The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [78]
“If you talk to billionaires and millionaires, and you ask them, ‘How important was sales to building your business?’ you’ll find out, it’s like half the business. And none of the top schools teach it. Yet it’s essential. So there’s an obvious disconnect there.
“It’s a huge problem, when people don’t know how to sell. Formal schools teach skills, but they don’t teach how to sell or market those skills. So, the graphic designer says, ‘I design great graphics. I ought to go in business myself.’ Or the medical doctor who works for a practice says, ‘I’m good at helping patients. I ought to have my own practice.’
“These people are frustrated. They want control over their own work and destiny. They think, ‘I’m working for the man, and he’s paying me twenty bucks an hour to do whatever work. And he’s charging eighty dollars an hour to the client.’ They see that, and they think, ‘That guy’s making sixty bucks an hour off of me! He’s taking me for a ride! I’m fed up with this, I’m going to go into business for myself, so instead of making the twenty dollars an hour, I’m gonna make the eighty!’
“So the person sets up shop, they get their business cards printed up, they open for business, and what happens on the first day? Absolutely nothing.
“What they took for granted was the business owner developed the process for getting clients. Without that, you get no money. It was worth the sixty dollars. They don’t realize why the sixty dollars was earned by the business owner. The practitioner just sees it as someone stealing their money. Until they try to go into business for themselves, and then they suffer for a couple of years, and they don’t try to learn those skills of sales and marketing, and can only tolerate it for so long, and then they give up and go back working for someone else.
“Most people who are successful in their field, you’ll find, are very good at selling. Either selling their ideas, selling to get customers, or selling to recruit people to support their vision. Most colleges don’t teach that. But it’s very hard to imagine a business being successful without somebody being good at selling. It’s a crucial skill to develop, through either direct experience, or mentorship, or training, or workshops.
“Read about it, study it, and frankly, just do it. A lot of it is trial and error. All experience comes from mistakes. Either making them yourself, or learning from someone else who has. It all counts. But unfortunately, experience is not something you get in college. Mastery comes from doing. Either do it yourself, or learn it from someone who did.”
Victor’s point about learning from other people’s experience is crucial. The book SPIN Selling summarizes the research and experience of one hundred researchers who spent a million bucks and twelve years trying to figure out a kind of sales that both makes the customer happy and closes the deal. The fruits of this effort are available at your local bookstore, or online, for around thirty bucks.
The originators of SPIN Selling (http://www.huthwaite.com) also offer two-day sales trainings all around the country for around $1,600. I haven’t attended one personally, but just their book alone had such a profound impact on my life and business, that would be the first place I’d look if I wanted a more intensive in-person study of sales.
My point is not necessarily that you should go out and plunk down $1,600 on a sales training right away (though I’ll bet it would be worth every penny). My point is, the information and training to learn this stuff is available to you, at a price within reach for most people reading this book.
Think about it. A typical college course costs between $500 and $5,000, depending on the overall tuition for the semester and how much grant aid you’re getting. What do you think, in the long run, is going to have a bigger impact on your life? A $1,600 training, from one of the top sales experts in the world, about how you sell your ideas, projects, and services in the real world? Or a couple of courses of your typical college fare?
Here are some courses