The Ben Franklin Sales Close.

It was the lessons taught, which included tracking your numbers.

It started with advertising my store, and keeping track of the responses, and return on e advertising investment.

Then I started studying copywriting to make my ads pay better. And that led me to Dan Kennedy and the huge world of marketing.

It wasn't until a little later that I figured out that these lessons could be applied to direct selling, in people's homes...and by extension, all selling, no matter what the industry of method of selling.

And to be frank, much of this overlapped. For example, 20 years ago, I was studying sales books and courses, testing my own ideas...but I was also reading books on psychology, logic, and marketing.

All these studies overlapped, it 's the emphasis that changed over time.

But it wasn't until I started studying marketing that I went back over all my old records to build a pattern of who was buying, and what was working.

Before that, I would simply test ideas (or verbal patterns and techniques) several times to see if they worked or not. For example, I tested raising my prices twice over the years, to study the effects on sales, and arrive at the most profitable price. I did that before I studied marketing in depth. And all this time, I was still selling in people's homes.

Added later; Something that may be useful. Remember that I have said that I used to be a solid 40% closer on cold called presentations? And this is after real serious study for a decade or more.

Several years ago, I went back to my records of those sales, and found the exact same patterns of who would buy and who wouldn't.

I was selling 40%. But I dissected who made up that 40%. And I found a couple of groups that made up nearly all my sales, and the rest made up almost none of the sales. A few tweaks, better decisions on who I was seeing...and even with my backward sales techniques of old, my closing percentage would have jumped to almost 80% had I known this information from the beginning.

Live and learn.

Can you not care on a whim? If so, do it. Most can't. I mean really, not caring. For instance, you must be able to reliably turn off your emotions so that you can digest the responses from the prospect and think ahead of the conversation. Rebuttals are reactive, sales are proactive. Anyone with training can react within a subset of taught, repetitive actions.

Since sales are proactive, you have to be too and you gotta be able to do it under YOUR worst circumstances, whatever they are. In my case, I lost about twenty blood relatives in less than ten years while being sued by uncle sam and friends, lost a financial partner and friend to a disease, got divorced, became a single father, found out my friend who I agreed to be a godfather to his two kids...got murdered so now I'm sporting three kids, one of them autistic... and brother, I'm just hitting some of the high points. Try keeping your zen in the middle of that.

You can get to that woo saah a few different ways. All of them quicker than a few decades. You have the internet and an infinite amount of people willing to help you. Claude and I had libraries and ourselves. Huge difference, plus anyone who has been in the sales game for any length of time seemingly hits that mark intermittently without them even realizing what they are doing. I have heard hundreds of names for it over the years. Hot streak, zone, etc. They vary in length of time, I usually see it happen once per shift by a few people...not always the same people. The better they are at sales, the more consistent the streaks are. The better ones tend to streak for a week. People that can streak for more then a week consistently...they don't work for anyone but themselves. Not for long anyway.

Just so you know, I consider those false woo saas, because they are usually followed up with the salesperson flat-lining when the run ended.

And it always ends, because in the middle of the zone - they start thinking and questioning why things are different now...it usually starts with them thinking that the leads are better and when they exhaust all of the external reasons, luck, better leads, fav timezone...etc, then they start paying attention to what they are saying and the very moment they do that... it's over AND ...they can't stop spiraling down and not selling anything.

I think I remember talking to you about getting comfortable asking for higher ticket items and I explained to you that the comfort was relative to your financial experiences. Other words if your bank account is empty and you're not used to making five thousand dollar decisions, it's difficult to ask someone else for that, no matter how much you believe in the product. You can double down on that sentiment if it's your product or service you're trying to sell.

My point of bringing that up is, I think to figure out how to whoo saa and figuring out how to be comfortable outside of your comfort zone is in the same ballpark. Asking for five thousand dollars is easy once five thousand dollars means nothing to you because you have ceased looking at it emotionally. Understand?


No idea buddy. With that said - when I was hammering the phones, I hung my script, rebuttals and common math formulas on the walls surrounding my workspace. I assume it's the same advantage as far as they both are cheats sheats following a plan (script). However, I imagine Claude breaks down the why's and in my opinion, often knowing why something works is more important than just knowing it works and using it (usually wrong or ineffectually).

Do you need to know why to procure a living? Hell...no ya don't!

You only need to know the whys if you want to grow your sales acumen.
I will tell you ...knowing the why's helps translate many other areas of business, such as signage, promotions, situational awareness and much much more.

The only thing that ever held me back in life and sales was, is and always will be........me.

When I first started in the game I was lazy and lucky. I started part-time because I was in school. - just like you -

The lucky part is I did not think I knew anything about sales, so I listened to what they told me to do. Which was - read the script verbatim and don't take it personally when people say no or hang up. Followed up with - stand up and walk around in front of my desk and make sure I smiled when I dialed.

What they told me to do worked. It was way too easy for me, so I slacked on the clock, the entire company was based on phone time vrs sales and if you were like me - having the proper percentages on paper, the company let you do what you wanted. In my case, I would come in for just a few hours a day and hammer out twenty or so sales and go home.

With my next few jobs, the same things happened. Once I became top tier at the company I got lazy and came and went when I wanted to.

I did not truly care about learning anything about anything until I started building my own business. That's when I realized how important this stuff is. Even then I only cared upto a point. My epiphany came when a west coast company offered me half a million bucks to come set them up like my room was. The epiphany wasn't getting offered that money, the epiphany was I had to turn it down...because these guys were asking me shit loads of questions...that I did not have the proper answers to.

That entire deal would have been worth over a million in my pocket for less than twelve months of work and I could not accept it, because I was a lazy business bum. That's when I started learning.

Hmmm...not to be pedantic, but doesn't "strain" mean to force or injure?
Also, I'm of two minds on that thought, so I'm not sure.