I’m rereading David Sandler’s book You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar, But You Can Teach Him How To Fish.
Even though the title won’t tell you so, it’s a sales book.
Do you know Jim Camp’s Start With No? Camp’s book is in many ways a rewrite of Sandler’s book. But the original, as always, has stuff that the rewrite doesn’t have…
… such as the following story of Ponzi-like cold calling, which could be useful to many, even if they never make a cold call in their life:
In the early days of his sales career, Sandler cold called business owners to sell self-improvement courses and sales training. It was the only way he knew how to get leads.
Valuable point #1: Sandler got 9 out 10 cold-called prospects to agree to meet him. How?
Simple. He’d offer something for free, something that the guy on other end wanted, something nobody else was offering.
Specifically, Sandler would offer to come down to the prospect’s office and demonstrate his cold calling techniques to the prospect’s sales team, and motivate the lazy bums a little.
Like I said, 9 out of 10 business owners agreed to that.
Valuable point #2: Sandler didn’t offer to come do a demo as a means of making a sale. He did it as a means of making cold calls.
Sandler hated making cold calls. If he had to make cold calls at home, he’d put it off, do it half-heartedly, and not make enough of them to set his weekly quota of appointments.
That’s why he did the scheme above.
He’d show up to the prospect’s office, nervous but also amped up. And then, for an hour or so, he’d cold call — for himself.
He’d spend an hour in the prospect’s office, with the sales staff looking at him in wonder, making cold call after cold call, chatting on the phone, digging into the pain, and in many cases, setting new appointments for himself.
A couple days ago, I wrote that identity is just about the most powerful appeal you can make.
Well there’s a close second, and that’s reputation. In fact, for many of us, reputation might even trump identity. Cause you wanna look good in front of people, right? Even if you have to do things you would never do on your own.
And so it was with Sandler. He’d end an hour at a prospect’s office with another 2-3 set appointments, way more than he’d get at home had he spent the afternoon there.
Plus of course, he’d have a way better chance of closing the sale. Because nothing sells like demonstration.
Such story. Much lessons. So few people who will do anything with it.
And yet, it could be so powerful if somebody would only apply it, whether to cold calling… or to any other persuasion-related activity.
I’ll leave you to ponder that, and I’ll just say my email today is a “demonstration” of the daily email prompt I send out this morning for my Daily Email Habit service.
Maybe it’s easy enough to figure out what today’s prompt was.
Or maybe not.
In any case, today’s prompt is gone. Today’s prompt is lost to history, to be known only by the current subscribers to Daily Email Habit.
But a new prompt will appear tomorrow, to help those who want to write emails regularly, both for their own enjoyment, and to impress and influence others in their market. Because powerful things happen when you know that others are watching you.
If you’d like to read the email I write based on that prompt, and maybe try to guess what the prompt was, click here to sign up to my email newsletter.