20 years. And so he confuses people when they say, let’s watch him work. And he goes out and he says, hey, Bob, I’m here to pick up our order for this month or for this year, or here to move you over to that other place. And so when do you want to get started? Well, because the trust is already built, it looks really easy. It’s very deceptive. Many people do not understand there’s an underlying structure to successful human communication and persuasion. Working without a structure or a plan is a design for failure. And in this profession, there’s no magic bullet in this profession or any other one that you can think of or will run into in your lifetime. I think what you just said is so powerful. There’s no magic bullet. There’s a proven system. It works. It’s called soft selling in a hard world. Paul, I wanted to see, and Paul no longer asks political gotcha questions. He no longer asks religious questions. He no longer paints our guests into a corner as one of our proud show sponsors. But he is a real entrepreneur with thousands of real customers. He has real employees. Paul, do you have a final question for the Wizard of Sales, Mr. Jerry Vance? Well, yeah. I apologize if this is a selfish question, but I would just like from the sales guru out there, Jerry, do you have any advice for me? Because I can say I’m in the wisdom business and I read a long time ago, I can’t remember what I read out, if you sell somebody, you break rapport, but if you educate them, you build rapport. But then I’ve got to balance that side of things, the hard sell versus not creating too much of a wisdom based or like you said vomiting my product or my wisdom or my knowledge all over them. What kind of advice could you give to me for that middle ground that I’ve got to educate them somewhat in that 40% that I speak but I don’t want to vomit all over them like you said earlier? Well, it sounds to me like you’re doing it right. There’s always a balance that has to be achieved, and there’s a balance between advice and persuasion and knowledge and experience and wisdom. There’s some kind of a balance, and I don’t know what that balance is, but I do know that that it is there because what we just did here in this podcast is that I have worked hard to balance advice and wisdom and knowledge that I have gained doing this for most of my adult life because it takes all of it. It’s kind of the whole mcgillow, the whole package. So frankly, I wouldn’t worry about it. I would do what I’m doing. If you’re successful doing it, I do not believe if you can afford to give away a new car with every sale and you want to do that, for God’s sake, do it. But if you can’t afford that, you’re going to have to figure out something else. And so it’s one of those things where you go, I don’t like to try to change people from what they’re doing now if they’re successful now. I work with people who are less than successful than they should be. Given their talent, their education, their preparation, their time and rank, their education in the market, when they’re still losing, then you can use this information to start cleaning up their act and getting successful again. Most people have been successful at least once, but they wander off, they forgot where the center of the universe was. The center of the universe is communication with buyers and potential buyers. They forgot that and they started doing other things. I’ve done it. I had nine man years in a software program because I lost contact with reality, actually. I lost contact with reality. I was going on this $10 million deal that I knew that it was going to be superb and I was going to be rich for life and be able to buy myself a good used car. But I was wrong. I was wrong. And because I wandered off from the basics. So I don’t think I’m the right guy to ask about what you should do differently. If you’re successful doing what you’re doing, for God’s sake, don’t change it. Great. Thank you. Jerry, I appreciate you so much for taking the time to be on today’s show. Where are you physically located? What state are you in? I am on the beach in North Florida. In North Florida? Yeah, in Northeast Florida, 40 miles south of Jacksonville. I’m looking at the beach and the ocean, and it is part of my success package, shall we say. That and my partner years, Iris Heron, who actually is a co-author of the second book I wrote, which is Soft Selling for Executives. Anyway, it’s a very happy circumstance. Is Soft Selling in a Hard World an in-print for the people that want to get a copy? I’ve been buying them off of Amazon. Is there a certain place you’d recommend all of our listeners to go to to get a copy of that book? No. No, Amazon is the place that the stuff is bought. And so that works. Well, Jerry, thank you so much for being on today’s podcast. If you see a pale male, the big white moose walking up and down the beach in Jacksonville, that’s me, because we’ve been to Jacksonville a few times. And I am the most pale man in the history of our planet. So just look away. I don’t want you to burn your corneas or anything. And when you see the… I like reflect light, don’t I, Chup? I mean, it’s truly Casper-ish. What is the scream? Don’t look at it! That was Jerry Bass right here on the Thrive Time show on your podcast download. And now without any further ado… 3…2…1… Boom! Two one boom Yo, this song goes out to the 1984 Chevy Browns Yes She runs this city She runs this city Like x-facts DJ. Clavis is back. It’s the most caught in the history of man. It’s about 20 up It’s the brown van. It’s luxurious with its brown exterior It’s so pimped out, makes players feel inferior Two wood cup holders in a deluxe light show Tinted windows and a huge fricken side note Like Mario and Dreddy when I drive my ride I’ll straight drag race ya, like I got nitrous oxide Sometimes I just have to pinch myself As I marinate about the brown bands, civil as well Yeah I bought it for a thousand, a straight cold cash Just to intimidate the seller, I spread it on his dash and I said homie sell me your fricking van I’m the king of krunk and I just bought your van now with my purchase I got a ladder and back so I can get up on the roof and talk my smack I talk my smack like my name is smack man I gotta be real I love my brown van. It’s like a mobile Atlantis. A paradise on wheels. The only people that can relate to it are Shaquille O’Neal’s. Is it the musky smells or the whistles and bells? That makes my van a feeling like expensive hotels. It’s the 84 Chevy van, the talk of the town. Like a new dude on Viagra, yeah, what’s up now? You see pimps and hustlas, this is the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. It’s the new van. She was born in 84, and she’s got final with time. And as a matter of fact, her top speed is 85, which is cool with me, cause I just throw the gift people fly. I got people lining up for days and weeks, coming to my crib just to see what Brown Van leaks. I know that I’m a big deal cause my van is so sexy, but please it doesn’t mean that your man can be sex man. I’m a big deal cause my van is so sexy, but please it doesn’t mean that your man can be sex man. I’m a big deal cause my van is so sexy, but please it doesn’t mean that your man can be sex man. I’m a big deal cause my van is so sexy, but please it doesn’t mean that your man can be sex man. I’m a big deal cause my van is so sexy, but please it doesn’t mean that your man can be sex man. I’m a big deal cause my van is so sexy, but please it doesn’t mean that your man can be sex man. I’m a big deal cause my van is so sexy, but please it doesn’t mean that your man can be sex man. I’m a big deal cause my van is so sexy, but please it doesn’t mean that your man can be sex man And I’ve been here, it’s been child I’ve been here I’ve been here a while, let’s dip a bottle here Oh you’re just my type, you got me so right I just wanna chill, let’s dip a bottle here Let’s dip a bottle here You ain’t a soul train ride, nearly hot enough to touch the divine Then we reach up, reach up to touch the sky Before we do a three point stance like we about to hide Then we shake it like a salt shaker, shake it like a salt shaker Then we make it shake it like a California earthquake Then we mow it, we mow it, we mow it again We mow it like we landscaping friends Then we kick it, we kick it, we kick it again Like a badass Chuck Norris in the 80’s seeking revenge Then we do the stanky leg like we don’t mind Like we have the beat and now is the time Because of the brown van, I’m a popular dude Now it’s hard to roll through the city without someone getting nude Women throw their bodies at the brown van And dudes simply want to kiss my hand And I need to sleep, it’s a job I fear I may need a hug, but I’m never far to leave Oh, you’re just my type Everything’s alright And I just want you Let’s dip a bottle of juice Let’s dip a bottle of juice I know most people want to hop in the brown van for a conjugal visit But my brown van is a 100% sex-free zone It’s strictly business But I want you She’s a beauty I want you She’s fine too She’s the brown man. Stallion. For 18 miles per gallon. Brown man. Sing it. What if you was happy for me? This is how I feel I’m in love Let’s dip a bite of this Oh, you’re just my style Everything’s alright I just want you Let’s dip a bite of this Dip a bite of this You can have all of my love I want to, but I won’t do I want to, but I won’t do I want to, but I won’t do Hey! Browns Band We’re going streaky! Remix! Browns Band remix Hey Jim Hey, who let Jim in here? Who let him in? Ladies and gentlemen, family and friends I present to you Who let Jim in here? Who let him in? Not enough room for a lamp or a bass, but still managed to put a gig in a empty seat. Ridin’ in the brown van, you know me. Side door hangin’ open as I roll down the street. Please don’t imitate what you see on the screen. Rockin’ the brown van ain’t no easy feat. They see us on the corner, they’re gonna look twice. We got the city on lock, so don’t even try. We keep scatting and playin’, we’re lookin’ to fly. Watch those hand-to-shed kids when they see us drive by. You hear the engine gun? I don’t know what to write. First line, should it be about the rims or the lights? Hands heat up, hands strike, both poles will be nice. Don’t even care if the doors don’t shut so tight. Yeah, we floss so bright, we shine so good. Children are scurred cause Brown Band is so hood. Country driving tipsy, Jamie Foxx said it. Blame it on the A-A-A-A-87 unleaded. If you’re singing down your street, you better get out the way. Two things ladies, love Brown Band and the DJs. Remix the remix, and I’m a T-Painist. Ooh, I can’t believe it. Homie, did you see it? So much style, it looks so easy Don’t get it twisted, you ain’t the brown VZ Ladies are staring, that is for definite Your girl look too long, brown van got her peckin’ in Yup, so fill up the tank Turn your swag on, get your stereo cranked Your money got it banked, let them haters hate Brown van, big pimpin’, rep at 918 What’s happenin’? That’s a wrap I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right, this is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing and this is our old team. And by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd. We’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month. And we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you. Thankful for thrive and your mentorship. And we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show. Two day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work everyday in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying. And I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever. And we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. All right. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to bring up my good friend Ryan Wimpy. My good friend Ryan Wimpy and his dog, Odin. This dog has the ability to eat me, so I’m sort of concerned. I’ll pass the mic to you. And, Odin, you can have your own mic if you want, whatever you want Odin. Okay, I’m a little bit afraid of Odin. Hi, I’m Ryan Wimpey. And I’m Rachel Wimpey and the name of our business is Kip Top Training. Our business is a dog training business. We help people with behavioral issues and teach their dog how to listen. When I was learning to become a dog trainer, we didn’t learn anything about internet marketing or advertising or anything at all. Just dog training and that’s what’s so great about working with Clay and his team because they do it all for us. So that we can focus on our passion and that’s training jobs. Clay and his team here, they’re so enthusiastic. Their energy is off the charts. Never a dull moment. They’re a threat. We’ve been working with Clay and his team for the last five months, two of which have been our biggest months ever. One, our biggest gross by 35%. Clay’s helped us make anything from brochures to stickers, new business cards, new logos, scripts for phones, scripts for emails, scripts for text messages, scripts for everything. How I would describe the weekly meetings with Clay and his team are awesome. They’re so effective. It’s worth every minute. Things get done, we’ll ask for things like different flyers and they’re done before our hour is up. So it’s just awesome, extremely effective. If you don’t use Clay and his team, you’re probably going to be pulling your hair out, or you’re going to spend half of your time trying to figure out the online marketing game, and produce your own flyers, and marketing materials, print materials, all the stuff like that. You’re really losing a lot as far as lost productivity and lost time. Not having a professional do it has a real sense of urgency and actually knows what they’re doing when you already have something that’s your core focus that you already know how to do. You would also be missing out with all the time and financial freedom that you would have working with Clay and his team. We would recommend Clay and his team to other business owners because they need to be working on their business, not just trying to figure out the online game, which is complex and changing daily. So, no one has a marketing team too. Most people don’t, they can’t afford one, and their local web guy or local person that they know probably can’t do everything that a whole team and a whole floor of people can do in hours and not just weeks or months. There’s a definite sense of urgency with Clay and his team. I used to have to ride other web people, I mean really ride them to get stuff done, and stuff is done so fast here. There’s a real sense of urgency to get it done. Hey I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. Like we have workflows that are kind of all over the place. Having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot, which we’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot. So the humor definitely helps. It breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts. And it’s very interactive. You can raise your hand. It’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak. The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. You’re definitely, it’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars. So, you’re missing the thought process of someone that’s already started, like nine profitable businesses. So not only is it a lot of good information, but just getting in the thought process of Clay Clark or Dr. Zellner or any of the other coaches getting in the thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses. To me, just that is priceless. That’s that’s money. Well, we’re definitely not getting upsold here. My wife and I have attended conferences where they up what was great information and then they upsold us like half the conference and I want to like bang my head into a wall. And she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her. Like it’s good information, but we’re like, oh my gosh, I want to strangle you. Shut up and go with the presentation that we paid for. And that’s not here. There’s no upsells or anything. So that’s awesome. I hate that. Oh, it makes me angry. So glad that’s not happening. So the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business. And I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. I would definitely recommend that people would check out the Thrive 15 conference. The information that you’re going to get is just very, very beneficial and the mindset that you’re going to get, that you’re going to leave with is just absolutely worth the price of a little bit of money and a few days worth of your time.