Transcription
Ever wonder why ninety percent of sales people don't make it within five years? Meaning real estate, insurance—it doesn't matter what you do; five years later, ninety percent don't make it. Only one out of ten makes it. So why is that?
By the way, I wanna manage expectations with you: most people who get into sales, they have no idea how hard it is. This thing is hard. So if you're not in the mood for somebody to scare you off from sales, skip this video. But if you want the truth, I'm going to give it to you today. [Music] So stick around till the very end to get the PDF of today's content, as well as tips on how to make it past your five years. But let me get right into it.
First five warnings; five things you need to know about before you get into sales. Number one: it's harder than you think. By the way, ten times harder than you think. Mentally, emotionally, it's going to be frustrating, agitating. You're going to go through it; you'll be tested. You don't want to call people back because people didn't call you back four times. You have to learn the script of words; it's so annoying at first because it's harder; you're not accustomed to it.
Number two: it takes a lot longer to make money than you think. Some industries are different, but it takes a lot longer for you to make money than you think.
Point number three: you're gonna make a lot less money at first than you think. By the way, most people get into sales because somebody sold them a dream, right? Oh my god, I want to have that guy's life! I wanted to because somebody told me to dream. I want to one day have the life and the cars and travel and freedom and all this other stuff, right? And what you don't realize is that guy paid the price for many, many years until he had the lifestyle that he has today. So for you, manage expectations, knowing at first you're gonna be underpaid for a long time, and don't be disappointed. We all go through that phase.
Number four: you're gonna have a lot of sleepless nights thinking about sales. You're gonna go to sleep saying, "Oh my god, is this person gonna buy tomorrow? What if they change their minds? This person change our minds? What do I do with this? I was expecting this thousand-dollar commission; what am I gonna do to pay my bills? Here, I need to give him…" You're gonna go through those nights; the anxiety, mental, emotional—it's tough. You're gonna go through it.
And last but not least, your friends, family, spouse—everyone's gonna ask you, "How much money have you made? How much money have you made? How much money have you ever had? How much? Why are you doing this? Why did you start to do this? You had a good job; why did you choose it?" Everybody's going to ask you. And this whole test of these five warnings I gave you—you're supposed to go through it. Here's why: once you make it past these five areas and you overcome it, your skin is thicker, you can handle more, you become a leader, and somehow, someway, based on your work ethic, you improving, you're getting better attitude—all of that stuff—all of a sudden the floodgates open in sales for you, and you wake up and you say, "I never thought this is what was going to happen to me." That's kind of what happened to me, but you got to go through it.
So if you're still sticking around to watch the content, let me share with you what things you could do to help you win the game of sales, especially after your first year. Number one: if you're going to do sales, go and seek out the best leader worth duplicating. The market's filled with a lot of average sales people; the market's filled with a lot of average sales leaders; but the market's also filled with a lot of great sales people and great sales leaders. You find the right sales leaders worth duplicating; the chances of you winning not only increases, but the speed and how quickly you win also increases. So choose an industry—say you're going to do real estate, you're going to do digital marketing, insurance, finance, stocks, whatever it is—fine, choose that industry, stay in that industry. Don't keep jumping industry to industry to industry; rather, within that industry, seek out the best mentors to work with. So that's point number one.
And the tip you're gonna get number two is the following: since you know and I know that this thing's gonna be hard mentally and emotionally, what worked for me is, over and over and over again, I read autobiographies and content about people that persevered. Like even this one, the book of the month for my sales guys—I have 20,000-plus insurance agents—this one, the book we're reading is a book called *Endurance*. This is a book about you lasting; this is a book about you being able to go through tough times. You need to feed yourself so much of that because your friends, your family, your cousins, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your husband, your wife—they're all putting so much fear: "Babe, why are you doing this? Babe, why don't you go back to your job?" They want you to go back. You need to—you need to almost fight off all that negativity with positivity. They can make it in sales.
Point number three: whatever product you're selling, do whatever you can to sell yourself on the product.
Before I give you point number four: if you were in the sales office I was in, Encino, from 2002 until 2005, you would have found me all over the office with a role-play buddy, role-playing scripts. It didn't matter what it was; we would role-play scripts and objections. We'd sit in a room for one hour after nine o'clock at night while everybody else was gone, and I would give an objection and you'd overcome it. Then I'm like, "I can't—I think we can come out with a better way to overcome it." I would give it; you would give it; I would give it; you would give it. "Oh, that was good!" Then we write it down. And so, "Let me try this one; how about this one? How about… well, that's the perfect one. How about that? How about this? How about that?" We role-played so much until any objection that people ask throughout the day, I could do it my eyes closed. I can do it with my eyes closed today, even though it was in 2003, 2004. So find yourself a role-play buddy and role-play with them constantly until you can overcome all the major objections without even thinking about them.
Point number five: when it comes down to prospecting, too many times people, all they think about what prospect is: "Let me send an email on LinkedIn; let me DM this person; let me go out there and prospect that any man; let me do some business; let me do this; let me do that," right? So everybody they look at as a customer. But I want to kind of give you a completely different perspective. There's nothing wrong with looking at everybody as a customer, but think about it this way: okay, imagine you like this 22-year-old girl, okay, and you're 25, 26 years old, and you want to date her, and you go into a room and you spot her, okay? So she's the customer, like I want her; she's the customer, right? Okay, no problem. Then there is a 58-year-old woman over here; you have no interest in because all you're thinking about is a 22-year-old. But what you don't know is that 58-year-old woman is her mentor, her mom, her auntie that she admires the most; that if you win her, she'll put in a good word into the 22-year-old, and then she's gonna go on a date with you because she'll make the introduction. So rather than going to the 22-year-old, you go to the 58-year-old; you talk to her: "You get—what can I get you something, ma'am? Is there anything I can get you?" "Oh wow, you're so sweet." "Yeah, you know what I would like…" "No problem, let me get you a drink." "Here you go." "Thank you. Enjoy your evening." And you walk away. That that fellow right there got me a drink. Why didn't I say, "Hey, let me introduce you to my niece; let me introduce you…" And then boom! So Pat, where are you going with this? Here's where I'm going with this: I would go networking for my main referral source—influencers—okay, and I took care of them as much as I could. Whatever they wanted, I took care of them because I knew they were going to lead me to the customers that I wanted, not just once, not just twice, not just three times, for years and years and years and years to come. So going back to it, as much as it's great to think about prospecting as, "And let me go get the client," think about prospecting as a, "Let me find the influencers that can introduce me to customers for years and years and years to come."
Point number six is: try to redefine in your own mind—like think about when you think about what a salesperson looks like and how they work and how they talk—try to redefine that. Like, "Oh, to be great in sales you have to be a car salesman." No, it's—and there's nothing wrong with that—but no, that's not the personality. When you think about a salesperson, to me a great salesperson is one who asks the right question, is a great listener, who's coming from a place of wanting to help you as the individual, that may be different than others, and is able to tailor something that matches your needs, right? So think of sales that way. Don't think of sales as somebody who, you know, has all everything is just perfect and put together and all this stuff, you know? I got a three-piece suit on right now because I'm shooting the video with you, but believe me, I'm a guy that just went out there and I looked in and said, "I wonder how I can help this person. Let me—you know, this person is slightly different than the other client I sat down with. Man, if they understood this product and if they said they want this, this can be so…" "Hey, you know what, after spending a lot of time, here's what I think would be a great uh product for you. These are the different things we can look at, but this is what I felt was great for you, but I want to open it up—what questions do you have on these products before I make the recommendations? This one I think is good for…" You're taking a very consultative approach, then just a slam dunk. "I got to be able to be the best salesperson and push them and I got gotta make them sign the check." That's in the movies, and quite frankly, those types of sales people maybe worked in the 60s, 70s, 80s; they don't work that well today. And even if you close, you ain't never going to get referrals. And this whole name of the game is referrals. So sales people like that rarely be customers become be backs and rarely do those customers give referrals. You want a lot of referrals. So redefine your image of what a salesperson looks like.
This next one's pretty much a story by life and it has to do with follow-up. My confidence comes from follow-up. If you asked anybody that ever did business with me, they'll tell you, "Pat's biggest strength who work with me closing sales—Pat's biggest strength in sales—just follow up." Here's why: did you know eighty percent of customers who buy, they'll say yes, but you got to follow up five times before they say yes? But did you also know forty-four percent of salespeople don't follow up after the first time they don't hear back from the client? Let me say this one more time: eighty percent of sales requires five follow-up calls before they say yes and you fill out the paperwork. Forty-four percent of the time, sales people don't follow up after the first call. So they leave a message: "Ah, man, she's not interested." How do you know? Uh, they didn't pick up or call me back. So wait, let me get this straight to you: you define that as they're not interested? "Oh yeah, of course, if they were interested they'd call me back." Are you kidding me? Let me ask you a question: how many times, like right now while I'm sitting here, I got two texts; I'm telling these guys I gotta go make these texts, right? I clicked on the text; it shows it's read. I may forget about it after this meeting because I'm in the middle of something. And if that person doesn't follow up, this text may be lost in translation, and that could end up being business for one of the people right now that just texted me, right? We make that mistake. You don't know that person forgot to call you back; that person maybe no longer checks messages or emails or texts, but you got to keep following up. Don't be discouraged when somebody says no or doesn't follow up with you or doesn't call you back. Don't take it personal; this isn't the dating game where you call them and you don't want to call too many times to seem desperate. You definitely don't want to be overly pestering your customer, but you do want to be a smooth operator and keep following up because chances are they'll eventually do business with you.
So you made it to the very end. Even though I gave you the warnings, even though I try to scare you off, you still want more tips? No problem; more power to you. Today's content is in a PDF, as well as three additional bonus tips below. If you click on the link below, you'll be able to get that PDF. On top of that, I did talk about referrals. If you want to get better at referrals, I made a video about a year and a half ago or so, maybe a year ago, that gets into referrals in a very deep way. If you've never watched it, click over here to watch it. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye. [Music]