4.5 Business Development Techniques for Driving New Revenue, with Jeffrey Gitomer

Episode 656

Jeffrey Gitomer is an international sales trainer, world-renowned keynote speaker and #1 best-selling author of 13 books, including the New York Times best sellers The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Black Book of Connections, and the Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. He helped create Outstand, the first CRM program that actually helps salespeople MAKE SALES and he developed The Gitomer Learning Academy — an interactive sales training and personal development platform that is designed to evaluate, educate, help you understand, and reinforce your learning.

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• Creating a reputation based on value
• Building your online platform presence
• A formula that leads up to trust
• Why you have to be easy to do business with, both online and offline
• What it really means when a customer says “I’m not interested”
• Why it’s all about the questions that you ask and the credibility that you build
• How to create value attraction
• Why it’s vital to keep up with the times to stay in business
• A lesson Jeffrey learned from one of his mentors on how hard work makes luck
• Why attitude and resilience are keys to determining your fate
• The importance of realizing that you cannot do everything
• Why you need to treat your employees better than you treat your customers

How best to connect with Jeffrey:

• Website: www.gitomer.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/JeffreyGitomer
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreygitomer

Subscribe to Onward Nation!

Resources:

• Podcast: Sell or Die

Transcript:

This is Onward Nation Episode 656.

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

Stephen Woessne: Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, and welcome to Episode 656 of Onward Nation. But before I introduce today’s very special guest, I wanna share with you that Onward Nation is now available on Amazon Echo. Holy Bananas. So, if you have an Echo at home or office, whatever. All you need to do is install the skill called, Anypod. And then the command goes like this, “Alexa, ask Anypod to play Onward Nation,” and then Alexa will cue up and play our latest episode. You can even ask Alexa to play a specific Episode number. So like this episode is Episode 656. You would just say, “Alexa, ask Anypod to play Episode 656 of Onward Nation,” and then our most current episode or that specific episode will start playing.  So, rock solid awesome. Drop me a note and let me know how it goes for you.

Now let’s welcome today’s very special guest, Jeffrey Gitomer. Jeffrey is an international sales trainer, world renowned keynote speaker, and number one best selling author of 13 books including the New York Times best seller, The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Black Book of Connections, and the Little Gold Book of Yes Attitude. He helped create Outstand, the first CRM program that actually helps salespeople make sales, and he developed the Gitomer Learning Academy, an interactive sales training and personal development platform that is designed to evaluate, educate, help you understand and reinforce your learning.

Welcome to Onward Nation, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Wow, I thought I died there. I thought you were giving my eulogy. Thank you very kindly for that nice introduction.

Stephen Woessne: Well, very impressive bio, and you’ve obviously accomplished quite a bit in your very stellar career.

Jeffrey Gitomer: You lucked out that I am a number one fan of the now 11 and two Philadelphia Eagles, who have clinched the playoff spot. You forgot that part.

Stephen Woessne: And thank you for rubbing the lemon juice-

Jeffrey Gitomer: No problem.

Stephen Woessne: … in my cut that is the Dallas Cowboys this year, but you know, it’s fine.

Jeffrey Gitomer: They’re still in the NFL. You’re gonna be fine.

Stephen Woessne: You know, if we beat you guys in the last game of this year, which is-

Jeffrey Gitomer: [crosstalk 00:02:36] Yeah, you’ll feel like you won the Superbowl, that’s fine.

Stephen Woessne: No, no, no. If we win our next three games, we are still a viable playoff contender.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You’ll get to lose in the first round. Listen, I can’t say anything. Our quarterback is gone.

Stephen Woessne: Well-

Jeffrey Gitomer: So, audiences wanna know about sales, not football. So, let’s crank on what is the burning question that you had in your mind when you first put me on this program? Number 656, by the way.

Stephen Woessne: Well … yeah, so I was very excited when you said yes. During our pre-interview chat when we were talking about the importance of biz dev and how, in my opinion, most business owners get selling and business development wrong. And then we were talking about your 4.5 non-secrets to business development. Let’s start there because I think that’s-

Jeffrey Gitomer: Sure.

Stephen Woessne: … gonna be really impactful. So, let’s start breaking down what the 4.5 are first.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, first of all, and this is like the overview. In order for you to develop, business development is a symptom. The issues are what goes into making up business development so that people call you rather than you call them. That’s huge. Like I want all my people to do a hundred calls a day. Nobody got into sales to do a hundred calls a day. And so it’s up to the company, or it’s up to the Vice President of Marketing, or it’s up to the Sales Manager to teach salespeople how to create inbound calls based on value messages. That’s the whole deal. If you get that as an overview, then you understand the difference between having you call a customer or having the customer call you.

Just in passing, did I call you or did you call me?

Stephen Woessne: Yeah, exactly. I called you.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Right. I don’t call anybody, and the reason I don’t call anybody is because I have a brand. I have a reputation. I have a body of work. It took a long time to develop, but in the 24 years that I’ve been making speeches and done over 2,500 of them, I’ve never made a sales call to book a talk, ever. I create attraction based on value. So, let’s look at that as the overview. It’s not point number one, it is a reputation based on value.

But number one is, in fact, reputation. The first most important thing is when somebody Googles you, what are they gonna find? Because salespeople all over the universe, they Google the customer. They Google the company. They Google everything, but they think that the customer’s not gonna Google them. If you have anybody in business right now listening to this podcast, get out your Smartphone. Well, you’re probably on your Smartphone, and Google yourself while you’re listening and see how hysterical it is to see what your customer sees or your prospect sees when they talk to you because I promise you, the minute you talk to them, they’re Googling you. Maybe before, but certainly during.

If you look at it from that perspective then you realize that you have to be qualified to do business with the customer, not them being qualified to do business with you. It’s reverse qualification. I’m sure you understand what I’m talking about with respect to reputation, but let me go to number two.

Stephen Woessne: Okay.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Number two is platform. If I Google you, what am I going to find? Have you ever tweeted ’cause most salespeople have never tweeted. How many LinkedIn connections do you have ’cause if it’s under 500 I’m really not gonna pay too much attention to you. Do you have a YouTube channel, and do you video testimonials on it? Do you have a Facebook business page that’s got social proof that you are who you say you are?

What is your online platform presence because I’m gonna fiddle around while I’m talking to you and think you’re either a good guy or not a good guy. Those are your only two choices, good guy, not good guy.

Then, once I see your platform, I’m going to look for social proof. Has anyone posted something about you that says you’re the guy or you’re the woman that I want to do business with. Because I did business with you, and you were amazing. You know you go to Amazon to buy a book. Do you just buy the book or do you look at the reviews? You go to a restaurant, do you just go to the restaurant or you gonna look it up on Yelp? You gonna go to a hotel somewhere in the Bahamas. Do you just fly in on a lark or do you look at their TripAdvisor to see what they say about it?

It’s the same in your business. If you’re any kind of a business person, marketing person, salesperson, customer service person, you need a reputation that is endorsed by others. You need to have someone say, “Boy, that Bob. He’s the greatest guy on the planet. Boy, that Steve, he’s the greatest. Boy, that Michael, he’s the greatest.” You got it?

Stephen Woessne: Yep.

Jeffrey Gitomer: And then, and I think this is probably as important as anything, I gotta trust you. If I feel a level of trust, then I may part with my money, but I have a formula that leads up to trust. If they like you, and they believe you, and they have confidence in you, and they trust you, then they may buy from you. Like, believe, confidence, trust. It starts, actually, with like. If I don’t like you, I’m never gonna get past to the next level. You know, the guys was a jerk. The guy was a creep.

You know you’ve been car shopping with your significant other and the car salesperson’s and you go, “Honey, let’s get out of here.” They wouldn’t take yes for an answer. That’s how I look at it. So, that’s where we’re at right now. Reputation, platform, social proof, trust.

But, there’s another element to this, and this is sort of the biggest non-secret of them all. You have to be easy to do business with. If I call you up on the phone, I don’t want a computer to tell me how important my call is and I can press one of nine options. I want someone to answer the phone with the word “hello.” My business does millions of dollars a year. We answer the phone in the second ring with the word “hello” 24/7, 365. I use an answering service. I have for 20-something years, and it works.

And I’m friendly. I’m approachable. Anyone can call me up on the phone, ask for me, and get me. All of our people are friendly, smart, happy people who love to do business with customers and enjoy the process of taking their credit card. And so, if I’m easy to do business with, and that’s online also. I have to be easy to order from. Amazon.com now dominates the world, correct?

Stephen Woessne: Absolutely.

Jeffrey Gitomer: And how do they do it?

Stephen Woessne: Through just distribution and controlling every aspect of the customer experience.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Right. And, you can buy in one click.

Stephen Woessne: Yep.

Jeffrey Gitomer: I like it. Click. I own it. And you know Barnes & Noble thought Amazon was a joke. Prime is now a verb. “What’d you do? How’d you get that?” “I Prime’d it,” and everyone will know what you’re talking about, completely.

Stephen Woessne: Yeah, it’s a $2 billion segment of their overall business. It’s amazing.

Jeffrey Gitomer: I’m a Prime member. If you go into a bookstore, any bookstore, you also search on what it cost on Amazon. If you go into a Home Depot, you search on what it cost on Amazon. I mean, everyone looks. Amazon shops it. No matter what, just to even just get a frame of reference. Now, some companies will match the price. Others are stupid and will not match the price and they lose the loyalty of a local customer. The only thing Amazon doesn’t have is local, and they’re even starting to bridge that one now.

They’ve got these warehouses in every city. I don’t know whether they have one in La Crosse or not, but I’m sure that they have one in some of the bigger cities that surround you where there’s a 150,000 square foot warehouse full of everything, and they ship it by the minute. You can get it in an hour sometimes. I mean that guy is just a brilliant, brilliant guy. And he/Amazon are easy to do business with. I can find the proof that I want. I can find the ratings that I want. I can find the price that I want. I can find the seller that I want. I can find the terms of delivery that I want, and I click, and I own it. Click. Buy.

And the way that it came to that was that the internet became, in the mind of the consumer, safe. In the beginning you wouldn’t put your credit card up. In the beginning you wouldn’t do anything online. You didn’t trust it. Now, not only is it trustworthy, but you can return things so easily. So, I’ll buy it ’cause I know I can return it. It’s an easy strategy to do business with, and it comes to your home.

Don’t take my word for it. Look at how many retail stores are going to close this year because they can’t compete.

Stephen Woessne: It’s traumatic.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, not only is it traumatic, it’s a little frightening. You know what will happen? What’s the resurgence factor? Obviously Walmart will compete with them ’til forever. If you look at their ads on TV they’re starting to offer free shipping. They’re starting to do all the same things that Amazon’s been doing for 10 years. Thank goodness they’re responding to it, and they’re a legitimate competitor because they have the hard stores where you can just go and get it. But, if you go into an Amazon bookstore, which I’ve been into in New York City, you can buy, have it on some books, get the Prime price, and walk away with the books.

Stephen Woessne: That’s a compelling value proposition.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Very compelling value. All the books are face out. It’s a fun environment and all the people who work in the store are smart. Obviously if you work in a bookstore, one of the prerequisites is you gotta read. But, they also know about the books. I was challenging the person who was helping me to go and tell me about this book, this book, or this book and they could tell me about everything, including kids books. It was pretty amazing. If they couldn’t, they’d bring somebody else over.

Stephen Woessne: And that’s a great attitude, right? That type of attitude in the store is contagious. It makes you feel good about the experience.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So, the non-secrets I think are the compelling and prospect thing because if you don’t understand that the customer is going to look at you while you’re doing the prospecting process, you’ve lost. This is an amazing understanding of this whole deal.

Stephen Woessne: Okay.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Salespeople call customers up on the phone, and the customer says, “I’m not interested,” or salespeople knock on somebody’s door, and they offer the product and the customer says, “I’m not interested.” What it means is, you’re not interesting because if you were interesting, they would invite you right in. High, I’m Tiger Woods. I’m here to sell magazine subscriptions to work my way through the Pro Tour. “Tiger Woods? Come on in.” “Hi, I’m Bob nobody, and I’m selling magazine subscriptions.”

But if you walk in the door and you say, “Hi, I’m bob. Can you please bring me a copy of the magazine you love the most? That might happen. You might be able to go get somebody to give you a copy of that magazine. Or, if you’re selling cable systems, you know, cable television systems and you’re knocking on somebody’s door, you say, “Hi, I wanna know about your cable system,” or you say, “Listen. If you could have one cable channel that had anything you wanted on there, what would it have?”

Now, I’ve engaged somebody both intellectually and emotionally because if it was a woman at the door they might say, “Well, I don’t want any sports on there.” What do I know? Or if they say, “Well, it’d probably have to have a lot of kids programming.” What do I know? Immediately they’ve told you their emotional engagement trigger point. So, it’s all about the questions that you ask and the credibility that you build and then somebody’s gonna check on you and see if you’re reliable. If you’re not reliable, you’re out.

Stephen Woessne: Let me give some of that back to you.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Alright.

Stephen Woessne: I like the, you’re not interesting as opposed to not interested. That’s very compelling.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Like self people blame. “The guy wouldn’t return my call.” “Well, why wouldn’t he return your call? Maybe the message you left sucked.”

Stephen Woessne: And there’s no value-

Jeffrey Gitomer: Right.

Stephen Woessne: … in returning the call, or at least no pertinent value.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Right.

Stephen Woessne: So then, with reputation, platform, social proof, trust, gotta be easy to do business with. In your experience, what are some of the constraints and maybe they’re even just excuses that you hear business owners as to why they can’t do and implement these non-secrets with excellence?

Jeffrey Gitomer: They blame, rather than take responsibility. They blame, rather than take responsibility. If the guy, and I’ve always wondered who the fictional guy was. The customer took a cheaper price.

Stephen Woessne: Okay.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Okay? Why? Well, you know, they’re a price based company. Well I doubt that. I totally doubt that. I think the guy took a cheaper price ’cause you weren’t able to persuade them that your value is bigger and better.

Stephen Woessne: Right.

Jeffrey Gitomer: So, I’m challenging salespeople, sales vice presidents, corporate CEOs to stop blaming other people for your inability to communicate a message that will get people to buy. And in the prospecting world, if you’re in the biz dev world, or as I like to call it, building your business, you have to be able to create an amount of attraction or it’s not going to work for you. Once you create the attraction through value messaging, you better have competent people to be able to engage, inform, and ultimately connect with someone who will wanna buy. That’s the whole deal.

We’ve been talking for 20 or 30 minutes. Nothing’s complicated yet, is it?

Stephen Woessne: No.

Jeffrey Gitomer: People say, “Well, it’s a complex sale.” That’s a bunchy of bologna. There’s no complex sale. You talk to the CEO of the company. He takes 92 seconds to decide and the complexity is over.

Stephen Woessne: Right, because if that CEO doesn’t immediately like you, they’re not gonna move-

Jeffrey Gitomer: You’re out.

Stephen Woessne: … to the [inaudible 00:16:57] of trust, right?

Jeffrey Gitomer: Right, exactly.

Stephen Woessne: Okay, so if you were to give or share a few nuggets if you wanna call ’em steps, when we’re talking about this, you know, creating attraction, you gave us the touch points of reputation all the way through doing business, working through to business. But, if there was like one or two things that you would suggest that a business owner like start doing today, what might a couple of those nuggets be?

Jeffrey Gitomer: Tear up your business card because it’s boring and no one will look at it or save it, and replace it with something that’s kind of cool. So, if you’re in the heating and air-conditioning business, for example, then make your business card a screwdriver with a flathead on one side and a Phillips on the other side. Something little that someone will keep around for years and years and years.

Or, maybe get a key chain that’s got a flash drive on it, and the flash drive has all your prices, all your stuff and your video testimonials. There’s so many things that people can … and you can get those flash drives made in all kinds of designs, colors, you name it, and they’re kind of fun. So, there has to be some innovation. Most of the time it’s so obvious that people just don’t do it.

For example, if you’re in the agricultural business and you sell seeds, then why isn’t your business card a pack of seeds of the best possible tomatoes or the best possible corn or the best possible radishes in the world, and then the farmer’s wife plants a garden and your vegetables start to grow. Who are they gonna think of every time they’re eating dinner in the summer?

So, there’s things that people can do that are obliviously obvious that they don’t do. I mean obliviously obvious. They just overlook it. They don’t use the power of creativity of their own stuff.

Stephen Woessne: Do you think it’s because business owners may be, not innately, but maybe wanna tell themselves that it’s more complicated than it really is?

Jeffrey Gitomer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Or, they don’t have the creative wherewithal to start from scratch and they go buy what everybody else does. You know, they try to pick up on, “Well, people have been doing this for a hundred years so it must be right.” That’s not happening. Look at all the companies that are going out of business because they forgot to keep up with the times. You know Blackberry was doing it right, correct?

Stephen Woessne: Yeah.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Where’s your Blackberry right now?

Stephen Woessne: Exactly. I loved mine when it was a relevant device. I loved it, and then it quickly got displaced.

Jeffrey Gitomer: I mean, it’s a horrible thing. How about your Yellow Pages? Do you pick them up every day, do you?

Stephen Woessne: I do have one, but no, I don’t use it.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Right, but the bottom line is that those were dominant players in the marketplace at one time.

Stephen Woessne: Yeah, now it’s to Google, right?

Jeffrey Gitomer: Right. Not only is the Yellow Pages dead, but it’s never going to revive itself. I mean it’s so far over, it’s just over. You gonna go to a pay phone booth anymore anytime soon, and put your 12-digit credit card number in there to make a $.10 call? You’re funny as hell, and just look at what the world has done over the last decade or so that has changed the face of the way we think about the way we do business.

Something as simple as you used to go to the drug store and give your film in at the one-hour photo developing booth.

Stephen Woessne: Right.

Jeffrey Gitomer: And you get back, you know, half your photos are crappy, but you got all your photos back in an hour. Now, you wait a millisecond for an amazing photograph that you can hit the print button on your printer and have a photo in literally, as long as it takes to print, seconds.

Stephen Woessne: Right, and even that span of time can seem like forever. Come on, already.

Jeffrey Gitomer: And post it to hundreds of thousands of people in the same nanosecond.

Stephen Woessne: Yeah, it is staggering that Kodak is the company that first invented that technology, and then obviously was their death now, but-

Jeffrey Gitomer: They blew it.

Stephen Woessne: … it’s just crazy.

Jeffrey Gitomer: They blew it. You can look at that same example. There’s hundreds of companies that are blowing it simply by not keeping up with the times. Even in the industry that we’re sitting in right now. AOL, at one time had 15 or 16 million customers, and they lost them all because of lousy service and low technology. They’re still around, but they’re a shadow of their former selves.

Stephen Woessne: Of course, and I mean it’s staggering to think that AOL once bought Time Warner. It’s like how in the world could a company like that have the market?

Jeffrey Gitomer: One crappy company bought another crappy company, the former huge crappy company.

Stephen Woessne: Yeah. Yes.

Jeffrey Gitomer: I mean God bless ’em. They had the wherewithal to buy Time Warner. It was a great move. It gave them total legitimacy, but the bottom line is you could never get anyone on the phone. You couldn’t get a human being at any cost, and their technology was low. They didn’t keep up with the times. Over.

Stephen Woessne: So, Jeffrey, you’re providing this great mentorship here, and in the areas of sales, and creating attraction, a reputation and really the seeds of creating the inbound calls, so you’re being a great mentor. Let me flip that and ask you share with us what you would consider to be the most influential lesson that you ever learned from one of your mentors, and then how that lesson helped you become who you are today.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, I’ve been very fortunate to have a bunch of mentors. Because of my age, many of them have passed on. One day I was riding down the road with one of my mentors who owned a large manufacturing company in Chicago. I was a consultant for the firm at a very young age, but the guy just loved me and I loved him like a dad. We’re riding down the road one day and I said, “Mel, you’re like the luckiest guy I’ve ever met in my life. Everything you touch, every idea you have turns to gold,” and he looked at me and he goes, “Jeffrey, hard work makes luck.” I just sat there, and I go, “You know I think this is something I’m gonna remember for the rest of my life,” ’cause it kind of made my blood run cold. And, it’s true.

You look at it from the perspective of anybody you know, you think Jeff Bezos was lucky or do you think he worked his ass off?

Stephen Woessne: Exactly.

Jeffrey Gitomer: You think Steve Jobs got lucky or do you think he worked his ass off? There’s no luck. There’s hard work, and that turns into fortune, good fortune, good timing, whatever the circumstances, serendipity, whatever you wanna call it. But, the bottom line is, unless you win the lottery, and even those people end up dead or broke in a few years, hard work is the key, not luck.

Stephen Woessne: See, and what I love about that is you know I’m kind of late to the game. I just finished studying Malcolm Gladwell’s great book, Outliers.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Isn’t that a cool book?

Stephen Woessne: Oh, it’s a fantastic book, and how he breaks down various success stories … talking about timing and this and that, but even with something being a fortuitous point in history, that person still invested 10,000 hours at least, at a minimum-

Jeffrey Gitomer: That’s correct.

Stephen Woessne: … to perfecting their craft.

Jeffrey Gitomer: That’s correct. And when you read about Jobs and when you read about Gates and their 10,000 hours, and where they got them, you immediately have 20 more [monocums 00:24:38] of respect for the guys.

Stephen Woessne: Right.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Because in the end, in the early days of themselves they busted their chops to get where they are.

Stephen Woessne: Absolutely. From a very young age and then consistently doing it. Sometimes 10, 15 hours a day when they might’ve been in middle school or-

Jeffrey Gitomer: Playing a game or doing something stupid.

Stephen Woessne: Right.

Jeffrey Gitomer: I will tell you that I read that on an overnight plane from Charlotte to Paris, and when I got out of the plane I was absolutely stunned. Of course, I figured out all my hours, so when I got off the plane I felt like a million dollars. The bottom line is that was an impactful book, and it was impactful for life.

Stephen Woessne: Yeah, and the stories that he connects back to.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, yeah.

Stephen Woessne: Asian rice paddies. It’s just mind blowing.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Immigrant business. There was so many things inside of that book that were just eye opening, and you know the guy’s done his research to be able to make it properly backed up and truthful.

Stephen Woessne: So I know the strategy is complex and I’m kind of serving up this question or asking this question kind of unfairly ’cause I’m gonna ask you to distill it into one, but if you could give us one strategy, like what one strategy that if business owners and their teams were able to consistently apply every day do you think would compound into big wins for them?

Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, I’m gonna make a combination like a slash thing.

Stephen Woessne: Okay.

Jeffrey Gitomer: The word resilience was originally used in the military and has become now commonplace in business because it’s how you react, respond, and recover from what happens to you. So, if a customer calls up and has a complaint, the way you react to it, the way you respond to it, the way you recover from it, pretty much determines your fate. If someone says, “Your price is too high.” The way you react to it, the way you respond to it, the way you recover from it, determines your fate.

If you call someone up on the telephone and they say, “I’m not interested,” the way you react to it, the way you respond to it, and the way you recover from it pretty much determines your fate. So, I’m gonna say resilience is the number one point five key. The number one key is your attitude because that will determine your resilience. If you’re an angry person, you’re gonna respond angrily. If you’re a happy person, you’re gonna respond with, “Abe, I know the barn is full of horse shit, but there must be a pony around here someplace.”

You have to look at it from the perspective of where’s the happy ending? Where’s the rainbow? Where’s the pot of gold? Where’s my leprechaun when I really need him? And the answer is that little leprechaun is out there. You gotta find him, and you find him by working your ass off and when you finally get there you go, wha! Made it! And it makes you feel good. When you find what you’re looking for, it makes you feel like $1 million and sometimes it makes you earn $1 million.

Stephen Woessne: Yeah, that attitude or maybe the incorrect attitude could be the constraint to ever seeing all of those possibilities, right?

Jeffrey Gitomer: Sure. I’m gonna just challenge people right now. We’re doing something innovative in learning this year. My online learning academy, the Gitomer Learning Academy, is going to be gamified for all the quizzes that we have so that you’ll play a game at the end of every lesson, and that game will be recorded for you, but you’ll be playing against either salespeople from your company if you want everybody in your company to be there, or against the universe and you’ll see how smart you are against all salespeople all over. It’s gonna be amazing. It’s gonna be absolutely amazing.

So, we’re looking at doing cutting edge stuff to help salespeople sell more. I want this 2018 to be the year of the salesperson and let them figure out that all they have to do is apply themselves a little bit more, but salespeople don’t always wanna do that. They wanna go home, relax, drink a beer, watch their stupid television show and think that they’re gonna be prepared for the next day. That’s not true. It’s just not. You have to prepare or you’re gonna die.

The attitude preparation will lead to resilience, and you can’t just read a book. You gotta study it.

Stephen Woessne: Well, and it’s impossible to build reputation, build a platform, build social proof if you’re not willing to put in the hard work.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Right.

Stephen Woessne: You’re not willing to have the right attitude while you’re doing it, right?

Jeffrey Gitomer: Ten years ago I wrote The Little Gold Book of Yes Attitude. It was a number one, overall, number one best seller on Amazon. Came out at number two in the Wall Street Journal Best Seller List, and made New York Times, every best seller list that possibly could’ve happened. Sold over a quarter of a million copies. Well, it’s now in its 10th year and we’re reprinting the book as a new edition. I’ve added 20 pages, and I’ve made about 200 additions to the book. I think that’s the benchmark. I think attitude is the key to wherever you wanna grow to. I think if you wake up in the morning and you’re happy and you can transfer that happiness to your people, they’re gonna transfer that happiness to your customers, and they’re gonna be happy.  But, if you don’t understand that attitude leads to loyalty you have a serious, serious problem.

So, we’re relaunching this book because it’s so important. I have thousands of emails from people telling me that it changed their life and that’s what I wanna try to do. If attitude will lead to resilience and will change people’s lives, then salespeople will automatically make their number or more, or business develop or more.

Stephen Woessne: And by the way, pretty powerful social proof when you get thousands of emails about your-

Jeffrey Gitomer: [crosstalk 00:30:36] That’s true. We’re asking people actually to put a little video up online about how the Yes Attitude book affected their lives. We’ll get hundreds of ’em.

Stephen Woessne: Jeffrey, this has been a phenomenal conversation. I was so delighted when you accepted my invitation. I’m grateful for that. I have one last question for you. Before I ask it, I just wanna say thank you. It’s been an honor to have you here and thank you very much.

Jeffrey Gitomer: It’s a total pleasure. I feel like I’ve created a good enough message to where people might be affected enough to go take an action to make their lives better.

Stephen Woessne: I think you did exactly that. Here’s my last question for you. Give you a scenario. Imagine you’re standing in front of a room of brand new business owners, people just like you when you were starting out, and so, maybe they’re battling their way through fear or doubt or maybe they’re just struggling trying to find their footing. So, what would be two or three strategies you would recommend that they focus on to best ensure success?

Jeffrey Gitomer: The first thing that they have to do is realize that they cannot do everything and they might wanna exercise their risk factor to hire someone who’s better at what they need to do than they are. Concentrate on the things that you’re best at. That’s number one.

Number two, your belief in your business, not in the money that your business can generate, in your business, the product of the service that you offer has to be deeply, deeply genuine. So, I wanna make sure that I am able to have the right attitude and have the right business acumen in order to be able to run my business, and I wanna have key people that are amazing in all the things that I’m not good at. I wanna respect my co-workers, not talk about them with disdain.

And then the third thing, which is missing by the way, from the book Good to Great, I want every business owner or every entrepreneur out there to treat their employees better than they treat their customers because the way you treat the employee is gonna determine the way they talk to your customer, whether it’s the accounting department, or the shipping department or the sales department, whatever it is. I want your employees to feel amazing so that when they talk to a customer that amazing feeling is transferred. Pretty simple formula, I think. What do you think?

Stephen Woessne: [crosstalk 00:33:10]

Jeffrey Gitomer: Deeply believe and make certain that you treat your people better than you treat your customers.

Stephen Woessne: And if you do that, it plays in so nicely with what you shared before about, you know, we gotta like you, believe you, gotta have the confidence and trust. If you do all the things that you just mentioned it maps so well to that.

Jeffrey Gitomer: I am recommending to everybody that this is the year you answer your phone live. If your call is so important to me then why don’t you pick the damn phone up?

Stephen Woessne: Well, we’ve become so reliant upon email thinking we’re gonna close that sale or develop that new relationship through email.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Not gonna happen. I think the book, A Better Way for Millennials is pick up the phone.

Stephen Woessne: I bet you’ll sell a bunch of copies.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, yeah. All to their bosses, that’s for sure. Well, listen, hey. The pleasure was mine today. This is a very, very insightful interview and you did a great job.

Stephen Woessne: Well, thank you for that. That means a lot coming from you. Before we go, what is the best way to connect with you, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey Gitomer: You can find me in my website, gitomer.com. We have a podcast called, “Sell or Die”. “Sell or Die”. You can get it on Overcast. You can get it on Stitcher. Obviously iTunes is probably the easiest place to find it, and maybe we’ll have to go Alexa, huh? Maybe we’ll have to take that big step to where we can be found on Amazon’s Talk to Me platform. But, we’re up to about 25,000 listeners a month and we’re shooting for couple hundred thousand this year. If we can do that we’re in pretty good shape.

Stephen Woessne: Congratulations.

Jeffrey Gitomer: Thank you.

Stephen Woessne: That puts you in the top 5% of all podcasts. Congratulations.

Jeffrey Gitomer: We had the number one position on Overcast, and then people all of a sudden started to be competitive, but we’ll get that number one position back shortly.

Stephen Woessne: Okay, Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took, or how often you go back and re-listen to Jeffrey’s words of wisdom, and I sure hope that you do. The key is you have to take action on what he so generously applied or shared with you today. Apply it into your business right away and accelerate your results.

And, Jeffrey we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. I appreciate you taking time out of your compressed schedule to come onto the show to help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much, my friend.

Speaker 2: This episode is complete so head over to onwardnation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.