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When you're in back to back meetings all day, you're trying to stay present, but you're also worried you'll forget the decisions that are made in the meeting. The action items you got to do, the important next steps that you need to take. That's where Granola comes in. Granola is an AI powered notepad for meetings. You jot down rough notes like you always do and in the background Granola transcribes and turns them into clear, useful notes. When the meeting ends. No bots joining your calls, no distractions, just a clean notepad that helps you focus. During or after the call, you can chat with your notes. Ask Granola to put out action items, help you negotiate, or even write a follow up email. I've been using Granola for some time now and one of my favorite features is that after a meeting I just ask Granola what are my action Items. After a 30 minute or 60 minute meeting. Sometimes you'll forget to jot down a thing or two that you need to do. So it's always good to know that Granola's got my back and I can just ask it at after the meeting what I need to do next. Head to Granola AI MBA and get 3 months free with the code MBA. That's Granola AI MBA and get 3 Months free with code MBA. Owning a small business comes with a lot of challenges. When I was starting out, I was chairing meetings, I was scripting and shooting podcasts, I was putting up social media posts. It's a lot. I know, I've been there. There is no doubt growing your small business is hard. It's even harder to do it efficiently. But with LinkedIn you get all the tools you need to grow in one place. With LinkedIn, simplify your sales, marketing and hiring so that you can, you know, actually run your small business. Learn more@LinkedIn.com mbashow I have a confession to make. For the first few years of my entrepreneurial life, I was terrible at sales. And it's not because I didn't believe in my product. It was because I did. I didn't want to become that guy. You know what I'm talking about? That slick closer, that relentless person that doesn't take no for an answer. I told myself if my product was good enough, I wouldn't need to sell. So I avoided sales completely and my business suffered because of it. It's actually a miracle I didn't go out of business. Honestly though, I was resisting because I thought selling was convincing people to buy things. They didn't really need. I thought it was pressure. I thought it was persistence and persuasion and just being, you know, somebody who had the gift of gab. I thought the best salespeople were the people that can talk anyone into anything. Everything I believed about sales was wrong. So in this episode, I'm going to give you a real masterclass. Everything I know about what works when it comes to sales. By the end of this episode, you're going to be better at sales than 99% of the rest of the world because some simple principles that you will learn and implement immediately. Welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow and scale your business. If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week. And more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much. The crazy thing is that I resisted sales all my life. You know, my dad was one of the best salesmen in the country in the US and there were so many things he taught me that I just neglected and then I had to go back to so that I can become better at sales. And I want to share with you some of those lessons as well as some of the things I learned on my own. The first thing I need to do is I need to get into your brain and rewire the definition of sales. We need to do this because how you perceive sales, what you believe about sales, will change the way you approach sales. What I'm about to do, rewire your brain when it comes to sales is going to make everything easier. It's going to make sales effortless. You're going to make a whole lot more sales because of it, and you're going to enjoy the process on top of it. You're going to feel good about what you're doing. If you knew the show, you probably don't know that. My first job was washing cars at the wash bay at the car dealership my dad worked at. My dad was in car sales for most of his adult life. We would drive to work at 9 o' clock every Saturday. I would go wash cars and then he would go sell cars. And my shift ended at 3pm the wash bay closes at 3pm so I would go up to the showroom from 3pm to 9pm when the dealership closed, and just sit and watch my dad sell cars. The first thing I noticed when I was sitting in the showroom is that on the wall there were these plaques. And on the plaque they would have the best salesperson of the month. And they would like etch their name in the plaque and there'd be a plaque for each year, like 93, 94, 95. There were like four or five plaques there for four or five years. And my dad's name was almost the only name on that plaque. Literally, he was the best salesman every single month. I think out of the five years, there were like two or three other salesmen that were able to beat my dad when it comes to the number of sales each month. Now remember, my dad is an immigrant from Egypt. English is his second language. He doesn't have the gift of gab, but he knows how to people work. And the first thing he taught me was what sales really is. And I'm going to gift you this definition because it's going to change everything for you. So one day after I finished my shift, I saw my dad sell a car. And I asked him, how do you get people to buy things? That's the definition I had of sales, getting people to buy things. And he told me, or go down, get me a cup of coffee in the break room, get yourself a hot chocolate and come back, and I want to have a talk with you. I said, cool. I went down to the break room, I got his coffee the way he likes it, a bit of milk, no sugar, got my hot chocolate, went back to his desk as he was finishing up the paperwork, and he spoke to me and told me, omar, I don't try to make anybody do anything. Then I said, well, then how do you get anybody to buy? And he said, omar, I found that you can't force anybody to do anything. Anytime you try to force any anything in life, it backfires. Then he gave me his definition of sales. That changed everything for me. He said, my job is not to make anybody do anything. My job is to help people make a decision. I was like, what? He's like, yes. They come to me, they're not really sure if they even want a new car, if the car they're looking for is the one that's right for them. My job is to help them get to the point where they can make a decision easily. They make the decision, not me. My job is to be consultant, to teach them, to educate them, to give them the information they need. So that they can. And I said, make a decision. This is the golden rule of sales. If you can believe this to your core and implement this in every way you sell, then you will win. I found this to be true when I started to implement this mentality. I. I've made millions and millions of dollars a year in multiple businesses in sales because of this mentality, Because I come to sales as a consultant, as sort of a guide, Somebody who's going to help somebody make the right decision. Now, sometimes the right decision is not to buy my product or service. And the funny thing is that when I say this to customers, I say, hey, I don't think we're the best fit for you. I think you might need XYZ instead. When I do this, they're like, I want to buy from you even more because of the honesty. And it's like they buy anyway, and they get benefit from it. But again, they're not a perfect fit for my product, but they still enjoy the experience. So this is rule number one of today's masterclass. Your job is not to convince anybody of anything. Your job is to help them make a decision. You are not doing your job if they don't make a decision. Right. So even if the decision is like, no, I won't buy your product, that's fine. You help them get to that point. That's your job. Now, obviously, we want to make sure that we're attracting the right customers so that when we give them the education, we help them make that decision. That decision is yes, more than it is no, but we will get some no sometimes, and that's okay. Now, the reason why this is the golden rule is because it dismisses all the things that people inherently think they hate about sales. That they hate the pressure. They hate the fact that maybe they have to say the right things. Maybe they feel like, oh, if I'm not charismatic enough, they won't love me enough to buy the product. All this goes out the window because that's not your job. Your job is not to be liked. Your job is not to convince anybody of anything or to put pressure on anybody. Your job is to ask questions and answer the questions that they have about the buying process, about what's right for them. Today's episode is sponsored by Rosetta Stone. If you have travel coming up, spring break, summer vacations, weddings abroad, or an international work trip, imagine arriving, actually, understanding the language, ordering your food and coffee confidently, connecting with locals, feeling immersed instead of just visiting. For example, Nicole and I are going to Europe this summer. We're going to Paris, we're going to Italy, we're going to Greece. And I've been working on my Italian with Rosetta Stone and boy am I making progress. And it's for good reason, because Rosetta Stone has been the trusted leader in language learning for over 30 years. Their immersive, intuitive method helps you naturally absorb your new language. No memorizing random vocabulary lists and no relying on translations. Instead, you learn by connecting words visually and meaning in context, the way language is meant to be learned. I love how simple the lessons are. It's very, very easy to jump into a lesson and do 5, 10 minutes of language learning. My favorite thing about Rosetta Stone is that my pronunciation has improved with their True accent feature. For example, as I'm learning Italian, I don't say grazie anymore. I say grazie. I can't wait to feel like a local as I travel through Italy in my upcoming trip. Ready to start learning a new language this spring? Visit rosettastone.com mba today to explore Rosetta Stone and choose the language that's right for you. Go to Rosetta Stone.com MBA now and begin your language learning journey. This episode of the $100 MBA show is brought to you by Booking.com if you're looking to grow your vacation rental business, this is the place to be. Booking.com is one of the most downloaded travel apps in the world, and for good reason. Since 2010, they've helped over 1.8 billion vacation rental guests find places to stay. But here's the thing. Most vacation rental hosts don't even realize they can list their properties on booking.com and if you're not on the platform, your rental is basically invisible to millions of Booking.com travelers worldwide. After all, they can't book what they can't see, right? I book all my travel, personal and business through booking.com and it's for good reason. I love their Genius program. So because I'm loyal And I use booking.com, i'm a genius. Level three. Yeah, I say it with pride because it gets me the best prices. I also love the fact that they give you all the details about all the hotels or the apartments that you're booking, so I know exactly what I'm getting before I check in. Does the place have a gym? Does it have a hairdryer? Does it have a fridge? What about a washing machine? I know because the listing is always accurate and their app is easy to use. So when I'm dead tired after a long flight and I'm trying to check into my accommodation. It's super simple. Just pull up my booking and show it to the host. So if your vacation rental isn't listed on booking.com, it could be invisible to millions of travelers searching the platform. Don't miss out on consistent bookings and global reach. Head over to booking.com and start your listing today. Get seen, get booked on booking.com Rule number two, more questions, less answers. You should be asking more questions in the sales process. Then you should be just, blah, here's my product, here's my service, here's all the features, here's all the wonderful things they could do for you. That is not what you should be doing. Because your job is what? To help them make a decision. And you can't know if the decision is right for them if you don't ask them questions. Let me give an example. When somebody would come and buy a car for my dad at the dealership, he would ask him a very blunt question. Why are you here? Like, what's wrong with your car right now? Why are you looking to shop for a new car? First of all, it's refreshingly honest. And people are like, oh, no one's really asked me this question. Well, you know, I'm kind of like, sick of my car. And there's a few things I don't like. And you'll ask, what are some of the things you don't like about the car that you have right now? See how he's just asking questions because he doesn't know anything about the person in front of him. He wants to find out what their values are. He wants to find out what they care about and why are they in the market to buy something in the first place. So the customer would answer and say, well, I actually don't love the stereo. It sounds kind of bad. I love music. And, you know, the speaker system is not so wonderful. Also, you know, the gas mileage is really bad, and gas prices are going up. I really would love a car that had better mileage. I also just got a dog, so I'm looking for something with a little bit more space in the back, maybe a hatchback trunk that would allow my dog to come with me on trips. Now, if you haven't noticed, this is gold. This is absolute gold in sales. Why? Because now you have information about what the customer actually cares about, what they actually value, what they actually need. And it all starts with asking questions, just like my dad did. Now, my dad showed them a car he didn't show them every feature. That would take hours. Okay. There's like a thousand different new features on this car. So he only focused on the features that matter to the customer. So he showed them the stereo because they love music and they don't love the stereo in their current car. He showed them the fact that, hey, this car does amazing gas mileage. Just 32 miles per gallon or whatever it might be, Right. How much does your car. Your car does about half that. Okay. So you're going to be saving double money, Right? And check out this hatchback trunk. Okay. See how it opens automatically and the dog can kind of sit here and you could still see the dog from inside the car. He focused on the things that actually matter to the customer. He didn't talk about the wishbone suspension or, you know, the 0 to 60 time of the pickup of the car or the paint job. Right. Because the customer didn't really express any interest or care about those things. Okay. Focus on the things that mattered. Now if I'm going to break this down, what you want to do in any sales situation, whether you're on a webinar, whether you're on the phone, whether you're in person, you want to ask questions to find out what the values are for the customer, right? What are the problems that they currently have that need solving? Why do you want to ask these questions? Because you want to show them how your product or service solves their specific problem. That's where the education comes. That's where you help them make a decision. And that's where it becomes a no brainer for the customer to say, hey, I have problem 1, 2, 3. You just showed me your product solves problem 1, 2, 3. I did this for years on webinars. I had a webinar software called Webinar Ninja. And guess how I sold that software on webinars, Right? So it was very meta and it was a good chance for me to show the software off. But one of the things I did at the start of the webinar is I would go into the chat. I would go on video and say, hey, put in the chat right now. What are your biggest challenges with running webinars right now? Remember, I'm selling a software to help them run webinars. And then in the chat they would say things like, oh, it seems complicated. I'm not a tech person. They might say, I don't know how to create a landing page to grab the registrants to get people to register. They might say, I don't know how to follow up with my registrants after the webinar. And I would take note of all these pain points, all these problems. Why? Because when it's time for me to demo my software to my audience so that they could be interested in making the decision to buy, I would show them how my product solved those issues. I'd show them, hey, see webinar Ninja. You create a webinar in 10 seconds. Literally here we're going to go, 1, 2, 3, 4. And they would see how fast it was and how easy it was. So you don't need to be a tech expert. I would show them how we had templates for the registration pages and how beautiful they are and how you can customize them with your brand colors. They'd be like, oh, cool, this is easy. That solves that problem. That problem in my head. That box gets ticked in my head now, right? What's the other problem? Oh, follow up on email. Well, we have actually an automatic follow up system that goes out to all your instruments so you don't have to worry about that. Sends them the replay and, and even your offer if you'd like to. But again, I wouldn't be able to know what to show them if I didn't ask them what they're struggling with, what their problems are. And that is the key to helping people make a decision and make more sales is to solve the specific problems that your customer has with your product or service. I just want to take a quick pause, a quick pulse, check to see. How is this episode going for you? Is it gold for you? If so, I really think you should hit subscribe because we have an upcoming episode that I'm working on that you're going to absolutely love with Ramit Sadie, New York Times bestselling author Ramit Sethi, star of the Netflix show How to Get Rich. Ramit Sethi. Okay. And we discuss at length an incredible question. Is starting a business really the best way to get rich? Because that's how Ramit got rich. But is that the best solution or the best way to get rich for everybody? Hit subscribe so you don't miss that episode when it drops. Golden rule number three. No is not the end. Okay? Many people that do sales are in sales. They hate the word no. They think no is rejection. No is failure. What I found after 20 years of entrepreneurship is that no almost never means never. It usually means no for now or not in this way, or not at this price, or not at this level of the, the trust that we have so far. I Found that when somebody says no in a sales conversation, it's because of four things. Number one, I don't fully understand the value. I don't fully get what I'm getting in this transaction. Number two, I don't trust this enough or I don't trust you enough yet. Number three, the timing isn't right. Right. It just doesn't work out for my life at the moment. And number four, the price doesn't justify it. By the way, each of these are addressable not by arguing and not by pushing harder, by asking questions. Again, questions are your friend questions like, I completely understand what's holding you back. That one question can turn a dead end into a conversations where you can find out if they have a reason why it's a no. And if you can solve for that reason, sometimes you can't solve for that reason, and that's okay. A good example of this is that they might say, well, Your product is $2,000, and I just don't have that kind of money right now. And they may not know that you have a payment plan. You might be like, well, can you afford $200 a month? Because we have a payment plan for $200 a month for 12 months. So it's good to understand why they're saying no, because maybe there's something that they don't know that you can solve that can turn that no into a yes. And I find that this is more frequent than you think. This actually happens a lot. And I want you to maybe reframe it or even ask it from a place of curiosity, a place of, I want to see if I could help rather than just being like this relentless salesperson. Now I'm going to tell you something. Even after asking these questions and seeing if you could solve some problems, and sometimes you just can't, right? And the no is a no, and that's okay. I've had people on my sales webinars where they did not buy, and they would come back to my next sales webinar the next week, and then the next week and the next week. For months, they would be on the same webinar, the same workshop. I've had people attend 7, 8, 9 of these webinars and then buy. Sometimes they just need a little bit more time, a little bit more information. They needed to maybe hear things in a certain way. Maybe they just wanted to build that relationship and trust with you. Listen, we live in a really crazy world and people are skeptical, okay? It's okay if it takes them a few times and A little bit more exposure to who you are and what you're all about in order for them to be convinced that they want to buy from you. Listen, buyers have options, so it's okay if it's a no. Often, I would say 90% of the time, it's just no for now. And I'm more interested in the relationship I'm building with my audience so that when they are ready to buy, they don't go shopping around, they come back to me. And that's the key. You can't make anybody buy anything, okay? Anybody who convinces you otherwise is a charlatan. And it's going to actually hurt your reputation if you pressure people. Because one, it's going to result in a chargeback, which means they call a credit card company, say, hey, I don't want this charge on my card. I got forced into this. You're going to get bad reviews, you're going to get a lot of complaints, and you don't want that. What you want to do is you want to build a relationship with your audience so that when people are ready to buy and you have given them all the information they need to make a decision, they're ready to make that decision and they buy. They'll come back to you over and over again because they see you as a trusted advisor, somebody that they can actually work with. I've had so many customers, countless. I'm talking about, like hundreds and hundreds of customers that have messaged me and said, I've been wanting to buy your product for years. But the timing wasn't right, my circumstances weren't right, I couldn't afford it. All these other reasons. And they said when I finally could do it, I didn't hesitate, went right back to your website and bought from you because I felt indebted because of all the information, all the help that you gave me all throughout the years. That's the value of building a relationship with your audience and not trying to just sell everybody and make that quick sale as fast as possible. We buy from people we trust. That's the bottom line. Even companies, even large companies. Why do you buy Apple products, for example? Because at some level you trust that Apple's going to deliver on their products, that it's going to be a valuable product, that's going to be reliable, that if something goes wrong, I can go to the Apple Store and they're going to fix it for me. So work on building that relationship and that trust so that you never actually have to push anybody into anything ever. This is the Part of the masterclass where I'm going to get extremely practical. And here's something that most people will not tell you. Sales is a numbers game. Okay? You have to understand that the more you try, the more successful you will be. The more people you expose your products and services to, the more likely you're going to sell more of your products and services. It's just how it is. They call sales a contact sport because the more contact you make, the more you sell. So if you feel like sales are stagnant, then kick up some dust. Make more contact. Run more live webinars, run in person workshops or meetups, do some Facebook or Instagram lives, put up some more content on social media or on YouTube or whatever you might be. Get out there and expose the value that you offer the world more and more. And you will get more people reaching back to you and be interested in what you are all about and what you sell and what you can offer. And as you do that, you are going to have more chances at that, more chances to help people make a decision. And what I found after years of sales is that for every five attempts, I get a yes. That means for every yes, there's also comes with four no's. Okay? So remember that if you want to get a yes, if you want to get a sale, you just need to approach five people. At least that's the question that I have discovered throughout years and years of sales, is that if you're genuine about this, if you're genuinely curious about helping people and helping them with your product or services, and you're approaching people that are a good fit for what you offer, you're going to find that you're going to get a yes for every five attempts, and that's okay. And I find that this is really applicable in a lot of ways, whether it's on a webinar, whether it's on email, whether it's on a. An ad that you run on Facebook that you know one in five people are going to say, yes, I want to sign up for that, or yes, I want to, you know, join your email list. And when you see it that way, the energy completely changes. You realize, okay, no is going to be part of the game. And that's okay. Not everybody's going to be a yes. I know that every time I want to get a yes, I'm going to get a few more nos than yeses. 4 On average for every yes. But that's okay because that means there's always going to be a yes on the horizon. The last piece of the masterclass is follow up. Listen, you don't need to be annoying to follow up, but you need to follow up, okay? Studies consistently show that majority of sales happen after the 5th. Contact the 5th. Why? Because people are busy. That people have other distractions. There's other things in their inbox. There's other people that are blowing up their phone. Okay? So don't just send out your proposal or send out your quote and just wait. Follow up. And try to follow up in more than one way, like email. Try a message, try phone call. When somebody calls me to follow up, I actually appreciate it. Because I'm a busy person, I rather just wrap this up quickly in five minutes while I'm driving. I found that when you get ghosted, meaning you get silence on the other side, like you send an email, no one replies. It's very rarely disinterested. It's often just, they're busy. Think about your own life. You are busy. I found that 30% of all my sales come from follow up. I saw this clear as day when I was selling with a webinar ninja. I used to have follow up email sequences after the webinar. 30% of all my sales came from way after the webinar. We're talking about two, three weeks after the webinar following up with the people that attended. Are you happy to give up 30% of your sales? No, of course not. You're leaving money on the table. So follow up. It's part of that. Building that relationship and being a trusted advisor. Today, I don't hate sales. I actually really embrace it, love it. It's a chance for me to help people. Don't fall into the trap thinking that sales got to be this pushy, manipulative way of doing business. No, that's not what you want to do. What you want to do is help people. What? Make a decision. That's all you got to do. Hopefully this masterclass was helpful. I wanted to share with you everything that's actually important when it comes to sales. Everything else you're gonna learn on your own. Okay? And it's okay because the fundamentals I just gave you are gonna take you to another level and it's gonna give you enough sales for you to have momentum and get those muscles flexing, you know, those sales muscles flexing and understanding. Hey, as long as I'm helping people make a decision and I'm helping solve people's problems, I will be of value and I will continue to sell. Thanks so much for making to the end of the episode. If this episode changed the way you think about selling, you're gonna love another episode that we recently published. If you're thinking about creating a digital product, it's called the Beginner's Blueprint for Building a Digital Product that Actually Sells. So if you wanna build like a course, a coaching program, a software templates, you wanna sell whatever that might be a digital product, then you're going to absolutely love that episode. Check it out because we just recently published it and it's getting a lot of buzz. So go ahead and I'll see you on that one and on the next one. Take care. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. Whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts, by hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode. I checked Allstate first and saved hundreds on my car insurance. Really smart. Unfortunately, I didn't check if I took the gas hose out of my car's tank. Oh, not smart. And I drove off while still attached to pump number three. Yeah, checking first is smart, so check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. Potential savings vary, subject to terms, conditions and availability. Allstate North American Insurance Company and Affiliates, Northwark, Illinois.