The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [74]
When sales is done well, it’s a really simple discovery conversation. The conversation basically follows the following contours: “Hey, what do you really want? What matters to you? Well, this is my ability to provide that. Does that seem like a match to you?” It’s just that simple. Sales is the ability to take someone who knows about you, but who has never given you money, and turn them into someone who knows about you and who is also giving you money, if what you’re offering is a good match for them. That’s it.
In the Fortune 1000, what position is the most highly paid? You think it’s the CEO?
Nope.
It’s the #1 sales rep.
Second most highly paid?
The #2 sales rep.
Third most highly paid?
VP of sales.
Fourth?
CEO.
The person making the most money in the company is often two or three levels down from the CEO. Why? Because without that star sales rep, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60 percent of the business of that company would not exist. Why is that individual able to make such an impact on the business? Because that sales rep understands the skill of selling.
The third skill of success is leadership. Leadership boils down to the ability to change the hearts and minds of people. Not controlling people; it’s a myth that the leader has control. Your leadership consists precisely in your ability to define a future you don’t have control over. The leader doesn’t have control over what the employees do; she has to influence the employees to do what she thinks is best. The more you understand that you have no control at all, and you’re dealing with a bunch of people with free will who are going to do what they want anyway, the more you realize that the skill of leadership really boils down to the skill of influence. If you’re taking on a role of leading others, people don’t do what you say just because you say it; they only do what you say if they’re inspired. Which means, you have to study “What influences people?”
[Michael’s note to reader: Seth Godin, in Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us—which you absolutely must read if you care about the themes in this chapter and the last—spreads the message that “Leadership is the new marketing.” I would also add that leadership is the new sales. And good sales is really a form of leadership. And good marketing is also really a form of leadership. When done with integrity, they all blend into each other; they are really all aspects of the same phenomenon. What is that phenomenon? Bryan calls it “guiding others into a future that would not have happened otherwise.”]
If you can get people who don’t know about you to know about you (marketing), and you can convert them into customers (sales), and once they’re customers, you can lead them from point A to point B, you can accomplish anything on the planet.
When you wrap these skills of success around your craft, you can become wildly successful at whatever it is you do. Creating stained glass. Being a lawyer. Running a company. Being a real estate investor. Because being successful at all of these disciplines—indeed at any discipline—requires these three fundamental skills of success.
If you want to take your success to the next level, it’s really simple. Just press Pause on learning about your craft. Admit that you’re good enough for now. (You can always get better later.) And press Play/Record on your learning about marketing, sales, and leadership. If you invest in being better at marketing, sales, and leadership, then the sky’s the limit to your success.
There is knowledge in the world about how to do these three things well. They