You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar

Ponzi-like cold calling

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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.

I’m not OK — you’re not OK

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Here’s a story I’ve been told but don’t remember:

When I was little, maybe around 2 or 3, I was in the dining room with my grandfather, who I loved better than life itself.

I started dragging a large chair around the dining room.

My grandfather told me to stop, I guess because the dragging was making noise and because the chair could topple and flatten 3-year-old Bejako.

But I didn’t stop. I kept dragging the chair around.

My grandfather again told me to stop.

I still didn’t.

So my grandfather gave me a light swat on the hand, not enough to hurt me, but enough to get my attention.

It worked. I let go of the chair. I started wailing instead. And in my childish fear and confusion, I turned to the only natural place of comfort, and that was back to my grandfather. I ran to him and hugged him and wailed away. My grandfather said later he felt so guilty that he wished for his hand, the one he had swatted me with, to dry up and fall off.

I’m reading a book now called, I’m OK — You’re OK. I’m reading it because:

I’ve learned the most about email marketing and copywriting from Ben Settle…

Ben frequently recommends a book called Start With No, by negotiation coach Jim Camp, which I’ve read a half dozen times…

Start With No is largely a rehash of ideas in a book called You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar, by sales trainer Dave Sandler, which I read for the first time earlier this year…

Sandler’s book and sales system are a mix of classic sales techniques, his own personal experimentation, and ideas coming from transactional analysis, specifically as described in the book I’m OK — You’re OK, by psychiatrist Thomas Harris.

(There’s value in working backwards like that.)

Here’s a passage in I’m OK — You’re OK that stuck out to me:

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The predominant by-product of the frustrating, civilizing process is negative feelings. On the basis of these feelings the little person early concludes, “I’m not OK.” We call this comprehensive self-estimate the NOT OK, or the NOT OK Child. This permanent recording is the residue of having been a child. Any child. Even the child of kind, loving, well-meaning parents. It is the situation of childhood and not the intention of the parents which produces the problem.

===

Like I said, this stuck out to me. Because some people had happy, stable childhoods. But even those people have a reservoir of childhood memories that make them feel not OK today. And maybe those people wonder what the hell is wrong with them. Says Harris, nothing. That’s life.

On the other hand, other people had genuinely troubled or traumatizing childhoods. They might suspect their childhood left them somehow uniquely warped and deformed, and the fact they feel not OK today proves it. But that logic is wrong, says Harris, because again, we are all not OK.

“I’m not OK — You’re not OK” is not a very inspiring message. Fortunately, the above passage is not how the book ends. In fact it only comes in chapter two. After all, the book is titled I’m OK — You’re OK.

If you’d like to know how to get out of the impulsive, frustrating, and maybe painful web of childhood memories and patterns, at least according to Thomas Harris, you can check out I’m OK — You’re OK below, and maybe learn a thing or two about sales and negotiation and copywriting in the process:

​https://bejakovic.com/ok​

Jim Camp, A-list copywriter

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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:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/