In 1983, the vision for my life was compacted into a short list, penned on the back of a photo of my future wife, and placed in a glass stand where I could see her and the list. Every item on that list has been accomplished or surpassed.

1. Have a family
2. Work out every day
3. Save $1,000 per month minimum
4. Generate $40,000 per month in gross profit
5. Open my own company
6. Buy a farm
7. Build a home
8. Work with children

Sally and I married in 1984. She had a five-year-old son from a previous marriage who became my son and has my name.  We were blessed with two daughters born in 1985 and 1986.

Until Sally’s pregnancy with our third child, I belonged to a gym and worked out six days a week. Then I gained weight and became fat and happy; not the worst thing. Everyone said I had a rough pregnancy. So I built a workout room in our newly renovated home, got heavily into mountain biking, and worked out regularly until my first illness. That’s a story for another day.

I saved more than four times $1,000 a month and we moved into our first home in January 1985.

After reaching $40,000 per month in gross profit in my second year, I doubled that mark until I left the company.

In 1989, after looking at property for over a year, we bought a farm in Albemarle County VA, just west of Charlottesville.

In 1991, we moved into the old farmhouse and I opened my own company. Our offices were 100 Yards away in a rustic but charming white, clapboard sided feed store circa 1910. It has a green, standing seam tin roof with red shutters and a porch.  The company operated at a profit from the first year and became a cash cow.

In 1996, after more illness, we built a home with a 2 ½-story carriage house for our offices.

I coached baseball at every level from T-ball through high school for fifteen years and was president of the 16 to 18 year old league for five years. All three kids played baseball. The games were a family outing and we had a ton of fun flipping burgers and running the concessions stand. Whatever the kids were involved in, we were involved in.

Our home was the place the kids came to hang out. Twenty or more sleeping bags in our great room were common. Sally would make three-foot tall stacks of pancakes or French toast and our country kitchen would fill with hungry, giggling kids enjoying breakfast on the floor.

Sally danced for the Joffrey Ballet for five years during the 70s. In addition to being an incredible mother, she is a phenomenal teacher.  While the kids were growing up, she operated a part-time ballet school. In 2005, I opened a dance school for her in our modernized Mayberry named Crozet.

Over 100 kids come through her school every week.  Sally teaches children with special needs and is God’s gift to children. Last year we awarded over $10,000 in need-based scholarships and nearly $40,000 since opening.

My duties encompass everything outside of the studio; I’m a walking hat rack. Yes, it was a huge career change, but my reward is having the kids here where I know they are having fun in a safe and loving environment. My favorite time is Saturday mornings when the preschoolers are here squealing in the studio.

List accomplished. I mentioned illness. Bad things happen like near death, bad enough to make you want to quit. Faith and goals kept and keep me going. Now there’s a new list that includes SalesDuJour, but the old one remains on my desk. It’s a beautiful photo with my list that reminds why I work and never quit.

So forget about the quotas. Why are you in sales? What are your life goals? What do you want your life to look like? Who do want included, do you want to have a family? Where do you want to live? How do you want to spend your time? What do you want to accomplish with your life?

Make a list and place it prominently. That’s your quota. Now do it and never quit

You have done a superlative job qualifying, establishing value and ROI, and have the customer’s agreement to both. Now price is the issue? You have invested time, effort, expense, and you’re frustrated, disappointed, and appropriately ticked off.

Don’t show your pain. Grin and bear it, because you’re at the beginning of the negotiations, not the end. When the buyer argues price, what they’re really telling you is, “I want what you have, and I need your help to justify this purchase.”

While in the midst of fear of losing a sale, we lose site of the customer’s own frustration and disappointment. Abandon fear and refocus attention on the reality that they have invested more time, effort, and expense than you. They have worked with other salespeople, researched the market, written justifications from cost analysis spreadsheets, and had too many meetings. They have a lot of skin in the game and they want to walk away with something for their effort just like you.

Price is the easiest solution, but you don’t have to take the easy way out.

There is absolutely, positively nothing more powerful to leverage during negotiations than the buyer’s want of that “one thing.” The secret is finding out what that “one thing” is. One method that serves me well is offering a horse of a different color. Remove an option or feature, scale down the offering, or suggest something completely different.

• Can you live without a saddle?
• Would our smaller horse work?
• How about this nice mule?

If they consider any of the alternatives, problem solved, price is no longer the issue. And when the answer is, “No, I really want that “one thing” bingo! The buyer has given you the lever to close the deal. Even if they are stuck on one feature, you have successfully shifted the negotiations from price to the most important mechanism in sales, want.

Frank Bettger illustrated this in a story that when I read it over thirty years ago, changed my life and became a seed that grew thousands of healthy sales. A Chevrolet PR executive named William Powell bought a home in Detroit and said the realtor “was one of the smartest salesmen I have ever met.”

The realtor listened intently to Mr. Powell and discovered that he had wanted to own trees all of his life. The realtor drove Powell to a house in a wooded suburb that had eighteen gorgeous trees. Powell told the realtor to sharpen his pencil, because he could buy similar houses for less money. But they didn’t have the trees and the realtor continuously pointed to, and counted all of the trees.

“He sold me eighteen trees and threw in the house. That is real salesmanship.” – William Powell

A new customer named Steve visited our warehouse to inspect two near identical Cincinnati machine tools. They weighed over 60,000 lbs each with identical footprints of something over 20’ X 15’. One could machine a part 100” X 40”, the other 100” X 60”. At over 12’ tall, the 20” difference in height seemed negligible to Steve and the 50% higher price was difficult for him to swallow. Price became the battleground, for him.

He adamantly insisted that he “had to have the larger machine.” Steve told me that “one thing” to win the battle over price.

“The extra height is extremely rare” I explained. I recommended the smaller machine and offered him the same capacity in a lighter duty machine from another manufacturer, sidestepping price.

We went out to eat, talked about family, sports, politics, and everything and anything other than the deal. After dinner, he said he’d take the larger machine, full price. We became friends and did business together for years.

Find out what the “one thing” that the buyer wants, clamp on to it like a pit-bull, and don’t let go.

“How One Idea Multiplied My Income“, the first chapter of Frank Bettger’s “How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling”, is dedicated to enthusiasm. Dale Carnegie closed with, “I urge you to reread many times this chapter and to make a high and holy resolve that you will double the amount of enthusiasm that you have been putting into your work and life.”

High-energy, optimistic excitement powers enthusiasm. The fulcrum, the object you leverage against, is your impassioned conviction expressing a deliverable promise of improvement to the quality of your customers’ business and personal lives that overshadows the cost. Your attitude is what makes this believable, because if you don’t convey your belief in what you are selling, why will anyone else?

For twenty years, I sold CNC machine tools; large green, blue, and gray obscure, seemingly mundane metal working machines, used for manufacturing aircraft, medical equipment, and a myriad of metal products. To me, they are sexy and gorgeous Ferraris and Lamborghinis that transform factories into Formula 1™ raceways.

My customers didn’t call their equipment sexy and gorgeous, but it was how they felt and thought. My enthusiastic, colorful descriptions infected them, and the superlatives caught on. My love, affection, and excitement, bridged our relationship. My passion told them I understood that bringing in the right equipment did more than increase production. That it transforms the image of the workplace and inspires pride and respect in their employees and customers.

In 1974, One of my print ad clients developed a hot line of umbrellas with vogue women imprinted on panels, which he asked me to test sell. Printing pictures on fabric was cutting edge technology back then, and the coming rage that is still a staple of fashion. I walked into a NY boutique with one dozen in a golf bag and made an appointment with the manager to present at closing time. My enthusiastic pitch colored with the newest technology, impassable quality, uniqueness, and exclusivity was the lever that sold them.  The visual impact of my patient unveiling of each umbrella that completely covered the floor of the shop with, gorgeous accessories was the fulcrum that leveraged the close.

The late Billy Mays was an over the top pitchman. But that is what made believable that Oxi Clean, “powered by the air you breathe and activated by the water you and I drink, had the power of bleach, yet was safer without weakening the fibers.” Loved radio announcer, the late Paul Harvey could never have sold Oxi Clean. I’m not saying you should emulate Billy Mays, but he is an iconic example of the power of ‘superlative enthusiasm’.

Enthusiasm became my natural state. One president to whom I reported, accused me of having more enthusiasm than any ten people he knew. Throughout my career I was asked, how I did do it and where did it come from. Every day begins with my thanks for another day of life, the conviction that this is going to be the best day of my life, and that my glass isn’t half-full, because it’s overflowing. Every sales opportunity is approached with the same thanks and optimistic enthusiastic attitude.

Enthusiasm is impassioned conviction with superlative description and visual demonstration that instills excitement about your offering’s life-changing solutions to your customers’ secret desires.  Enthusiasm is one idea that will do more than multiply your income. Enthusiasm will improve your entire life and infect everyone around you in a way that improves their lives too.

Back in the dark ages of the 1960’s, before computers and PowerPoint presentations, there were 35mm slide shows. Each fall, before the pennant race and World Series kicked in, our middle school principal, Mr. Nussbaum, would run his ‘how-I-spent-my-summer-vacation-traveling” presentations.

We gathered in the auditorium for assembly in blue pants or skirts, white shirts, and red ties, pledged allegiance to the flag and sang the National Anthem. The lights dimmed and the projector flashed slides of the Parthenon or perhaps the Manneken Pis in Brussels. He let his hair down and made fun of his limited skills in Spanish or his New York version of a French accent. Each slide was a joke-filled story from his personal experience that lured you into his trip and transported you to a crossing of the Tower Bridge or a walk together through the Louvre Museum.

Manneken Pis "Little Man Piss" in Brussels

Growing up in the projects of Brooklyn painted a bleak, existential dead-end picture; Alfred Nussbaum dedicated his life proving it was not. He drew on his own inspiration to design presentations that would inspire us to break through the brick walls of our social circumstances.   He sold us an image of the life we could have by sharing himself, his personal stories, and experiences – that’s selling!

People don’t buy your presentations; they buy you. Bullet points don’t sell; “your story” sells. Charts, graphs, stats, and facts are not the story; they support the story. Inspired selling comes from you, from your heart and soul, and from your personal experience. If you want your audience and customers to open up to you, trust you, and place their confidence in you, then open yourself up to them. Vulnerability is intimidating, but that is the nature of transparency. Your prospects, customers, and audience are buying you. Sell your story and you have sold yourself.

“This weekend, Alfred Nussbaum, passed away at the age of 100. He was married to one woman for 59-years, fathered three children, and had a 42-year career as teacher, principal, and chairman with New York City Board of Education. He loved history, literature, travel, photography, and telling good jokes”

We had, shall I say, a personal relationship, as I spent a fair amount of time in his office. He might have been a successful business and sales leader; instead, he chose to sell street kids solutions to fulfill our dreams.

My first interview was with the president of a management recruiting company for a position as a salesperson in his organization. Without a résumé and armed only with boyish charm, big smile, and infinite confidence and optimism, “I can and I will” echoed in my mind as I awaited my first conquest.

A debonair gent greeted me in their plush reception area, escorted me to his office, and invited me to sit in a tufted leather wingback chair. After 10 or 15 minutes of Q&A he asked, “Can you close a deal?” “Yes”, I replied with obvious overconfidence. He gently proposed that I sell him the stapler on his desk, which he handed to me as he stood up and politely warned, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

My value based presentation covered everything from the slick chrome finish to the felt protective bottom and anti jamming mechanism. But he didn’t bight, and whatever my close was, it wasn’t memorable.  He politely asked me for the stapler, rattled off an old boiler-room “Box Pitch”, and then explained the mechanism. He graciously donated more of his valuable time and advice with courtesy and enjoyment of my greenness. I left his office knowing that there was more to selling than a silver tongue and most of my seventeen year old ego intact.

That eye-opening meeting led to my first sales position on my next interview and set me on the path to an incredible, prosperous career in sales. In that brief encounter, I decided to excel, learn, and teach, successful sales skills.

My hope is that SalesDuJour.com is as inviting and comfortable as that tufted leather winged back chair, and as enlightening, entertaining, and enjoyable as he and many other great mentors have been to me.