jumbo training review

now we are here for the man, the legend, theincredible. do they have x-factor in australia or was it founded here? man, i tell you ialways watch like youtube videos and after somebody comes up and they're nobody and thenthey're just trying to explain on... and there was this one thing i keep watching, it's oneof the girls from x-factor and she says to this guy after he performs phenomenal, shesays: "people ask me what the x-factor is," she says. "i tell them, it's indescribable,it's incredible and it's something unexplainable." wouldn't you agree with me, by a round ofapplause, that this describes mr. james schramko? let's give it up for james! you like eddie? he's pretty funny isn't he?by the way, i didn't tell him he was going

to introduce me today. it really demonstratessome of the points i'm making about selling today and we're going to talk about fear.this is just what i learned about selling in 30 minutes or less. are you interested?alright, i thought i'd put another picture of me back in the mercedes days because youlaughed so much at yesterday's picture, i just thought of giving you something to startoff the day with. this is me in tahiti on a mercedes-benz sales guild trip, they usedto send the top achievers. so i did use to travel around the world. i went to tahitiand fiji and new zealand. the only problem was it was for a week and it was with my otherpeople who i work with all the time, and then i had to go back to my job. so now i do itmore on my terms, and that is the whole point

of this event. whatever your situation isright now, i'm hoping that your situation can be improved by coming along to this event,and implementing some of the solutions that we talk about. i mentioned before that i was a sales achiever.this was my certificate from the '97 year. my first year at mercedes, i made it intothe sales guild, they only take the top few. and then the next year i won it in the wholecountry, within 12 months, actually. the next year i got promoted as a manager and i wonthat, and then two years later i won it again. you're probably wondering, why didn't i winit in 2001. were you wondering that? what happened? well, there was a meeting at headoffice, and they actually changed the rules,

because, to quote, i've won too many times.and that's one of the things i hated about working for a large bureaucratic company,where it's like things are done because that's how they're always done, and i think to alarge extent that's what people think about sales. they're still selling the same waythey see other people sell, or they don't actually understand what selling is. so, one of my first jobs was repossessingcars. and i learned a few truths about sales there. because if you think about it, they'vealready got the goods or the service and now you just have to get the money. so it's likea really difficult transaction. and i literally dragged a hundred cars out of people's drivewaysfor a year. and i was really good at it. you

could virtually steal cars, and you were allowedto. it's like a lot of fun for a 21-year-old. but i learned a few truths about selling thati don't think are well understood. so the first one i learned was you don't have tolike the salesperson. it's a very popular notion, and i'm sure that cialdini was rightwith his research that likeability is a persuasion and influence factor. but it's certainly notessential. anyone here had mcdonald's? put your hand up if you've ever eaten at mcdonald's.do you like the salesperson at mcdonald's? is that the reason you bought your burger?or were you hungry? yeah. you see, if you think about it, there's all these examplesof where... i checked into my hotel here. did i order from that hotel because i likedthe salesperson there? no. i checked into

the hotel because i have to be here. did peoplegive me money for their car so i could take it off the tow truck and give it back to thembecause they liked me so much? no. so have we demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubtthat you don't have to like someone who sells? so this whole thing about make best friendsand all that, i will tell you: if you make best friends with all of your customers itwill cost you money for another reason, and it's to do with what dan kennedy talks about,price elasticity. it's because now, you actually compromise yourself, and you start to feeluncomfortable about... it's very hard to take a friendship and turn it into a business transaction.and probably one of the biggest weaknesses of my rookie salespeople was they thoughtthey were the customer's best friend. but

the customer doesn't really care, becausewhen they drive out in their brand new mercedes-benz, a week later, they don't care about the salesperson.they care about their mercedes-benz and what that does for them, and that's another keyelement. people aren't buying the thing, they're buying the thing for what it does. it's theresult they're buying. are we on track so far? you don't have to bluff, lie or trick people.i don't think "pitch anything" is the book of the year or the book of the decade. theguy is a bluffer. i read the book. i went through the whole book in detail. i went backto my sales negotiation, psychology, influence notes, to add anything that i picked up fromthe book that was new, and there wasn't one

thing. not one. there's a thousand books it'scovered in. if you know nothing about selling, it's a really good start, but it doesn't covereverything and i'm going to show you a few reasons why. you don't have to know 73 tricky closing techniques.ok? it's another myth of sales that you have to be a good closer or always be closing.the reality is, you don't actually want to sell to everyone that you're talking to. noteveryone is a buyer. and when you accept that, it really helps you get over the main obstacleof sales, and that is the fear of rejection. selling is not telling. alright? so if sellingis not telling, what is selling? do we actually know what selling is? if you look it up inthe dictionary, it'll say something like,

"establish faith, belief and confidence inthe value of goods or services," or something tricky like that. but i want to redefine whatselling is for you, and i'll draw from one of the great books that i read. and just togive you some background, before i was so successful at selling cars, i was recruitedby vodaphone when they came to australia in 1993 to work for a sales division. and theygot the best of the best of the best. they got people from xerox, and from the telecomstores and hutchinson, they brought them in. and these people, they gave me brian tracyand they gave me spin selling from neil rackham. and these references still work now. i usethem everyday in my business, and you can use them too. this is a definition that ithink fits well with my values, and hopefully

you can relate to this. i think selling isthe process of change from one situation to a better alternative situation. you've heardit described many different ways. yesterday, you heard about the cheese and the whiskers,ok? now does that fit this model? yes. the mouse goes from hungry to not hungry. it works.now if this is the case, if selling is the process of change from one situation to abetter alternative, obviously people only buy if they think they'll be better off. andi just want to emphasize that people buy. we don't actually really have to do anythingto somebody to sell. it's not something you do to somebody. it's actually more about settingup the environment. but what it comes down to is the "what's init for me?" and this was covered many, many

decades ago. this is the cheese. if the customer'snot interested in it, they're not moving forward. does this make perfect sense? this is a classic.for most people -- and again, it's covered in many, many documented books and stuff -- formost people it's they're either excited about something or there's a pain attached to themotivation to be better off. so when i started selling cars, it was because we were goingto have a baby and i needed to increase my income. so there was a pain. i did not wantto live in a cardboard box with my newly-born child. and so the pain drove me to succeed.then when i started winning and getting that successful feeling of being the best at whati do, because i had this philosophy that if you're going to do something why not be thebest at it, and that sits well with the mercedes-benz

thing of the best or nothing, which kind ofties in with the whole grange philosophy, isn't it? create grange. so it turned intopleasure. i actually enjoyed the competitive thing about selling. so how do i incorporate this in my mercedesthings? i sent out direct response pieces to customers saying, "amg test drive weekendinvitation." so i'm literally saying, would you like to come in and drive a $400,000 handbuiltamg mercedes benz? now, a mercedes-benz owner can either say "yes" or "no" to that. andwe absolutely crushed the dealership through. we had over a thousand people coming in onthe weekend. we sold more cars in that weekend than all of the other dealers combined offthat direct response piece, and the campaign

that went around it, which was more or lessan orchestrated marketing campaign, but it was centered around who? the customer. andwhat was in it for them? that's the cheese. so this is the formula that i learned, thati still use as a rough template. i trained my filipinos on this, they make sales videosfrom it, i do emails around it, this will tie you into just about any scenario. so ifyou have nothing, just write these four things down and you are set. the first thing is thesituation. in other words, where is your customer at? where is their mind at? how do you meetthem at their place? how do you walk in the customer's shoes, so to speak? so you're actuallythinking about the customer. and i think ed said that yesterday. let's think about thecustomer. so, my starting point is always

the customer. you heard about it in my mafiaplan -- the customer is in the middle. the next thing is what problems, challenges,things they have. how do you find out? there's simple ways to do this. you don't say, "oh,what's your problem?" you could say, "what is it that you'd like to improve about yoursituation?" "what would you like to change?" with a car, it's like, "what would you liketo change about the car you've got now, and they might say, "well, i want to go from afour-door to a two-door" or i want to get a bigger car or a smaller car or a more economicalcar or a more reliable car. so, just probing for problems. and then there's implications. f they don'tfix the problem, what would happen? you say,

if you don't change cars, if you don't learnthat essential thing you need to know, and attend our group training offer, your businessmight go broke. that's the implications. and then you just step in with the solution. whatdoes this person actually need? so this is my basic formula. we use it allacross my business. if you go and retro-analyze almost any of my communications to you, you'llsee some of these common factors. this is called spin selling, and i still think itis a great sales model because it puts the customer in front, and you are actually beingdiagnostic. so let's run through the scenario as a doctor.you go into the doctor's surgery, he says, "tell me about why you're here, what's goingdown?" and you say, "well, i've injured my

elbow." and he might ask, "how did you doit?" "well, i was riding my mountain bike.""ok, and can you straighten it?" "yup.""can you twist the thing?" "no."what are the implications? "well, if you don't have that x-rayed, then your bone might bebroken and it might heal back like this and you'll walk around like this for the restof your life." and so then he says, "well, all we need to do is do an x-ray." sale made.i think, well, that's a better situation than i'm in right now. do things like price really matter in thatscenario? has this guy tried 57 tricky closes

on me? no? i still don't know effective closes,and i've been selling for a long time. because usually the customer asks me, "when can iget it?" or "what's the next step?" they're the right signs that you're on track. the other thing, the big trap, is people talkabout sales in logical terms, and they use the word "think." so salespeople will say,"what do you think about it?" the customer never thinks about it. they go and they nevercome back. but they do feel. they buy on emotion. we are very emotional beings, and we buy onemotion. so stick to emotional words, illustrations, pictures. you might have heard the phrase,"encourage dreams." that's a very common thing. it's pretty much how all religion, cults work.they encourage dreams. when you die, you'll

go to heaven, and have all of this, and itwill be amazing. that's why people blow themselves up. they'll go and get their how many virginsand things... it's the dream, that's the sale made. dreams are very strong. so this is somethingthat i like to do. when i was reconfiguring my seo business, i thought, what would bethe perfect dream for my seo customer? i'm pretty sure they just want to be ranked atthe top of google. that would be their dream, wouldn't it? so why don't i construct my offerto make sure we talk about that, and we feature it, and then we report on it, and we can cutout all the other stuff because it's really irrelevant. what's in it for the customer?they want to rank on the first page of google. this is what we do, here's the results weget, here's our packages, they order. do they

like us? i'm not sure. do they want to rankon the first page of google? absolutely. how do i know? because they put money into mypaypal account. does this make sense? it's simple stuff. so your job is just to solve problems. themoney goes to the best problem solvers. it doesn't matter what market you're in, yourniche. almost every area of life, if you solve problems, you'll make money, because money'sthe by-product of solving problems. your first focus should be on how can i help someoneimprove their situation, and then the money will come as a by-product of that. and a lotof it will come with environmental control. you can actually control the environment.when we were selling mercedes-benz, why did

we wear the $300 german shoes and have themontblanc pen and the $15,000 rolex? and the handmade two and a half thousand dollar suit?it's because that's what the customer expected when they buy at mercedes-benz. it made themfeel comfortable. again, we're being customer-centric here, because it's now our obligation to makethem feel comfortable, so that they are in a position to make a decision to purchase.so you're operating from their needs, not your needs. and most people operate from theirneeds, unfortunately. a couple of things that work really well,if they're genuine, are urgency and scarcity, and i do suggest you read "influence" by cialdini.i do think that's a much better book to read. it explains a lot. your opinion doesn't matter.when i was selling cars, the salespeople would

pull out the stock sheet and find the carthat paid the biggest commission and that's what they were going to sell to someone whowalked in the door. whose side of the fence are they operating from there? their own.and that's not very nice. i had this different idea. i thought, what if i actually solvedthe customer's problem? i get them the right car, so that i can look them in the eye whenthey come back and buy the next car, because my goal, of course, was to have a lifetimecustomer, and you don't get a lifetime customer by jabbing them with the bright red, two-year-old,out of stock, superseded car that broke down and got sent back under warranty, do you?that's not doing the right thing by somebody. that's why people in some industries havea bad reputation, because they operate from

the wrong place. they're thinking of themselves. so selling is really more about asking. askingis at least one way to have a bit of control. you want to be in control, but the customerneeds to feel comfortable, like it's their decision, and you do that by setting up yourenvironment properly. authority increases sales power. the morefamous you are, the more leverage you have in your market, the more people trust you,and that trust will go a long way to them making a decision. it doesn't mean that theynecessarily like you, but it will increase sales, the more authority that you have. itjust removes some of the typical problems that would stop someone buying. because they'reunsure if they'll really be better off or

not. when you're famous, they know that they'llbe better off, because otherwise you wouldn't be famous, right? you should never "need" a deal. needy, desperatesalespeople are the worst. and i actually get a lot of desperate people approachingme, trying to sell me on their deal, and it's always from their point of view. they sendin this help ticket, "i've got this great opportunity. i think your site would be agood fit for it. i need you to do this and to take it to that market and dadada, it'smy last chance, i'm sick, divorced, i had a gambling problem, i'm down on my last 300,i've got my credit cards racked up and i need you to help me." it's very unappealing.

so i like pull marketing, where people arecoming to you. and how do we put this on the website context? well, in dealerships, theyused to spend a lot of money in the newspaper, the radio, and direct response to bring thecustomer. when i send out the amg letter, the customers came in on the weekend. we said,"come on this weekend." and they came to us. and in most of my marketing systems, peoplecome to us through press releases or seo results, affiliate referrals. we create an environmentwhere they're coming to me. do you recall when you got your event reminder, that i sentout an email and it said, "are you all set? if you need any help or whatever, just giveme a call"? in previous years, we phoned you. but this year i thought it would be much betterif you phoned me. because then if you do have

a problem and need help, you can just callme. how does that make you feel as a customer? you've got access, there's accountability,you're more likely to be a loyal buyer and come back because you had a good experience.that's pull marketing, and the opposite of pull marketing is push marketing, and that'swhat most of you are experiencing right now. in your inbox, you are being hassled to deathby continual pitch after pitch. when you get those, just think: is this person thinkingabout me, or are they thinking about them? and the classic one i got last week was someguy promoting a webinar for a product that he'd never heard of and knew nothing about,and he actually made that the feature point. he's like, "i know nothing, i'm clueless,come and learn about this with me." and i'm

thinking, what a loser. he might as well say,"i want your money, will do anything to get it, sign up so i can transfer money from yourwallet to mine." that's how i interpret it, because i know that he's not really interestedin helping me. the best sales are undetectable. that's whyyou don't need to know closes. they just happen, because you've done all the right things,you've set up the environment, you've created value, you've helped somebody, it's obviousto them. you didn't have to tell them, they can join the dots, and now the sale will takeplace. the big thing that stops people, of course,is fear of rejection. how did we handle that in the dealership? we had a sales system.we sat down, we talked about what are all

the things that we need to know to be ableto help someone make the right decision to buy a motor vehicle and we came up with thiswrite-up sheet. and we printed it out on blue paper, and the highlighted little gray bitsthere are the things we needed to know. there were about seven things, that's all. we saidto the salesperson, this is our subway system, you just need to know these things to be ableto help someone make the right decision when they buy a car from us. and it was, "who isthe vehicle for? are we actually talking to the person whose problem we are trying tosolve, or is it their delegate?" that was very important. and then there was other stufflike, "what have you got now?" because that's the current situation and from that we couldwork out the problems. then they'd say, "well,

i've got a range rover." and we're like, "oh,ok." because we know the valuation's going to be tough work, right? sorry timbo, i hadto throw that in there. main reason for purchase. that's really "what's your biggest challengeor problem?" what's caused someone to get in their car and drive to us, because theproblem's that bad? you know what it's like. you buy the car and it starts to get old,the seats start to fade, the steering doesn't quite go straight and then the warning signpops up and you've got this pink slip notification and you just think, well, it's getting toohard. you'd be surprised how many trade-ins come in with blown tires, out of registration,no fuel in the petrol tank, and the spare key missing. it's unbelievably common. infact, if you get a trade-in that's not like

that, it's rare. does that tell you something?people have problems, and we fix it. so think about in your business, this is the actionitem, what can you help someone fix and solve better than what you're doing now and howcan you interpret it for them in even clearer terms than they understand? and you've gotthe data right now on your database. if you're already dealing with somebody, then go backand see what's the common trait here? what's the common problem? the other things we askedwere: "when do you need it?" and "specific features that you require" and then the finalone, the catch-all was "is there anything else?" and that's the bit they usually forgetto tell us. you say: "is there anything else?", "oh yeah, just one thing with this amway thing,it could take a year or two until my checks

come through so i just want to set my visionand goal now." isn't it nice to know that now before you do ten test drives in the cl600?oh that used to piss me off. that's why i don't like them all. you need a black box too. you really needa black box. what is a black box? you know it's that thing when a plane crashes, theyhave to get it no matter what. it's so valuable. sort of makes you wonder why they don't justbuild a whole plane out of a black box right? but in sales, the best thing you can haveto create a pull market is something that no one can see, touch, feel, reverse engineer,understand or whatever. it's your thing and that is the glue that holds your sale together.my seo black box is a 100 percent private

network that no one else in the world canaccess that is age-mature, pagerank, category-themed, original content blogs that's taken me a longtime to build and very hard for my competitors to emulate. they just can't go into businessinto that market space with the same offer. so you want to create your unassailable positionin the market. you need a black box. if you're doing local business services, then you mighttalk about your proprietary traffic system. you know google are pretty good with it. theiralgorithm. they don't tell us what it is. kentucky fried do it with their secret herbsand spices, oh sorry, kfc. yeah, kfc and they do it with their secret herbs and spices.and then coca-cola have their secret formula. they can't have two people fly in the sameplane or whatever because if it crashes, then

it will go out of business and all this sortof stuff. you need a black box, the secret sauce, the special herbs. i want to reframe your outlook on sellingand i want you to stop thinking about make money, make money, how are we going to makemoney, because that's thinking about you and that's not right. if you want to make money,create value by solving problems and if you want to make a lot of money, then you justcreate value by solving problems for a lot of people, and websites are fantastic forthat. because, i have websites right now, solving problems for people out there in theworld and they see the value in it and they make a decision to buy. so really, if youwant to summarize this all down, if you want

to be good at selling, just improve situations.how can you make something better? and then you'll be fine. ok? so, that's my notes onselling. i hope you've got a nugget from that, was that useful? thank you.