THE ONLY WAY OUT
IS TO SELL YOUR WAY OUT
The one key talent of the entrepreneur is to see profit and to have the desire to create a solution. The one key skill that you must possess (or acquire) is the ability to sell. If you can’t persuade people to buy into your project, then it won’t get off the ground. For an entrepreneur, there are a host of different people who need to be sold: partners, customers, employees, bankers, suppliers. As soon as your PSI (product/service/information) is ready to market to the world, if you can’t sell it, your business will shrivel up and die. If you can sell it, your business with survive and flourish. You’ve got to be able to sell.
Most people hate to sell.
A woman once complained to her friend how much she hated selling.
“What don’t you like about selling?” her friend asked.
“Everything! The rejection! The pushy people. It’s a low-class profession. It’s a job that I would never do. I mean…. never!”
Her friend listened and then said, “I agree. You sure sold me!”
Without realizing it, the woman who hated selling was selling passionately the whole time. She just didn’t call it selling. She would probably call it “sincere sharing of my true, passionate beliefs.”
No matter what you think about selling, everyone sells! Whether you’re an employee or the owner, you’re constantly selling. If you need a job, you have to sell yourself to your employer to get hired. Then you need to constantly sell your value to your employer to keep from being fired. If your company is downsizing, why should they keep you? If you haven’t sold them on the value of keeping you, you’ll be on the pink slip list.
Sir Richard Branson learned how to sell as a teenager, as he explains in his book Screw It, Let’s Do It:
I have spent much of my life being happy about promoting myself and Virgin. Advertising, publicity, promotion—call it what you will—works. Even nature puts on a show—flowers, birds, even beetles display themselves. There is so much competition in the world that if you have something to sell, no matter what, you have to get it noticed. Those early days of hard sell were to stand me in good stead. I learned that we all have something to sell, whether it’s a tangible object like a car or a box of Girl Scout cookies or offering our talents for hire. It’s no use producing goods or having the best ideas in the universe if they just stay in your head or stacked up in a corner of your bedroom.
You see, you’re always selling—whether you like it or not. Let’s assume that you’re one of those people who is not good at selling. You don’t want to sell. You don’t believe in selling. As a matter of fact, you hate selling. How do you behave when you try to sell anything? You stumble over your words. Your body language shows that you’re uncomfortable. You act embarrassed when you ask for the money. The result? You don’t get the sale. You get rejected. You don’t make any money.
But the whole time you were selling. What were you selling? You were selling the fact that you hated selling. And your customer bought your sales pitch. He bought that you didn’t believe in your product. He bought that you didn’t enjoy selling it. He bought that you hated to sell it. He bought that you were embarrassed trying to sell it. You convinced him. So he did exactly what you sold him to do—he rejected your sales pitch. He didn’t buy.
In every interaction, there is a buyer and a seller. What are you selling? You are selling what you passionately, congruently believe. If you passionately, congruently believe that you don’t like selling, that’s exactly what gets bought.
There is no way around this fact. Life isn’t 37 percent selling or 60 percent selling or 92 percent selling. Life is 100 percent selling.
If you try to sell us on the fact that your life sucks and life isn’t fair, we believe you. You sold us. We buy that you believe that. Why do we buy it? Because consciously or unconsciously, we notice the subtle sales clues that you give off—slumped shoulders, sallow face, dejected language.
If you try to sell us on the fact that life is great, we believe you. You sold us. Why do we buy it? Because consciously or unconsciously, we notice the subtle sales clues that you give off—good posture, glowing face, uplifting language.
The first sale you make is to yourself. In fact, whatever you believe is the pitch you make to yourself. If you believe that you can change your life in the next ninety days, then you’ve sold yourself that message. Then, having sold yourself, you now reorder your life to bring in the evidence to prove the sales pitch you made to yourself. Everyone around you picks up your sales pitch by the way you talk, the way you dress, the way you move, the little and big decisions you make. You are a walking sales pitch for what you’ve sold yourself.
You might say, “My dad told me constantly that I was worthless.” Let’s put that same sentence into sales language. Your dad sold you on the fact that you are worthless. You bought it. And you’ve been selling yourself on that belief ever since. Are you really worthless? Of course not! You’re a child of God! At least, that’s what we’ve been selling ourselves since we were little kids. It’s a good sales pitch. You should try it sometime.
You are on the front line of the sales force of the company called You. You’re not selling PSIs. You’re selling yourself. You are the product on sale. People don’t buy things, they buy people. Why would someone buy you? Do you think you are valuable enough? Whatever you believe, they will buy.
Are you selling yourself short? Are you selling what you want to be selling? Do you want to be selling your time an hour at a time? Or do you want to shift to a new way of thinking—from selling your time for dollars to selling your time for profits?
When beliefs are wrapped in strong desire, they are even more persuasive.
To find out how we learned to sell, visit www.cashinaflashthebook.com.
When you’re selling something you believe in from your heart, you’re not selling. You’re sharing your truth.
What does your truth consist of?
Your mind and your heart. That is the essence of you. What do you believe? What do you truly desire? That’s the truth of you.
When most people think about selling, they’re usually referring to endarkened selling. That’s when people don’t believe in what they’re selling and don’t really want to sell it. But they try to sell it anyway because they need money to survive. That’s insincere selling. It lacks belief and passion. It leaves most people cold.
Enlightened selling is when you sincerely believe in what you are selling. You have a conviction that it’s the right thing for your customer and for you.
Enlightened selling is when you have an innate passion for what you are selling. You actually enjoy talking about your PSI. You use it yourself. You have experienced the benefits of it. It’s true for you … so why wouldn’t it be true for someone else?
Belief and desire. Mix those two together and there is an explosion of results.
The best salespeople are passionately convinced.
You can’t sell what you’re not proud of.
—GARY HALBERT
I remember a friend of mine, Collette, trying to sell me on belonging to a network marketing company in the nutrition field. It was totally off purpose for me. Health and nutrition were at the bottom of my list. I took no vitamins. I almost laughed when she told me that I should join her. By the way, she was my secretary. I was the money guru. I wasn’t about to listen to her. Especially about expensive vitamins!
You see, my beliefs were 180 degrees opposite of hers. I didn’t believe my health was in danger. (As evidenced by my being fifty pounds overweight.) I didn’t believe in nutrition. I didn’t believe that any vitamins were necessary. I didn’t believe in network marketing. There was no way you could get me to sell it. It would have been endarkened selling.
For her, however, it was enlightened selling. She had two children with cystic fibrosis, and the nutritional products had helped them dramatically. She also had a deep need to earn income because her husband had just abandoned her with five children. She was passionately convinced.
But she didn’t try to convince me. She knew I was a money guy. So the next week she showed me her first $100 check. “That’s nice,” I thought. “Good for her.” A month or so later, it was a $1,000 check. “Interesting,” I thought. “Good for her.” A few weeks later she told me that she was earning $1,000 a week.
Now, this got my attention. That was certainly more than I was paying her as my secretary. “Hmmmm. A thousand bucks a week. Residual. How did she do that?” My purpose path is to research and teach people how to earn multiple streams of income. I thought there was no way that anyone could earn that kind of residual income that quickly—especially not her. But when she showed me her check, I had to believe it. My belief went from “Network marketing is a scam” to “By golly, this works. My secretary is really making a thousand dollars a week!”
Then she quit and went to do it full-time. “Good for her,” I thought. “But never for me. I’m never going to get involved in one of those MLM thingies selling nutrition. I don’t take nutritional products myself and I doubt I ever will.”
Collette was one of my wife’s best friends. They went to lunch. My wife wasn’t skeptical like me. She thought it was great and tried to get me to sign up with this nutrition company called USANA. “No thanks,” I said. “Honey, you can keep all the money.” In retrospect, those were the seven dumbest words I’ve ever uttered. She launched her network marketing business and the money started to roll in.
But I still wanted nothing to do with it. Okay, people could make money, but I still didn’t believe in vitamins. So I wasn’t going to try to sell something I didn’t believe in. That’s endarkened selling. My wife shared it with some people at one of my seminars. I was so embarrassed; I sat at the back of the room. People rushed to sign up. After all, it was Robert Allen’s wife, even after I had told them that I wasn’t convinced myself. Then people started calling me to say that the product my wife had sold them was incredible. It made them feel like a million bucks. “Hmmmmm,” I thought as the testimonials started flowing back. “Maybe this stuff really is worth it. Maybe the doctor who invented it really did know what he was doing. Maybe I should be trying it.”
And so I did. I began taking the product and noticed an amazing difference. More energy. Less aches and pains. Less fatigue. Less colds and laryngitis. As they say, the rest is history. I’ve been taking it every day for the last fifteen years and I will for the rest of my (I hope) longer life. I believe in it that much.
As for the money, well, my wife has deposited over $3 million into her bank account. Sometimes she even shares some of it with me. By the way, my former secretary now earns over a million dollars a year! I’m not skeptical anymore.
Did you notice how I transitioned from someone who was anti-to someone who is extremely pro-? At first, I thought the money was a joke and the product was a rip-off. Now, after cashing millions in checks, we’re laughing all the way to the bank. And I’ve never felt better or healthier.
When you believe something this strongly, it affects your desire. You start to want to talk about it. You’re less afraid to talk about it. Because no matter what they say, it still works for you.
If your belief is weak and your desire is tepid, then when someone challenges you, you feel like a fraud. Like a phony. That’s endarkened selling. If someone asks you, “Is this network marketing?” you cower behind your fear and give some excuse about how your network marketing thingy is different from and better than all the other network marketing thingies.
But if you have strong belief and true passion, when they ask the question “Is this network marketing?” you reply, “Absolutely! I don’t know what your experience has been, but my experience with my MLM thingy has been fantastic.”
You’re probably already involved with some form of network marketing. Isn’t everyone? (Mark and I think everyone should be. It’s a great training ground for beginning entrepreneurs.) The purpose of this story is to highlight for you that your belief and your desire must be calibrated at liftoff intensity or you’ll never get off the ground.
You have to find something that you believe in until it becomes a passion for you. When your passion kicks in, you’re not selling anymore. You’re just sharing what you believe is true.
What is true for you? What do you believe in and desire so strongly that even rejection will not deter you? That’s the secret to selling.
Which comes first, belief or desire? It depends. Sometimes one triggers the other. But your belief or desire must reach a high enough intensity or nothing happens. Belief must reach the level of conviction. Desire must reach the level of burning desire or passion.
This is the description of someone who is passionately convinced! That’s when your intensity reaches the success threshold. This threshold is represented many ways.
Threshold speed is called escape velocity. It’s the speed at which an airplane leaves the runway and rises into the air. It’s the speed at which rockets escape the earth’s gravitational attraction.
Threshold temperature is called the boiling point—212 degrees. It’s the temperature at which water boils. A degree below this boiling point and you just have very hot water.
Threshold pressure is when temperature and force are applied for the right length of time to transform ordinary carbon into diamonds. This is how synthetic diamonds are actually produced today. Believe it or not, ordinary cow manure (carbon) can be turned into diamond in a few hours with the correct pressure and temperature.
Sometimes we want things but don’t believe we can get them.
ROBERT ALLEN: I wanted to lose fifty pounds. I’d tried a hundred times and had finally given up. Then my doctor informed me that my genetic disposition to diabetes had manifested.—I had the disease. My belief that my health was in danger went from zero to 100 percent in sixty seconds. My desire for ice cream and cookies went from 100 percent to zero in sixty seconds. Conviction and burning desire combined. I dropped fifty pounds in the next fifty days. And I’ve not gained it back.
When your desire and belief get in synch, the results are almost immediate. What do you call it when your desire and belief are in synch and have reached the threshold? Burning desire.
One day a dispassionate young man approached the Greek philosopher and casually said, “O great Socrates, I come to you for knowledge.”
The philosopher took the young man down to the sea, waded in with him, and then dunked him under the water for thirty seconds. When he let the young man up for air, Socrates asked him to repeat what he wanted. “Knowledge, O great one,” he sputtered.
Socrates put him under the water again, only this time a little longer.
After repeated dunkings and responses, the philosopher asked, “What do you want?” The young man finally gasped, “Air. I want air!” “Good,” answered Socrates. “Now, when you want knowledge as much as you wanted air, you shall have it.”
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You just set yourself on fire.
—REGGIE LEACH
So what do you want? What is your burning desire? What do you really, really, really want? What do you want more than air, more than any other thing? Why do we ask you this question?
Because when you set a goal, there will be a million distractions between now and your achieving of that goal. Each distraction is disguised as an immediate want, a pressing want, an urgent want. Do you want that immediate want? Or do you want your ultimate want? Hold both of them in your hands—your immediate want in your left hand and your ultimate want in your right hand.
| Left hand: | Do you want that doughnut? |
| Right hand: | Or do you want to see yourself reaching your goal weight? |
If you choose the immediate want, you get the consequences that go with it. Your ultimate want must be so burning, so important, of such a high priority that nothing distracts you from it. Nothing tempts you away from it. Nothing diverts or delays you. You want it as badly as you want air. Just try holding your breath for sixty seconds right now. Bet you can’t do it. Come on. Try it.
As the sixtieth second approached, did you want to take a breath? Did you? Nothing could stop you, could it? You had to have it, didn’t you? Nothing could distract you, could it? You wanted to breathe, and you did.
This is the urgency you need to feel for your ultimate want. You want it urgently. Immediately. Right now. Nothing else takes precedence. You must have it. Even if it is a month, six months, a year, two years, or more in the future. Since it’s such an important part of your why, you keep thinking about it, wanting, hoping for it, expecting it, moving toward it. Relentlessly. Unstoppably.
When you want it and believe it this much, you won’t have trouble selling it. By the way, you won’t call it selling. Just like the woman who hated selling, you’ll call it sincere sharing of your true, passionate beliefs.
What do you want to sell?
Sell the low-hanging fruit on the tree of you. That’s the best stuff that you have to offer. The stuff in your own backyard. Your acres of diamonds. That’s your money tree.
Here is your wax on/wax off assignment. Look through the following list of things to sell and find one PSI that you’ll commit to selling successfully in the next ninety days.
WHAT PRODUCTS DO YOU HAVE TO SELL?
Sell your used products. Put it up on eBay. Get rid of it.
Sell a bargain property. Find and flip a bargain piece of real estate.
Sell someone a product-selling business. Find a network marketing company that you believe in.
Sell your own new product. Create a new product that solves a world problem.
Sell other people’s new products. Buy wholesale and market someone else’s product solution.
Sell others’ used products. Learn how to sell on eBay. It’s working for millions. Why not you?
WHAT SERVICES DO YOU HAVE TO SELL?
Sell an existing service based on an old skill. What do you know how to do, that people need done?
Sell a new service based on your new skill. What do you want to learn how to do for people?
Sell someone else on learning and selling a new skill. You take a piece of the deal.
Sell someone else on learning how to sell an old skill. You take a piece of the deal.
Sell someone’s skill or service.
Sell someone on how to get into business selling services.
WHAT INFORMATION DO YOU HAVE TO SELL?
Sell your knowledge. What do you know that others need to know?
Sell your skill. What do you know how to do that others need to learn how to do?
Sell other people’s knowledge. Who has knowledge that other people need to know?
Sell other people’s skill. Whom do you know that has skill that other people need to learn?
Find something you passionately believe it. Get passionately convinced. And then start selling it.
In Danish the word selji is the original word for “selling,” and it means “to serve.” One of the greatest salesmen in the world, Jesus Christ, said, “The greatest among you is the servant of all.” So if you serve greatly with passion and share your PSI with a lot of people on the front end, you’ll be paid enormous amounts on the back end. You have to share your message with a whole lot of people with a positive mental attitude and ask for the business, and ultimately and inevitably you’ll earn a fortune.