The Small Book From the 1930’s That Reminded Me Why I Love Selling | #Sales - Ep. 85

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Voco Hotels by IHG, where you should prepare to be charmed. From Chicago to Myrtle Beach to Saranak Lake, each Voco in the U.S.

Speaker 1 has its own local flavor and unique detail.

Speaker 1 Our hosts welcome you with little extras, and you'll find rooms for catching up on me time and full-service bars and restaurants that are perfect for us time.

Speaker 1 Come on in and live the Voco life and book your next day at vocohotels.com. V-O-C-Ohotels.com.

Speaker 2 Do you have a funnel, but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling.

Speaker 2 If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 2 That's sellingonline.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 2 This is the Russell Brunson Show.

Speaker 2 I'm going to show you guys one thing I found cool in this book as I was leafing through initially. Here in the middle,

Speaker 2 there it is.

Speaker 2 The shading from the paper like bled into the actual page. You can see it's been here for, who knows, 70, 80 years.

Speaker 2 It's interesting because there's actually a sales principle here that I don't know, whoever owned this book, cut it out and plugged it in here. And this is a principle that

Speaker 2 has been super powerful for me as

Speaker 2 I learned sales. What's up, everybody? This is Russell.
Welcome back to the vault. Today I'm going to share with you guys a book.
I'm a little embarrassed. This book only costs me $20.10,

Speaker 2 but that's okay.

Speaker 2 You can still find gems in the cheap books, as long as they're written before 1940 so this is a book written in 1930 called the romance of selling and i i bought this book and i love this book because um for some reason in the world as a whole selling is looked down upon i remember as a kid growing up uh and going to college and going to school and people were like what are you going to be when you grow up and people go i'm going to be a doctor i'm going to be a dentist i'm going to be whatever and it was always fascinating to me because i never heard someone bragging about i want to be a salesman i want to be i want to get into sales right that was never a thing people cared about.

Speaker 2 And then fast forward, when I got into business and I started learning how to make money, I realized there are different skill sets. I had to learn marketing, then I had to learn how to sell.

Speaker 2 And I started realizing that all the people I met who were extremely wealthy, extremely successful, like the one common thing that all these people were really, really good at is they all knew how to sell.

Speaker 2 I started realizing that the person in the room that makes the most amount of money is never the technician, right?

Speaker 2 There's this concept people have, like, I'm going to go to school and typically teach you how to be a technician, teach you how to be a doctor or a dentist or a teacher or whatever the thing is, right?

Speaker 2 But in any business, like the person that makes the most amount of money is the rainmakers, the person who makes the money, who makes the sales, right?

Speaker 2 That's the person who makes the most amount of money. In fact, I always talk about in, if you look at any business, right?

Speaker 2 There's, there's a couple of different pieces that key players that are involved, right? There is the entrepreneur who starts a business, right? And that's the person who puts in the risk.

Speaker 2 And so that's the person who has like the big ups or the big downs, right? But they don't have a ceiling on their income. Then you have the technicians who do the actual thing, right?

Speaker 2 They're the person that they're teaching, or they're drilling the teeth, or they're whatever, the chiropractor,

Speaker 2 they're the technician who does the thing, right? And they usually don't have the risk,

Speaker 2 they have the skill set,

Speaker 2 but because they don't have the risk, there's always like a ceiling on their earning potential, right? And then again, the last person in the business is the rainmaker.

Speaker 2 It's the person who actually makes the money, right? And that person typically doesn't have a degree. There's not typically, you don't go to school to get a degree in selling,

Speaker 2 you know, and but that's the person who doesn't typically have a ceiling on their on how much money they can make, right? There's no ceiling because the more they sell, the more money they can make.

Speaker 2 And so for me, it's like you've either got to be the entrepreneur in the business because you have no, like you have unlimited upside, or you've got to become the salesperson.

Speaker 2 And a lot of times the salesperson, the entrepreneur is the same, the same person. But for me, like when you think about selling and the romance of selling, it is the thing that moves the business.

Speaker 2 It's the thing that produces the revenue. It's the thing that makes the doctor actually useful.

Speaker 2 It's the thing that makes the dentist, makes the the person with the skill set actually useful because if nobody shows up and gives that person money, then nobody gets paid.

Speaker 2 And so it's actually the most important part of every single business is the selling.

Speaker 2 And so I think about the romance of selling, I want people thinking more about that and like not looking down upon sales or sales positions or anything, but understanding like it is the key.

Speaker 2 It is the most important part of the equation. So if you want to learn how to do anything, you got to learn how to be great at sales.

Speaker 2 I'm going to show you guys one thing I found cool in this book as I was leafing through initially. Here Here in the middle,

Speaker 2 there was like this little bookmark, if I can find it again.

Speaker 2 There it is.

Speaker 2 Now I learn sales differently than most people, right?

Speaker 2 Most people, if they're doing sales, they learned on the phone or maybe they went door to door or they, you know, whatever, you know, they sold cars at a car dealership, things like that.

Speaker 2 My first version of something that I learned was different. So I went on a mission for my church for two years.
And I went to New Jersey. And for two years, I was knocking on doors,

Speaker 2 literally selling religion, which of all the things you can possibly sell, I think is the hardest sell.

Speaker 2 Like my sales pitch on the door approach was, you know, we talked to someone like, hey, this is our offer.

Speaker 2 Like, I need you to give up alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, all premarital and extramarital sex, and 10% of your income for the rest of your life.

Speaker 2 In exchange, you may get salvation if you don't mess it up. Like, that was our sales pitch.
That was like what I learned going door to door for two years.

Speaker 2 It was hard, like knocking on doors and getting rejected and doors slammed in your face. I had people like sicking dogs on us.
We had like

Speaker 2 all sorts of chaos and craziness.

Speaker 2 But one of the things I learned through the process which literally is crazy because it's the message from this little piece of paper i'll read it first and i'll explain it it says nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm so it's the real allegory in the tale of orpheus which i don't know that story but it says it moves stones and charms brutes it is the genius of science and truth accomplishes no victories without it so the power and contagious is enthusiasm it's one thing i learned is like when i would um when i would go and knock on somebody's door and i'm trying to share my faith and my belief with people when I was scared and nervous other people just shut me down right but when I had enthusiasm at what I was sharing like this is the most exciting thing in the world and I started getting into it I got excited and I would meet somebody it would shift everything like the enthusiasm I would walk in the door with right when I came to some enthusiastic hey you guys what's going on like we've got the most exciting message in the entire world like then people listen they started paying attention and I remember when I got back into

Speaker 2 you know got home for my mission and then I had a chance to like starting my business things like that again I was very shy and awkward and I remember having my first opportunity to actually sell something in an event right i've been selling things online through email so it wasn't me ever talking it was just like sending out emails and that's how sales were made right and i got invited to speak in an event and i'd been to an event before i saw people selling from stage and you know these people are on stage were very charismatic and at the time i wasn't i was nervous i didn't know how to do these things and i would watch them and i would like what were the people that like inspired me to want to go run to the back right and i started paying attention to that and i would notice that the people that um

Speaker 2 the people that had that that were having the most success people I connected with,

Speaker 2 they had enthusiasm, they had excitement, they had more charisma.

Speaker 2 And I remember if you look at the early videos of me, I look my first couple times on stage, I'm wearing a tie, I had a shaved head, and my eyes look like half asleep, like I'm tired, I'm talking like this.

Speaker 2 And I was like, I realized, like,

Speaker 2 I just, I felt tired. I looked tired, like, I was like, I'm not engaging people.
And somewhere along the line, I thought it'd be really smart for me to create my very first infomercial.

Speaker 2 And by the way, it was one of the biggest mistakes of my business. I lost a whole bunch of money.
Didn't sell a single product from the infomercial, but we recreated the infomercial.

Speaker 2 And I remember we went on set and I had a co-host on the infomercial. And this guy was like, you could tell he had, he was a coach for a lot of infomercials.
He had tons of energy.

Speaker 2 He was talking over the top. And I was so embarrassed.
I was like, well, this guy is going crazy. And then he would do his whole thing.
And I would deliver my line.

Speaker 2 And I remember he's like, he's like, no, no, like, you need more energy. So I'm like, okay.
So he'd do his whole thing. And then he'd cut to me and I'd be like,

Speaker 2 right, I do my line. And he was like, he cut against like, he's like, Russell, Russell, you have to understand.

Speaker 2 He's like, if you could, if you, if you're on TV and your energy and your enthusiasm at this level right here, you sound normal.

Speaker 2 He's like, if you come in normal, you're going to sound boring and half asleep. Anyway, super awkward.
And so we try again. And then he would do the whole thing.

Speaker 2 And I'd come in and try to be like as much energy and enthusiasm as I had. And I remember one time he's like, he's like, don't you believe in your product? He's like, you've sold me on the product.

Speaker 2 Like, study, like, I'm more excited about this than you are. Like, where's your enthusiasm? I'm like, I don't know.
I just feel uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 And so anyway, all said and done, we filmed the infomercial. I do my version of it.
I'm trying to talk as excited as I could, but, you know, with the constraints of me feeling stupid.

Speaker 2 And then when the infomercial came out and we watched it, it was crazy because I met, like, sure enough, just like he said, when you watched it, he seemed normal and I seemed half asleep.

Speaker 2 And the infomercial bombed, didn't make a single sell, but it was a powerful lesson I learned.

Speaker 2 And so I remember when social media came out and I first started doing social media, like, I realized, I remember that lesson he kept saying.

Speaker 2 He's like, If you talk normal without enthusiasm, you're going to sound boring, right, on TV. But if you come in with a lot of energy, you're going to sound normal.

Speaker 2 And so when I started doing social media, first times I'd go live on Periscope back and then I was like, what's up? This is Russell Brunson.

Speaker 2 And like, I start that level and then people watch it and it sounds normal.

Speaker 2 And it's funny to me to this day because I still get people who, every time they say, like, Russell, how do you have so much energy? Like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 2 Like, every time I see you, you got so much energy. I'm like, oh, well, the reason why is because the only time you ever see me is when I'm about to go live on TV, right?

Speaker 2 I'm clicking live on Facebook. I'm going live on a webinar or something.
But when I show up, I show up with enthusiasm. It's one of the most important things of selling.

Speaker 2 Like, if you don't show up with that level of enthusiasm, if you're not excited about the product nobody else is gonna be excited like you have to bring that excitement that energy to it right you're bringing a pro you could be bringing a book like hey you should buy this book it's awesome versus like this book is insane if you want to learn how to sell and like and like you're right that level of enthusiasm gets people to actually desire the thing you want right people desire more energy in their life like they're trying to get energy from caffeine from coffee from from parties from like what like they're craving that right everyone wants to be this different vibe they're trying to raise up that level and so when you're the person who comes in with with the enthusiasm, the excitement, right, they want to plug into that.

Speaker 2 There's a sales concept that's really powerful when you're doing group selling, right? If you're doing even small groups, whatever. But the concept is this.

Speaker 2 The person in any room who has the most certainty always wins, right?

Speaker 2 Everyone comes in this room and everyone's looking like, who's got the most certainty?

Speaker 2 And whoever's willing to step up into that, right, has the most certainty, everyone else is like, that's the leader. And they're going to plug into that person, right?

Speaker 2 So if I'm speaking in an event, I have to come in with more certainty than the other speakers. I have to come in with more certainty than the audience members.

Speaker 2 The person with the most certainty wins in a situation, right? And so if I'm going into a selling situation, I have to understand that.

Speaker 2 So it's enthusiasm, it's certainty, like those things will clean up so many of the other sales things.

Speaker 2 If you're not as good at creating the offer or whatever, but you come in with certainty and enthusiasm, people are looking. for people to plug into.
J.

Speaker 2 Abraham once said that people are silently begging to be led. He said they're walking around with like a cord on their umbilical cord, looking for somebody to plug into.

Speaker 2 And so if you want to be a leader, if you want to be successful in selling, you've got to be the person who comes in with those things

Speaker 2 because because that's what's going to get people to want to plug into you. And that's how you win.
That's how you sell the

Speaker 2 people to buy into the products and services that you are promoting and you're selling.

Speaker 2 Now, if all you salespeople out there want to get my notes on this book, The Romance of Selling, there'll be a link down below. Click on that link and you can go get a copy of my notes.

Speaker 2 Other than that, thank you guys so much for being here. I appreciate you.
If you got your best sales technique, drop in the comments down below. And we'll see you guys on the next video.

Speaker 2 Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way.

Speaker 2 Or like a month.

Speaker 2 With offer watch. Wanna have CarMax pick it up from your driveway.

Speaker 2 So, wanna drive? CarMax. Pickup not available everywhere.
Restrictions and fee may apply.