Sales 301: Advanced Sales Training From Selling $100s of Millions | Ep 800

Oren Klaff has developed pioneering presentation techniques that have enabled him to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for some of the largest companies in the world. By focusing on how we’ve evolved to receive and interpret information, Klaff approaches the art of pitching through our more primitive instincts, directing us to tap into the parts of our brains that are truly responsible for decision-making. In Pitch Anything, he walks the reader through these techniques step-by-step, laying out a practical, measurable system that can help you craft a stronger, more effective message.

Imagine you have a product or service that can change people’s lives—one that can help them reach their most ambitious goals financially or personally. If you don’t know how to effectively market it, your idea won’t make a difference in anyone’s life. Russell Brunson, who made his name selling online marketing tools and advising startups on building a brand, aims to solve this problem with Expert Secrets, a how-to guide for creating excitement for your idea that turns potential customers into lifelong buyers.

In this guide, we’ll give an overview of the main “secrets” Brunson discusses, focusing on how you can tap into your audience’s emotions to create loyal customers. Along the way, we’ll examine the human instincts that drive purchasing decisions and how other sales experts advise you to close a sale.

Are you a salesperson? You might be surprised to learn that the answer is “Yes.” Hate it or love it, in the modern world, we’re all selling something, and the value of sales skills has never been higher.

To Sell Is Human explains the history, evolution, and significance of sales. It challenges commonly held assumptions by redefining the meaning of sales, re-evaluating the purpose of the salesperson, and showing you how to effectively harness sales skills to create purpose, growth, or “movement” in your life (whether it be for personal or professional gain). Using our guide, you’ll build on your inherent sales instincts to develop confidence, build connection, and generate success in your life.

Are you a salesperson? You might be surprised to learn that the answer is “Yes.” Hate it or love it, in the modern world, we’re all selling something, and the value of sales skills has never been higher.

To Sell Is Human explains the history, evolution, and significance of sales. It challenges commonly held assumptions by redefining the meaning of sales, re-evaluating the purpose of the salesperson, and showing you how to effectively harness sales skills to create purpose, growth, or “movement” in your life (whether it be for personal or professional gain). Using our guide, you’ll build on your inherent sales instincts to develop confidence, build connection, and generate success in your life.

Experts in the art of persuasion, whether orators, salespersons, or politicians, often focus on fine-tuning their arguments. But, according to psychologist Robert Cialdini, this approach fails to consider another key component of persuasion—what happens before we begin conveying our argument. In his 2016 book, Pre-Suasion, Cialdini argues that to make our audience receptive to our message, we must optimize the moments before persuasion.

In this guide, we’ll discuss Cialdini’s insight that people are susceptible to influence the moment before they make a decision, and we’ll examine how words, images, and environments can influence people in that moment. Next, we’ll discuss ways to “pre-suade” your audience by aligning with people’s preferences for consistency, likable communicators, authority figures, and people who share their identity. Finally, we’ll consider how to anchor the behavioral changes that result from pre-suasion by getting your audience to make a commitment. Throughout the guide, we’ll discuss pushback against Cialdini’s arguments and explore supplemental advice from other authors on how to influence people.

People who succeed in sales have high incomes and job security. However, while many people enter the profession, only a few succeed. In fact, of every 100 salespeople, just four of them will earn as much as all the rest combined. In The Psychology of Selling, bestselling author and management consultant Brian Tracy explains how you can become one of those top salespeople by understanding how your customers think. He walks you through basic and advanced selling techniques, demonstrating how you can dramatically increase your sales success by improving your skills just a little bit on a consistent basis.

In The Ultimate Sales Machine, Chet Holmes argues that the secret to sales success is relentless discipline, determination, and above all, repetition of just a few steps. For Holmes, sales mastery is intensive, not extensive—it’s about being an expert in a relative handful of practices, not being adequate or average at many things.

But you and your entire team have to be fully committed to refining and perfecting every aspect of your new sales strategy. By implementing effective time management across your company, honing your sales team with interactive training, hiring people with the right personality traits, and relentless marketing that presents your company’s value to the customer, you can significantly boost your sales figures and put your team on the path to permanent success.

This guide takes you through Holmes’s key ideas about building a first-rate sales operation and supplements them with more up-to-date information and commentary (the book was published in 2008)—while also offering counterpoints to some of his more outdated or controversial suggestions.

The process of selling can seem mysterious and incomprehensible, but in Secrets of Closing the Sale, salesman and public speaker Zig Ziglar pulls back the curtain on successful salesmanship. You’ll learn what qualities you must develop as a salesperson, how customers tend to behave in sales situations, and the strategies you can employ to maximize the impact of your pitch and close the sale every time.

Alongside Ziglar’s selling advice, we’ll include commentary connecting Ziglar’s ideas to other, more contemporary sales techniques from sales experts like Daniel K. Pink (To Sell Is Human), Jordan Belfort (Way of the Wolf), and Grant Cardone (Sell Or Be Sold). We’ll also discuss specific methods of implementing Ziglar’s advice and scientific support for his claims about human behavior in selling.

Way of the Wolf explains sales trainer Jordan Belfort’s Straight Line method of selling, which is designed to efficiently move a prospect from doubt to certainty about buying. It provides a conceptual framework plus a collection of principles, techniques, and psychology that he says anyone can use to sell anything in any industry.

Belfort is best known as The Wolf of Wall Street—the name of his first memoir and of a Scorcese movie depicting his high-flying life as a broker before pleading guilty in 1999 to securities fraud and money laundering. He served 22 months, then became a motivational speaker and sales trainer. Belfort rethought his ethics and refined his selling method, which he says will shorten sales cycles, dramatically increase closes, and lead to referrals and long-term customer relationships—all while bringing the seller success and wealth.

In our guide, we compare his method to other iconic sales programs like SPIN Selling and The Challenger Sale.