Last Friday I did a one day course with Jordan Belfort “The wolf of wall street”
There are two clear skills Jordan possesses that made him able to make 50,000 000 / year and have a team of 1000 people woking effectively for him:
1) He is a fantastic sales man
2) Just as importantly he is able to coach these sales skills to others – this is rare.
Firstly sales:
Jordan is a very gifted at this, he has been tested and massively out performs other salesmen. The story he told us was a great example:
He was submitted to testing on his sales ability and asked to sell cows to a farmer. In the test when Jordan closes and the actor cant help but buy the cows then bursts into laughter because he was paid to not say yes under any circumstances. But Jordan just is that good.
No one had been able to do this before in any of the tests.
So what separated Jordan from the rest?
Preparation – Jordan spent 2 hours preparing notes and learning all about the farm and cows. When he went into the meeting he was an expert and he had planned everything and knew all the upsides and downside for the farmer.
The longest any other salesman had prepared was 10 minutes.
When asked about the 2 hours, he said how can I sell him the cows if I am not an expert in that field?
For me this is powerful, it shows that Jordan’s success is no fluke and requires hard work.
Points to learn from Jordan:
Prepare – Know your market back to back
product know your product, finally know your customer its easy to predict what positives your product will have for them and what negatives it will take them away from.
Inspire people – People buy things because they are inspired by what that thing will do for them. Everyone wants to be inspired so inspire them by your product, if its not for them and they are not genuinely inspired by the positive influence it will have in their life they wont buy it.
But this is important – When your selling something your job is to inspire them about your product or you are doing them a disservice.
Make a positive first impression:
Jordan quotes a Harvard’s study on this one, you have 4 seconds to make a first impression, if you don’t make a positive one it will take upto 25 other meetings before you can have that back.
First impressions come down to the following:
in 4 seconds you need to convey:
1)your sharp as a tack
2)your enthusiastic
3)your an expert
On the phone this is done in the tonality of your voice, in person it is done with tonality and body language.
Finally Jordans sales technique
Its called the straight line system. It involves getting a person from Open to close across a straight line.
In the sale you must take someone from the open to the close and by the close you must have them committing to the 3 tens.
- they must love your product (10 out of 10)
- They must trust & connect to you )(10/10)
- They must trust and connect to your company (10/10)
So if you want to use this:
Take your time to prepare your pitch around your customers needs. Make sure you have a compelling argument as to hit the 3 tens. Finally practice and remember the first impression tonality.
Jordan as a coach:
Jordan could not have reached the heights he reached with out his talent to inspire and teach his team how to sell.
He had a few key approaches:
- He does a daily speech to his team, changing their state to a positive and passionate one.
- He has a powerful vision for his company which people follow.
- He is very skilled at building sales systems for his staff. Not just relying on them to sell or ale their own. He breaks down what works through trial and error and eventually builds the perfect system.
Finally here are a few key motivational things I got from the day with Jordan:
Change your perspective on selling, its a positive thing. Especially if your product is in the health industry. People go to health professionals because they know they need help and guidance. To not inspire that person to change is to let them down, it takes a lot to seek out and ask for help to not inspire them into this changing is to let them down.
Make things a must! – You learnt to speak because you had to it was hard but you had to learn, you learnt to drive because you had to..
Build the roots to create the fruits. – Invest yourself, education, software, team, hardware
Most people think they have a fear of failure, Jordan thinks its deeper than just that. Its not their fear of failing thats the problem its their belief that they do not have the skills to succeed.
Make your goals focused not just on what you will gain but what others around you will gain. For me this is very powerful I am much more motivated to help friends and family have the things they truly want in life than myself as I already have my standards.