Right now I’m reading a book titled You Can’t Teach a Kid To Ride a Bike at a Seminar.
The book was written by David Sandler, a 20th-century sales trainer.
I wrote an email about Sandler last year because of his connection to famed negotiation coach Jim Camp. That email ran with the subject line, “Jim Camp, plagiarist.”
Camp must have studied under Sandler, because the ideas inside “You Can’t Teach a Kid” and Camp’s book “Start With No” are as close to identical as two brown, “L”-sized, farm-fresh eggs. (For reference, Sandler died in 1995, Camp published Start With No in 2002.)
If you ask me, Camp did three things right.
First, he took Sandler’s system out of the world of sales — water filters, life insurance, and whirring hard drives — and he applied it, word-for-word, to the world of billion-dollar negotiation in corporate boardrooms.
In other words, Camp took Sandler’s valuable but provincial knowledge and brought it to a bigger, more prestigious arena, not encumbered by the slumdog baggage that’s attached to the word “sales.”
Second, Camp co-opted what Sandler taught and made it his own. He turned the Sandler Sales System into the Camp Negotiation System, without ever mentioning or crediting Sandler except once, in the middle of a list of 20 other mentors, in an appendix to his “Start With No” book.
You might think this is despicable, and in a way it is, but it’s also a necessary part of the positioning of the guru at the top of the mountain.
And then there’s a third thing that Camp did right.
It’s completely in the presentation, the messaging of his book and of his Camp Negotiation System.
You can see this messaging change in the title Start With No. It’s also present on almost every page of the book.
This messaging change is what built up the mystery of Jim Camp, and it’s why Camp’s book has sold so well and spread so far, and why so many sales folks and marketers and copywriters know Camp today, and why so few know Sandler.
Now ask yourself:
If you knew what change Camp made, and if you could apply it to turn your message from unknown to bestselling, from slumdog salesman to mysterious and yet celebrated negotiation guru…
… what could that be worth to you?
I don’t know. But you do know, and maybe the truth is it would be worth a lot — thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more.
I’m asking you this question because you can find this messaging change, the technique that Camp used to make himself and his system fascinating, in my Copy Riddles program.
It’s there in round 15.
If you own Copy Riddles and it’s not 100% clear to you how Camp applied the technique in that round to his messaging, write me and I will clarify it.
And if you don’t own Copy Riddles, you can find out more about it at the link below.
I can tell you upfront, at $997, Copy Riddles is an expensive program.
But maybe in your case will be worth much more than I’m asking for it. Here’s that link: