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What Are the Three Biggest Business Blunders of Apple Inc?

When you think of Apple Inc. you might conjure up an image of a business underdog that became a billion-dollar juggernaut that’s on the verge of cracking the trillion-dollar threshold. Of course, all of their out-of-this-world innovations, tech breakthroughs and beautiful designs might also come to mind. However, many don’t readily associate this unicorn business with major blunders; but they have made three disastrous decisions, what are they? Read the rest here »

What was Bruce Lee’s Motivational Secret and Can it Work for Lead Generation?

In the Netflix series, The Legend of Bruce Lee, we learn that Bruce Lee was not born with the desire to be a Kung Fu hero. In fact, his father discouraged this endeavor. However, persistent bullying eventually caused Bruce to develop a burning desire to learn Kung Fu.

It was this very difficult situation that later lead to Bruce Lee’s secret motivational technique, what was this technique, and can it work for lead generation? Read the rest here »

What is the Nonverbal Mad Men Sales Technique in the Famous Lipstick Pitch?

Most sales people can pick up Don Draper’s reverse sales technique in the famous Mad men Lipstick Pitch. However, there is another powerful marketing concept silently influencing Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s prospects that builds know, like and trust!

Watch the film clip and try to guess the secret behind Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s nonverbal selling concept! Then read my answer below! Read the rest here »

Can Mad Men Teach How to Create a Paradigm Shift in Sales?

Closing is the toughest part of the sales process and one of the reasons is because most companies are engaged in marketing the opposite of what some buyers think they need. In many business verticals the buyers have their own opinion about how a service should be delivered, provided, designed etc.… Most of the time these are hack opinions that are simply wrong headed and won’t serve their interest or help them meet their objectives.

This is where salespeople find themselves between the horns of a dilemma in the sales game because they have to choose between making a quick sale by giving a prospect what they want, even when it’s known not to help the prospect. Or they can try to reason and persuade a stubborn buyer, that ‘thinks’ they know exactly what they need, to change their mind; but risk losing the sale. Read the rest here »

Grow Your Business by Focusing on Customer Experience

I just finished reading, Growth IQ by Tiffany Bova and it speaks to a business issue close to my heart and that’s customer experience.

I know that this subject might not sound sexy; but that is the problem. Most companies only think about customer experience when they first develop their business model and envision the value their product of service will add in the marketplace. Read the rest here »

You Can Sell More to Prospects Without Pain & Need

Most marketing campaigns focus on locating companies with obvious pain and need. However, you can sell more to prospects that don’t have a need, and are not actively looking for your service or product.

I first learned this lesson when I worked at a retail job in a men’s clothing store, trying to make sales.

I realized that everyone who walked into the store said, “I am just looking.” However, it became apparent that these people comprised two distinct groups of shoppers. While both said they were just looking, one group had a need and was looking for something specific, and the other group literally was just looking.

Which group do you think presented a better opportunity to sell?

I crafted a way to separate the sheep from the goats, by telling these ‘just looking’ shoppers that I was going to give them something to look at, a sale on sport coats. Before they could say anything, I would have them in the right size sport coat and looking into what I called the ‘mirror of truth’.

You see, the shoppers that had a need would get nervous and squeamish and reveal to me that they just came into the store to buy a pair of socks! I sold them socks and got them out of the store!

Meanwhile, the shoppers that were truly just looking or that didn’t have a need could be convinced to buy 3 or 4 sport coats, suits, ties, dress shirts and slacks. This is how I made all my money!

This is how I learned early in my career that you can sell more to prospects that don’t have a need! This understanding enabled me to become a top salesman right out of high school, and go on to set record amounts of appointments, and now to write this book!

What Can We Learn From the Tower of Babel About Lead Generation?

For many years I have believed that we could extract some valuable information for the Bible’s account of the tower of bible. Not in a religious way but in the spirit of understanding human boundaries and what’s conceivable. Of course, this information could be transformative to anyone that wants to apply it to improving their performance in business, sales and lead generation efforts.

What happened in this account that has so much potential to change our understanding of the limits of human possibility?

The Account

We are told that Nimrod was gathering by force humans to the city of babel where they were building a tower that could reach the heavens. Apparently, there was some mystical nature to the purpose of this tower since most ziggurats had a spiritual connotation. The focus of God’s attention fell on how many was using the unifying power of language to defy his command to multiply and fill the earth. This is where God is said to have confused the language of men to force them to scatter and leave off building the Tower of Babel.

The Statement of Interest

When God starts his observation of the tower of babel he notes that there is nothing man cannot do. The idea is that something must be done to slow the progress of man apparently so that what ever Gods’ time table was would remain correct. However, I wonder whether it was just the unifying force of men using the same language that God was referring to when he acknowledges to limitless abilities of mankind.

The Crawl of Progress

If this event did in fact happen in the ancient past, then we could conclude that confusing the language was an effective tool. However, language is not what gives man the power to accomplish impossible but rather it’s our subconscious mind. The fact is that even with the limits of language man has still explored the entire earth, research deep in the ocean and reached out into the expanse of Heaven. Yes, mankind has build that ‘tower’ that reaches into Heaven, but it has taken thousands of years.

The Power

When you realize that God has said we have nearly unstoppable power that has no boundaries it time to get excited. Truly, our subconscious mind is the closest thing to God if in fact we were made in God’s image. When you properly communicate with your subconscious mind through meditation, mantra’s and claiming your goals then you can receive the answers to any business, sales or lead generation quandary that perplexes your and can be given virtually unlimited power though releases of adrenaline. Of course, when you combine more than one individual into a Mastermind of people all communicating with their subconscious mind then this can create and unstoppable force.

Setting Goals

When you truly believe in the power of the subconscious mind it’s imperative that you reassess all your goals. Stop thinking small and realize that you have nearly limitless powers to grow a business to become international, break every sales record and develop lead generations techniques that defy all imagination. Today every human has the ability to build their own ‘tower’ if they would only look inside and believe the impossible is in fact possible!

My Cold Calling Success Story

In the 90’s, after my family’s business tanked, I found a job working for an upscale telemarketing position calling on businesses in Dallas setting appointments. It wasn’t long before I discovered that I could set far more appointment than the average cold caller on the team.

However, even with the salary and commissions I received on appointments I was still struggling to maintain my lifestyle. In other words, I was in the red zone financially and was in the throws of losing my BMW, upscale apartment and possibly my girlfriend!

This is when I turned to a friend in desperation for advise and he instructed me to ‘ride the clock’ which I tired for about 2 weeks. This entailed clocking in for an extra hour in the morning, working through lunch and staying one hour longer.

However, ‘riding the clock’ was driving me crazy! I was not built to ‘ride the clock’ since I am a natural born salesperson that loves to see results and productivity. So I approached my friend again and told him that ‘riding the clock” just wasn’t for me. Then he told me that my only other option to generate enough income to maintain my lifestyle would be to get a second job.

I took his advice and quicking found another job in the evenings working at a call center. To make this situation more clear I already had a telemarketing job and now I was working for a real boiler room in an even higher pressure environment. To make things even worse I found that working all those hours was taking a toll on my sleep and I started falling asleep on my second job. All the muscles that support my neck would just give out and my head would come crashing down on the keyboard which would only served to wake me up so I could begin calling again.

I can tell you that working all these hours and trying to focus in a semi-sleep state and struggling to stay awake has to be one of the rings of Dante’s hell, that’s reserved for the worst sinners. Needless to say I physically couldn’t take working all these hours and quit my second job; but I was still faced with the same dilemma of how to solve my financial crisis.

This is when things started to turn around for me because stopped taking my friend’s advice and started thinking for myself. It became clear that I had to make more money working on my main job, not with extra hours or a second job. I reasoned that I just had to become more productive in the eight hours I was already working. That is when I awakened to the fact that I was getting commissions for every appointment I set and that this represented an unlimited financial opportunity. All I had to do is figure out how to dramatically increase the number of appointment I set each day and then I could start making more money; but by just working the same hours.

That’s when the idea of setting 15 appointments a day popped into my head and then I combined that phenomenal idea with some of the inspirational books I had been reading like, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I dedicated myself to meditating on my goals and six months later The Million Dollar Rebuttal was born along with my Stratospheric Lead Generation Secrets.

Once I started using the cold calling system I created, I finally realized my goal of setting 15 appointments a day. The staggering total of appointments set throughout that time amounted to roughly 2,700 face-to-face business appointments. With the extra income I was able to pay off my car, buy land in the county and build a house for cash.

Oh, and by the way, I married my girlfriend!

Ultimately these accomplishments lead me to starting my own telemarketing company, which operated successfully for 13 years. During the time I was running the company I was able to help many businesses earn millions of dollars with my innovative cold calling system.

For me Desperation was truly the mother of invention; but my message for all the business owners and sales people out there, is that you are also sitting on a gold mine of unlimited opportunity. You just need to have a system that can help you dramatically increase lead generation and then you can reach any financial goal you believe is possible!