Michael: So where are you? What part of the country are you located in?

Stan: I‘m in Florida, just north of Daytona Beach.

Michael: I‘m from Atlanta originally. When I was 15 and 16, Daytona was the place to go. Me and my friends, we used to go down to Daytona—well, actually, we used to go to Ormond Beach as a family for family vacation. We stayed at the Ormond Beach Holiday Club, it was right there on the ocean. And then as I grew up I used to visit Daytona with my friends as I went through high school. We even had a family reunion back down in Daytona about two years ago.

Stan: I actually live in Ormond Beach, right on the ocean.

Michael: I love Daytona. It‘s definitely a different kind of ocean than here in San Diego; got a different smell to it, the sand‘s different. When I think of the beach, that‘s what I think about; I think about the Florida beaches.

Stan: I love the power of your waves on the West coast. We very rarely get anything that big here.

Michael: Are you from there originally?

Stan: No. Born and raised in the mid-West. Spent 34 years in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and then moved to Florida and thought I‘d died and went to heaven!

Michael: What brought you out to Florida?

Stan: I actually followed my original mentor down here after I had quit working for him the last time, he relocated supposedly to retire in Florida and kept calling me. He used to call me Big Guy. He‘d say, ―Hey big guy, you‘ve got to come to Florida.‖ I‘d say, ―Why, Jerry?‖ He said, ―Every day the sun is shining. The sky is blue. The flowers are blooming. The birds are chirping. You‘ll have a whole new attitude.‖ At the time I was in Flint, Michigan, which is kind of the armpit of mid-America, and I believe there‘s only one city—believe it or not—in the United States that gets less sunshine than Flint and I believe it‘s Seattle or Spokane or something. For about eight months of the year it‘s like living in gray pea soup with everything dead around you. One thing led to another and he had come out of retirement, got back in the furniture business, only had two stores and was going up against some pretty strong competition and he talked me into moving down to Florida for supposedly a ninety day evaluation, take over the two stores and decide whether or not he needed to open three, or four, or five more to be competitive; or whether we should go do a GOB. So that‘s why I came to Florida.

Michael: What was his name and how did he become your mentor? What‘s the story behind that?

Stan: Originally, I had worked for Jerry Ross—that is his name, he‘s not famous or anything—several different times over a three or four year period. We used to call it Ross University because you got one heck of an education. He had been a high school dropout, married with three kids before he was 18 and was a self-made millionaire by the time he was 21 and a multi- millionaire by the time he was 23.

Michael: Was that all in the furniture business?

Stan: Basically, yes. I had done a variety of work with him and the only way you could ever get a raise, promotion or a compliment, was literally to quit and then a month or two would go by or whatever, sometimes only a few weeks, and he would come and romance you, if you would, to come back to work for him. We used to call him the ―flute player,‖ like a snake charmer would charm a snake. He could be phenomenally warm and personable when he wanted to be. He had invited me, at the time, he had a summer call-up on Makinaw Island, Michigan.

Michael: How old were you at that time?

Stan: 34. I had basically been bankrupt, divorced twice, never finished high school and a self-made failure for the better part of 34 years. Jerry called and invited my wife at the time and I to Makinaw Island for a weekend, and I knew darn well why he wanted me to come up and visit and that‘s to hire me back. I said to him, ―You know, I really appreciate it but I‘m not interested in coming back to work.‖ ―No, no, no. Just come on up and have a great weekend.‖ I said, ―I‘ll call you back.‖ My wife and I talked about it. We really didn‘t want to take advantage of his generosity, but yet we both loved Makinaw Island. It‘s like going back in time, literally; horses and buggies and bicycles and for three months of the year it‘s phenomenal. Anyway, to make a long story short, I decided to write down a figure that would be so much more than what he‘d ever paid me, that when it finally came down for him to try to pitch me to come back to work I would pull out this figure and of course it would be much higher than what he offered. That way, I could justify going up there for the weekend. We went up there, had a great time, Sunday afternoon we were sitting around by the pool and Jerry said, ―You know, I like where your head‘s at. I like your attitude. Here‘s your position.‖ Which was basically General Manager. ―Here‘s your responsibilities and here‘s what I‘m going to pay you.‖ Well, the amount that he had written down was much higher than the figure I had written down. Basically I said, ―Okay. I‘ll be to work tomorrow morning.‖ The next morning I walked into his office, I said, ―Jerry, I‘ve got a challenge.‖ He said, ―Oh, I know.‖ He said, ―I‘m paying you more than what you were going to ask me for.‖ I said, ―How in the hell did you know that?‖ He said, ―Well, because that‘s your main problem, that‘s your main challenge in life.‖ I said, ―What‘s that?‖ He said, ―Low self esteem, low self worth.‖ He said, ―I see talent in you that you don‘t even see.‖ He said, ―You‘re a jack of all trades, master of none.‖ He said, ―I‘ve never seen such a waste of talent.‖ He said, ―If you‘re finally ready, willing and able to make some changes, I‘ll be your mentor.‖ I thought to myself, I‘m divorced twice, never finished high school. Had to borrow money to pay my rent. I was driving a fifteen year old Volkswagen. I had to park it on a hill to push it and get started and living on macaroni and cheese for three straight months. I finally woke up, Michael, and said, ―You know, whatever game plan I‘ve been on for 34 years hasn‘t been working real well. Okay, it‘s time for a new game plan.‖ I bought in, 100%. I said, ―Okay, what do I need to do to deserve this money? To earn this money.‖ He said, ―Become a master of your craft.‖ I said, ―How do I do that?‖ He said, ―University of California did a study that if any of us invest one hour a day studying any one subject, within three years we would have the equivalent of a college degree in that subject and within five years we would be a world renowned expert in that one subject.‖ I said okay. I asked the question we always ask, ―What‘s in it for me?‖ He said, ―Stan, in five years you could produce recordings.‖ Back then we didn‘t even have cassettes, they were eight track tapes. But he said, ―You could produce recordings, write books.‖ He said, ―You could travel the world and companies would pay you enormous amounts of money for your knowledge in that one area.‖ So that‘s how it all started.

Michael: Were you working for his furniture stores?

Stan: Basically, he made me the general manager. At the time, this was in Flint, Michigan. He had two giant warehouse showrooms, like a Levitz, where it‘s 100-150,000 square foot building; they‘ve got two to three hundred rooms of furniture on display and then the furniture is in big racks. You come out and you pick out what you want and they literally stuff it in your trunk, tie it on top of your car or they rent you a trailer and you take it home. He had two furniture stores, plus he was pretty heavy into real estate. I believe at the time we had about 600,000 square foot of real estate. So I was also responsible for leasing that out. I was responsible for hiring and training about 35 salespeople; managing his office staff and from time to time he would get involved in other projects. There was constantly something new almost every week.

Michael: How long were you working with him?

Stan: All in all, I worked with him for about a total of three years over a five year period. So again, I left several times and came back. The last time I worked with him for about six months and then that‘s when he retired and moved to Florida and we parted friends, almost for good, although again I ended up coming down to Florida. Long story short, he asked me to evaluate his two stores. In Flint, Michigan, at the time Michael, there was like two newspapers, three TV stations and eight radio stations and we basically owned that market. Now he was in Miami and he couldn‘t buy media time like he had in Flint, Michigan, so he was getting eaten alive by all the big chains that were down there. So I evaluated the situation and really within one week said, ―Let‘s do a GOB and lease or sell the buildings.‖

Michael: What‘s a GOB?

Stan: Going out of business.

Michael: I got you.

Stan: Interestingly enough, at the time I don‘t know what the laws are now, but basically you got a license from the city and you had thirty days to run your GOB. They basically freeze your inventory and you sell out and you close your doors. I found a couple of loopholes in the law and we were actually able to run the GOB for ninety days. I had trucks coming in at two, three and four in the morning and loading furniture in the back door and the inspectors would come out once a week and they‘d say, ―Geez, it looks like you‘ve got as much furniture as you had last week, maybe more.‖ I‘d say, ―Yeah, sales have been slow.‖

Michael: Let‘s talk about some of these stories. I asked you to kind of go through some of your files and pull out some of the greatest sales stories that you‘ve had over the last thirty years in your career and try to tie a lesson to each one so the listeners can hear the exciting story and learn a lesson from what you learned. Can we go through some of these?

Stan: Sure, Michael. I‘ll tell you, it was a real challenge because I had to search back in my memory. I know there‘s a lot of things [inaudible] because I have the ability to extract large amounts of money from people. I am known as the trainer that [inaudible] six or seven figure a year income earning sales pros than any other trainer. I love to talk about it and train about it, but I haven‘t ever really sat down and tried to pick out the ten biggest sales I‘ve made until you challenged me to do that. So I ended up getting a heck of an education in the process. I talked earlier about going to Miami and running the going out of business sale for my mentor. Well, within ninety days we had two huge buildings and one I would call one of my ten biggest sales was we had 120,000 square foot building that I was able to negotiate a lease with a bank, and I guess for the time being we‘ll leave that bank‘s name anonymous. But when I went in to negotiate the details of this ten year lease with a ten year option, I have to share with you Michael, I was sitting at one end of this long board table in this conference room, at the other end was the matriarch of this bank, 70-some years old, and on one side there was literally ten or twelve real estate specialists and on the other side of the table eight or ten attorneys. I was going up against this matriarch of the banking industry and about twenty supposed experts in their field.

Michael: Can I ask you this; how did the lead come in for the bank? Do you remember where that occurred? Was there a fore lease on the building at that time and then the bank contacted you?

Stan: There was a fore lease on the building, but many, many years ago Jerry had told me to be proactive, not reactive. So he had taught me how to prospect, ask for referrals, you know ―if you‘re not interested in a new location, who do you know that‘s expanding and needs a bigger location?‖ I had found the lead basically. So we started negotiating and we had purposely built in a whole series of B.S. requests, if you will, stipulations that we knew they would throw out.

Michael: What‘s the strategy in doing that?

Stan: You basically get to the bottom line, which was to at least get a cost of living increase thrown in. At the time, this would have been in the late 70‘s, there was 8-10-12% cost of living, inflation if you will, and I wanted to have something in there to protect. The strategy was that we would confuse them with all of these goofy little requests and let them strut their stuff. The attorneys kept saying, ―No, we can‘t live with that.‖ And the real estate expert would say, ―Oh, that‘s out of line. That‘s way too much.‖ So we let them beat us down repeatedly. We finally got to the cost of living, which I had left for last and I said, ―Well, I suppose you‘re not going to even let me have a cost of living increase.‖ ―Well, no, we know it‘s up there and we know we‘ve got to do something, but we‘re not going to give you 8% a year.‖ Bottom line is, we ended up settling on 5% a year. We shook hands, signed the paperwork. It was interesting when we were done, Michael, because many of the attorneys and real estate people wanted to know where I had graduated from and of course they were referring to college, I didn‘t have the heart to tell them I didn‘t even finish high school. But about a month later, one of the lead attorneys called up and said, ―Stan, we‘ve got a little situation here we need to clarify.‖ I said, ―What‘s that, Mr. Jones?‖ And he said, ―Well, page 18, paragraph 3(6)(b), the way it‘s worded it could actually be construed as possibly being that we would have to pay a cost of living every year and it would be compounded. So next year we would have to pay a 105%, the following year we would pay 5% more, but it would be based on the 105 and of course we couldn‘t do that.‖ I said, ―Well, Mr. Jones that‘s exactly why we gave in on all the other points just to get that.‖ So the bottom line is, a bank and all their attorneys and all their real estate people couldn‘t figure out that the way we had it worded, it was 5% a year compounded.

Michael: So you intentionally wrote it up that way?

Stan: Absolutely. Bottom line is, every year for the next ten or twelve years, Jerry would call me once a year on the anniversary date of the lease just to say thank you. It was the single biggest sale that he‘d ever made or that we ever made together.

Michael: And they stuck with it and couldn‘t get out of it?

Stan: They couldn‘t get out of it, it was the ten year option. The only way they finally got out of it was, I believe, around year twelve—and I was no longer with him at the time—but I believe around year twelve they finally bought the building from him, which they had an option to buy. The option was similarly worded, so they ended up paying through the nose to buy the building, way more than what it was worth at the time, just to get out of the lease they were in that was eating them alive.

Michael: So what‘s the lesson here for my students with that story?

Stan: Let them worry about the small stuff and they‘ll have a tendency to overlook the big stuff.

Michael: That‘s a great story. Number two you have here, selling 100,000 square foot building to Tasco. Who is Tasco?

Stan: First of all, Tasco is one of the leading manufacturers of binoculars. This was the second building that Jerry Ross had that, after our GOB sale, we just had 100,000 square foot building sitting doing nothing.

Michael: So he owned these buildings, right?

Stan: Yes, he had bought them. It was right on the Palmetto Expressway though, which is a main thoroughfare in the Miami area. It had a large pylon attached to the building. Interestingly enough, I researched the sign laws and you couldn‘t put up billboards or signs along there, but if you had a pylon that was attached to your building you were grandfathered in and you could just about put anything on this pylon that you wanted to.

Michael: Explain what a pylon is.

Stan: Imagine a 100,000 square foot building that‘s three stories high and all of a sudden there‘s a section coming out that‘s maybe six stories hgh nad eighty to a hundred feet long, only a couple of feet thick; but it‘s like a huge metal sign board attached to your building.

Michael: Is that the purpose they built them; for signage?

Stan: Right. They weren‘t allowed to do it anymore, but again, you were grandfathered in. I found out Tasco was in a very bad part of Miami. They owned a building and they needed to expand. There was no room to expand. There was a lot of vandalism and I found that they might be looking for a bigger, better place. I also did a little checking. I drove by and I saw that they had signs everywhere—Tasco, this. They had these little magnetic signs on the signs of the vehicles. Tasco was everywhere. I did some checking and found out the owner had a huge, huge ego. Bottom line is, I got an appointment with him. I went in and I had an aerial shot taken of our building ahead of time. I had done a little artwork, or had art department, superimpose their logo on this pylon. I had all the numbers from the Department of Transportation as far as how many hundreds and hundreds of thousands of cars pass this building everyday and I had this picture blow up into a huge—must have been 4x6 feet, had it covered with purple velvet, which I found out believe it or not was his favorite color. Had it on a tripod and I set it up and then I sat down and then I started talking to him. He kept looking over at this thing and saying, ―What‘s that?‖ ―Well, we‘ll get to that in just a second. Here‘s what we can do for you….‖ And I laid out the building and all the details. Of course it was way more than they wanted to spend and he said, ―No, I don‘t need that kind of exposure, it‘s too expensive. We don‘t need to be out there.‖ One thing led to another and I started to leave and he said, ―Wait a minute, what the heck is behind the purple curtain thing?‖ ―You‘ve already said no, so there‘s no sense in showing it to you.‖ ―Well, I want to see it.‖ I pulled back the purple velvet and here‘s this phenomenal color aerial shot of this building with his logo plastered on the pylon. He sat there and looked at it and he said, ―You SOB. You did your homework, didn‘t you?‖ I said, ―Yes, I guess I did.‖ And he said, ―All right, let‘s meet tomorrow.‖ So the next day we start meeting with his real estate people and his attorneys, and within two or three weeks they owned the building.

Michael: It was sold at a real premium?

Stan: Yes. It was absolutely a premium price because again, the building was in great shape, it was right on the Palmetto, easy access. It was basically set up as a warehouse. We already had offices built in one section, it was real easy to convert to just about anything they needed. They needed office space. They needed manufacturing, they needed warehousing space. They needed loading docks. Everything that they needed, we had in abundance. Probably a little more than they actually did need, but that was part of my sales presentation also is that you could grow into it and I had even found a law that he could have sublet one of it if he needed to for the time being just to help offset his monthly payments until he could grow into it. As it turned out, they grew into it real quick. Of course, the lesson there is it really was this simple, Michael. I appealed to the owner‘s ego. It was that simple.

Michael: How can professional sales people appeal to their prospect‘s ego to generate more sales or maybe generate a better presentation when they‘re prospecting?

Stan: What an [inaudible] question. I guess what I‘ll share is that not every skill or technique is going to work with every sales pro, with every prospect or customer. That‘s why you need to have a variety in your arsenal. But in this particular case, keep in mind that most people want to be loved, they want to be respected. One of the great lines a lot times you can use for managers is, ―Wow, this is going to make you look like a hero, isn‘t it?‖ Whether it‘s saving money for their company or whatever. Make somebody feel important. Everybody wants to know ―what‘s in it for me.‖ They may be an employee, a manager, or sometimes even the owner, they want to be respected, they want to be looked up to. They all have an ego to some degree, not always that big of an ego, but usually the more important someone is the more money they have, the deeper the pockets they have, they have a bigger ego. Interestingly enough, most of those deep pocket people also hold their cards very close to their chest; they don‘t like to go and necessarily run around and brag about it. Let me give you a quick example, if I may. If you‘re qualifying someone and you say, ―Tell me a little bit about the kind of work you do.‖ Well, someone with deep pockets is liable to say, ―I‘m in banking.‖ Again, what does that mean? I don‘t know if the guy‘s a bank teller or what, so I would use a continuation phrase like, ―Interesting. Tell me more.‖ ―Well, I own three banks here in West Palm Beach.‖ So just by using a continuation phrase I didn‘t buy into the first response because the first response is not necessarily always the whole truth and nothing but the truth. A lot of times you have to use a continuation phrase to get them to explain, justify or enhance their original short answer.

Michael: When he says, ―I‘m in banking,‖ he really doesn‘t want to share that much about himself, is that what you‘re saying?

Stan: Exactly, because he figures if I know how deep his pockets are then I‘m going to get more money out of it.

Michael: That‘s a good technique, the continuation phrase. Tell me more.

Stan: Those three magic words, ―tell me more,‖ I can‘t stress enough. While we‘re on the subject, one of the things I teach people is selling is so simple, all you need to do is find out what you need to do or say to make a sale and the way to do that is qualifying of course. But in Selling 101 we were taught that there‘s open-ended and close-end questions. And of course, open-ended are better because they give you more information, but depending on your product or service, you may have five, eight, ten questions that you need to ask and it can almost end up sounding like an FBI interrogation. One of the advanced techniques I teach with the mega buck income producers I work with is we qualify without asking questions. We use instructional statements, like ―share with me a little bit about your family.‖ Now if you listen carefully, that‘s not a question, Michael, if you will a direct order. The way you say it will sound much more conversational and less confrontational. ―So, bring me up to date on the best investment you‘ve ever made.‖ ―Fill me in on what it would take to make you happy.‖ ―Tell me more about…‖ These are all lead-ins to instructional statements and even then, whatever their answer is, don‘t go to your next subject— immediately use a continuation phrase like, ―Then what happened?‖ ―Tell me more.‖ ―Please continue.‖ You get them to explain or enhance or embellish their original response and now you‘ve got the whole truth. Getting them your product or service, these people have been qualified by many other sales people selling the same thing and all the sales people use basically the same scripted questions. Over a period of time our prospects have developed scripted answers for these scripted questions, and thereby that‘s where the term ―buyers or liars‖ came from. You‘re not getting the whole truth when you just ask the standard qualifying questions that everybody else asks.

Michael: And these are techniques to get them to talk so you can do your job of listening so you can determine what exactly this prospect needs or wants?

Stan: Exactly.

Michael: So you compare this to the questions that you‘re used to. You‘re going to come out with a lot more information with these techniques?

Stan: Yes. By using the instructional statements, you‘ll get much more than with closed or even open-ended questions and then, by using continuation phrases, you‘re actually showing them that you have a sincere interest in whatever they‘re talking about. And people would rather talk about themselves than hear about the ten most famous people that ever lived. So if you give a person an opportunity to open up and talk about at least one of their favorite subjects, which is themselves, or herself, their job or career or their business or their family, they will open up and tell things to a complete stranger that you‘re just amazed.

Michael: Can these techniques also be used over the phone for cold calling?

Stan: Absolutely. Quite frankly, you can apply them face to face, belly button to belly button. Even though I specialize in telemarketing, I do a ton of work in direct sales where it‘s one on one; nothing is ever done on the phone. Maybe some prospecting, maybe setting an appointment, but the actual sales process is one on one.

Michael: Since we‘re talking a little bit about cold calling, can you tell me about another story. A story you told me about making a $265,000 on a cold call.

Stan: You‘ve done your research. This is when I still in selling, before I became a trainer, and I was cold calling up into New Jersey one night and I got a hold of a doctor—

Michael: What were you selling?

Stan: I was selling investments, high ticket items. So I got about four words out of my mouth and he heard the word investments and proceeded to yell, holler, scream, cuss at me and slam the phone in my ear. One of the things that I teach in certain situations is, feel free to call back and say, ―Hey doc, I‘m sorry. This is Stan again. I apologize. We must have got disconnected.‖ And then you continue your talk.

Michael: So you acted like you got hung up on?

Stan: Right. The reason you do that is because, believe it or not, the majority of the people that do yell and scream and cuss at you or hang up on you, that is their only line of defense and if you can get through that they usually are very easy to sell. It‘s almost like going out cold calling, knocking on doors where you see the sign that says ―no solicitors allowed.‖ They‘re easy sells and they know it and they‘re trying to keep you away. I called him back, I said, ―Hey doc, it‘s Stan again. We must have gotten disconnected and he was the exception to the rule. He said, ―You little SOB. We didn‘t get disconnected. I hung up on you and I‘m going to do it again and if you ever call me back again I‘m going to report you to the NASD, the CFEC, the state attorney general‘s office and I‘ll call my mother.‖ And he slammed the phone in my ear again. So I called back and of course at this time you normally get a busy signal and I tried every five minutes or so and kept getting a busy signal. About half an hour later somebody must have walked by his phone, saw it was off the hook and it was going beep, beep, beep, and they must have put it back on the cradle because when I called about thirty minutes later it rang through and he answered the phone. He said, ―Yeah?‖ I said, ―Doc, before you hang up on me a third time I gotta ask you one quick question.‖ Guess what he said?

Michael: What?

Stan: ―What?‖ Who has control?

Michael: You did.

Stan: Absolutely. Always remember, and this is a great skill, curiosity always overpowers programming. He was programmed to blow me off the phone again but he couldn‘t get the words out of his mouth.

Michael: Just like with the Tasco.

Stan: Exactly, there‘s a correlation there. I said, ―Before you hang up, I‘ve got to ask you a quick question.‖ ―What?‖ I said, ―It sounds like you‘ve had some God awful experiences before in the investment arena over the phone.‖ And he said, ―I sure have.‖ And I said, ―I am so sorry. Tell me more.‖ And for the next two minutes he told me everything I needed to know. He yelled and screamed, but interestingly enough it was almost like letting the air out of a hot air balloon. The longer he talked, the mellower he became and he was saying things like, ―This guy kept calling me from South Florida. He‘d call me two or three times a day for a month until I finally bought.‖ Is this is a good prospect? Stay with him long enough, you‘ll sell him. And then I said, ―My God, what happened then, Doc?‖ He said, ―Then he made me all these promises and I sent him $100,000.‖ ―Oh my God, $100,000? On a first sale? Holy smokes.‖ So I said, ―What happened then?‖ ―Oh, I lost it all.‖ I said, ―Doc, I am so, so sorry.‖ I said, ―I‘ve got to ask you though,‖ as I‘m getting ready to write, ―Doc, what in the world did this guy tell you over the phone to get you excited enough about sending him $100,000?‖ And I‘m writing and I‘m saying ―go on.‖ And then what happened? What did he say next?

Michael: I don‘t know; what?

Stan: He was telling me exactly how this guy sold him.

Michael: I see what you‘re saying. He‘s giving you his buying strategy.

Stan: Exactly; what his hot button was. What objections or concerns he had and how the guy overcame him. Interestingly enough, and this is very important, he was also telling me some words and phrases that he did not want me to use. These are words and phrases that he associated with a very painful experience. Do you follow me?

Michael: Do you remember what a couple of them were?

Stan: Not off the top of my head. But when I teach people to sell investments, two of the key questions we do ask is ―share with me,‖ and again it‘s not really a question, it‘s an instructional statement; but ―share with me the very best investments you ever had.‖ I don‘t really care so much what it was. Michael, what I‘m looking for here is a couple of favorite words or phrases that this prospect uses to describe this questionable experience, because if I‘m real smart, if they legally fit what I‘m selling, I‘m going to use those words and phrases. Ninety-nine percent of the people will not know what‘s happening when you‘re using their favorite words or phrases. All they do know is they‘re starting to feel real comfortable communicating with you. On the other hand, we also say, ―Now without causing you too much pain, what was the worst one you ever got into and what happened?‖ Again, I don‘t necessarily care what it was, I‘m looking for words and phrases that they use that they associate with this bad, painful experience because if I‘m real smart I‘m going to write them down and never use them. Makes sense?

Michael: Makes perfect sense, yes.

Stan: The bottom line was, I said, ―Doc, I‘m so sorry. I do thank you for sharing.‖ He said, ―You know, I kind of like you.‖ Now listen to this. He had been talking for two, three, four minutes. All I had been doing was leading the conversation by saying ―go on; tell me more; what happened next; what did he say next,‖ all I‘ve been doing is listening. But he ended up saying, ―You know I kind of like you. What the heck have you got?‖ At this point I started using take aways. I said, ―Doc, believe me, it‘s not the right time to discuss that now.‖

Michael: What‘s the strategy? Why did you choose take aways at that point?

Stan: Because I wanted him to beg me, ask me, to sell him. I didn‘t want to try to be another salesman. I didn‘t want to be pushy like this other salesman had been. I wanted to use just the opposite approach; have him try to sell himself instead of me trying to sell him. So I started using take aways. I said, ―Doc, trust me, it‘s not the right time. Maybe on a future conversation.‖ ―Well, what have you got?‖ I said, ―Doc, trust me, it‘s very risky.‖ And he had used the word trust several times in a good way, so I kept using this word back. I said, again, ―Trust me, it‘s very risky. You could lose all your money and that‘s the last thing you need to do is get involved in another investment where you could lose all your money.‖ ―Well, what the heck is it?‖ I said, ―Doc, I‘ll tell you what, let‘s talk in about a week.‖ And he said, ―Damnit, what the hell have you got?‖ I said, ―All right, if you insist.‖ ―I do.‖ I proceeded to tell him what we sold and did all the disclaimers, did everything legal, and he said, ―Yeah, I like that.‖ Bottom line was, about twenty minutes after he had already hung up on me two times he said, ―You‘ve got a deal. I‘ll wire the money tomorrow.‖ He opened up a new account. The next morning he wire transferred $265,000.

Michael: That‘s incredible. What was your commission on that, do you remember?

Stan: At the time it was about 4%, do the math it was a pretty good day in paradise. The minute that happened I went around to about fifty other sales people that were on the same floor as I was and I said, ―Please, give me anyone that hangs up on, anybody that yells at you, cusses at you, I‘ll buy the darn leads.‖

Michael: And did you get any?

Stan: Yes.

Michael: Were you able to turn others around the same way?

Stan: Yes and that‘s why I found that that is basically their only line of defense. If they can blow you off in the first five or ten seconds like they do 88 or 99% of the other schmucks that call them, you‘ve got a good shot at getting them to open up. And the reason they blow you off is because they have pain; they have hurt, something bad has happened to them and you can never sell—they will not be receptive to anything new until they dump their garbage. You have to give them that outlet to let them tell you all about what happened. In the process, two great things happened. One, they‘re getting rid of some of this anger and pain and hatefulness that they have been storing up for the next guy that calls them on the phone, but at the same time you‘re also finding out how they were sold in the past.

Michael: That is very powerful. I really like what you‘re explaining her because at the same time, the ―tell me more,‖ you‘re looking for their unconscious buying patterns and your listening and you‘re getting him to tell you the exact way he buys and then your mirroring him with some of the positive words and you‘re avoiding the negative words to increase the chance of that sale.

Stan: Wow, you‘re taking notes!

Michael: That‘s good stuff.

Stan: You‘ve hit the nail right on the head. Again, that‘s one of the beauties about being able to do business on the phone is I don‘t have to worry about looking interested or how I‘m sitting or anything else. I can concentrate 100% on listening to him, what he‘s saying, how he‘s saying it, what does he really mean, what are the words he‘s using, how is he using them. And I can take enormous notes. Interestingly enough, do you know Mike Brooks, Mr. inside sales?

Michael: I do not.

Stan: You might even interview him. Mike has been a protégé. He now has a best selling book out on Amazon. We met back in the ‗80s and the way a lot of people know about me is he was struggling to even stay in last place in his sales organization and his manager said, ―Here, buy these tapes from this guy named Billue. This is the last hope for you.‖ Anyhow, Mike bought my tapes and within thirty days became the top salesman in that company, went on to double his income every year for three years, became a millionaire and now he‘s out teaching others how to do— basically followed in my footsteps. Mike will tell you the single greatest catalyst, if you will, for him turning his career around was that he had heard me on one of my tapes say, ―The greatest thing you can ever do to improve your career is tape record and critique one phone call a day.‖ You don‘t need a manager, you don‘t need seminars, all you need to do is listen to yourself and you‘ll hear whether or not you‘re pacing yourself to your prospect or you were stepping on their answers, or he asked you what time it was and three minutes later you‘re telling him how to build a clock because you‘re too wordy; or you‘re not even answering his question. Whatever the case may be, it‘s phenomenal what that one technique will do for you.

Michael: Also, just to recap on these prospects who hang up on you, what appears to most sales people–probably to even professional sales people—is that this is going to be your toughest client when it‘s really the opposite. It could be your easiest and best sale.

Stan: Exactly. And the lesson to be learned there is I earned the right to make a presentation by listening. I allowed him to dump all of his garbage into the process, I was finding out how he was sold before and by tweaking it a little bit I got him to go instead of $100,000, to $265,000.

Michael: How much today should professional sales people present with presentations? Is that a good strategy?

Stan: It‘s an interesting question because a lot of times the sales process might not all take place at one sitting or in one phone call. Depending on your product or service, you may be doing your qualifying and setting an appointment and then going over to visit with them to make the presentation, or you may be qualifying on the phone, by law sending out a prospectus or something and then calling them back to do your presentation. So it‘s not always done at the same time. Yes, there are some distinct steps. The qualifying process should be about 80/20, which is 20% me talking, 80% me listening. The presentation stage should just be the opposite, which is about 80% me presenting, talking and the prospect 20% talking. So yes, they will have a couple of questions. They will have a couple of concerns. They will have a couple of objections. If I‘m not getting anything from them in the way of feedback, I‘m going to elicit some feedback just by using some tie downs or [inaudible] tie downs, or questions just to make sure that I‘m doing my job right. Interestingly enough, it can be the wording you use. I never teach people to say ―do you follow me?‖ That‘s almost implying that they could be stupid, that they‘re not smart enough to follow you. Instead you say, ―Am I making myself clear? Did I explain that properly?‖ Little minor things like that won‘t necessarily make or break your career. What I teach sales people is if you‘ll add one skill or technique to your arsenal a day, that‘s 5 a week, that‘s 20 a month, that‘s 250 a year; you‘ll be able to go elephant hunting with a self-bomber instead of a pea shooter.

Michael: That‘s great. Let‘s do another story. How you started your career as a trainer.

Stan: My reputation was that I doubled my income every year for five straight years, which is true; semi-retired to my Arabian horse farm that I was building on the St. John‘s River. Bought a Bass boat, went fishing every morning and every evening and within about two weeks was bored to death. I knew I could sell. I knew I had made selling a science, if you will, because remember that one hour a day for five years? Well, you can quit at the end of five years. I kept investing that hour a day. In fact, interestingly enough Michael, this past July I just celebrated my 31st anniversary of investing at least one hour a day to become a little better today than I was yesterday.

Michael: That‘s great. If you ever run out of material let me know, I‘ve got some stuff on the site for you.

Stan: Believe me, I‘ll plug your site to no end. You discovered me and told me about your site, man, I have been on it, downloading and listening. See, this is the beauty of it. There‘s no excuse for a bad year, a bad month, a bad week or even a bad day in selling. All the masters that have gone before us have committed their skills, their techniques, their attitudes, their mindsets, their time tables. Anything and everything you ever want to know is already there. In your case, it‘s the spoken word, which is even more powerful to most of us than the written word. It‘s there, all the great ones. So yes, I would encourage anyone that any waking moment—why turn on the boob tube and watch and two and three quarter hours a day of people entertaining you when you could invest some time every day to become a master of your craft. So there‘s a plug for your site.

Michael: I appreciate it. There‘s one particular interview you may be interested in, it‘s with Melvin Powers. He was the great, famous mail order man and he‘s still alive, he‘s in his 80s; he doesn‘t like me saying his age. He was very heavily into Arabian horses as well and he was a publisher, he was Wilsher Books, and he publishes a whole line of books on horse racing and Arabian horses and he was into that as well for a long time.

Stan: I will definitely look him up and listen to him and exchange some e-mails. I‘ve heard of him by reputation. How I started my career as a trainer. I went ahead and I sat down at the dining room table and I started organizing all of the skills and techniques that I had been using, it was almost like swipe files, organizing it all into the different segments; like the approach, how to keep from being blown off in the first ten seconds, how to work through screeners, how to arouse interest with benefits, how to bridge into the qualifying, how to qualify it properly in less time for larger amounts of money, how to bridge into the presentation or set a firm appointment, how to call back for your presentation and not get blown off the phone again (―I‘ve read it, not interested‖ or ―Haven‘t read it yet. Call me back in a week.‖). How to do add-on or step-up selling so I can write larger orders; how to overcome objections, how to close sales, how to get referrals. That‘s another thing, I‘m known as the king of referrals. What to do after the sale. I started organizing all of this and then I hired an English major to go into a recording studio with me, because English was never one of my best subjects, and I wanted to make sure I wasn‘t mispronouncing anything or using it in the wrong context, and I recorded my first six pack, if you will, six audio tapes. Called it Double Your Income Selling On The Phone. I had a tape duplicator make up fifty sets and got on the phone, started calling stock brokerage companies and basically cold called asking for the manager. And Stan Billue does not like rejection, so I used Pat Murphy, and I‘d say, ―Hi. Pat Murphy here. I understand you guys do business over the phone.‖ ―Yes.‖ ―How many sales people?‖ ―Six.‖ ―Great. There‘s a new set of cassette tapes out called Double Your Income Selling On The Phone. They‘re really great and you ought to get a set.‖ And they‘d say, ―Well, who‘s it buy?‖ ―Some guy by the name Stan Billue.‖ ―Never heard of him.‖ ―I hadn‘t either until I listened to his tapes, but I‘ll tell you, they are powerful. In fact, Nightingale [inaudible], which is the largest manufacturer of tapes in the world, only gives you a thirty day money back guarantee. This guy, Stan, gives you a 90 day money back guarantee. So hey, use him for ninety days. I don‘t care if you don‘t like the color of the ink on the label, send them back and get your money back, have him cancel your credit charge. It‘s a win/win situation. How many sets did you want?‖ Basically, I started selling my tapes over the phone. Interestingly enough, within a week or two the phone would start ringing. ―Hello?‖ ―Yes, is Stan Billue there?‖ ―Hold on, let me transfer your call.‖ ―Hi, this is Stan.‖ ―Hey Stan, we bought your tapes a week or two ago from that Pat Murphy guy.‖ ―Yeah, Pat‘s a character isn‘t he?‖ ―Yeah. Listen, this is some good stuff here. Do you ever do live dates?‖ And I‘d say, ―Do I do live dates? You were lucky to catch me on the phone.‖ I‘ve never done a live date in my life Michael!

Michael: Yeah, I got ya.

Stan: So they‘d say, ―We were interested in having you come in and do some training. What do you charge?‖ I said, ―Well, what‘s your budget?‖ Whatever figure they‘d give me, I‘d say ―Oooh,‖ which is what I call the disappointed technique, and they‘d always say, ―Why? Do we need more?‖ ―Well, yeah.‖ We‘d basically arrive at a ballpark figure and they‘d say, ―What can you do for us?‖ I‘d say, ―Well, let me ask you this Mr. Manager, if you could wave a magic wand and improve three areas of your sales process that would dramatically impact your bottom line like virtually overnight, what would they be?‖ They would say, ―Write larger orders, open more new accounts and get a lot more referrals.‖ We‘d talk a little bit and then I‘d say, ―Well, Mr. Manager, in wrapping up, a four hour seminar I believe that we can help your people open more new accounts, write larger orders and get more referrals.‖ They‘d say, ―Wow, that‘s just what we need.‖ They‘d say, ―When are you open?‖ I‘d flip through my pages and I‘d say, ―When did you need me?‖ And they would say, ―We were hoping for next week.‖ ―What day next week?‖ ―Maybe Tuesday morning?‖ ―You know what, it‘s your lucky day, I am open Tuesday morning.‖ And I‘d do a date. At the end, they‘d say, ―Wow, this is great. Do you have anymore?‖ And I‘d say, ―Oh yeah, and it‘s a shame if you don‘t bring me back because my next presentation is so much better than this one.‖ So I got repeat business and of course being the king of referrals, I‘d also say ―You know, without telling me your direct competition, you‘ve got to know some other managers from other investment houses. Who do you know that could need a shot in the arm?‖ So I‘d get referrals.

Michael: When you created the tapes, wasn‘t your intention to do training on it? Or was that just—

Stan: Absolutely.

Michael: It was, okay.

Stan: Everybody else in the industry basically put a tri-fold brochure flyer together, mailed it out and then hoped the phone would ring. They were begging for people to buy their products or, better yet, book them. What I did was I turned the whole process around, I dealt from a position of power. I made them come to me and ask me to come and do training for them by selling them my product first; just completely backwards from anybody else that was doing it at the time. Within one year from the day I was doing nothing except bass fishing and feeding my horses, within one year I had taken a three car garage on my property, remodeled it into about 600 square feet of offices. I had a staff of three people that were just shipping product, booking my travel and keeping track of my Marriott points and my airline miles and had five people on the phone, full time, selling my tapes over the phone and I was on the road doing up to 22 engagements a month for the next 20 years.

Michael: Twenty years? What were you selling your engagements for? How much at that time?

Stan: I started my career in late ‘83, as far as a speaker/trainer and back then if it was around Florida it could be as low as $1,000 to $1,500 for a four hour seminar. If it was out of Florida, it was usually $2,000 to $3,000 because I did pay my own expenses. I found from a couple of speakers that after the magic wears off sometimes, then a month later your client gets a bill for the airline or the hotel and wanting them to pay sometimes didn‘t work real well. Plus, I didn‘t want to argue with somebody about why stay at the Marriott rather than the Holiday Inn or why I flew first class instead of coach, or whatever. I just booked it as an all inclusive; I cover all travel and expenses.

Michael: Were you selling product in the room?

Stan: Yes. And these came from my years when I worked with American Sales Masters, which is a whole other story. Let me get back to yes, I would go in and say, ―I‘m going to do the presentation. Here‘s the introduction. For any speakers that are out there, this will help you, believe me.‖ The person introducing you can really set the tone for the entire meeting. If you just let him get up there and say, ―Okay guys, get your attention. We‘ve got some guy here, Stan Billue—talk with you a little bit more and try to get you to sell some more so you don‘t get fired.‖ I had a standard introduction I made them read that made them sound like the second coming and before we actually went on stage I‘d say, ―Now, at the end of the program I‘m going to be offering them my tapes. If you like what you heard on the tapes, you‘re going to darn sure going to want them to have those tapes because not just four hours today, they can actually have me riding with them in their car to and from work and the [inaudible] reputation I‘d sell him on the idea of power of listening to the spoken word and what I would do is give him volume one, it was $125; let‘s say it‘s both volumes, within the second year I had produced volume two. Both volumes are like $197 and believe it or not, twenty years later they‘re still that price and they‘re sold in forty-five countries. Why? Because the content is that great, number one; number two, there‘s no mistakes on it because I had the English major in there and took out any second takes or any mistakes or screw ups or whatever. The most content rich series ever produced on selling.

Michael: What‘s the title of them again?

Stan: Double Your Income Selling Over The Phone. But again, 95% of it can be applied to face to face selling.

Michael: You‘ve got a volume one and volume two?

Stan: Yes. And my website is www.stanbillue.com, real simple, all one word. My DVDs, my CDs, I‘ve got all kinds of free stuff; free articles, free positive affirmations, all kinds of neat stuff. Anyhow, I would say to him is, ―I can share this series with him at the end of my seminar and sell them for $197 for those interested today, the company‘s going to pick up half of that. Now you don‘t really have to pay me that half, I‘m actually going to discount it 50%, but they‘re going to think that you‘re paying half of it. Now, can you do me one other favor? Some of the guys may be a little tapped between paydays; can you do a payroll deductions for those guys that don‘t have the cash or don‘t have a credit card?‖ Then what I was leading to is basically getting one check when I walked out for 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 or 50 sets or whatever, and then let them worry about collecting the money from their sales people.

Michael: Where did you learn that strategy?

Stan: From, again, studying other great speakers and trainers. When I decided to be a speaker and trainer, I did an enormous amount of research, who the best were. And most of them said they would make two and three and four times as much income selling product in the back of the room as they ever did for a speaking fee. So I became a master of my craft at selling product.

Michael: That‘s great. Were your clients pretty willing to do the deduction on the paychecks and stuff? Were they okay with that?

Stan: Once in a while I would have a couple of people that would say, ―No, I don‘t want to go into that; an accounting nightmare. Get them to either pay cash or credit card or whatever.‖ But I would work with them. You can‘t make everybody happy. Again, not every skill or technique or strategy is going to work every time with everybody. Let me just back up slightly too and share with you that when I decided to be a speaker and trainer, I joined the National Speakers Association. At the time I believe there was something like 1,400 members; there‘s probably 4,000 or 5,000 today. But I got the membership list and I noticed about 700 of them were motivational speakers and the other 700 were sales trainers. I said, ―You know, I don‘t want to be a small fish in the ocean. I want to be the whale in the pond. I want to be the big fish in the small pond.‖ So I looked a little closer and there were actually two people, there was a Tom Norman and a Mona Ling, I remember them very well, that actually specialized in selling over the phone. Everyone that I could talk to said, ―Hey, that‘s the coming thing. You don‘t want to drive around in 120° car fighting traffic, making maybe two or three presentations a day when you could make two or three presentations an hour by learning how to sell over the phone.‖ So I decided to be a specialist, if you will, and build myself out as one of the greatest telemarketing sales trainers in the world and then spent the next 35 years leading up to that reputation.

Michael: That‘s great. We‘re getting into the lesson about how you position yourself as a big fish and when we talk about positioning, just three simple examples. When you were telemarketing on the phone you used a different name so you could position Stan Billue as the expert rather than Stan Billue saying how great your tapes are, why don‘t you buy them. You also gave the example of when your clients would introduce you to the people you were speaking to, that was positioning as well because you had written and prepared the introduction, so it made you more receptive to the listeners. And then also you gave an example of when you sold your tapes first and then had your clients call you asking you for a speaking engagement, that‘s also positioning as well.

Stan: I‘ll give you one more example of positioning. You remember I said at the end, when I was sitting with the manager, I‘d say, ―By the way, without giving me your direct competition, you‘ve got not other—―

Michael: There you go, your referrals.

Stan: But listen to what I would do. He would say, ―Yeah, I know Bob Jones over at ABC Company.‖ ―Okay, what‘s his number?‖ And they‘d look it up in the Rolodex, they would give me the number. I‘d say, ―Would you mind giving Bob a call right now?‖ Now why did I do that? He‘s still in the ether. He just saw ten minutes and when I hit the stage I‘m soaking wet in a minute and a half; he saw ten minutes of me fire and brimstone, getting his sales people excited. They all held their hand up; they raised their hand. They wanted to invest in their future and buy my tapes. The guy‘s booking me for a repeat engagement already; he‘s in the ether. I got him to call the referral and say, ―Bob, we just had this kid Stan Billue here. Holy smokes, has he got my people fired up. You‘ve got to talk to him. You‘ve got to have him into your room.‖

Michael: What would you have him do? Would you say call him or I‘m going to have him call you? How would you position that?

Stan: When they had the Rolodex open they were reading off the number to me, I‘d say, ―You know what, since you‘ve got a minute, you‘ve got the phone right there and the phone number in front of you, would you give Bob a call real quick?‖ ―Well, okay.‖ They‘d pick up the phone and call Bob.

Michael: What would you do after they told him how great you were? Would you get on the phone?

Stan: Sometimes they would say, ―Here, let me have you talk with him.‖ And I‘d just briefly introduce myself and say that ―I‘ve got to catch a flight, but I will give you a call tomorrow. What‘s a the best possible time to reach you? In case I miss you then, when is an alternate time I can almost always be able to reach you?‖

Michael: Sum up the lesson for number four, how you started your sales career and then we‘ll go on to another story.

Stan: Always position yourself from power. Don‘t beg for business. If at all possible, position yourself in power and they will come to you and ask you for business.

Michael: Number five. Getting a company with fifty offices to pay for your video production, tell me that story.

Stan: I was selling a ton of cassette tapes and everyone was talking about the training of the future is going to be video; it‘s more powerful. You can‘t get a sales room together necessarily and have them listen to thirty minutes of an audio, it‘s got to be much more effective. If you can turn on the TV and they can watch the speaker because there‘s another sense involved and all that good stuff. I decided I would produce some video training. Well, I didn‘t really have or choose not to use my own money. I‘m a big believer in OPM (other people‘s money). I had a client that I had started with that had twelve offices when I started with him. Within a year and a half they had fifty offices. I was doing a great job for them. They actually had me under contract to do all of their fifty offices, four times a year. Do the math on that; that was a sweet one.

Michael: You were presenting to all fifty of their offices?

Stan: I was going around once every three months to each one of the offices doing a four hour seminar. They loved me so it was a natural for me to say, ―Look, you keep expanding and I keep taking on more clients, I‘m going to not be able to do all these dates for you. In addition, when you‘ve got somebody brand new that‘s just starting and maybe they just started the day after I was there, you don‘t want to wait for three months until I come back to give them this kind of quality training, do you?‖ ―Well, no. What do you have in mind?‖ ―Well, I‘m going to produce a video series. Here‘s the deal. The thing‘s going to sell for $1595, it‘s going to be called Ninety Telemarketing Skills, it‘s going to be on eighteen videotapes with five complete training sessions on each tape. It‘s going to have a leader‘s guide. It‘s going to have a workbook, which I‘ll give you the rights to reproduce for every telemarketer or sales person you‘ve got. And here‘s the deal, you buy them for only $1,000.‖ Now what‘s the catch? ―You‘re going to pay me today, you‘re not going to get them for about a month.‖ I got them to write me literally a $50,000 check. The whole series I figured was going to cost me about $40,000 to film and edit and produce the way I wanted it because I wanted it to be first class. As it ended up, the whole thing cost me almost $50,000, but it was their money and I ended up having somebody else put up the money to produce my product.

Michael: That‘s beautiful. What‘s the lesson?

Stan: The lesson is, I built tremendous value and benefits to them to get them to buy and pay up front

Stan: When you are green, you grow. When you are ripe, you rot. Many people that I work for have been in the industry 5, 10, 15, or 20 years, Michael, but they don‘t necessarily have 5, 10, 15, or 20 years experience. They have one years‘ experience 5, 10, 15 or 20 times over because we all have the tendency to get lazy, sloppy, get into a rut, and we quit growing. Right now with the way that the world is and as fast as it is changing, you need to be on top of your game. You can‘t be using the same language and the same style necessarily that even worked 5 or 10 years ago or maybe even last year or the competition is going to eat you for lunch. So constantly be striving to be the best that you can become and make that commitment to become a master at your craft.

Michael: Have you been with American Sales Master‘s yet? Where did all that come within your training?

Stan: Right after I left Jerry Rosch, the last time that I actually worked for American Sales Masters for about a year and a half.

Michael: Before you started doing your own tapes and training yourself right?

Stan: Exactly.

Michael: Tell the listeners who American Sales Master was.

Stan: Back then they were producing these all day seminars where they bring in people like Jay Douglas Edwards who was at that time the dean of American Sales Trainers. Fred Herman, the kind of asking questions, by the way I will tell you a great Fred Herman story in a minute, Dr. Vincent Peale. They also saw, the future if you will. What they were doing is they were filming all of these great speakers. They put together this library of 80 to 100, believe it or not 16 mm films because it wasn‘t on video back then. They would sell people or rent them a series of like 12 films. You get to choose 12 different films over the next year, to build a meeting around, about 30 minutes a film. Interesting enough, that is when I learned one of the greatest techniques that I ever learned and that is establish criteria for sale. Know what needs to be done to make the sale and both you and your prospect agreed on it ahead of time. We would literally go out door-to-door looking for any companies that had any kind of sales force and offer to do a free 30-minute meeting. In that 30 minute meeting we would come in and show one of these films.

Michael: What was the pitch? I am sure you remember it.

Stan: I am with American Sales Masters. First I do a lot of qualifying to find out if they had sales people and to find out what some of their challenges were. You know American Sales Masters is a company that produces all of these great seminars. A lot of companies are finding that the cost is prohibitive to sending their people to all-day seminar, when in reality you can have the same speakers right on film and use them whenever you want. You know rather than eight speakers in a day, use a different speaker every week or whatever, every month. What we do is we offer to come in and do a 30-minute meeting, no charge or obligation on your part and we will show one of these films. All we ask is that you and any other decision makers be present from start to finish. Number two, if you and your guys like what they see that you will sign-up for our program. Here is the deal. Whatever it was, you rent like 12 tapes for $1800 or something. Then we would do a free dog and pony show and literally lug a 16 mm canister of film, a projector and our briefcases into these offices and set them up. Before the meeting, we would also get them to agree to meet with us immediately before and after the meetings, the owners. So we set up everything and we go in and say, ―Okay, as we agreed, we are going to meet for a few minutes. Here is the introduction. Here is what I want you to say. Again, just to reconfirm, if you and your guys like what you see, after that you will sign up for the program. Is that correct?‖ Well, one of the owners couldn‘t make it. All right, I will be happy to reschedule. Well no wait a minute, you have all of your stuff set up. I know, but our agreement was you and the owners would be present from start to finish. Well yeah, but my guys are ready for the meeting. I know, but we don‘t do free shows.

Michael: That is about setting the criteria?

Stan: That is establishing criteria. I get them to agree to be there from start to finish. I get them to agree to meet with me before and after this seminar. They agree to make a decision, whether it is yes or no. You know no maybes or no, I want to think about it. You know, you are going to see first hand the quality of the material that we have and how your guys relate to it and respond to it. So there is really nothing to think about.

Michael: Okay, so if the other owner weren‘t there you would take off.

Stan: Exactly. If they said, I can‘t stay for the whole meeting. I have to run out. Well then we will be happy to reschedule. We just didn‘t give it away for free.

Michael: Okay, so you would go in and so if all of the criteria was there then you would do the presentation.

Stan: Yeah, I would take it a little bit further. I would say, ―Okay you have 20 guys there, what would you say would be a majority?‖ Well, I let them pick 60%, 70%, 80% or whatever. So out of 20 guys, we get 16 of them to hold their hand up and say that they learned something and they would like to see more. Would that be good enough for you? We really nail them down to what is it going to take to write business before I leave today?

Michael: I am curious to know what you did after the presentation was over to close them on these meetings.

Stan: Simple as that they would say usually, ―That was great. Thank you very much.‖ Super. Okay. Here is our agreement and I will sit and help you pick the best speakers for your company.

Michael: You learned a lot of your techniques before you did your own audiotaping and your own training yourself?

Stan: Yeah and before I actually got on the phone and started selling for a living, because again, I was on this quest of an hour date. When I went to work for American Sales Masters, I had the option of being in charge of the library for all of our distributors in the southern United States, which meant that every time someone had a meeting and used one of the films, they would send it back to me. I would make sure that it didn‘t break, that it was clean, and get it repackaged to send out. So literally every night, I would be sitting in my little apartment watching 4, 5, 6 hours or the greatest speakers and trainers in the world.

Michael: Is this stuff still around anywhere?

Stan: To the best of my knowledge, I don‘t believe that they are marketing it anymore, but you can probably still find some archives if you go on U-tube or some of those places.

Michael: Who are some of the guys that just blew you away?

Stan: I could almost go back and say Jay Douglas Edwards, the dean of the sales trainers. He was Tommy Hopkins mentor. Ask Tommy sometime about Jay Douglas, they were actually neighbors for a while. Tommy Hopkins uses my video training to teach his telemarketers how to sell tickets to Tommy Hopkins.

Michael: Does he really?

Stan: Jay Douglas Edwards, I learned the power of intimidation almost to the degree where he was too strong for a lot of people. He basically, unfortunately, was a one-trick pony if you will. He only had one style. He was not adaptable to different personalities. Basically if you didn‘t like his style that was tough and he would go on to somebody else.

Michael: What was his style? Intimidation?

Stan: Intimidation, total control, almost to the point where it just smacks. It‘s too cute, too strong. The 95% rule; 95% are leaders and 95% are followers. It might work with the majority of the 95, but the leaders, which again are the ones with the fairly deep pockets. They will tell you to go blow it someplace that they don‘t need it.

Michael: Okay, who else really impacted you?

Stan: Fred Herman, the king of asking questions. I told you that I would share a quick story with you. He was on Merv Griffin Show when Merv still had his TV talk show. Merv introduced him and said, ―This is Fred Herman, one of the greatest sales trainers in the world. Fred, sell me something.‖ How would you like to be under that kind of pressure; a couple million people watching on TV, right? He said, Okay, what would you like me to sell you, first question. Merv looked around and said, ―Sell me this ashtray here.‖ He had a beautiful ashtray on the desk for decoration. Frank said, ―Okay, so why would you like that ashtray?‖ Second question. Merv said, ―It is purple. It is gold. It matches the décor and it is nice.‖ Frank said, ―Okay, what would you give for that ashtray?‖ Third question. Merv said, ―I don‘t know, $15.‖ Fred said, ―Okay, I will let you have it.‖

Michael: That‘s great.

Stan: But he was the key of asking questions. Zig Zigler of course was a hero. I learned storytelling from Zig. Some of it is hokey, some of it is corny, but I love that southern accent and believe it or not a southern accent is the second best accent or dialect you can ever have on the phone. A true British accent is best by far. It‘s memorizing to listen to someone that uses the English language properly. So I picked up how to tell stories and how to use a little humor and how to be a little hokey and corny sometimes, to get down home with folks.

Michael: Let‘s get into another one of your case studies, another one of your stories. Number six, getting Pat Bell to use you as a keynote speaker at their convention. Tell me about that.

Stan: This was amazing because it actually opened up a whole new career for me. I had been doing some training for about, I don‘t know, eight or ten Pack Bell offices out in California, getting rave revues, getting rebooked. One day a very distinguished African American walked in just toward one of the end of one of my training sessions and I could certainly tell that he wasn‘t a telemarketer or even a manager. At the end he introduced himself as one of the executive VPs of Pack Bell. He said, ―You are doing a great job with our guys. We are going to promote this big 3-day convention down in San Francisco on telemarketing. We are going to have hundreds of vendors there. We are going to have booths. We are going to have speakers and we are going to do breakout sessions everyday where people can choose from like 6 different speakers to go to and learn everything that they ever wanted to know about doing business over the phone. We would like you to do a breakout session. I said, ―Fine, I would be happy to do that. Who are you using for your keynote?‖ He said, ―Well we are still negotiating with a couple of people.‖ Basically in a nutshell I told him that I could take it. He was complimenting me on all of my funny stories and all of the humor that I used and how I was as much of a motivator as I was a sales trainer. So I kind of left that out of the beginning of the story, but I played off of that. I said, ―You mentioned that I was motivating your people.‖ Oh yeah, you are getting rave reviews and everything else. I sold him on letting me do a 20-minute keynote address in the morning, each one of the three mornings, because I didn‘t want to be one of six speakers that they were choosing from for a breakout session when I could talk to every one of the attendees in the morning for 20 minutes. Does that make any sense?

Michael: Yeah.

Stan: All right. So I am getting a double whammy, if you will. I am getting the motivational talk, the keynote speech in the morning, plus my breakout sessions. Well, interestingly enough within a year, Michael we had figured out that we had booked something like 86 additional speaking engagements from managers and owners that had seen me at the seminar doing a motivational talk and they were booking me strictly as a motivational speaker. Some of them didn‘t even know that I was a sales trainer. So that opened up a whole new career as a motivational speaker. So I had to quick get some product out there so I could have something to sell from the back of the room because I found myself talking to employees who didn‘t do any selling or customer service rep in some cases that didn‘t do any selling. So I had a whole new career now blossoming as a motivational speaker.

Michael: That 20-minute keynote, you knew that was a big opportunity. What did you do in that 20-minute in front of all of those people that really separates you from all of these other speakers?

Stan: Basically I asked him what was he looking for as a keynote? Why had he not made a decision yet? He told me basically exactly how he wanted those 20 minutes to go. He wanted a lot of laughter, he wanted a lot of humor, he wanted some funny stories that made a point, and he wanted to talk about attitude and goal setting. So basically I just gave him back exactly what he was asking for.

Michael: That is what you do just do what the boss wants basically?

Stan: Exactly. So I am there to earn my paycheck. I don‘t have a set speech, if you will. It is segmented. So whether it is training or motivation or even consulting work that I do I basically find out what they need. I don‘t try to assume ever that I know what they need.

Michael: What do you like doing, the motivational stuff or the telemarketing cold calling training better?

Stan: Both really because honestly it takes a mix. I don‘t know if it is 50/50 or 60/40, but you can have the greatest attitude in the world and a lousy command of skills and never reach the full potential or even have a great command of skills and a lousy attitude and never reach your full potential. So it does take a mixture of both.

Michael: All right. So what is the lesson with this story?

Stan: Well basically I was able to start a whole new second career as a motivational speaker because of the additional exposure. I saw opportunity when he was describing what they were going to use. I said, ―I could be that motivational speaker. I could be that keynote speaker.‖ You are listening to an exclusive interview found on Michael Senoff‘s

Michael: Can you give our telemarketers listeners a couple of tips on getting past the gatekeeper?

Stan: A couple of things. I try to get on a first name basis with the screener if at all possible. I try to treat her as a real person and not just a machine. I show empathy sometimes. I say, ―Your boss probably gets a lot of these kinds of calls.‖ Right, all the time. I can assure you he will thank you for putting this one through and here is why. Then I throw in a couple of benefits. Sometimes a screener is so good that you are not going to get through, so you might have to work around her. As an example, I have somebody like Count Dracula‘s wife on the phone as a screener and she is just not going to let me through no matter what. I might simply say, ―By the way, what time do you all go to lunch there?‖ Well, twelve to one. Why? I was just curious. All right, thank you for your time. Guess when I call back? Between twelve and one because she is at lunch and whomever they pick out of the crowd to say hey sit here for the next hour and if this thing blinks, answer it. She is not as nearly as proficient as blowing me off the phone as she was. Another technique is what we call the wrong department call. Depending on the product or service that you are selling and who you are calling, most companies have an accounting department or a sales department or a shipping department. So if I just call up and say shipping please, the odds are unless there is a Mr. or Mrs. Shipping working there, they are not going to put me through the third degree. Can I tell him who is calling? Is he expecting your call? Why are you calling? How did you get our name and all of that other stuff. They just put me right through to shipping. Shipping, hi who is this? Bob. Hey, Bob. Sorry to bother you I was actually trying to get a hold of Mr. Big. Can you transfer my call? Now many times when you transfer you pass through the operator. You are not saying anything or they could say, no you have to call back. Okay, Bob what was your last name? Bob Jones. Okay, Bob. So you are suggesting I call back and ask for Mr. Bigs? Is that right? Okay, thank you. Now listen to this. Ring, ring - ABC Company. Ralph Peterson please. May I tell him who is calling? Yeah, Stan, I was just talking to Bob Smith down in shipping, he suggested that I call. Is he available?

Michael: That is beautiful.

Stan: Now, many times she will say something like, ―I don‘t know he is away from his desk.‖ She may be on the ground floor and he may be up on the sixth floor. She really doesn‘t know where he is at. So many times we simply say, ―We understand. Please put me through to somebody else in his department.‖ Because, again, you can say like in account, ―I was looking for Bob Jones. I understand he is not at his desk right now.‖ Yeah, I don‘t know where Bob is. Oh, here he comes. He was just in the restroom. Hold on. So I got a contact where I wouldn‘t of had one before. Another great one and then we will go on to another subject. When she says, ―I‘m sorry he is not in his office right now.‖ I say, ―I understand. Please page him, I will hold.‖ I have had even company corporate presidents tell me that this is the greatest single thing that they have ever learned from me as far as being able to reach more people in less time. Is simply to say, ―Please page him. I will hold.‖ If that is too strong for you, ―I understand. Is there any way that you can page him or locate him for me.‖

Michael: Just tell them what to do?

Stan: Yeah. Invariably you will hear something like, ―All right hold on.‖ You are not going to hear, ―No, I‘m sorry he is not in his office right now, Stan. If you hold on, I will place you on hold. I will be happy to page him for you and try to get the two of you together because that is my job. I love my job.‖ They are not going to work that hard. You have to tell them what to do.

Michael: That is great. What about voice mail? I mean today it is almost sometimes impossible to get people to pick up the phone. They are screening their calls. They are using voice mail. They are using email. What do you recommend that professional sales people or sales people out there, telemarketing, which are hitting a lot of voice mails? Do you recommend that they leave a message or just try to call back and get someone on it?

Stan: Well we try not to leave messages because you want to be different than everybody else. Everybody else is leaving a stupid message. So what we recommend is usually hit zero because in many cases you will at least be connected to a live operator and you can say, ―Hi. I was trying to get a hold of Michael and I got his voice mail. Does he happen to be there in live and in person?‖ Many times doing that can connect me. Another thing is if I try to find the best time to call, they say I don‘t know. He is always busy. I say, ―I know, but would you recommend morning or afternoon?‖ Well I don‘t know his schedule is always crazy. Okay. Who would we need to talk to? He sets his own schedule. I can‘t help you. Listen to this. ―Is there a particular time of the day or week that I shouldn‘t try to call?‖ Well yeah, don‘t call from 8:30 to 9 in the morning. She just told me that I could reach him at 8:25 or 5 minutes after 9 almost any day.

Michael: Some of the old timers from American Sales Masters, was there anyone doing telemarketing at that time? Anyone who positioned themselves as an expert over the phone?

Stan: Absolutely none. Everything that I learned, again I learned a little bit from Tom Norman. I learned a little bit from Mona Ling. I think Tom Norman had a little cassette tape series out. Mona Ling had a book out. I did call them up and introduced myself. I brain picked the bejesus out of them, but let me tell you the greatest way that I learned how to sell. This is one of the secrets that I teach mega-buck producers. Every year for five years that I made my living on the phone, I got a free education from one of the top sales people in the country. Here is how I did it. Let‘s say that I was selling investments. I would look in the Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, whatever looking for any company that sold any kind of investment. If they were dumb enough to run a toll-free number, which most of them did, I would call up and pretend I was a prospect. ABC Company. Hi I saw your ad in the Wall Street Journal. I don‘t have an account with you all, but I would like to talk with one of your brokers. By the way, we could be talking some serious dollars here so I don‘t want to talk to a rookie or trainee. I want to talk to the best broker that you have.

Michael: So you would get the best guy on the phone to sell you?

Stan: Exactly. I don‘t know if best meant $50,000 a year or $500,000 a year, but in the next 20-minutes I got a free sales training seminar. I got to hear how he introduced himself, how he qualified me, his wording, his phrasing, his terminology, his attitude, and his tone of voice and eventually then I asked my company to allow me to put in a separate phone line that I paid for so that I could have him mail me out information and call me back. I wanted to hear the rest of the story. I wanted to hear the rest of the presentation. Toward the end I would always say, ―Michael this sounds pretty good, but I have to talk it over with my wife.‖

Michael: Yeah, you get them to write the script book.

Stan: Yeah, could you repeat that last line a little slower? Yeah, I got them to write my script book. I became a mimic. A couple of wise people taught me that you don‘t have to go reinvent the wheel. If you want to be successful, just go and find somebody else that is already doing what you want to do, that already has become what you want to become, and then mimic them. Tony Robinson says, ―Success leaves clues.‖ It is not that difficult.

Michael: Who is the guy who took your course and became like the all-time greatest salesperson in several of his industries.

Stan: Mike Brescia and I will be happy to give Mike a plug. His site is called Think Right Now International. I highly recommend it. It is the most visited self-improvement site on the web today, but yeah Mike was kind enough to send me that testimonial. He said, ―Hi Stan. Mike Brescia here. I know your work from the 80‘s when I first started in phone sales, high-ticket investments. I sucked at it. After that I couldn‘t even close someone on buying a Christmas Wreath over the phone, even though it would support their local Fire Department. I listened to your tapes and thought that there could be no one alive who could turn a prospect around like you or could teach it like you do. You are like a machine when it comes to saying what needs to be said, when it must be said, and in the way that it must be said. Your tapes are real hands-on stuff like no others I have heard before. So, I worked at the skills and literally played those tapes until they wouldn‘t play anymore and became the highest-paid salesman in the world in a few different industries. So a real thanks Stan.‖

Michael: Why don‘t you tell me another success story, Stan?

Stan: Well I had a company, this is still when I was a speaker and trainer. They had twelve offices. They loved what I was doing. I was doing basically a half-day seminar at each of their offices. They kept saying, ―We would like to have you back.‖ It was twice a year, then it was three times a year, and then it was finally four times a year that they were having me back in each of the offices. Again, that was like 48 dates a year. In hindsight a lot of people didn‘t believe that I could do as many as 22 engagements a month. The reason that I was able to do that was that I went for multiple clients. This is another little tip that I will share with your listeners. If you have any speakers or aspiring speakers, one of the things that I decided early on was to go after clients with multiple offices. Why go and try to sell one client, one date, when I could sell the client 12 dates or 30 dates or 50 dates? Duh. It just made a lot of sense. So anyhow, the reason I called that one of my biggest sales was because they wanted me back. The last time they asked me to come four times a year. I said, ―Okay, but you are going to pay me a quarter at a time and let me set the dates. They will all be roughly three months apart, it might be not quite 3 months or a maybe a week or two later, but I need to be able to set the date because I am getting so many other dates. Like someone wants me to come in and speak at a convention in San Francisco. Well I can do your La Hoya office, your LA office, and your San Bernardino office a day or two before or the day or two after, but I need to be able to support my big money dates.‖ I was implying that they weren‘t paying me big money. So that is how I got them to prepay me a quarter at a time, which was 12 offices at about $2,500 each. So that was a nice little paycheck every quarter like clockwork and I got to literally call them about a week ahead sometimes and say, ―Okay, I will be doing your La Hoya office next Tuesday.‖

Michael: What percentage would you say over those 20 years was your speaking on as you broke it down to motivation to telephone selling or selling skills in general?

Stan: Interesting. The first couple of years, of course, it was telemarketing. Then after I did the Pack Bell convention it became almost 50/50; half motivation and half sales training, if you will. That basically then opened up a third career for me as a consultant. I hadn‘t planned on necessarily talking about that, but I had a lot of clients. Well one in particular at this one time. You know, we love what you have done with our sales department. You did some attitude motivation for our customer service people. You had suggested that we get everybody together for a working lunch and brought pizza in, so that we have all of our employees in the motivational talk. Man, everybody just went sky- high. You have been with a lot of companies, right? Oh yeah, hundreds and hundreds. Well you have seen what works and doesn‘t work and doesn‘t work, right? Well, of course. Well could we pay you like maybe to come in for a full day? We will give you access to every department, every manager, and let you ask them any question that you want. We know we are doing like 90-95% of what we are doing right, but can you maybe help us with the other 5% or 10%? That opened up a whole new career as a consultant.

Michael: Well what did you charge for that?

Stan: Many times I would negotiate a small percentage out of their increased business or a small percentage out of the additional overhead that I could cut and save them money. So a lot of times I didn‘t get as much money up front, but I kept getting residual checks for 2, 3, 4, or 5 years. I got one client that 15 years later I still get a little quarterly check from them.

Michael: Let‘s say for your telemarketing training, did you favor certain types of businesses to sell that training to? Who responded most to that?

Stan: I am quick to listen and learn. When I was sitting with a manager after a seminar one day, I said, ―You know again not getting your direct competition, but you know some other managers dah-ta-dah.‖ He said, ―Yeah I know Larry. He has six offices.‖ Well cha-ching. The bell just went off. Why am I out here trying to sell one office, one training date when there has to be other locations out there with six or more offices. So that is what I went for. Early in my career I just went after the people that had multiple locations. Every time I was talking to somebody, how many other locations do you have? Who do I need to be talking to? Interestingly enough, I mentioned that I had five people on the phone selling my tapes. Remember out of my garage?

Michael: Yes.

Stan: One of the things that they would ask everybody whether they bought the tapes or not is by the way, does your company, organization, association or whoever, ever use any outside speakers or trainers? Well, yeah. Who do we need to talk to? Now they didn‘t follow up on it. I had a separate person who just followed up. They would give me that lead. ABC Company, Joe Blow Books, their convention speakers, whatever and I had the name of the person that referred us, which helped me get through the secretary.

Michael: So they would give you the person who booked their other speaking engagements, but not the actual speaker.

Stan: When my people were cold-calling the manager to sell them a set of tapes, they would say, ―By the way before we part friends. Does your company ever use any outside speakers or trainers? Great, who do we need to talk to?‖ Now simply by having them ask that question and filling out a little slip, I paid them, believe it or not 20% of the engagement. So some of them were making a ton of money, almost more than they were selling my tapes, simply by getting referral fees from me. I took care of my people. For more exclusive interviews on business, marketing, advertising, and copywriting go to Michael Senoff‘s

Michael: Tell me what is the lesson for number seven? Getting the company with 12 offices to prepay?

Stan: Again, I just built value. I did a little bit of the take away and the fact that I was actually kind of doing them a favor by working as cheap as I was. By paying me up front and prepaying me and allowing me to set the dates, they were getting the very best that I could offer them.

Michael: Okay, number eight. You sold a $12,000 product in a 20-minute talk.

Stan: Yeah, $12,000 of product in a 20-minute talk. An MLM company called me and said we are going to do a convention on a cruise ship. Well I love cruising, so I negotiated a first class suite for my wife at the time. Her grandmother actually, we brought her along. So I had an adjoining bedroom. They paid my fee and a 4-day cruise and all I was supposed to do was talk 20 minutes to do the keynote at the start of the convention. Well he told me, he really warned me ahead of time. He said, ―I have to tell you about 80% of our distributors are Mormons. They are a very unusual bunch. So here is basically what you can‘t say, what you can say.‖ I did probably two hours with him just on what their personalities were. Why they were in it, which a lot of them weren‘t in it for the money. They were really in it to just help other people with their health. What I could talk about and not talk about as far as income and goal setting. I mean you talk about when someone says, ―My business is really different.‖ Well 99% of the time you say, ―Yeah right.‖ It ends up being the same. Well this one was different. I got on the Internet and researched Mormons. I actually found a couple of Mormons that lived in the area and went out and spent some time with them. I learned about why they don‘t use electricity and everything else. He admitted that it was even a stretch for them to have this convention on a cruise because they were going to be exposed to so many things that they normally don‘t have as part of their normal lifestyle. So anyhow, the bottom line is I just did a phenomenal amount of research to make sure that I didn‘t say something wrong in 20 minutes. I was an absolute hit. My wife was at one exit and I was at the other. Three hours after my 20-minute talk, three hours later, we were still taking credit card orders and I was signing autographs. We went back to import everything, all the credit card slips, and the checks and the cash on the event and it turned out to be over $12,000 in product sales just on a 20-minute talk to about 260 people.

Michael: All right, number nine. Selling a company to use me for three months of consulting and training and expanding that to eighteen months. Tell me about that.

Stan: Well I was retired basically. I had a company that had a sales manager. We had known each other for 20 to 25 years. He has used me I think in every company that he has ever worked for. He has always had me come in and do what we call a dog and pony show. He had me fly up and do four hours of training. Well the response was so great, and what I mean by that is, immediate increase in sales like starting the next day. He said, ―Can you come back and do three full days? Not necessarily of training, just do a little training everyday with everybody, but what we will do is we will actually record their phone calls and let you sit down and critique their phone calls where they can actually hear both sides of the conversation. Then you can tell them what they could of done differently or maybe how they could of handled the situation any better. Also, a lot of them were stuck in a rut. I want you to do that banker question that you do.‖ Basically depending on how deep their pockets are, it could be $50,000 or $500,000. I also use this with prospects. When I ask them what is the most important thing that I want to accomplish with their investment dollars over the next couple of years. They say, ―Well make a lot of money.‖ Well that is not the answer I want. So I say, Michael, let‘s imagine for a moment that your banker calls you tomorrow morning and says that some anonymous donor had just put $50,000 in your account and it is all yours tax free, but there are a couple of catches. First of all, you can‘t invest it or save it. You have to spend it. Number two, you have to spend all $50,000 by 5 o‘clock tomorrow or you lose the whole $50,000. Michael, I want you to close your eyes for a moment and imagine that you get $50,000 tax-free. All of your bills are paid, all of your obligations are met, you have $50,000 and you have to spend it by 5 o‘clock. What is the one thing that you have always wanted to do for yourself or your family? Out comes the boat, the cabin in the woods, education for your grandkids or whatever. That is why, he would consider sending $50,000 to somebody he doesn‘t know, he has never met, to buy something that he doesn‘t know a whole lot about. There is no common sense, logic, or rationale to that. It is pure emotion. You have to find the hot button. So I would sit down with these individual sales people and use the bank question. You are going to set goals. Whether it is a fancy car or getting a doublewide instead of a singlewide trailer, you are putting some wheels on the pickup that has been sitting in the yard. I don‘t know what it is. You know a travel vacation around the world or whatever. I get them to set some goals because if you have a goal, that gives you a purpose to come in and bust your butt. If you don‘t have a reason to come in and bust your butt, you will do just enough to get by and complain that leads suck or your manager is unfair or the economy is bad. So anyhow, I did four names. The response to that was incredible. So they said, ―We love to have you here. We can‘t have you here full-time. What do we need to do?‖ Well, basically I sold them on four-days a week. I told them that I only work four days. I play for three. That is when I recharge my batteries. So I agreed to fly up there Sunday night and work for them for four days. Fly back Thursday night and have my three-day vacation. Of course, which also meant that I could still do a couple other dates. Well the longer I was there, the more areas that either I found or they found that they needed help in. Whether it was marketing, advertising, whether it was customer service, whether it was fulfillment, whether it was accounting, you name it. Bottom line is that I turned a four- hour training engagement into an eighteen-month consulting arrangement. I made probably more in that eighteen months than I had made in the previous eight years.

Michael: What kind of company was it for?

Stan: In the investment arena, which again is one of my specialty fields. I do a lot of work in other areas, but quite frankly I love to go into a room with guys that are making six and even seven figures a year, that have just been yanked off the phone for four hours. They are sitting there with their arms folded saying, ―Okay champ, you better be good because you are costing me a fortune to sit here and listen to you for the next four hours.‖

Michael: You like those guys.

Stan: Oh I love them. I eat them for lunch. I love it. I love to take someone that is already great and make them into a superstar. If they are already a superstar then turn them into a megabucks income producer. They say that an old dog doesn‘t necessarily learn new tricks. I have to tell you that old dogs appreciate a new trick once in a while.

Michael: All right, so give me the lesson for that last case study and we will move on to the last one.

Stan: I just actually found out what they needed and I gave it to them. The minute that I got an order complaining about something I would say great, if you can wave a magic wand and improve two or three areas that would dramatically impact your bottom line, what would they be? Then it was just a matter of finding out what they did in the past to correct that challenge. Many times it is so simple Michael. Going into a shipping department. Hi. I‘m here doing some consulting work. I am curious. Who do you use for shipping? UPS. Okay, and how long have you used them? Forever. Okay. Have you grown over the last couple of years? Yeah. When was the last time that you brought the UPS rep in and tried to negotiate a lower rate. Never. When was the last time that you sat down with the Air Borne, DHL, even the Postal Service to compare rates. Never.

Michael: Yeah, it is that easy. You just ask them questions.

Stan: Yeah, again Fred Herman - asking questions. Someone asked Fred Herman once, why do you always answer questions with a question? He said, ―Why shouldn‘t I?‖

Michael: So Fred Herman, that was his thing. His was asking questions. That was his USP for his sales stick.

Stan: Yeah. I am going to share another little insight with you. I never told anybody, but at the time I was on this quest. Again, displaced repetition learning. I am lazy. I never finished High School. I hate to study, but I thought this is a man from heaven. I can listen to his spoken words 16 to 21 times and absorb 95% of it. I mean I had stuff flowing out of my mouth that would make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I would say, ―Whoa. That was good. I don‘t remember staying up last night memorizing it. I don‘t remember rehearsing it 16 to 21 times.‖ I didn‘t have to. I pumped it into my ears and it came out of my mouth. It still works to this day. What I was going to share with you was my wife at the time and my son who was living with me sat me down and said, ―You are driving us nuts.‖ I said, ―What is the matter?‖ They said, ―You are making money. We appreciate the nice dinners and all of the other things that you are able to provide for us, but you know we know who the heck you are listening to every week.‖ I said, ―What do you mean?‖ Well like three weeks ago, we knew you were listening to Jay Douglas Edwards because you were intimidating the hell out of us. We knew you were listening to Zig Zigler because you were telling all of these goofy, funny stories and half of them weren‘t even funny. This week you are listening to Fred Herman and you are driving us nuts with questions. Yeah, but just take the best from each one of these and mix them into your personality and be the best you that you can be. What a great lesson that was.

Michael: That is great. Okay, let‘s do one more story and then I am going to let you go. I have taken up way too much of your time.

Stan: It has been my pleasure. If 1 person or 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 listen to this tape or this recording or two or three parts or as long as it ends up being, if it helps them create a better life style, if it helps them become a better person, then our investment today has been well worth it. The last point that I am going to share with you is 6-months ago I officially retired. I said, ―Okay, I am not doing anymore training dates, I don‘t care what. I have developed claustrophobia. I don‘t like to get on airplanes. I have a couple of books I need to write. I moved over to the ocean. I am right on the ocean, north of Daytona Beach. I am looking out right now at the ocean. It is beautiful. It is relaxing. I took my formula, remember that one-hour a day, five days a week for five years and become a world expert?

Michael: Yeah.

Stan: I proved it worked. So I said, ―Okay, what if I do five hours a day, for one year. I could become a world expert in one year.‖ So about 6 months ago, and I am still not there yet, but I literally invest at least five hours a day. I subscribe to I believe it is almost 300 newsletters and e-zines that are anywhere from daily tips to weekly or monthly seminars or whatever. There are all kinds of free teleseminars where basically they have a seminar to sell you on buying their course, but the teleseminar is free just in hopes that you are going to sign up. Then there are sites like yours, which are incredible. Then again, I don‘t know if you are just rich and doing this to be nice or what. The amount of time that you invested to get literally the best speakers, trainers, consultants, and you name it in the world and get them to commit either their thoughts or their skills through audio or digging up some of the great talks of all times that you have been able to dig up and post on your site. It is incredible. I am a sponge. I listen to all of these. I watch speakers. I listen to the voice-overs on infomercials and two-minute long form commercials. I watch evangelists. I watch trial attorneys.

Michael: Who is your favorite trial attorney for hard-core selling?

Stan: The ones that I quote often, whether you like him or not and he passed on a year or so ago, and whether you like what he did or not.

Michael: Tony Cochran?

Stan: Yeah.

Michael: Oh that is a classic.

Stan: What I teach there is that less can be better. Now Cochran could of done a two-hour summary, closing statement. He was able to in seven words get that man off. ―If it doesn‘t fit, you must acquit.‖ Did he dream that up on the way over to the courthouse that morning? No, that was practiced, drilled, and rehearsed. That was written by some of the greatest copywriting minds in the world. That was video taped over and over to get his facial expressions, his hand movements, and his body language. That was down to an absolute science. So I learn from everyone.

Michael: I think U-tube has that whole thing up there.

Stan: Do they?

Michael: I am just thinking because I would love to see it again. I am just thinking U-tube. I am sure that the closing statement by Johnny Cochran has to be up on U-tube.

Stan: Well, you can certainly learn from it. Again, I watched some of the greatest Evangelists in the world because they have to be making one of the greatest sales in the world.

Michael: Who do you think is really good Evangelist wise?

Stan: Oh gosh. There are so many. There are a couple of African Americans out there. There is a lady out there. I would have to even look on my list to start naming names and I am afraid I would leave somebody off.

Michael: Did you see the interview with Glenn Turner on my site?

Stan: No, but that is another old part of my life. I will watch that. Guys and gals, if you don‘t know Glenn, he could motivate with the best of them. Couldn‘t he?

Michael: Well I have got; it is called Kick Back Your Mind. I think it is on the first page at HardToFindSeminars.com and I took his challenge to America speech, which was about 40, 50 minutes and I edited it down to about 20 minutes. I have about a nine-minute clip of it and it is incredibly powerful.

Stan: I have to go watch that.

Michael: It is just the audio, but it is powerful.

Stan: Do you know the Rice twins at all, Greg and John Rice?

Michael: Yeah, the little midgets?

Stan: Yeah. They were some of the highest paid motivation speakers in the world.

Michael: Yeah, I have another full interview with Glenn from a couple of years ago and he told me that those were two of his stars.

Stan: Yeah and interestingly enough, he originally hired them as bodyguards. This was kind of a joke because they would stand on stage, these little guys, with their hands in their jacket like they had a gun because they were his bodyguards. They use to listen to him do his motivational talks and they said one night, ―Why don‘t we open for you and warm the crowd up?‖ That is how they ended up being two of the greatest motivational speakers in the world. Interestingly enough on my DVD motivational series, I am introduced by John and Greg Rice. When I was just starting my career as a speaker, I was at a motivational speakers convention and I met John and Greg. For some reason, we just really hit it off. They were from West Palm. I was in Orlando. I happened to mention that I was going to shoot these 3, 30-minute motivational talks and package it. I would just do anything to pay them enough. You know how much do I have to save to pay you to come up and introduce me? They were both at $10,000 and $15,000 a night booked 2 or 3 years in advance. Listen to this. They said, ―Just let us know when and we will book it into our schedule.‖ I said, ―Well how much?‖ They said, ―Oh nothing. We will just come up and do it for free.‖ I said, ―Okay, I will book you first class airfare.‖ They said, ―No, no. We will pay our own airfare.‖ They flew up to Orlando to introduce me on these 3, 30-minute seminars at absolutely no cost and all I did was plug their company, ―Think Big, Incorporated‖ at the end of the videos.

Michael: Are they still alive?

Stan: Well John passed away a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, he fell off a curb and broke his leg. They rushed him into the hospital. In the process of putting him under anesthesia to fix his leg, he passed away.

Michael: Oh. I didn‘t know that they were motivational speakers. Were they just incredible speakers?

Stan: Oh, they were absolutely incredible. Of course they got involved in the pest control business and made a whole bunch of commercials on pest control that are funny as all get out. They were hugely successful in the real estate business. They owned a bank. They owned the world‘s largest poinsettia farm. Oh yeah, they were tremendous entrepreneurs.

Michael: Wow. Incidentally when I just did the interview with Ben Gay, III, I brought up Glenn Turner because Ben Gay eventually became the president of Holiday Magic. Holiday Magic was the multi-level that Glenn Turner was involved with and doing really well with before he started Koscot.

Stan: Isn‘t that wild? It is a small world, isn‘t it?

Michael: It is a small world. Yeah, it was a great story.

Stan: I use to have on my license plate for about ten years by the way, closure.

Michael: All right, so we have to get to your tenth story.

Stan: Be willing to invest some time to become a master of your craft. I don‘t want to be a Webmaster. I don‘t want to know everything that there is to know, but I did know that I wanted to be able to sit here and sell a lot more of my products and services on the Internet. So I have been learning Meta tags and I have been learning linking and blogging and free articles and submitting free videos and all of this other stuff to the point where I can tell you, in the last six months, I use to sell my products in 30 countries. I am now up to 45 countries. My product sales have tripled in the last 6 months, even though supposedly, I guess someone said that the economy is bad or something right now? I don‘t even have the news on. Someone said that it dropped 400 in the last week or two ago. Someone else said that it dropped 700.

Michael: Yeah, I was going to say to you that the interview with Eric and you were talking about how you didn‘t even know you went out to dinner and some guy told you about the stock market.

Stan: I said, ―That is interesting.‖

Michael: That is funny. Oh yeah, the Internet, I am sure you know what a powerful delivery system it is for delivering your expertise and delivering product and sales. It is amazing.

Stan: Again, depending on the product or service that your listeners market, there are some legalities there to be aware of certainly, but in most cases if you are not on the Internet in a big way. Again social Internetting, blogging, newsletters, employee of the month if you have a company put them on there. Have some videos. Make it easy for your customers to navigate your site. Make it easy for them to find you and your products. Work on your google rankings and all of that, so that they can find you. Not necessarily first, but at least find you among the most preferred so that you have a fair shot of making your presentation to people. Have some humor, have some pictures. Use the right colors. Proof read your stuff. There are just so many little things from what I have been able to determine in 6 months, 5 hours a day or more. There is not one thing that you can do. It is a whole bunch of little things. Again it is much like selling. When we first started talking today I mentioned that not one skill or technique or one strategy is going to work with every prospect or client. I just encourage your listeners to become a master of your craft by at least committing to learn one new thing a day. It makes you a little bit better than you were yesterday. My little game that I play with myself, and I don‘t care what time of the night it is, when I finally lay my head down. If I cannot identify at least one skill or technique or choice of words that I added to my repertoire, to my arsenal today, I will literally get back up or surf the Internet or flip on the TV and do some channel surfing. If nothing else I will blindly open up the dictionary and point to any word and add that word to my vocabulary. When you are green you grow. When you are ripe you rot. Many people that I work with have been in the industry 5, 10, 15, or 20 years Michael, but they don‘t necessarily have 5, 10, 15, or 20 years in experience. They have one year‘s experience 5, 10, 15, or 20 years over because we all have a tendency to get lazy, sloppy, and get into a rut and we quit growing. Right now with the way the world is and as fast as it is changing, you need to be on top of your game. You can‘t be using the same language and the same style necessarily that worked 5 or 10 years ago or maybe even last year or the competition is going to eat you for lunch. So constantly be striving to become the best that you can become and make that commitment to become a master of your craft.

Michael: Well stated. Give the URL of your web site one more time and I encourage anyone to get anything from your site. I mean I think just by the last couple of hours of our interview here, it is evident that you know what you are talking about.

Stan: Michael, thank you again. You are a class act and it has been a joy to work with you. The web site again is www.stanbillue.com; it is all one word. S-t-a-n-b-i-l-l-u-e. Again, the bottom line is that the amount of money that I am going to make off of a couple sets of CDs or DVDs, trust me folks it is not going to alter my lifestyle, but the content there will dramatically change yours.