The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 176: Jeffrey Gitomer - Why Sales Is The Greatest Profession In The World

Episode Date: November 21, 2016

Episode 176: Jeffrey Gitomer - Why Sales Is The Greatest Profession In The World Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The New York Times best sellers The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Black Book of Connections, and The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. All of his books have been number one best sellers on Amazon.com, including Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching!, The Little Teal Book of Trust, Social BOOM!, and The Little Book of Leadership, and 21.5 Unbreakable Laws of Selling. Jeffrey's books have appeared on best-seller lists more than 850 times and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Episode 176: Jeffrey Gitomer - Why Sales Is The Greatest Profession In The World Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show "Most sales are made after the 7th NO." In This Episode, You Will Learn: Common themes within the best performers: Great attitude Deep belief in themselves  Approachable and good sense of humor You like to hang out with them How to judge a great sales professional: Will you do business with them again? Will you refer them to friends/family Understanding the ethics of a sales professional Why sales is the greatest profession in the world The duty of the sales leader The Wells Fargo Fiasco Why Jeffrey was banned from USAir A live role play -- How Jeffrey sells books on a plane (he sells to me) Keys to successful cold-calling: Engaging, approachable, having a good time Why Jeffrey believes he's the greatest sales professional in the world Why new managers need to be trained/coached (A LOT) Jeffrey's process for speaking to large audiences Why Jeffrey prefers to drive a Lexus Using creativity to differentiate and dominate Saying thank you like John Ruhlin The process of learning from customers: Why it's absolutely vital to your success "People don't like to be sold, but they love to buy." Continue Learning: Jeffrey's best-selling book: Little Red Book of Selling Jeffrey's book: Sales Bible See why over 110,000 people follow Jeffrey on Twitter: @gitomer To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 071: Nate Boyer - Green Beret, Texas Football, The NFL Episode 073: Jay Bilas - World Class ESPN Basketball Broadcaster, Toughness, Fixing The NCAA Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Jeffrey Gitomer on the show, please don't hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell The Learning Leader Show is supported by  Mizzen and Main: Performance fabric menswear. The most comfortable/durable dress shirts you will find on the market. I personally own 22 of them. To get free shipping, use the code "ryanhawk" -- To get $50 off when you purchase three shirts, use the code "ryanhawk3" -- Thank you for your support!

Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey, and welcome to The Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. I want to remind you to join us in our Facebook group, the Learning Leader community.

Go to learning leader.com slash group, learning leader.com slash group to sign up and join us further the conversation. I promise. It's a lot of fun, a lot of learning taking place. On to tonight's episode, our featured leader is the great Jeffrey Gidimer, multiple time, New York Times, bestselling author. Fubis books, The Sales Bible, the little red book of selling. A lot of people in the profession of sales have probably already read them. Also, he does more than 100 presentations a year, has multiple big corporate customers. and he's in front of millions of readers every week through a syndicated column, also on video and audio. A few of the topics we got into. Why sales is the greatest profession in the world and why Jeffrey claims to be the greatest salesman in the world.

And then making the transition from individual contributor to manager. A lot of people going through this right now. And then a live roleplay where Jeffrey tries to sell me. I think you guys will really enjoy it with Jeffrey Gidimer. All right, Jeffrey Gittimer. I got to tell you real quick, Jeffrey, off the top. I know I mentioned this to you briefly. In our pre-interview interview?

Yeah, our first, my very first sales job. I get hired in 2005, and one of the first books I was given was written by you, the little red book of selling. And I noticed everyone in my office had the book as well. And so that was my introduction to the profession of sales. And here I am years later, having moved around a little bit, but still doing the same thing. So, Jeffrey, welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. Thank you very kindly.

Without being too braggy, the Little Red Book of Selling is going on to be the best-selling sales book of all time. Really? So, yeah, when I'm dead, go on eBay. Did I sign it? It's not signed. I might need to get another copy for me. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Just send me a copy. Okay. Send it to my office. I'll sign it and send it back. All right. I will. Well, I got a question for us, Jeffrey, to get us rolling. And it's pretty broad. And I'd love for you to distill it down a little bit. I like to ask people in great leaders and bestselling authors, CEOs, the people I talk to on this show, I love to learn the common themes or characteristics of sustained excellence.

And so I like to ask this to you with a little bit of a twist. And that's in regards to, you know, you've spent a. good portion of your life studying sales professionals writing about what it takes to be great in the profession of selling and I think it's as my dad has said it's the greatest profession of the world if we didn't have salespeople then the world would come to a screeching halt and I believe that thoroughly and I love to learn from you after all these years if you had to pull out a few common themes amongst the greatest sales professionals who sustain excellence not just one year but many years what are a few of those themes

They have great attitude. They have deep belief in themselves, in their company, in their product. They believe that the customer is better off having purchased from them. They are approachable. They're funny. They're affable. They're conversational. And for the most part, there's somebody that you would like to hang out with when the sale is over.

If they are not or if they don't display those qualities, then it's likely the sale has not been consummated. And the salesperson wonders why. Like, the customer thinks you're a jackass. That's why. But they're not going to ever tell you that. Like, dude, I'm saying no to you because you're a jackass. No, they're going to say your price is too high or we're not in the market right now or we've spent our whole budget.

They give the common sales objections and the salesperson takes us to heart, believes it, and goes home. and you know I've always subscribed early on to the theory that most sales are made after the seventh no now it may not be an actual no it may be a get me a proposal but call me back in two weeks that kind of thing but it's the no and not yet and that's that persistent sales guy who has a modicum of value that he can bring to the customer not added value but pre-sale value for example if you're selling me a piece of real estate, I want to know that this real estate is going to fit my needs from my family, not necessarily selling your listing. I'm going to want to proactively meet my neighbors. And when something, you know, when something happens, I expect a proactive phone call.

So there are things that a salesperson should do to make the relationship right. And if they do that or when they do that, then they build a relationship, number one. And number two, they can actually get an unsolicited referral, which is the true report card of sales. I only got, for my customers, I care about two things. Will you do business with me again? Will you refer somebody to me? That's the report card for a salesperson. Do business again, refer me.

All other things are a bunch of crap. You know, the car companies erroneously try to get their customers to be satisfied. Seriously? I don't want to be, I don't want, you know, I have tons of customers that are not satisfied, but they're loyal. You know, they call up and they're groaning or moaning or whatever about something that did or didn't happen, but they stay with me. They love my stuff. So if something, if there's a technological glitch or they forget a password or something didn't derive the same way they wanted it or on time, which is rare for us, but it happens. They're not going to go away.

he's not going to post something up on Facebook that's bad they're not going to you know i don't own any of the URLs that would that would accuse me of being someone bad because i don't need to i just wake up in the morning and do the right thing one of the things that we should talk about i'm hoping that you'll talk about is ethics because the ethics of the salesperson and especially the sales leadership is playing an amazing role in today's society as well as fargo drops to their knees with respect to their activities, not only of their salespeople, but of their leaders. Yeah.

Speaking of that, I think this kind of goes hand in hand. My dad and I, this is a couple years ago, we're sitting down at an extended family event. I forget, probably a birthday party or something like this. It doesn't matter. And we were speaking with a family member, a distant cousin, and she said that she had recently went out on a date and it didn't go well. And we said, oh, that's too bad. What happened?

Why didn't it go well? And she said, the other guy or the guy that I went out with was like this salesman. And it's just like he was selling. And so my dad, my dad who's been in the profession of sales, his entire professional life, me in the same way, took, you know, you take kind of offense to that. Of course you do. Immediately what my dad said, well, if he was a professional sales guy, then I bet he would be great to go out with because he'd be probably understanding your needs,

asking you great questions, trying to figure out what you're into and see if you align properly. And I think she looked at us with a puzzled face, not really. And the reason I bring up this story, Jeffrey, is because a lot of people, when they hear about the profession of selling,

they do think of maybe use car guys or people who approach them at certain stores that give commission for selling TVs or something like that. And they have a bad feeling. So how do you respond when people turn their head or they speak negatively about the profession of selling? I tell them that there are more politicians in jail

than by percentage than any other profession in the world, and these are people that we vote for. These are people that we elect the office. Not everybody's going to be perfect. There's lousy surgeons. There's lousy truck drivers. There's lousy bus drivers. But it's a very minor number.

Unfortunately, the minor number is what gets played up in the press. Yeah. You know, the Wells Fargo thing has brought about the ethical responsibility of salespeople in a way that hasn't happened in 100 years. You haven't seen this kind of thing happen to salespeople. They just, you know, do their job. They try to create customers. They try to make people happy. I think in the profession of selling, in general, the goal is to help the customer win.

Yes, you want to make a sale. Yes, you want to make a commission. but you want to make two sales. You want to make two commissions. So you can't just hoodwings somebody one time and hope it's going to work like they might have done 70 or 80 years ago. In today's world with social media, someone's going to tell somebody everything in two seconds. So you can't risk that. What do you think about the ethical principles?

You've brought up Wells Fargo a couple of times now. I'd love to get your feelings on the duty of the leadership when it comes to the profession of selling and how they lead their individual sellers? Well, obviously, in the Wells Fargo case, these salespeople didn't come up with this idea on their own. They were told what to do by leaders. They were told how to do it by leaders. And the, I mean, to me, the embarrassment of it was their CEO getting up and said,

no, we didn't do that. Like, seriously, dude, even Elizabeth Warren, who's not on my hit parade, ripped this guy a brand new butt. And he deserved it. He totally deserved it. And he, you know, he retired. That's bullshit. He resigned in disgrace.

Yeah. Or he would have been fired. But, you know, the bottom line is he knew all along. How could you not know? How could two million of your customers be affected and the CEO not know? Well, if you don't know, yeah, I mean, either way, regardless, you're still responsible. for what your people are doing. So even if you claim you don't know, that's almost worse.

I mean, it's equally bad to have your head in the saying that much. I mean, you have to know as the leader of the team, if one of your people does something bad, it's on you as the leader. And he wasn't even angry about it. Yeah. He was trying to defend it. He wasn't saying, I'm pissed off of that. This is bullshit.

I'm going to go back to my people. I'm going to fire everybody summarily who's been involved in it. We're going to clean house. I'm going to take names and I'm going to resign. It's what he should have said, but he had no balls. He was more interested in his money than he was in his truth. Yeah. So let's dive into some of your materials.

Luckily, by the way, you and I are perfect, so we don't have to worry about anything we've done in our lives. No. Well, actually, you know what? This brings something, and this is actually coming from, like, you know, I look on Wikipedia, and I was definitely not going to bring this up, but it was since you said we're both perfect. Wait a second. Yeah. You're going to talk about my U.S. Airways thing?

Yes, I am. Trust me, I wasn't going to. But when we talk about you and I being perfect, when obviously said in jest and we're joking, but on Wikipedia, which is not my primary source of research, but sometimes, you know, I go there or I'll go there for most guests just to kind of get an idea and maybe link out to articles. There's a controversy that talks about you gaining notoriety for being the first passion, ever to be banned from U.S. Airways. I'd love to learn more about this from your perspective.

First of all, let's talk about the year that it happened, 2003, so we're now 13 years under our belt. Second of all, I wrote two very scathing but very truthful articles about the airline, and they were kind of laying for me because the article appeared in business journals in every one of their hub cities. So that didn't please them too well, because I talked about how they lie and how they creeped lateness and all the other things that they do, how they're unresponsive and untruthful. And I made one of the gate agents feel very self-conscious one day because she was lying about where the plane was, what the maintenance issue was, what time they're going to take off. And I get a letter in Kansas City by FedEx saying that I've been thrown off the airline

that I can't fly it anymore. Find my own way home. Yeah. If you go to flyer talk, you'll find a thousand. thousand posts about the incident. Finally, one of the top three people at U.S. Airways called me on the phone and said, I can't be known as the guy that kept you off the airline. We're going to come to Charlotte and try to work something out.

Two of their biggest guys came down, not Stephen Wolfson, moron, but different U.S. Airways moronic officials came down. And we agreed that I would write a letter of apology and they would put me back on the airline and give me my status and give me all my miles back. That was 11 months later. Wow. Now they've merged with American Airlines. So I stand as the only person ever banned by U.S. Airways.

Is that cool or what? I was going to say, it seems like you're proud of it. The irony is, three months before they banned me, I got this package in the mail of one of those crystal globes that spins around on another piece of crystal. And I'm one of their 500 best customers. Wow. So I have that badge of honor. and when I came back to that part of the Charlotte Airport, where U.S. Airways was, the skycaps all lined up to hug me and welcome me back. Really?

Yeah. Wow. Oh, yeah. Nice. So, you know, I fly out of Charlotte. I live in Charlotte. I love Charlotte. I'm in the airport a couple hundred times a year.

It's how I earn my living. But now I just get on the plane. I put my hood up. Sometimes I try to sell a book to the guy next. to me. Seriously? Yeah. Totally.

Do you mind if I stop you here for a second? Sure. What is it? Okay. Can we role play right now? I'm sitting, we both get, hopefully, I'm guessing you're in first class now based on your status. That's correct.

We both take our seats in first class. I am a guy sitting next to you, just a guy. Yeah. And you're, if you have a suit and tie on, I know you're a professional guy. So does that help? You want to, you want to see? Oh, yeah. Okay, okay.

So I'm sitting there with a nice suit and tie, nice watch, whatever, good shoes. you're sitting next to me. Let's roll play. Can I hear exactly how it goes? I put a couple of books on the seat, you know, on the divider. And I turned to the guy and I say, hey, what do you do? And they'll tell you, you know, that's part of the seat talk.

What do you do? And I say, have you ever read this book? And he will take the book and start to read. If he starts to read voraciously, I've made a sale. He goes, wow, this is pretty good. Where do you get this? said, I wrote it. And he goes, really? And I said, yeah, and you can get an autographed copy right now. All you need is 20 bucks. And I, you know, I probably sell 20 books a year that way. But it's fun to

interact in exchange. It's fun to try to do it. I don't do it because I need the money. I do it because I have the fun. And sometimes guys are, can I get like 10 of these? And, you know, for my people, like, I go, sure. So I've made multiple sales. I've done one time literally my financial planner. I met him that way. I met him on the airplane. I had just done a thing for Northwestern Mutual. And we talked, talk, talk.

He got me a speaking gig at the million dollar roundtable on the main platform. And they bought a ton of books. So it's, I'm engaging. I'm approachable. And I'm having to go. time. Yeah. I think that's the main thing. And some, every once in a while, I'm talking to somebody and I'm in the plane from Charlotte. People know me in Charlotte. And one day, one of the Supreme Business guys in Charlotte, his name is Johnny Harris, he's like, he was in the row in front

of me. And he turns around, he goes, I thought that was you. Wow. I love it. It's fun. Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm there to have a good time. In spite sometimes of the service or whatever the, you know, whatever the circumstances, I just want people to feel comfortable. Do, has, has, has, have people ever called you pushy on an airplane? Uh, only flight attendants. No. No. No.

No. I don't, uh, I've never had a complaint about what I do because I do it very friendly. Yeah. Yeah. So when somebody looks over to you and says, uh, hey, what do you do? Uh, how do you respond? I tell them that I'm the best salesman in the world. That's your response?

Yeah. And so if you said it to me, I would say, really, how is that defined or how are you able to make a statement like that? I've given 2,500 talks to corporations all over the world, and I wrote the little red book of selling, the best selling sales book of all time, and 12 other books. And how they respond when you say that? They're dumbfounded for the most part. Although sometimes people will look me up Yeah You know what I mean?

Like they have Wi-Fi in the airplane now Yeah So they'll look up who I am or whatever Go, you know what? I think my son read your, you know There's always a connection There's always a connection So what's your get stopped

I get stopped in the airport From people that know me And I don't know them What does your day to day look like Over the course of let's let's I know they're not all the same But what do you what do you How do you spend your time?

Today will be a writing day and a telephone day. You know, I'm talking to my new friend, Kyle, Ryan, I mean. And Ryan is one of these amazing leader learning guys. And I shot one video for a customer. I'm probably going to shoot another video this afternoon talking about our podcast, which I'll gladly invite you on to because we're starting to get a bunch of attraction and we're going to start to do it on Facebook live. Oh nice. Let's do it. Yeah. Do you do do your on, do you do video on yours or is it? Mine has only been audio. I've had a few video

episodes I've done with my brother, but so far for my show, it's only audio. So we're going to do video and I do with my partner, Jen Gluckow. And it's a pretty lively show. We've got some really good guests. We're going to get a bunch more. You know, I just have my friends come on, either other authors or writers or other experts. And we are going to do a show next week on ethics. Oh, nice. We have to. It's so bad.

You know, you haven't, what's happening with Wells Fargo? Tip of the iceberg. But a typical day for me, you know, if I'm in my office, I'm going to talk to customers on the phone. I'm going to write. I'm going to shoot video. If I'm on the road, I'm going to write and I'm going to do a seminar for some company or have some kind of business meeting.

I have an office in New York City and an office in Charlotte, so I'm back and forth. Sometimes I'm talking to publishers. Sometimes I'm talking to customers. Sometimes I'm giving a seminar. Depends. So how many speeches, keynotes, seminars are you doing a year? It depends on the political party in power. What do you mean?

Republicans are better for business. How so? I don't know. They just are. I've done more with Republicans and office than Democrats. office. So I'll do maybe a hundred, a year, a hundred a year if it's a Republican, 75 a year if it's a Democrat. So for the last eight years, you've been about 75 a year? Yep. Wow. Is there a, there's, is there a reason behind that? Well, the economy blew for a long time.

Yeah. So it's okay. It's okay now, though, I mean. It's better. It's certainly not recovered. Hmm, interesting. Wow. Okay. So let's. And I don't mean to make a political statement. You know, my political philosophy is don't reelect anybody. And that way, you get a new bunch of people and they have no extra grant. Interesting. Okay. But I have a question about, I get emails, I think frequently from people who are either interviewing or they've already made that initial jump from being an individual sales contributor to then leading others, leading their own team. And I'm curious, what advice do you give?

to the people who are making that jump? Take leadership training or don't make the jump. Make your company pay for training as a leader as a manager so that you don't go into the job as a great salesperson turned manager. Because they almost always fail. And they think they can do it. But in the end, then there's politics. They don't know how to deal with people. They've never led people, managed people before.

you have to take managerial leadership courses in order to be able to lead your team. And you have to be able to make a sale when your salesperson cannot. You have to be able to go into somebody's office that they can't close, sit down, close the guy, walk away, hand the commission to your salespeople and go next time. You can do it by yourself. Yeah. Why do you think a lot of places, a lot of companies, I hear this is, very calm, that the further you move up in the company, the less, less training you have.

It's kind of forced on you to do it yourself. Why is that? That seems so backwards to me. It's totally backwards. I don't understand that at all. Many of my customers, I make the leaders take the training so that when they're talking to other people, they can talk about it. Like, I don't want to sell my Gidimer Learning Academy.com. I don't want to sell that to a company without their leader taking it as well.

Why is he or she above the people that are out there making all the money for him? Yeah. You know, the sales guy makes the money. Yeah, I'll tell you something interesting. If you've ever watched one of those business shows where the CEO comes on and he's talking to CNN money or Lou Dobbs or whatever, they never thank the salesperson. The sales guy's out there busting his balls so that the CEO can take a limo. from the airport to the studio. And there's no thanks ever.

So that kind of pisses me off. You know, I want to thank my sales guys because without them, I wouldn't be here. Do you have a, what's your team look like? My team, it's a bunch of has-beens that, you know, hardly get up in the morning. Now, I have people that are on fire. You know, they love to learn, they watch my stuff,

they do their own stuff, they're happy, people, you know, they go make sales. I was going to say it because like, we're very sales oriented company, but you know, I'll tell you, most of the people who I've done business with over the past 25 years, they buy. Yeah. All the speeches that I've given 2,500 speeches in the last 20 years, I've never made a sales call to give a speech, ever. I don't have a lot of marketing postcards. I don't call speakers, bureaus. I don't do jack. They just call up and go, hey, can you speak? on, you know, April the 15th.

I go, sure. What do you, like, if you do a one-hour keynote, is that, is that a regular thing or are they mainly seminars where you teach after? Everything that I do is customized for the customer. Okay. Every single thing, whether I'm going to Ohio University and speaking to the sponsors of the sales class. Yeah.

Or I'm talking to one of my Fortune 500 companies that, you know, the guy selling tractors wants to know about tractors. The guy, the guy selling life insurance wants to know about life insurance. If I'm not well-versed enough to be able to speak their language to them, I won't have any attraction. I won't have any connection. So I spend hours customizing my talks. Interesting. So what, how do you, I'm thinking from a business perspective, we're going back into the sales stuff here in a second, but from business perspective,

how many streams of revenue do you have and what percentages come from each stream? Like the percentage of total? It's a secret. That's why you come on the podcast, though, to share it. It's a secret. I have several different, I earn money from books. I earn money from seminars. Yep.

I certainly earn money from my online learning academy. And, you know, those are my major streams of income. So the speaking going out 100 times a year, though, or 75 times for the last eight years? But one breeds the other. I got you. You know, the customer who hires me to speak will buy books. books and we'll buy long-term training. The guy that buys my long-term training says, hey, we're having a sales meeting.

You want to show up? Yeah. That's what happens. One breeds the other. They're all interactive. You say people don't like to be sold, but they like to buy. People don't like to be sold, but they love to buy. People don't like to be sold, but they love that.

I've trademarked that phrase. How do you, how do you, what's the, the, the, keys to getting, let's think of the new salesperson right now. What are the keys to getting somebody in the position to want to buy from you? All right. Let's talk about the one of the most controversial sales people in the world. Okay. The car sales guy. Okay. You walk into a car dealership. Do you know what you're known as when you walk in? What's that? An up.

And known as an up. Is that an acronym? No, it's not. What does up mean? Up means who's up. It started out with the guys rotating and the sales manager say, hey, you're up. And so they became known over the years as an up. Okay.

Now that guy, that car shows guys, were you looking for a new car today? Did you want to lease or buy today? a trade in today? What's your budget today? Yeah. Now, the customer has already done research. They have a piece of paper in their pocket. But the salesperson is so stupid that they think the customer is stupid and they treat them stupid. True? Yeah. So if you walked into my car dealership, I would say, what's your favorite car on the showroom right now? And they would point at the car probably the one they want. Yeah. And I'd say, have you ever driven it? you know well here's the keys take it for a ride come back tell me what you think yeah that's it

that's engagement yeah it's tactile invasion engagement maybe i go with the guy do you want me to go with you do you want to go by yourself if you're going by the crispy cream would you mind bring me back a couple of donuts and some chocolate milk so um why they're not having any fun they're all pissed off they're all got quotas they got a sales manager's got the foot up their to get the next car sold for Friday, you know. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I may have bought a few cars.

It doesn't seem like that enjoyable of a job. It's not. You know, like I hate saying that. Because they don't make it an enjoyable job. It's a piece of shit job because the way they, they structure the thing is crappy. How could you fix that? They're like the overall.

By making it fun. Yeah. How would you make it fun, the industry of selling cars? Because I know the margins are so slim depending on new cars. They're not that slim. Don't kid yourself. I guess that's what I've heard. Yeah, right.

Of course, that's what they want you to think. Not necessarily from a sales guy, but just from, I guess, overlooking the industry or interviewing people who used to be in car sales to work in other jobs saying, you know, we hardly get any commission for, they get it on financing. That's because they suck. They left because they suck. Do you know Joe Gerard? I don't know him personally now. But do you know of Joe Gerard? Yes, I do.

You know, he's like the greatest car sales person of all time, correct? He claims to be I thought it was audited wasn't it Wasn't he professionally audited? I have no idea I don't know I didn't look at the numbers I've read that about him and I think his whole His whole thought process from what I've read From his work

You got people can look up Joe Gerard And he sold cars He sold cars one at a time not like you know In fleets or anything like that He just said I hope I hope you get a lemon Meaning you know I hope you get a bad car Because then it's that's when I come in That's when I come in to show you my I'm gonna differentiate myself based on service

and I'm going to do such a good job that you're going to refer me to all of your friends and all your family, and you're going to continually come back, and that's how he became. Now, think about this for just a second. Yep. Name another car salesman. Besides maybe Lee Ayacocca. Yeah. You know, because he brought back Chrysler and said, he invented the rebate.

Buy a car, get a check. Mm-hmm. And it revived Chrysler. Literally, that one idea revived Chrysler. Mm-hmm. But you can't think of the next, who's the next greatest car salesman? No idea. Right.

How many car salesmen are there? Hundreds of thousands, right? Tons, yes. Right. So if there's only one guy that stands out, I think you've got a problem. Yeah. Yeah. Tesla will change the way cars are sold.

Well, you can just go online and buy him. Yeah. Yeah, they buy them online. Yeah. Here's the price. Hit the buy now button. Yeah. Did you see that Elon Musk email he sent out to his whole company,

told Tesla when he found out that a few people were discounting the cars. And it was an incredible letter basically stating like that will never happen for anybody no matter what. Like when he, when he gets a Tesla himself, he pays full price, his family pays full price, his friends pay, celebrities pay full price. Like I thought it was just an incredible, I guess thinking from an ethical or just an ideal ideology. He's saying we do not discount our cars. We never will for anybody. And if it if it happens at all, that's a big problem. Exactly. He has a standard. It may not, you can say whatever you want about ethics, but Tesla is setting a standard. And they're going to set the standard for the entire industry. And if you

don't think they're doing well, all the other car companies are trying to take him to court to stop what he's doing. Yeah. Once General Motors hits the buy now button, once they put it on their website, every car salesperson in America is selling a Chevy will lose their job in an hour. Yeah. Hmm. I don't know if that's good or bad for... Well, I don't know whether it's good or bad either, but they've been pissing customers off for a century. Isn't that enough?

What cars do you have you purchased recently? I buy Lexus. Lexus. I buy Hendrick Lexus of Charlotte. Do you like the service? I like the service. I like the people. I like the car.

Okay. Hendrick Lexus of Charlotte.com. Nice. You give them a little plug. You can buy them online. Do you buy them online? No, I go to the place. How are there sales?

How are their sales guys? They're, I train them. Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense. And, and, um, so they're the best, I'm guessing, right? Well, that didn't start out that way. Right. Um, but I've been driving the car.

They service the car. They, they're friendly. They're nice. They get it done. They're not inexpensive, but I don't, I don't really care. I want it done right. They'll inspect the car. They'll fix whatever's wrong with it.

I'm a happy guy. I highly recommend them to anybody. Yeah. So you, page 136, a little red book, you, I don't know if you're pulling it up, but you say use creativity to differentiate and dominate. Can you expand on that, maybe share a story or reinforce that one? So let's say, let's say you're selling bags of seeds to farmers and they're planting corn with it. and it's $1.89 a pound or $2.21 cents a pound.

How do you differentiate yourself from your competitor who claims they have the best seed? Don't they both have seed? Yep. It's almost a commodity, isn't it? Right. So I tell my customers to have a business card printed on a bag of seeds. You know, like there's 39 cent or $1.29 seeds you get at the hardware store in the sprint. Yep.

And you make them all different kinds of vegetables. And the sales guy goes to the farmer's house, gives the farmer's wife a bunch of seeds for the year. Now, what do you think those people think about every single time they're eating dinner? You. Bingo. For how much money? Not much. Right.

Under 20 bucks, guaranteed. So it's a real small thing, but it wouldn't it be great if you could have a business card? It was actually your product. Yeah, exactly. Makes me think a little bit of a guy by the name of John Rulin, become a good friend of mine, been on this podcast twice. He differentiates himself, by the way, he says, thank you from a gifting perspective. Always makes it about the other person doesn't send out anything with his own logo,

but he always puts the person he's thanking his logo on whatever it is, whether it's a knife, a bag, a metal card, which are some things that I've done modeled because of him. How do you say thank you to your customers? I call John Rulin. Do you use John? Mm-hmm. Are you serious? Yeah.

Oh, wow. I didn't even realize that. No, John Rulin and I have been friends for more than a decade. Wow. I met him at a seminar in Minnesota or Wisconsin somewhere. We hung out for a while. You know, I've got him a couple of professional sports teams. I got him a major meat producer.

I think about John. he's a good guy from his heart yeah he's not a fake guy he's a real good guy yeah it's what it what a small world yeah here we wait no no here we are in your blog on your podcast and we're talking about john ruling yeah man good for him so evidently he's made an impact correct huge he's done some incredible things for me personally uh and i've certainly then gone on to um say thank you in unique ways based on some advice from him and the behavior he's modeled towards me. The first time he came on my podcast, you know, literally I think it was two days later. You know, normally I send out some sort of thank you that I try to personalize for them.

And he, he had sent me personalized knives, you know, with mine and my wife's name on them. And they got here literally like two days after we recorded it, not even, it was before I even released. it. So it's just an incredible guy. And I'm glad he gets the pub. He deserves it. He's the best. One more question for you, or maybe a couple more, but real quick. I'm thinking of, and I know I'm bouncing around, but I want to get your advice on this because a lot of people do this. So let's say you are already in a leadership role. You're a sales leader, whether you're a manager, you're a VP, whatever it may be. And you've done a great job, a good enough job to where you've been recruited by another company and the company that has recruited you is in a completely different industry than you're

currently in, meaning you don't know anything about the products, you don't know anything about the industry, but it appears to be a phenomenal opportunity and you go and you take it. How do you advise people in those jobs, those leadership roles when their, when their first day on the job, they know less than every single person who works for them, which can be kind of an intimidating spot to be in. How do you, what advice? I'm going to give you the answer, whether you're a salesperson in a new job, in a new career, or even in a job where you know what's going on. Okay.

Or you're a sales leader in a new career or you know what's going on. The first thing you do is you do nothing with the people that are there. You go visit a dozen customers, your best customers. You find out why they buy, how they value. So you immediately become at least a decent authority on what's really happening out in the customer's world, the only world that matters. So whether you're a new salesperson or a new sales leader, the first thing, your best training is go to a customer's place of business and train there. Talk to them, ask them, work your product or your service there, do anything that you can to get up to speed and take two weeks to do it. Yeah, it makes sense.

Yeah, of course it makes sense. It came from you. Thanks. Thanks. I totally appreciate it, Ryan. Well, no, Jeffrey, thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. Are there any questions you wanted me to ask that I didn't ask you? No, I think we're pretty well.

I would like to come back. And I would also like to, especially like you have to do the election to see what's going to happen with business in America. Okay. And what leaders are, you know, how's the new leader doing? Okay. And I would like to invite you on our podcast, Sell or Die, talk to Jennifer, my partner and I, about what your leadership experience has been as an athlete.

Yeah. Let's do it. Because I think athletes make the best salespeople on the planet. They're dedicated, they're fit, they're coachable. Have you stayed fit since college? Actually, I think I'm in better shape than I was when I was in college. Cool. A lot of athletes are like that.

They, you know, they don't expand. Well, I mean, it's done like triathlons and I don't get beat up anymore. Like when I played football, I was getting hit all the time, you know, playing, I played quarterback. And so you're getting beat up. And I don't get hit like that anymore. So I'm, I am able to do more work in the water when I swim, when I run, when I lift, than I did when I was playing. So that's why I feel, I feel a lot better now. Cool.

But I love to come on to. You can be proud of yourself. Yeah. We should talk about how athletes make the best salespeople. I would love to. So that would be a topic on your show? You got it. Well, let's definitely do it.

So we can... Doug will reach back out to you and we'll get you on the show. Perfect, perfect. Yeah, man, I really appreciate it. Hey, it's a pleasure talking to you. Very well prepared. Thank you. And I totally respect what you've done.

Thank you. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Well, obviously go to gettimer.com, our website, which is going to relaunch in another couple of weeks. But for now, I'd like them to go to the Gittimer Learning Academy.com. Gidemer Learning Academy.com and subscribe to my online learning for a year. It's the best thing to do is call our company 704-333-1112 and talk to somebody because the listed price is $4,900 and we're running a deal right now for $9.95, but I don't know

what the promo code is. So just have somebody call. If anybody's interested, have them call the office and we'll honor the deal. Not, not a... Oh, you go to iTunes. Go to iTunes and C. Oh, and sell or die. Yeah, cool.

Yeah, man. Not a surprise that you're, as you would call it, the greatest sales guy in the world. You close it out by giving a phone... You give a phone number. It's the first phone number given on this show in 175-plus episodes. So, yeah, man. Nice. I love it.

They have phones now. Yeah, I know. I know. I know. But thanks so much again, Jeffrey. I look forward to you coming back and then me going on your... show, but this will be a lot of fun, man. This is cool. You got it. All right, thanks, Jeffrey. You got it. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty

more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to learningleadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on the Learning Leader Show.