Great Sales Day Quotes

If you try to buy my body, I’ll sell you my shadow. My shadow would make a great day laborer, because it’s solar powered.

This is why tyrants of all stripes, infernal servants, have such deep-seated hatred for the nomads - this is why they persecute the Gypsies and the Jews, and why they force all free peoples to settle, assigning the addresses that serve as our sentences. What they want is to create a frozen order, to falsify time's passage. They want for the days to repeat themselves, unchanging, they want to build a big machine where every creature will be forced to take its place and carry out false actions. Institutions and offices, stamps,newsletters, a hierarchy, and ranks, degrees, applications and rejections, passports, numbers, cards, elections results, sales and amassing points, collecting, exchanging some things for others. What they want is to pin down the world with the aid of barcodes, labelling all things, letting it be known that everything is a commodity, that this is how much it will cost you. Let this new foreign language be illegible to humans, let it be read exclusively by automatons, machines. That way by night, in their great underground shops, they can organize reading of their own barcoded poetry. Move. Get going. Blesses is he who leaves.

Harry’s letter to his daughter: If I could give you just one thing, I’d want it to be a simple truth that took me many years to learn. If you learn it now, it may enrich your life in hundreds of ways. And it may prevent you from facing many problems that have hurt people who have never learned it. The truth is simply this: No one owes you anything. Significance How could such a simple statement be important? It may not seem so, but understanding it can bless your entire life. No one owes you anything. It means that no one else is living for you, my child. Because no one is you. Each person is living for himself; his own happiness is all he can ever personally feel. When you realize that no one owes you happiness or anything else, you’ll be freed from expecting what isn’t likely to be. It means no one has to love you. If someone loves you, it’s because there’s something special about you that gives him happiness. Find out what that something special is and try to make it stronger in you, so that you’ll be loved even more. When people do things for you, it’s because they want to — because you, in some way, give them something meaningful that makes them want to please you, not because anyone owes you anything. No one has to like you. If your friends want to be with you, it’s not out of duty. Find out what makes others happy so they’ll want to be near you. No one has to respect you. Some people may even be unkind to you. But once you realize that people don’t have to be good to you, and may not be good to you, you’ll learn to avoid those who would harm you. For you don’t owe them anything either. Living your Life No one owes you anything. You owe it to yourself to be the best person possible. Because if you are, others will want to be with you, want to provide you with the things you want in exchange for what you’re giving to them. Some people will choose not to be with you for reasons that have nothing to do with you. When that happens, look elsewhere for the relationships you want. Don’t make someone else’s problem your problem. Once you learn that you must earn the love and respect of others, you’ll never expect the impossible and you won’t be disappointed. Others don’t have to share their property with you, nor their feelings or thoughts. If they do, it’s because you’ve earned these things. And you have every reason to be proud of the love you receive, your friends’ respect, the property you’ve earned. But don’t ever take them for granted. If you do, you could lose them. They’re not yours by right; you must always earn them. My Experience A great burden was lifted from my shoulders the day I realized that no one owes me anything. For so long as I’d thought there were things I was entitled to, I’d been wearing myself out —physically and emotionally — trying to collect them. No one owes me moral conduct, respect, friendship, love, courtesy, or intelligence. And once I recognized that, all my relationships became far more satisfying. I’ve focused on being with people who want to do the things I want them to do. That understanding has served me well with friends, business associates, lovers, sales prospects, and strangers. It constantly reminds me that I can get what I want only if I can enter the other person’s world. I must try to understand how he thinks, what he believes to be important, what he wants. Only then can I appeal to someone in ways that will bring me what I want. And only then can I tell whether I really want to be involved with someone. And I can save the important relationships for th

We like to think that we plan what happens to us, but it is chance, surely, that lies behind so many of the great events of our lives -- the meeting with the person with whom we are destined to spend the rest of our days, the receiving of a piece of advice whic influences our choice of career, the spotting of a particular house for sale; all of these may be put down to pur chance, and yet they govern how our lives work out and how happy--or unhappy--we were going to be.

Learn to see God in the details of your life, for He is everywhere.

A hunter’s meal is in proportion to his skill.

I have to admit," I said when he finished a lengthy discussion on the types of drivers, "I've been golfing and it's about the most boring thing I've ever done. Old men drive around in golf carts pretending they're sporty and getting grouchy if there's any noise. It's like the nursing-home Olympics." Nick's mouth dropped open. "It takes great athletic ability to know how to aim and drive the ball that far." "I get more exercise shopping at the mall," I joked. "I don't come home and tell everyone I won at shopping." Although those red shoes I got on sale the other day felt like a win.

It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber. If love comes from the heart, where does hate come from? Children aren’t born knowing how to hate. They must be taught. Therefore, the lesson is simple. Let’s not teach our children hatred and prejudice, because what they don’t know won’t hurt them — or others. PEACE IS PATRIOTIC.

Remember this study when you are in a negotiation—make your initial request far too high. You have to start somewhere, and your initial decision or calculation greatly influences all the choices that follow, cascading out, each tethered to the anchors set before. Many of the choices you make every day are reruns of past decisions; as if traveling channels dug into a dirt road by a wagon train of selections, you follow the path created by your former self. External anchors, like prices before a sale or ridiculous requests, are obvious and can be avoided. Internal, self-generated anchors, are not so easy to bypass. You visit the same circuit of Web sites every day, eat basically the same few breakfasts. When it comes time to buy new cat food or take your car in for repairs, you have old favorites. Come election time, you pretty much already know who will and will not get your vote. These choices, so predictable—ask yourself what drives them. Are old anchors controlling your current decisions?

There’s some great early stories of him in his sales days. When American Express, for example, wouldn’t buy advertising on TBS because they were ‘too downscale’…and ‘too this, too that’…Ted pulls out an American Express card, slides it across the table and says, ‘I use your product, but you don’t use mine. I have a real problem with that’. “They were saying our audience was downscale, and he’s like, ‘I watch TBS, and I’m worth half a billion dollars, pal!’ He rejected people’s snobbery of ‘it’s gotta be this fancy programming’. He was like ‘look, I’m doing a ‘3’ rating at 6:05, so screw you’.

Each of us hides our own private Delaware lost in the gray jungle-tangle of our brains. No one else can know its depths and byways. No one else can know the height of its towers, the secrets of its tides and pools. There will always be lost lagoons to find there, and ruins almost hidden by the sand. There will always be monsters of great beauty and good men with ugly frowns. The forests are dark but lights bob among the branches. You are at home there, more at home than anyplace else, and yet you will never go there in your life. Their legends are yours. The pirates sale around the cape, a crew of skeletons in the rigging. Milkmaids run down mountain passes, dragging kites behind them. Wizards crack their backs after long days of chalk and incantation while above the crowded bazaars, over the golden temples, against the setting sun, around the ruddy minarets, the pterodactyls call out a long farewell.

Stuart Diver has had years of extensive professional counselling to retrain his brain so that he can replace the thought of how helpless he was when Sally dies with the truth that he tried everything he could to save her, showing how much he cared. He has learned to substitute memories of Sally's last moments with thoughts of wonderful times from their lives together- a great trip, a fun birthday, some other special occasion. In the corner of his living room is a bicycle that he rides every night, and he likens keeping his mental health on track to keeping physically fit. It's hard. It requires patience and it takes discipline.

THE order of God’s Providence maintains a perpetual vicissitude in the material being of this world; day is continually turning to night, spring to summer, summer to autumn, autumn to winter, winter to spring; no two days are ever exactly alike. Some are foggy, rainy, some dry or windy; and this endless variety greatly enhances the beauty of the universe. And even so precisely is it with man (who, as ancient writers have said, is a miniature of the world), for he is never long in any one condition, and his life on earth flows by like the mighty waters, heaving and tossing with an endless variety of motion; one while raising him on high with hope, another plunging him low in fear; now turning him to the right with rejoicing, then driving him to the left with sorrows; and no single day, no, not even one hour, is entirely the same as any other of his life. All this is a very weighty warning, and teaches us to aim at an abiding and unchangeable evenness of mind amid so great an uncertainty of events; and, while all around is changing, we must seek to remain immoveable, ever looking to, reaching after and desiring our God.

Pham Nuwen spent years learning to program/explore. Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father’s castle. Where the creek had worn that away, ten meters down, there were the crumpled hulks of machines—flying machines, the peasants said—from the great days of Canberra’s original colonial era. But the castle midden was clean and fresh compared to what lay within the Reprise’s local net. There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it—the horror of it, Sura said—was that unlike the useless wrecks of Canberra’s past, these programs still worked! And via a million million circuitous threads of inheritance, many of the oldest programs still ran in the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly complex—and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely. . .the starting instant was actually some hundred million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems. So behind all the top-level interfaces was layer under layer of support. Some of that software had been designed for wildly different situations. Every so often, the inconsistencies caused fatal accidents. Despite the romance of spaceflight, the most common accidents were simply caused by ancient, misused programs finally getting their revenge. “We should rewrite it all,” said Pham. “It’s been done,” said Sura, not looking up. She was preparing to go off-Watch, and had spent the last four days trying to root a problem out of the coldsleep automation. “It’s been tried,” corrected Bret, just back from the freezers. “But even the top levels of fleet system code are enormous. You and a thousand of your friends would have to work for a century or so to reproduce it.” Trinli grinned evilly. “And guess what—even if you did, by the time you finished, you’d have your own set of inconsistencies. And you still wouldn’t be consistent with all the applications that might be needed now and then.” Sura gave up on her debugging for the moment. “The word for all this is ‘mature programming environment.’ Basically, when hardware performance has been pushed to its final limit, and programmers have had several centuries to code, you reach a point where there is far more signicant code than can be rationalized. The best you can do is understand the overall layering, and know how to search for the oddball tool that may come in handy—take the situation I have here.” She waved at the dependency chart she had been working on. “We are low on working fluid for the coffins. Like a million other things, there was none for sale on dear old Canberra. Well, the obvious thing is to move the coffins near the aft hull, and cool by direct radiation. We don’t have the proper equipment to support this—so lately, I’ve been doing my share of archeology. It seems that five hundred years ago, a similar thing happened after an in-system war at Torma. They hacked together a temperature maintenance package that is precisely what we need.” “Almost precisely.

I spend a great deal of time working for kids in Uganda and India and chasing bad guys who hurt them. I started a nonprofit a number of years ago and now Sweet Maria and I think about my day job as a great way to fund the things we’re doing. Now when I put on a suit and tie or jump on a plane to go take a deposition, we call it “fund-raising.” It still makes me grin every time to say it this way. It’s like a really successful bake sale to get rid of bad guys.

The other New Age bullshit bullet to dodge is the constant aggressive sale of ‘wonder nature cures.’ Some are no better than snake oil, but others are true healing substances taken out of context, refined, and made into a supplement that you are told you must take every day (at great expense). Don’t get sucked into the bullshit. Learn about your own body, learn about substances and how they work, and do not get trapped in the endless New Age loop of pseudoscience.

The number one job of a leader is to wake up every morning, point to the horizon, and let everybody on the team know where the organization is going. The number two job of a leader is to explain, in clear and simple terms, why the story of going to and arriving at that specific destination matters. The number three job of a leader is to analyze the skills and abilities of each team member and find them an important role to play in that story. All human beings long for a mission. We are all born self-identifying as heroes in a story and we know, even as children, that our existence on this planet matters. Not only this, but as communal beings, every person longs to join a team on a serious and important mission. This is why dynamic leaders are able to attract top talent. Every dynamic leader you know or have ever heard of had a mission burning inside them that other people wanted to join. Great leaders become great because their mission makes them great. There are no exceptions.

The natives use human excrement for tanning leather. When Bernal Diaz came with Cortés to the great market-place of Mexico City, in Montezuma's day, he saw the little pots of human excrement in rows for sale, and the leather-makers going round sniffing to see which was the best, before they paid for it. It staggered even a fifteenth-century Spaniard. Yet my leather man and his wife think it screamingly funny that I smell the huaraches before buying them. Everything has its own smell, and the natural smell of huaraches is what it is. You might as well quarrel with an onion for smelling like an onion.

Hypothetically, then, you may be picking up in someone a certain very strange type of sadness that appears as a kind of disassociation from itself, maybe, Love-o.’ ‘I don’t know disassociation.’ ‘Well, love, but you know the idiom “not yourself” — “He’s not himself today,” for example,’ crooking and uncrooking fingers to form quotes on either side of what she says, which Mario adores. ‘There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them.’ ‘Engulf means obliterate.’ ‘I am saying that such persons usually have a very fragile sense of themselves as persons. As existing at all. This interpretation is “existential,” Mario, which means vague and slightly flaky. But I think it may hold true in certain cases. My own father told stories of his own father, whose potato farm had been in St. Pamphile and very much larger than my father’s. My grandfather had had a marvelous harvest one season, and he wanted to invest money. This was in the early 1920s, when there was a great deal of money to be made on upstart companies and new American products. He apparently narrowed the field to two choices — Delaware-brand Punch, or an obscure sweet fizzy coffee substitute that sold out of pharmacy soda fountains and was rumored to contain smidgeons of cocaine, which was the subject of much controversy in those days. My father’s father chose Delaware Punch, which apparently tasted like rancid cranberry juice, and the manufacturer of which folded. And then his next two potato harvests were decimated by blight, resulting in the forced sale of his farm. Coca-Cola is now Coca-Cola. My father said his father showed very little emotion or anger or sadness about this, though. That he somehow couldn’t. My father said his father was frozen, and could feel emotion only when he was drunk. He would apparently get drunk four times a year, weep about his life, throw my father through the living room window, and disappear for several days, roaming the countryside of L’Islet Province, drunk and enraged.’ She’s not been looking at Mario this whole time, though Mario’s been looking at her. She smiled. ‘My father, of course, could himself tell this story only when he was drunk. He never threw anyone through any windows. He simply sat in his chair, drinking ale and reading the newspaper, for hours, until he fell out of the chair. And then one day he fell out of the chair and didn’t get up again, and that was how your maternal grandfather passed away. I’d never have gotten to go to University had he not died when I was a girl. He believed education was a waste for girls. It was a function of his era; it wasn’t his fault. His inheritance to Charles and me paid for university.’ She’s been smiling pleasantly this whole time, emptying the butt from the ashtray into the wastebasket, wiping the bowl’s inside with a Kleenex, straightening straight piles of folders on her desk.

Bezos had seemingly made up his mind that he was no longer going to indulge in financial maneuvering as a way to escape the rather large hole Amazon had dug for itself, and it wasn’t just through borrowing Sinegal’s business plan. At a two-day management and board offsite later that year, Amazon invited business thinker Jim Collins to present the findings from his soon-to-be-published book Good to Great. Collins had studied the company and led a series of intense discussions at the offsite. “You’ve got to decide what you’re great at,” he told the Amazon executives. Drawing on Collins’s concept of a flywheel, or self-reinforcing loop, Bezos and his lieutenants sketched their own virtuous cycle, which they believed powered their business. It went something like this: Lower prices led to more customer visits. More customers increased the volume of sales and attracted more commission-paying third-party sellers to the site. That allowed Amazon to get more out of fixed costs like the fulfillment centers and the servers needed to run the website. This greater efficiency then enabled it to lower prices further. Feed any part of this flywheel, they reasoned, and it should accelerate the loop. Amazon executives were elated; according to several members of the S Team at the time, they felt that, after five years, they finally understood their own business. But when Warren Jenson asked Bezos if he should put the flywheel in his presentations to analysts, Bezos asked him not to. For now, he considered it the secret sauce.

But surely the commute that defines the era was Noah's voyage aboard his eponymous ark, and to this day it remains the most epic commuting story ever told. As most people know, God felt that Earth had essentially "jumped the shark" (or "raped the angel" as they used to say back then), so rather than try to fix it, He instead decided to simply wash everyone away in a great flood and start over from scratch--just as you might do to your computer's hard drive if it has a really bad virus. So God spoke to Noah and commanded him to build an ark, aboard which he'd carry two of every animal in the world....Thus was born humankind's lust for gigantic vehicles, for God's instructions to Noah were basically the world's first car commercial, and the sales pitch was this: Large vehicles are your salvation.

So, each one represents Devotion according to his liking and imagination. He who is in the habit of fasting thinks that because he fasts he is very devout, even though his heart is filled with hatred; and while fasting he will not dare to sip wine or even water, but neither will he refrain from drinking the blood of his neighbor by means of gossip or slander. Another considers himself devout because of the very great number of prayers he recites every day, even though soon after this he speaks words that are annoying, arrogant, and hurtful to those in his house and to his neighbors. Another very gladly takes alms from his purse to give to the poor but cannot take any gentleness from his heart to forgive his enemies. Yet another will forgive his enemies but will not pay what he owes unless legally forced to do so. All such persons are generally looked upon as devout, whereas in fact they are not.

Here is New York. This is why I stay. I stay to hear the jazz musicians playing in the parks, and to browse the tables of books for sale on the street. I stay for a drink in a quiet bar, lit by golden autumn light, and for Film Forum double features in black and white. I stay for egg creams, for the amateur opera singers practicing with their windows open so we all can listen. For the Chinese grandmothers dancing by the East River, snapping red fans in their hands. For the music of shopkeepers throwing open their gates. I stay for the unexpected spectacle, and the chance encounter, and for those tough seagulls gliding inland on rainy days to remind us that Manhattan is an island, a potential space both separate and connected. Most of all, I stay because I need New York. I can't live anywhere else, so I hold on to what remains. We've lost a lot, but there's so much left worth fighting for. And while I stay, I fight.

If you haven’t sent them an email yet, send an email as soon as you leave them the voicemail—give them more than one way to get back to you. Example 1: “Hi John, this is Aaron Ross from Salesforce.com. My number is 555-555-5555. John, I sent you an email a couple of days ago and hadn’t heard back, and I was hoping you could give me a quick courtesy response. I’ll resend it here in a minute. Again, Aaron Ross, 555-555-5555. Thank you and have a great day.” Example 2: “Hi John, this is Aaron Ross from Salesforce.com. My number is 555-555-5555. John, I’m calling to follow up on the email I sent you, I’d love to hear either way if you can please help me out or not. Again, Aaron Ross, 555-555-5555. Thank you and have a great day.” Example 3: (the mysterious version): “Hi John, this is Aaron Ross following up. My number is 555-555-5555. I’m free after 3pm today. Again, Aaron Ross, from Salesforce.com, 555-555-5555. Thanks and have a great day.

I really should simplify my existence. How much trouble is a person required to have? I mean, is it an assignment I have to carry out? It can’t be, because the only good I ever knew of was done by people when they were happy. But to tell you the truth, Kayo, since you are the kind of guy who will understand it, my pride has always been hurt by my not being able to give an account of myself and always being manipulated. Reality comes from giving an account of yourself, and that’s the worst of being helpless. Oh, I don’t mean like the swimmer on the sea or the child on the grass, which is the innocent being in the great hand of Creation, but you can’t lie down so innocent on objects made by man,” I said to him. “In the world of nature you can trust, but in the world of artifacts you must beware. There you must know, and you can’t keep so many things on your mind and be happy. ‘Look on my works ye mighty and despair!’ Well, never mind about Ozymandias now being just trunkless legs; in his day the humble had to live in his shadow, and so do we live under shadow, with acts of faith in functioning of inventions, as up in the stratosphere, down in the subway, crossing bridges, going through tunnels, rising and falling in elevators where our safety is given in keeping. Things done by man which overshadow us. And this is true also of meat on the table, heat in the pipes, print on the paper, sounds in the air, so that all matters are alike, of the same weight, of the same rank, the caldron of God’s wrath on page one and Wieboldt’s sale on page two. It is all external and the same. Well, then what makes your existence necessary, as it should be? These technical achievements which try to make you exist in their way?” Kayo said, not much surprised by this, “What you are talking about is moha—a Navajo word, and also Sanskrit, meaning opposition of the finite. It is the Bronx cheer of the conditioning forces. Love is the only answer to moha, being infinite. I mean all the forms of love, eros, agape, libido, philia, and ecstasy. They are always the same but sometimes one quality dominates and sometimes another.

Know the Competition I had a wonderful experience purchasing a luxury car. I was looking at three different brands. I have owned all three at different times in my life so I knew each fairly well. I had studied the market and knew most of the features of the competing models. However, this particular sales guy knew every detail about every car I was considering and so served me wonderfully in my purchase. He never once used his knowledge to speak poorly of the competition. On the contrary, he told me where each model was better than the car I was considering. Wow. I found myself starting to trust this guy because he was being honest and transparent. He stood firm that his car was the car I should buy because of its particular features and quality, but he brought great information about his competitors to the discussion. It was a really classy way to handle a sales role. A really sad part of my wonderful car purchase was that I was on a competitor’s lot the next day and the sales guy there knew less about the car he was selling than my guy knew about the same car. In

Yorick's Used and Rare Books had a small storefront on Channing but a deep interior shaded by tall bookcases crammed with history, poetry, theology, antiquated anthologies. There was no open wall space to hang the framed prints for sale, so Hogarth's scenes of lust, pride, and debauchery leaned rakishly against piles of novels, folk tales, and literary theory. In the back room these piles were so tall and dusty that they took on a geological air, rising like stalagmites. Jess often felt her workplace was a secret mine or quarry where she could pry crystals from crevices and sweep precious jewels straight off the floor. As she tended crowded shelves, she opened one volume and then another, turning pages on the history of gardens, perusing Edna St. Vincent Millay: "We were very tired, were very merry, / We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry..." dipping into Gibbon: "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay..." and old translations of Grimm's Fairy Tales: "They walked the whole day over meadows, fields, and stony places. And when it rained, the little sister said, 'Heaven and our hearts are weeping together...

In other words, you have been hypnotized or conditioned by an educational processing-system arranged in grades or steps, supposedly leading to some ultimate Success. First nursery school or kindergarten, then the grades or forms of elementary school, preparing you for the great moment of secondary school! But then more steps, up and up to the coveted goal of the university. Here, if you are clever, you can stay on indefinitely by getting into graduate school and becoming a permanent student. Otherwise, you are headed step by step for the great Outside World of family-raising, business, and profession. Yet graduation day is a very temporary fulfillment, for with your first sales-promotion meeting you are back in the same old system, being urged to make that quota (and if you do, they’ll give you a higher quota) and so progress up the ladder to sales manager, vice-president, and, at last, president of your own show (about forty to forty-five years old). In the meantime, the insurance and investment people have been interesting you in plans for Retirement—that really ultimate goal of being able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of all your labors. But when that day comes, your anxieties and exertions will have left you with a weak heart, false teeth, prostate trouble, sexual impotence, fuzzy eyesight, and a vile digestion.

THE PAYOFF IS EXTRAORDINARY I was giving a seminar in Detroit a couple of years ago when a young man, about thirty years old, came up to me at the break. He told me that he had first come to my seminar and heard my “3 Percent Rule” about ten years ago. At that time, he had dropped out of college, was living at home, driving an old car, and earning about $20,000 a year as an office-to-office salesman. He decided after the seminar that he was going to apply the 3 Percent Rule to himself, and he did so immediately. He calculated 3 percent of his income of $20,000 would be $600. He began to buy sales books and read them every day. He invested in two audio-learning programs on sales and time management. He took one sales seminar. He invested the entire $600 in himself, in learning to become better. That year, his income went from $20,000 to $30,000, an increase of 50 percent. He said he could trace the increase with great accuracy to the things he had learned and applied from the books he had read and the audio programs he had listened to. So the following year, he invested 3 percent of $30,000, a total of $900, back into himself. That year, his income jumped from $30,000 to $50,000. He began to think, “If my income goes up at 50 percent per year by investing 3 percent back into myself, what would happen if I invested 5 percent? KEEP RAISING THE BAR The next year, he invested 5 percent of his income, $2,500, into his learning program. He took more seminars, traveled cross-country to a conference, bought more audio- and video-learning programs, and even hired a part-time coach. And that year, his income doubled to $100,000. After that, like playing Texas Hold-Em, he decided to go “all in” and raise his investment into himself to 10 percent per year. He told me that he had been doing this every since. I asked him, “How has investing 10 percent of your income back into yourself affected your income?” He smiled and said, “I passed a million dollars in personal income last year. And I still invest 10 percent of my income in myself every single year.” I said, “That’s a lot of money. How do you manage to spend that much money on personal development?” He said, “It’s hard! I have to start spending money on myself in January in order to invest it all by the end of the year. I have an image coach, a sales coach, and a speaking coach. I have a large library in my home with every book, audio program, and video program on sales and personal success I can find. I attend conferences, both nationally and internationally in my field. And my income keeps going up and up every year.

Successful con men are treated with considerable respect in the South. A good slice of the settler population of that region were men who’d been given a choice between being shipped off to the New World in leg-irons and spending the rest of their lives in English prisons. The Crown saw no point in feeding them year after year, and they were far too dangerous to be turned loose on the streets of London—so, rather than overload the public hanging schedule, the King’s Minister of Gaol decided to put this scum to work on the other side of the Atlantic, in The Colonies, where cheap labor was much in demand. Most of these poor bastards wound up in what is now the Deep South because of the wretched climate. No settler with good sense and a few dollars in his pocket would venture south of Richmond. There was plenty of opportunity around Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—and by British standards the climate in places like South Carolina and Georgia was close to Hell on Earth: swamps, alligators, mosquitoes, tropical disease... all this plus a boiling sun all day long and no way to make money unless you had a land grant from the King... So the South was sparsely settled at first, and the shortage of skilled labor was a serious problem to the scattered aristocracy of would-be cotton barons who’d been granted huge tracts of good land that would make them all rich if they could only get people to work it. The slave-trade was one answer, but Africa in 1699 was not a fertile breeding ground for middle-management types... and the planters said it was damn near impossible for one white man to establish any kind of control over a boatload of black primitives. The bastards couldn’t even speak English. How could a man get the crop in, with brutes like that for help? There would have to be managers, keepers, overseers: white men who spoke the language, and had a sense of purpose in life. But where would they come from? There was no middle class in the South: only masters and slaves... and all that rich land lying fallow. The King was quick to grasp the financial implications of the problem: The crops must be planted and harvested, in order to sell them for gold—and if all those lazy bastards needed was a few thousand half-bright English-speaking lackeys in order to bring the crops in... hell, that was easy: Clean out the jails, cut back on the Crown’s grocery bill, jolt the liberals off balance by announcing a new “Progressive Amnesty” program for hardened criminals.... Wonderful. Dispatch royal messengers to spread the good word in every corner of the kingdom; and after that send out professional pollsters to record an amazing 66 percent jump in the King’s popularity... then wait a few weeks before announcing the new 10 percent sales tax on ale. That’s how the South got settled. Not the whole story, perhaps, but it goes a long way toward explaining why George Wallace is the Governor of Alabama. He has the same smile as his great-grandfather—a thrice-convicted pig thief from somewhere near Nottingham, who made a small reputation, they say, as a jailhouse lawyer, before he got shipped out. With a bit of imagination you can almost hear the cranky little bastard haranguing his fellow prisoners in London jail, urging them on to revolt: “Lissen here, you poor fools! There’s not much time! Even now—up there in the tower—they’re cookin up some kind of cruel new punishment for us! How much longer will we stand for it? And now they want to ship us across the ocean to work like slaves in a swamp with a bunch of goddamn Hottentots! “We won’t go! It’s asinine! We’ll tear this place apart before we’ll let that thieving old faggot of a king send us off to work next to Africans! “How much more of this misery can we stand, boys? I know you’re fed right up to here with it. I can see it in your eyes— pure misery! And I’m tellin’ you, we don’t have to stand for it!...

It was 7 AM, so what else could I say but, “Have a great night.” Plus, he was as blind as Helen Keller was deaf, so to him day was night.

Selling is crucial to your success because without the sale, you do not make any money. The great thing about writing a book to position yourself is that the book does a lot of the selling for you. People read the book and come to you for more answers. If you have products created to match the theme of your book, your platform (website) will do the selling for you. Automate as much of the process as you can with opt-in boxes, video sales landing pages and special offers. Make it as easy as you can for your fans and followers. Once your products are created, simply write about them, talk about them, and create articles from the content and say, “Yes” to interviews. The buzz created will point people back to your site where your automatic sales team is ready to take orders 24 hours a day.

The most vexing managerial aspect of this problem of asymmetry, where the easiest path to growth and profit is up, and the most deadly attacks come from below, is that “good” management—working harder and smarter and being more visionary—doesn’t solve the problem. The resource allocation process involves thousands of decisions, some subtle and some explicit, made every day by hundreds of people, about how their time and the company’s money ought to be spent. Even when a senior manager decides to pursue a disruptive technology, the people in the organization are likely to ignore it or, at best, cooperate reluctantly if it doesn’t fit their model of what it takes to succeed as an organization and as individuals within an organization. Well-run companies are not populated by yes-people who have been taught to carry out mindlessly the directives of management. Rather, their employees have been trained to understand what is good for the company and what it takes to build a successful career within the company. Employees of great companies exercise initiative to serve customers and meet budgeted sales and profits. It is very difficult for a manager to motivate competent people to energetically and persistently pursue a course of action that they think makes no sense.

the great fortunes of our day have rarely been accumulated through the sale of the most meaningful items and services, such as poetry or relationship counselling.

What is the Internet’s role as a channel of distribution? The Internet can be a great way to sell product. The Internet has four functions as a channel of customer communication, called the Four C’s of Internet marketing. The “commerce” function of a Web site allows for sales, but more importantly it provides a 24/7 storefront to fit the customer’s schedule to shop, browse, and compare product offerings. The “content” of your Web site is an extension of the product. It can provide additional support and value, and if it is compelling, it can attract new prospects. iTunes.com provides music for the Apple’s iPod player; it sold over 10 billion songs by 2010. Your site can provide “customer care” by allowing customers to access their accounts, check on deliveries, and get answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs). This pleases customers and also reduces a manufacturer’s cost of live customer service. And lastly, Web sites also “convert leads” from your Internet and other marketing efforts, such as television, radio, sales promotions, and public relations.

As Nate Silver, author of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t, points out, “ice cream sales and forest fires are correlated because both occur more often in the summer heat. But there is no causation; you don’t light a patch of the Montana brush on fire when you buy a pint of Häagen-Dazs.” Of course, it’s no surprise that correlation isn’t the same as causality. But although most organizations know that, I don’t think they act as if there is a difference. They’re comfortable with correlation. It allows managers to sleep at night. But correlation does not reveal the one thing that matters most in innovation—the causality behind why I might purchase a particular solution. Yet few innovators frame their primary challenge around the discovery of a cause. Instead, they focus on how they can make their products better, more profitable, or differentiated from the competition. As W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement that transformed manufacturing, once said: “If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.” After decades of watching great companies fail over and over again, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is, indeed, a better question to ask: What job did you hire that product to do? For me, this is a neat idea. When we buy a product, we essentially “hire” something to get a job done. If it does the job well, when we are confronted with the same job, we hire that same product again. And if the product does a crummy job, we “fire” it and look around for something else we might hire to solve the problem. Every day stuff happens to us. Jobs arise in our lives that we need to get done. Some jobs are little (“ pass the time while waiting in line”), some are big (“ find a more fulfilling career”). Some surface unpredictably (“ dress for an out-of-town business meeting after the airline lost my suitcase”), some regularly (“ pack a healthy, tasty lunch for my daughter to take to school”). Other times we know they’re coming. When we realize we have a job to do, we reach out and pull something into our lives to get the job done. I might, for example, choose to buy the New York Times because I have a job to fill my time while waiting for a doctor’s appointment and I don’t want to read the boring magazines available in the lobby. Or perhaps because I’m a basketball fan and it’s March Madness time. It’s only when a job arises in my life that the Times can solve for me that I’ll choose to hire the paper to do it. Or perhaps I have it delivered to my door so that my neighbors think I’m informed—and nothing about their ZIP code or median household income will tell the Times that either.

his peers have expressed considerably more skepticism. “There is nothing Tesla [can] do that we cannot also do,” Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne said in June 2016. Two years earlier, he had asked customers not to buy the Fiat 500e electric car, because the company lost $14,000 on the sale of each one. Fiat would sell the minimum number of electric cars needed to meet government mandates and “not one more,” he said. In April 2016, Marchionne continued that theme in an interview on the sidelines of his company’s annual meeting, this time responding to the price of the Model 3. If Musk could show him that the car would be profitable at the $35,000 price tag, Marchionne said, “I will copy the formula, add the Italian design flair, and get it to the market within twelve months.” The German automakers have been even more dismissive. In November 2015, Edzard Reuter, the former CEO of Daimler, called Tesla a “joke” and Musk a “pretender,” suggesting in an interview with a German newspaper that Tesla didn’t stand up to serious comparison with “the great car companies of Germany.” Daimler, BMW, and Volkswagen were slow to accept that Tesla could one day challenge their market dominance. “German carmakers have been in denial that electric vehicles can create an emotional appeal to customers,” Arndt Ellinghorst, an automotive analyst at Evercore ISI, told the Los Angeles Times in April 2016. “Many still believe that Tesla is a sideshow catering to a niche product to some tree-hugging Californians and eccentric US hedge fund managers.” GM wasn’t quite so blasé. In 2013, then CEO Dan Akerson established a team within the company to study Tesla, based on the belief that it could be a big disrupter. GM’s Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid sedan that could drive about forty miles in full electric mode, had won Motor Trend’s 2011 Car of the Year, but GM was looking further into the future. At the 2015 Detroit auto show, it unveiled a concept of the Chevy Bolt, a two-hundred-mile electric car that would retail for $30,000 (after a $7,500 rebate from the US government). It was seen as a direct response to Tesla and new CEO Mary Barra’s biggest risk since she took over in 2014. Wired magazine celebrated the Bolt’s impending arrival with a February 2016 cover story about how GM had beaten Tesla “in the race to build a true electric car for the masses

By far the main stakeholder Shkreli took from was customers – patients and health insurance companies. But Shkreli also took from his colleagues, who may have joined a biotech start-up excited about inventing new drugs, but instead spent their days ordered to squeeze higher profits from existing drugs. He took from suppliers, because the restricted sale and thus production of Daraprim slashed the demand for its inputs. And he took from communities, because reduced access to Daraprim hurt patients, their families and their friends.

How exactly does social selling work? For the purposes of prospecting for new business, social selling involves contacting prospective customers on social media platforms, most commonly LinkedIn and Twitter. Here are some pointers: Cultivate a relationship: Social selling is not for the quick wins, generally speaking. You can start simply by following a prospect, engaging with their content, and then inviting them to connect. You want to draw their attention, but not overwhelm them. Don’t pitch right away: In the early days of social selling, it was possible to immediately pitch a prospect online with some success. That time has passed, so don’t assume that when someone accepts your connection request it means they want to buy from you. Be someone worth talking to: Your prospects will see your public profile, so be sure to demonstrate your expertise in your profile and content. If you’re still using your LinkedIn account as a resume, you’re doing it wrong. Move from online to offline: The goal of social selling is not to run through the entire sale over social media. As with all initial contacting, your goal is to set up a real-time conversation over the phone or in person. While nearly all great salespeople communicate with prospects across all three of these channels, it’s best to become confident with one before adding another. Cold calling, while unattractive to many, will yield the greatest number of opportunities to learn which offers and messaging resonate with our prospects. The skill of adapting to prospects in live conversation is invaluable throughout the sales process. In fact, it’s one of the most important skills to master in order to advance your sales career.

Here are four examples of Lead Magnets I use: A checklist that can be used to properly perform something I explained in a video. A template for determining, say, a business’s profit margin. An advanced guide that goes further into the details of a subject of one of my videos. A unique book that provides substantial value but is offered for free. For me, it is 11 Side Hustle Ideas to Make $500/Day from Your Phone. The appropriate opt-in incentive depends on your content. Here are other types of examples: A DIY carpenter could offer plans to make a corner table. A marketing YouTuber could offer scripts of what to say on sales phone calls. A landscaping expert might offer recommendations for which kinds of grass to use around the United States. YouTuber Nick True at Mapped Out Money, who makes video tutorials that teach the best practices for using the personal budgeting software YNAB, found that he gets the highest sign-up rates when he offers a checklist that relates to the video. His followers really like having a resource that they can use to put his advice into practice. Jess Dante of Love and London runs a YouTube channel helping viewers plan their trips to London by suggesting lesser-known restaurants and stores to visit. Her superstar opt-in incentive is a free London 101 Guide with everything a first-time visitor needs to know. It’s been downloaded more than 45,000 times. Where you make your call to action will also have an impact on your success building your email list. You can make your call to action in a variety of places or ways inside your videos. One of the best ways is to give a short, relevant tease of the bonus or resource you’re offering within the YouTube video and tell people where they can learn more. CHALLENGE Create a Lead Magnet. It’s time to create your first Lead Magnet using the process we’ve just outlined above. You can use your piece of content from the previous chapter as a base or start something new. Don’t spend more than two hours on the first iteration. If you want to turn it into a big thing later on, great. But start SMALL. Go to MillionDollarWeekend.com to get Lead Magnet templates! (See what I did there?)

Now that you understand the key players in ecosystems, here are the key principles of building an ecosystem. They are similar to the principles of creating a community discussed in chapter 8, “The Art of Evangelizing.” CREATE SOMETHING WORTHY OF AN ECOSYSTEM. Once again, the key to evangelism, sales, presentations, and now ecosystems is a great product. In fact, if you create a great product, you may not be able to stop an ecosystem from forming. By contrast, it’s hard to build an ecosystem around crap. DESIGNATE A CHAMPION. Many employees would like to help build an ecosystem, but who wakes up every day with this task at the top of her list of priorities? Another way to look at this is, “Who’s going to get fired if an ecosystem doesn’t happen?” Ecosystems need a champion—an identifiable hero—within the company to carry the flag for the community. DON’T COMPETE WITH THE ECOSYSTEM. If you want people or organizations to take part in your ecosystem, then you shouldn’t compete with them. For example, if you want people to create apps for your product, then don’t sell (or give away) apps that do the same thing. It was hard to convince companies to create a Macintosh word processor when Apple was giving away MacWrite. CREATE AN OPEN SYSTEM. An “open system” means that there are minimal requirements to participating and minimal controls on what you can do. A “closed system” means that you control who participates and what they can do. Either can work, but I recommend an open system because it appeals to my trusting, anarchic personality. This means that members of your ecosystem will be able to write apps, access data, and interact with your product. I’m using software terminology here, but the point is to enable people to customize and tweak your product. PUBLISH INFORMATION. The natural complement of an open system is publishing books and articles about the product. This spreads information to people on the periphery of a product. Publishing also communicates to the world that your startup is open and willing to help external parties. FOSTER DISCOURSE. The definition of “discourse” is “verbal exchange.” The key word is “exchange.” Any company that wants an ecosystem should foster the exchange of ideas and opinions. This means your website should provide a forum where people can engage with other members as well as your employees. This doesn’t mean that you let the ecosystem run your company, but you should hear what members have to say. WELCOME CRITICISM. Most organizations feel warm and fuzzy toward their ecosystem as long as the ecosystem says nice things, buys their products, and never complains. The minute that the ecosystem says anything negative, however, many organizations freak out and get defensive. This is dumb. A healthy ecosystem is a long-term relationship, so an organization shouldn’t file for divorce at the first sign of discord. Indeed, the more an organization welcomes—or even celebrates—criticism, the stronger its bonds to its ecosystem become. CREATE A NONMONETARY REWARD SYSTEM. You already know how I feel about paying people off to help you, but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reward people in other ways. Things as simple as public recognition, badges, points, and credits have more impact than a few bucks. Many people don’t participate in an ecosystem for the money, so don’t insult them by rewarding them with it.

I’d give up three days just to get three hours with the woman I love. Of course this instinct is the reason why my investment decisions always look so great—for the people on the other ends of the trades.

Professor Craig Franklin of the University of Queensland mounted a crocodile research partnership with Steve. The idea was to fasten transmitters and data loggers on crocs to record their activity in their natural environment. But in order to place the transmitters, you had to catch the crocs first, and that’s where Steve’s expertise came in. Steve never felt more content than when he was with his family in the bush. “There’s nothing more valuable than human life, and this research will help protect both crocs and people,” he told us. The bush was where Steve felt most at home. It was where he was at his best. On that one trip, he caught thirty-three crocs in fourteen days. He wanted to do more. “I’d really like to have the capability of doing research on the ocean as well as in the rivers,” he told me. “I could do so much more for crocodiles and sharks if I had a purpose-built research vessel.” I could see where he was heading. I was not a big fan of boats. “I’m going to contact a company in Western Australia, in Perth,” he said. “I’m going to work on a custom-built research vessel.” As the wheels turned in his mind, he became more and more excited. “The sky’s the limit, mate,” he said. “We could help tiger sharks and learn why crocs go out to sea. There is no reason why we couldn’t help whales, too.” “Tell me how we can help whales,” I said, expecting to hear about a research project that he and Craig had in mind. “It will be great,” he said. “We’ll build a boat with an icebreaking hull. We’ll weld a can opener to the front, and join Sea Shepherd in Antarctica to stop those whaling boats in their tracks.” When we got back from our first trip to Cape York Peninsula with Craig Franklin, Steve immediately began drawing up plans for his boat. He wanted to make it as comfortable as possible. As he envisioned it, the boat would be somewhere between a hard-core scientific research vessel and a luxury cruiser. He designed three berths, a plasma screen television for the kids, and air-conditioned comfort below deck. He placed a big marlin board off the back, for Jet Skis, shark cages, or hauling out huge crocs. One feature that he was really adamant about was a helicopter pad. He designed the craft so that the helicopter could land on the top. Steve’s design plans went back and forth to Perth for months. “I want this boat’s primary function to be crocodile research and rescue work,” Steve said. “So I’m going to name her Croc One.” “Why don’t we call it For Sale instead?” I suggested. I’m not sure Steve saw the humor in that. Croc One was his baby. But for some reason, I felt tremendous trepidation about this boat. I attributed my feelings of concern to Bindi and Robert. Anytime you have kids on a boat, the rules change--no playing hide-and-seek, no walking on deck without a life jacket on. It made me uncomfortable to think about being two hundred miles out at sea with two young kids. We had had so many wild adventures together as a family that, ultimately, I had to trust Steve. But my support for Croc One was always, deep down, halfhearted at best. I couldn’t shake my feeling of foreboding about it.

A third example of this was when we said, "Let's make some kind of coupon system"—because we had this idea that we would send people an automatic email when they visited our website that would tell them—and we had all these crazy ideas like, "Buy our software within the next 72 hours and get 25 percent off." (That thing was actually a bot that we wrote years ago, and it still runs. If you try CityDesk, which is our least popular product right now, you will get an automatic email with a 25 percent–off coupon that you have to use in the next 72 hours.) When we launched that, it did increase our sales a little bit. It gets people to evaluate the demo version right away—because they don't want to lose their 25 percent off coupon which is going to expire. These were all marginally good marketing ideas. Unfortunately we spent a lot of time chasing them. The one thing we learned over 5 years is that nothing works better than just improving your product. Every minute, every developer hour we spent on any one of these crazy things—although they had some marginal return on the work that we put into them—was nothing compared to just making a better version of the product and releasing it. If we had taken all the effort we put into these crazy schemes and put it into moving our software development schedule ahead by the equivalent amount, it would have paid off much more. That was probably the biggest mistake we made. And that's the advice I give everybody. All those little coupon schemes, this is what General Motors does. They figure out new rebate schemes because they forgot all about how to design cars people want to buy. But when you still remember how to make software people want, great, just improve it. Talk to your customers. Find out what they need. Don't pay any attention to the competition. They're not relevant to you. Only talk to your customers and your potential customers and see what it is that caused them not to buy your product or would cause them to buy more copies of it. And do that, and then ship it. That was something we really, really should have focused on, but, you know, we didn't know any better.

Loyalty isn’t won in product development centers, in advertisements, or on toll-free help lines: Loyalty is won out in the field, in the trenches, during the sales call. It’s the result of the conversations our reps are having with customers every single day. The entire remainder of customer loyalty—all 53 percent—is attributable to your ability to outperform the competition in the sales experience itself. Over half of customer loyalty is a result not of what you sell, but how you sell. As important as it is to have great products, brand, and service, it’s all for naught if your reps can’t execute out in the field.

Talking Dog One day, while driving in the country, a man noticed a sign that said “Talking Dog for Sale.”  The sign pointed to a farm house off the road just a bit.  The man’s interest was piqued so he pulled off the road and headed up to the farm house. When he got there and inquired about the talking dog, the farmer told him the talking dog was around the back of the farm house.  The farmer said the man was welcome to go in back and talk with the dog. The man was in a serious state of disbelief, because he knew dogs couldn’t talk.  Still he was very curious so he headed around to the backyard. In the backyard the man noticed a poodle that quickly came up to him.  The man thought to himself, “Hmmm poodles are supposed to be smart dogs.” “Can you really talk?” the man asked the poodle. “I sure can,” replied back the poodle. “Wow,” exclaimed the man.  Wanting to hear more he asked, “So what’s your story?” “I discovered I could talk when I was very young,” said the poodle.  “I knew I had a real gift so I thought I should do something about it.  I joined the CIA and became one of their very best spies.  I was sent on many secret missions.  I traveled all around the world and was involved in many interesting and intriguing cases. I even helped save the life of the President on two occasions. After eight years I got tired of all the jetting around and decided to retire.  I was given several awards for all my achievements and a gala dinner, attended by many important people, was held in my honor.  I was given a full government pension and brought to this farm to enjoy the rest of my life.” After hearing all this, the man was astounded.  He quickly went back to the farmer and said, “I want that dog!  I will buy it at any price.  How much do you want for that dog?” “Ten dollars,” was the farmer’s reply. “Ten dollars?” the man said in disbelief.  “That dog is amazing, why on earth would you sell it for so little?” “Because he’s a big liar; he didn’t do any of those things!

In 1859 Butler’s mounting debts would lead to one of the biggest slave sales in American history, originally set to take place in Savannah’s Johnson Square, where the Crafts had passed through: the square of heartache with the great live oaks, where Spanish moss refused to grow. The sale was eventually held at a racetrack. The rain did not stop for days, as 436 men, women, and children were sold in an event remembered as “The Weeping Time.

I Repeat: Starting today you are going to focus on Eight Basic Fundamentals. These eight fundamentals will transform your restaurant from OK to GREAT in the next 90 days. (Did he just say 90-days?)  Yes, I did! The Eight Basic Fundamentals are: Set & Achieve a Noble Goal Develop the Owner Mindset Build a Winning Team Build a Customer-Centered Brand Build a Better Marketing & Sales System Build a Better Money Management System Build a Bullet-Proof Operating System Improve, Innovate & Adapt

LOW: Sales Effort Sales effort is a measure of the length of your sales cycle and includes the number of touch points required to make the sale. Where CAC measures the amount of money you’re spending to get a new customer, sales effort measures the time and energy you’re spending. The best way to track sales effort is to look at both the average number of days from someone scheduling their first demo to closing and the number of calls it takes to close a deal. Your ability to keep sales effort low depends greatly on your industry and customer base. If you’re doing enterprise sales, your sales cycle will be long and require more effort than if you’re targeting solopreneurs and other small businesses with a single decision-maker. A three- or four-month sales cycle is reasonable in enterprise sales—and worth it because the ACV might be $50,000. If you’re spending that much time for $5,000 contracts, though, that’s rough. No matter what your sales process looks like, you want your sales effort to be as low as possible. Here are some ways to lower this number. Self-Serve Sign-up and Onboarding. Many inexpensive products can get away with low price points because they have a low-touch or no-touch sales process. They have a self-serve sign-up and onboarding process, which requires almost no sales effort. The higher your ARPA, the less likely they are to become customers without some sales effort. But finding places to offer self-service along the journey can reduce the amount of hand-holding your team has to do while making the process speedier for your customer. One-Call Close. Self-service isn’t going to work in a lot of spaces, but you can try to get to a point where the decision is made by a single person. You can do this by targeting a founder, a developer, or a single manager. You can also streamline the back-and-forth of providing more sales materials, getting on second calls, waiting for input from the committee—and on and on. Educate your customers as much as you can ahead of time so they have the information they need and develop checklists to gather the information you need to close the deal quickly.

Collier understood and preached this swim-with-current-rather-than-against strategy. Do not arrive as an interruption or disruption, attempting to divert your reader's attention from the object it is focused on, fighting to interest him in something different from what he is already, at this moment, interested in. Instead, align yourself with the subjects already possessing his attention, the matters already garnering his interest, the self-talk conversation already occurring in his mind, and the conversations he is already having around the water-cooler at work or at the kitchen table at home with peers, friends, and family. About this, Collier wrote: “Study your reader first — your product second…. The reader of your letter wants certain things and the desire for them is, consciously or unconsciously, the dominant idea in his mind all the time. He is also engaged by the news or events or public conversations of the day. Put yourself in his place. If you were deep in discussion with a friend over some matter and a stranger came up and said: ‘Mister, I have a fine coat I want to sell you!’ — what would you do? The same thing happens when you approach a man by mail. He is in discussion with himself. If you just butt in, will you be welcome? How would you do it if approaching him and his friend in person? You'd listen and get the trend of the conversation. Then, when you chimed in, it would be with a remark on a related subject. Then you could gradually bring the talk around logically to the point you wanted to discuss. Study your reader. Know what interests him. Listen to the conversation he is already having with himself. Enter where he already is.” There are some obvious, perennially occurring attention dominators, such as seasons and holidays, and linking to these — regardless of whether your business naturally links or not — can be extremely helpful. You need not be a florist, jeweler, or restaurant to utilize Valentine's Day, for example. Beyond that, and deeper than that, every customer group has some shared item on their minds. Know it. Start your conversation with them with it. And be sure to take advantage of one of the great advantages of today's online media, including e-mail, blogs, and social media sites — being day to day, even hour by hour, timely. You can link a marketing message to world or local, financial, or cultural news of the moment — and you should.

If you need help getting started, here’s an example: Hi John, I saw you’re selling a PDF on your website using PayPal, and manually emailing everyone who buys the PDF. I built a service called Gumroad, which basically automates all of this. I’d love to show it to you, or you can check it out yourself: gumroad.com. Also happy to just share any learnings we see from creators in a little PDF we have. Let me know! Best, Sahil, founder and CEO of Gumroad Don’t copy-paste. Each email will refine your ability to write better emails. Done right, you’re not only educating customers, but educating yourself about what you can do better. It’s a learn-learn situation. Manual “sales” will be 99 percent of your growth in the early days, and word of mouth will be 99 percent of your growth in the latter days. It’s not a glamorous answer, but it’s true. Things like paid marketing, SEO, and content marketing can come later, once you have a hundred customers, once you’re profitable, and once your customers are referring more customers to you. Only then!

Mark Allin and Richard Burton started Capstone, their book-publishing venture, with high hopes. False modesty aside, they knew they were excellent editors, with a great track record at two publishing giants. I could vouch for Mark Allin’s profit-making abilities, since he gave me the idea for writing The 80/20 Principle, my bestselling book. Richard and Mark envisaged Capstone as a star venture, the leader in a new category of ‘funky business books’. They convinced me that this idea was plausible and I became their financial backer. I reckoned that I had an ‘each-way bet’ - either their star business would materialise, or, at worst, they would pick a few great winners, making Capstone highly profitable. The business appeared to start well. They commissioned a stream of trendy books from interesting authors. The product looked great, with distinctive trendy designs. Mark and Richard were full of ideas and enthusiasm, confidently projecting sales that would give us good profits. The only thing was, the forecasts never materialised. Whenever we looked at the numbers we were constantly disappointed. I kept injecting cash, and it kept vanishing. To this day I don’t know why their books didn’t sell in quantities we could reasonably expect.The favoured explanation was the weakness of the sales force - inevitably, it was difficult to acquire distribution muscle from scratch. Maybe they just had bad luck in not commissioning any smash hits. Whatever the reason, Capstone was a financial black hole. I remember a rather difficult meeting at my home in Richmond some three years after the start. Richard and Mark asked for a further loan to commission new books. I had to say no. We had to face facts. Capstone was not a star; the category of ‘funky business books’ had not established itself. Capstone was a rather weak follower in the business-books arena. Capstone had none of the financial attributes of a star. If it looked like a dog, behaved like a dog and barked like a dog, it probably was a dog.

Strong in services rendered, the now wealthy heirs of Power’s lawyer-servants claimed henceforward to control its actions, and assuredly there was no other body of men in the country better qualified to hold Power in check. If officers were bought the control over the sales exercised by this body hedged in the appointment of a new magistrate with guarantees which ensured that no senate was ever recruited better. If the members of the Parliament were not elected by the public, they deserved on that account more of the public confidence, as being less it's flatterers by design than its champions by principle. Taken as a whole, they formed a weightier and more capable body of men than those of the British Parliament. Was it right, then, for the monarchy to accept and sanction this counter-Power? Or did its dignity demand that it react against the pretension of Parliament? That was a policy of one party, which called itself Richelieu’s heir and it was in fact, led by d’Aiguillon, a great-nephew of the great Cardinal. But if the need was to smash now this aristocracy of the robe and extend that the royal authority even further, it had to be done as in former days to the plaudits of the common people and by employing a new set of plebeians against the present wearers of periwigs. Mirabeau saw as much, but that d’Aiguillon’s faction were blind to it. That faction consisted of nobles who had been more or less plucked by the monarchial Power and were now getting new feathers by installing themselves into wealth-giving apparatus of state which had been built by the plebeian clerks. Finding that offices were now of greater value than manors. They fell to on the offices. Finding that the bulk of the feudal dues had been diverted into the coffers of the state, they put their hands in them. And, occupying every place and obstructing every avenue leading to Power, they succeeded in weakening it both by their incapacity and by their feeble efforts to prevent it from attracting, as formerly, to its banners and the aspirations of the common people. In this way the men who should have served the state, finding themselves discarded, turned Jacobin. In the cold shades of a parliamentary opposition, which, if it had been accepted, would have transformed the absolute monarchy into a limited one, a plebeian elite champed at the bit; had it been admitted to office, it would have extended even further the centralizing power of the throne. So much was it part of its nature to serve the royal authority that it was to ensure its continuance even when there was no king.

The head of one of the large management consulting firms always starts an assignment with a new client by spending a few days visiting the senior executives of the client organization one by one. After he has chatted with them about the assignment and the client organization, its history and its people, he asks (though rarely, of course, in these words): “And what do you do that justifies your being on the payroll?” The great majority, he reports, answer: “I run the accounting department,” or “I am in charge of the sales force.” Indeed, not uncommonly the answer is, “I have 850 people working under me.” Only a few say, “It’s my job to give our managers the information they need to make the right decisions,” or “I am responsible for finding out what products the customer will want tomorrow,” or “I have to think through and prepare the decisions the president will have to face tomorrow.” The man who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his title and rank. But the man who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior, is in the most literal sense of the phrase, “top management.” He holds himself accountable for the performance of the whole.

Investor: “Great! Now, I know we talked about the fact that you want $110,000 for the house. I already mentioned that I’d be purchasing your house as an investment, and unfortunately, I just can’t afford to pay that much and still be able to make a profit on the deal. But, here’s what I can do. I can either pay you $90,000 in cash for the property or I can pay you $100,000 if you’re willing to owner finance the sale. That means we would complete the sale in ten days, but you would wait six months to collect your $100,000. Which of those options would you prefer?” At this point, if you’ve done a good job of selecting your offer prices (e.g., you weren’t too generous), there is a good chance the seller isn’t going to accept either of those offers without some additional negotiation. The good news is that we’ve gotten the seller to implicitly agree to all the other terms and contingencies in the contract. Not only that, but we’ve now given the seller two options for the sale price, and his response to your final question (“Which of those options would you prefer?”) will give insight into which direction the negotiation goes.

Madame Lorraine was a rich French woman who lived in an old mansion, which she inherited from her husband. The family had already had many possessions, however, they were ruined in the Revolution. For defending the monarchy, they lost their titles, lands and servants. Madame Lorraine's husband, the old Earl, died in the Reign of Terror, as did her children. The wife, however, had hidden the jewelry at the beginning of the revolution and had left in secret for Switzerland. After the restoration, she returned to France, but with few resources she had, she bought a house in Paris. She complained of loneliness and adopted a little orphan, named Juliette, who she used as a servant. When the girl complained about being overworked, as she had to take care of the entire house alone, her stepmother told her: “your complaints hurt me, you see, I lost everything and I only have you, your mother didn't want you, but I I adopted you and took care of you and you don’t even appreciate that.” The girl, then, victim of emotional blackmail, got used to serving, without complaining. The problem is that every day more and more was demanded – the girl never reached perfection, said Madame Lorraine: “look at the silverware, look at the floor, look at the walls, you will never be able to get married”. However, Madame Lorraine did not tell the girl that perfection is never achieved: it is just a resource to dominate the poor in spirit, who see in the light of their own craft a hope of transcendence. Another thing that Madame Lorraine had not taught the girl – even if the Revolution had taught humanity: that they were free. The girl then grew older and became an object of exploitation every day, her arms becoming weaker, her mind increasingly taken over by obedience. One day, the girl went to the market in the square, and hardly talked to anyone – Madame Lorraine told her that everyone wanted to abuse her and that she shouldn't trust anyone. That day, however, she was exhausted and stopped at a farmer's stand selling tomatoes and said to her: “young man, what's your name, I always see you running around here and you never talk to anyone”. She decided to talk to him: “I'm the old widow's daughter, she says that everyone wants to exploit me, that I shouldn't trust strangers”. The salesman, already aware of the girl's situation from the stories that were circulating in the village, said to her: “Isn't it just the opposite, girl, maybe you haven't learned a lie all your life and now you're trying harder and harder to keep this lie as if it were the truth – see, God made everyone free.” The girl then quickly returned to the house, but doubt had entered her heart and there she began to take root and grow. Until, one day, the old lady released the drop that would overflow her body and said to her: “Well, Juliette, you don't do anything right, look how my dresses are, you didn't sew them perfectly”. The girl then got up, looked the vixen in the eyes and said: “if it’s not good, do it yourself” and left. It is said that she married the farmer in the sale and, from that day on, she was the best wife in the world. Not because she did everything with great care, with an almost divine perfection, that she was modest or because she had freed herself from the shrew who exploited her, but simply because she recognized the value of freedom itself.

With this new information, you now do some research to show Gary what is possible. You find a similar go-kart business in another city and notice they have a great website, complete with great photos and racing videos. It has the opening hours and booking details listed, and a section on how to book parties and corporate events. They even have a racing club member section with race day events and the fastest track lap records. The whole website looks very fun and exciting, but it is also expertly designed to help create new sales and attract new customers. You can clearly see how something similar would be very effective for Gary’s business. With this in mind, you share your plan with Gary to demonstrate all the great things about his own business that can be shared online to improve his sales. On the website, he can show his race track, explain why they are a great place to come to and have some fun, and how easy it can be to book a race night. This way, Gary starts to see the website not just as a "thing," but as a valuable part of his business.

Here are some specific things we look for in a real estate listing: Price: If a house is priced below market value, that is the best indication that the seller is motivated. They are willing to give up at least some profit in return for a quicker sale. On the other hand, when a house is listed above market value, this typically indicates that seller is not desperate to sell and is more interested in a high sale price than a quick sale. Additionally, once a seller lists a property above market value, they will become anchored to that above-market price, and—barring any major realizations by the seller—it will be difficult to break that anchor and get a great deal on the property. Days on Market (DOM): The second piece of information a listing can provide with respect to motivation is the number of days the property has been listed for sale. Typically, when a seller first lists a property, they are confident (or at least optimistic) that they will get an offer close to list price. For that reason, it’s generally difficult to purchase newly listed properties much below list price.

Lots of artists wonder how to get a record deal, as though everything is easy street after that one hurdle is cleared. The fact of the matter is that if you need a record deal, you won’t get one—at least not anymore. Today, being a talented singer, a great songwriter, or an innovative composer just isn’t enough to land a major label deal. Today’s labels are looking for safe bets with proven track records of ticket sales. In fact, most of the great artists from the past that we love probably would not have gotten record deals in today’s market. It’s important to understand this because many assume that record deals are just awarded to the most talented individuals. The modern-day record industry excels at expanding upon existing commercial success, but it’s no longer interested in nor deft at scooping up raw, unknown talent and sculpting superstars.

This is—the moment,” I said. “This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. Our moment. No more selling someone else’s brand. No more working for someone else. Onitsuka has been holding us down for years. Their late deliveries, their mixed-up orders, their refusal to hear and implement our design ideas—who among us isn’t sick of dealing with all that? It’s time we faced facts: If we’re going to succeed, or fail, we should do so on our own terms, with our own ideas—our own brand. We posted two million in sales last year… none of which had anything to do with Onitsuka. That number was a testament to our ingenuity and hard work. Let’s not look at this as a crisis. Let’s look at this as our liberation. Our Independence Day. “Yes, it’s going to be rough. I won’t lie to you. We’re definitely going to war, people. But we know the terrain. We know our way around Japan now. And that’s one reason I feel in my heart this is a war we can win. And if we win it, when we win it, I see great things for us on the other side of victory. We are still alive, people. We are still. Alive.

This too shall pass” is always a great encouragement to the weary traveler. Life is hard. Business building is not for the fainthearted. Prospecting clients on a daily basis is back breaking and thankless and sometimes we wish we could go home late morning and go back to bed. We often ask the question, why do I do what I do. On most days, the answer seems to be convoluted.

I'll give you an actual example. Pamela Yellen, the CEO of the Prospecting & Marketing Institute, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I were conducting a multiday seminar for her clients — corporate executives and general agents from life insurance companies — about new methods of recruiting agents. Even though the attendees had paid a very high per-person fee to be there, most had traveled great distances, and the subject was of critical importance to them, we both noticed that on breaks, what most of them were talking about was where they were going to go play golf that evening when the seminar let out, the next morning before it started, or the day afterward. Both Pamela and I made note of how important it was to these clients of hers to get out on the golf course. This led to one of the most unusual ads Pamela has ever written and run in her own industry's trade journals, with the headline: “Puts Recruiting on Autopilot So You Can Go Play Golf!” The entire ad is reproduced on the following page, Exhibit #3. As you'll see, it sold the system we devised for insurance agent recruiting, but it did so circuitously, by emphasizing the hidden benefit: you'll get the job done with less time invested, so you can spend more time on the golf course.

Fill-In-the-Blank Headlines with Examples They Didn't Think I Could ________, but I Did. This headline works well for many reasons, including our natural tendency to root for the underdog. We're fascinated with stories of people who overcome great obstacles and others' ridicule to achieve success. When this headline refers to something you have thought about doing, but talked yourself out of, you'll want to know if the successful person shared your doubt or fear or handicap. Examples: They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano — but Not When I Started to Play! They Grinned When the Waiter Spoke to Me in French — but Their Laughter Changed to Amazement at My Reply! Who Else Wants ________? I like this type of headline because of its strong implication that a lot of other people know something the reader doesn't. Examples: Who Else Wants a Hollywood Actress' Figure? Who Else Needs an Extra Hour Every Day? How ________ Made Me ________ This headline introduces a first-person story. People love stories and are remarkably interested in other people. This headline structure seems to work best with dramatic differences. Examples: How a “Fool Stunt” Made Me a Star Salesman. How a Simple Idea Made Me “Plant Manager of the Year.” How Relocating to Tennessee Saved Our Company $1 Million a Year Are You ________? The question headline is used to grab attention by challenging, provoking, or arousing curiosity. Examples: Are You Ashamed of the Smells in Your House? Are You Prepared for the Next Stock Market Crash? How I ________ Very much like How ________ Made Me ________, this headline introduces a first-person story. The strength of the benefit at the end, obviously, controls its success. Examples: How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling. How I Retired at Age 40 — With a Guaranteed Income for Life.

Winners do the little things that count These are simple things winners do to keep growing and bettering themselves. You don’t have to spend three hours a day studying. Just take advantage of the time you’re not using right now. Podcasts are another great tool. You can download messages and listen to them whenever you want. This year we will give away 100 million copies of my messages at no charge. You can sign up for them on iTunes and listen as often as you want. That’s a growth plan. If you want to keep growing you need to have good mentors, people who have been where you want to go, people who know more than you. Let them speak into your life. Listen to their ideas. Learn from their mistakes. Study how they think and how they got to where they are. I heard about a company that held a sales class for several hundred employees. The speaker asked if anyone knew the names of the top three salespeople. Every person raised a hand. He then asked how many of them had gone to lunch with these top salespeople and taken time to find out how they do what they do? Not one hand went up. There are people all around us whom God put in our paths on purpose so we can gain wisdom, insight, and experience, but we have to be open to learning from them. Look around and find the winners you could learn from. I say this respectfully: Don’t waste your valuable time with people who aren’t contributing to your growth. Life is too short to hang around people who are not going anywhere. Destination disease is contagious. If you’re with them long enough, their lack of ambition and energy will rub off on you. Winners need to associate with inspiring people who build you up, people who challenge you to go higher, not anyone who pulls you down and convinces you to settle where you are. Your destiny is too important for that. Young people often get caught up in trying to be popular instead of trying to be their best. I’ve found that in twenty years nobody will care whether you were popular in high school. Those who need attention and act up or wear a lot of bling and don’t study because it isn’t cool will find things change after high school.

I once was waiting for a bus on a very hot humid day in New York City in August, it’s the kind of day, I don’t know about London, but in New York we have a rather invisible balloon around us, we’re feeling a little prickly it says “Don’t talk to me, don’t touch me” and my balloon intact and the bus pulls up, get on with my balloon and the bus driver did something quite surprising, he actually spoke to me, he said: how has your day been? I was shocked but I sat down taking most of my bubble with me, then I realized this bus driver is carrying a conversation with everyone on the bus, “you’re looking for suits, you know there’s a great sale over here, and did you hear about the Monnet exhibit on the left”, on and on like that and then people would get off the bus and he’d say to them “I hope the rest of your day is really wonderful”. That man was an urban Saint. He transformed anyone on the bus. He was sending ripples of good feeling through a city that sorely needed it and I think the bottom line is you don’t have to go to the Himalayas for decades, we all can do that in our lives if we pay attention.

salesperson. If I take care of the work, the work will take care of me. Think about it. Life is going to go up and down. You will have great days and some you’d like to forget ever happened. You will have good relationships and bad ones.

John Deco became the basis of our marketing campaign. We decided to throw John Deco a homecoming party as our launch event. We invited a lot of brokers for food and drinks, and gave out fancy gifts from Tiffany & Co. and Hermès, making sure everyone knew that both of those stores were located right in the area. See what a great neighborhood this is!? Now people were talking about the building. Suddenly, instead of calling the building 99 John, brokers started referring to it as “the John Deco building.” It was no longer just a bunch of units being converted into condos—now everyone knew about the building’s rich history because we had created a story to showcase it to potential buyers. We got our first three offers the next day.

That day I walked out of the store with new shoes and an understanding of how emotions can be used to drive a sale. Having me put on a shoe that was way out of my price range, but not pressuring me to buy it, created a big Wow Moment, and it achieved a couple of important things. First, my mind was blown. I couldn’t believe the difference between a good shoe and an amazing shoe, and I was able to feel it for myself. This is a great technique for upselling someone if they have more to spend. You can’t control how much money is in a client’s bank account, but you can control how you present the product to them—and that directly impacts how they feel about it. I

1. Opportunity. What is the best opportunity for a new entrepreneur to build a successful business? Why is now the time to do it? How does the new landscape of e-commerce and social media create an environment of opportunity? And how do you fit into it all? You will discover why now is the perfect time to create your pie, and why there are others who are ready and willing to buy a slice. 2. Mindset. There’s a reason not every wantrepreneur becomes a successful entrepreneur, and psychology is a big piece of the puzzle. I’ll take you through the development of the right mindset to take a business from zero to one million in a year. 3. Getting customers. A million-dollar business doesn’t start with a product; it starts with a person. Your first step in building your business must be identifying your customer, and then answering his or her need. This builds a real brand, not just a revenue stream. If you get this piece right, you will have droves of repeat buyers who will eagerly “overpay” for your products, thank you for it, and tell all of their friends about you. 4. Product. Choosing your first product will be the biggest hurdle you face. It will take research, patience, and determination. Most importantly, it will require listening to what your customer is saying. I’ll take you through the whole process, from ideation to prototyping and refinement, helping you clear this hurdle in no time flat. 5. Funding. Sure, you’ve got a great product, and you know to whom you’re selling—but how do you fund your inventory? Here’s how to bootstrap, borrow, and build your way to a self-sustaining revenue machine, without stressing about money. 6. Stacking the deck. How do you nearly guarantee that your first product is successful, right out of the gate? Once you’ve decided what business you’re in, we will work to ensure that you don’t get stuck holding a product no one wants; this is where you stack the deck so your launch day is set up to blast off. 7. Launch. Your first product is ready to launch. What do you do now? Do you just let it ride? No. Here’s where building relationships and a few strategic marketing tips will take your business from a single product to a world-class brand, as we cover what you need to do to reach the key growth point of twenty-five sales per day.

A great analogy for timing your calls is investing. The investor who attempts to time the market has historically failed to beat the investor who uses a dollar-cost-averaging strategy—making incremental investments on a regular schedule over time. If you think about prospecting in the same vein, salespeople who prospect daily on a regular schedule are always more successful over time than those who make the attempt to time their prospecting. Like investing, statistics are always in the favor of the salesperson who does a little bit of prospecting every day.

Born of the Great War, this “trench broom” meant to help American doughboys sweep their way across Europe. But the conflict ended too soon for the Thompson to take part, and many of the fifteen thousand guns in circulation by 1929 ended up in private hands. Because the weapon was so new, few laws governed its sale. Legally purchasing a tommy gun in Chicago, in those days, was easier than acquiring a handgun.

Each of us hides our own private Delaware lost in the gray jungle-tangle of our brains. No one else can know its depths and byways. No one else can know the height of its towers, the secrets of its tides and pools. There will always be lost lagoons to find there, and ruins almost hidden by the sand. There will always be monsters of great beauty and good men with ugly frowns. The forests are dark but lights bob among the branches. You are at home there, more at home than anyplace else, and yet you will never go there in your life. Their legends are yours. The pirates sale around the cape, a crew of skeletons in the rigging. Milkmaids run down mountain passes, dragging kites behind them. Wizards crack their backs after long days of chalk and incantation while above the crowded bazaars, over the golden temples, against the setting sun, around the ruddy minarets, the pterodactyls call out a long farewell.

I baked all those cakes, and I didn't want them to just sit." "You could have told me," I said through gritted teeth. "I'm sure I wasn't missed," Sabrina replied. I looked back at Dante, who was ignoring the conversation in favor of chatting through his Bluetooth earpiece neck thingy. "What do you sell?" I asked Tameka. "I make jams and jellies. Chowchow." "It's so delicious," Sabrina added. I cocked an eyebrow at my sister. "Sabrina had a great sales day. Most of her cakes sold out." Tameka turned to Sabrina. "How many jars did you sell?" "Thirty-four," Sabrina said, cutting her eyes away from me. Thirty-four. In one morning? At a farmers market? I couldn't believe it. A sting of resentment settled around my heart. I didn't know why that bothered me so much. Tameka looked at my cake tray and said to Sabrina, "The little jars would fit nicely at events like this." Once again, my uninventive and un-unique dessert display was dissed.