“Buy me candy! I want a toy! Gimme food! Me, me, me! Look at me! See how high I can jump!” No, that’s not a four-year-old, spoilt brat – it’s a typical, brain dead, self-employed, broke salesman, pretending to be an entrepreneur. I get these e mails all the time, asking me to expose my list and database to unknown felons posing as salespeople. “Buy my products because I need money! I paid $247 to join your club so now you have to help me sell my services!” SHOOT ME NOW. I even get emails from “JD” asking me to spam my Members with his snake-oil “health” juice adverts, and he’s not even a Member of DollarMakers. OK I’m calm now. My gun is loaded, but I’m calm.

Why “Me, me me!” Doesn’t Work Anymore

Basically, when you’re trying to sell your services, tap into other peoples’ databases, and sell, sell, sell, you’re simply wasting other peoples’ time. Joint Ventures is about getting the attention and the reciprocity of other people by NOT selling, but by solving THEIR problems. You’re in selling mode, that’s why you’re not getting ahead. This isn’t a networking club. Here’s how you get someone’s attention and create enough value for them to ask, “And tell, me Petunia, how can I help YOU?” That’s what I teach. The “Me, me me!” approach doesn’t work anymore – people will simply delete your e mails. You need to find out what other people want, help them get it, and get paid for it. It has nothing to do with what you’re selling, but everything to do with THEY want.

Why People Buy

People only buy from you (they have millions of other options, believe me, Mr. Manson, or may I call you Charles?) when they like you and trust you, and they will only take time to even LOOK at what you’re offering when you give them a damn good reason to do so. I get to know you by spending time with you, even if it’s on the Internet, not by reading your adverts.

What “Sowing Before You Reap” Means

The Members of DollarMakers who make the most money are on our Members Only conference calls, at the local Members meetings, especially at the Convention, and at the Bootcamps, building relationships. Are you involved in these ways? You have to sow before you reap and earn the right. I promote people who have proven themselves to be trustworthy, reliable, honest, professional, and generous. I cannot know that when there is no relationship.

My suggestion to you is to:

1. identify people with whom you want to work,
2. then to go all out to create value for them (and get paid for it, of course, Petunia,)
3. and build relationships with them.

The return on that investment is substantial. Give me a reason to like you and trust you and help you.  Put wood on the fire before you expect heat.

The Difference Between Selling and Brokering

Desperate salespeople are a dime a dozen, and nobody likes them or respects them. They hang out at business networking clubs, reeking of aftershave, pushing business cards, flashing their whitened teeth and trying to sell their stuff to other broke people. Joint Venture brokers are entrepreneurs who work strategically and use leverage, relationship, and reciprocity to create long-term wealth. Then you can go buy you own candy and even have your teeth whitened, if you’re that needy.

A lot of people are good at selling themselves, but they can’t sell or produce anything. They can run their mouths all day long and impress everyone with their promises, but they can’t make it happen.

The main reason is that they don’t work hard enough, and they quit too soon.

We’ve all heard the story of the billionaire who started out in a car dealership and fired his worst salesman every month. It’s interesting to see the responses of people who hear this story.

Talk is cheap – money buys the whiskey.

“Show Me the Money!”

I like to give people a chance to prove themselves, to show me that the hype actually leads to results. I have no expectations, because I am used to listening to B.S. and I am pleasantly surprised when someone actually does what he tells me he can do.

I don’t believe a word you say; I only believe results.

You can’t bank B.S. – only money.

So give people time to produce, and if they don’t, fire them. Replace them. Everyone is replaceable. Losers hate the story about firing the worst salesman every month, because they know they are just talkers.

Only Pay for Results

People who write sales copy are the worst – they will tell you how they can write copy that will make you millions – IF you first pay them their ridiculous fee. When you put them on the spot and tell them how they can make double their fee by getting paid for the results they produce for you, they tuck their tails between their legs, grab their teddy bears, and run for the hills crying for their mamas.

The same goes for web “masters” who tell me how much money they will make me through SEO. OK, so go ahead and create a site for me, do your thing, and let’s share the results.

Talk is cheap. I don’t pay for lies and promises; I pay for results. The same goes for advertisers.

Check These Out & Gauge Your Reaction

Making money isn’t about being popular or parties or hype – it’s about closing sales and making deals. (Warning – foul language in the following movie cuts.)

• Watch this cut from the movie, Glenn Gary Glennross and get a wake-up call.
• This cut is from the movie, Boiler Room. It will either excite you or upset you, depending on whether you’re a producer or a talker.

Production Shows the Real You

Tom Hopkins said:

“Sales is the highest paid hard work, and the lowest paid easy work.”

It puts people on the line. You can’t hide behind your computer and wear your mask when you’re in sales – sooner or later, you will reveal who you really are through what you produce…

“by your FRUIT, you will be known”

…apples don’t grow on weeds.

If you can’t produce, go work for the government. But if you CAN sell, close deals, and produce, you are on of the most valuable people around, and a rare commodity. Time will tell.

Some Sales Managers experience the following challenges:

• Unproductive salespeople who specialize in whining new tunes
• Salespeople complaining that the customers can’t afford their products and services
• Economic downturns
• Absenteeism and showing up late
• Salespeople that are not loyal and leave for the slightest pay increase or incentive
• Salespeople that make excuses and are lazy
• Strong competition
• Hard to find and keep good salespeople
• No new information or tools to motivate their salespeople – they’ve heard it all before.

We offer Sales Managers the following tools for their beloved sales teams:

• Create unlimited streams of eager, qualified, and primed prospects
• Differentiate yourself from the competition by creating massive added value at no cost
• Offer huge, compelling incentives, bonuses and premiums to prospects for making a buying decision, at no cost to you
• Learn how to get the prospect’s undivided attention and lifelong loyalty
• Stop selling, and start solving
• Increase sales closing/conversion ratios through the roof  by using our proven systems
• Offer your salespeople exciting and valuable sales target bonuses at no cost to you

Our customized, in-house, 5-hour Joint Venture Bootcamps turn snailspeople into salespeople. We’re all about working smart and getting results.

We watched an old 1966 movie last night, called OSCAR, in which the Maitre D’, a failed film star, tells the famous film-star just how precarious the film star’s position really is.

It’s human nature to avoid reality, wear blinders, and stick our heads in the sand, but facts are facts. Your eager replacement is waiting in the wings. If you don’t perform, you will be replaced fast, and the scary part is that you won’t even know it until it’s too late.

Earn the Right

We all buy life insurance, houses, websites, holidays, cars, furniture, and many other things, and we are free to decide whom to purchase from.

I had someone call me and ask me, “Why didn’t you buy from me?” My response was very simple: “You didn’t earn the right. You need to earn my business. You didn’t.”

Last week I had someone ask me to recommend a realtor. I know a few realtors, but there was not one that I would recommend – they didn’t earn the right.

I am currently in the process or replacing one of my service providers, and he is blissfully unaware that his replacement is already waiting in the wings. Why? He has been unreliable, unprofessional, and unresponsive. So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodnight. When he wakes up and wipes his eyes he will realize he has lost a fortune in future business and referrals. Too late for tears.

A Few Pointers to Not Only Keep the Business You Already Have, but to Add to it Significantly

Pride comes before the fall. Take people for granted, let your service slip, and before you know it, you’ve been replaced by a hungry competitor. In order to avoid this unhappy and costly predicament, here are a few pointers to allow you not only to keep the business you already have, but to add to it significantly:

1. Respond promptly to e-mails, calls, and letters. That means FAST.
2. Pay on time. If I have to remind you, I might suspect you never intended paying.
3. Go the extra mile – add unexpected value.
4. Communicate effectively, respectfully, and regularly.
5. Reciprocate with referrals, invitations, and recognition.
6. Constantly improve your service and products.
7. THANK people for the business they send you with money or other real value.

Differentiate Yourself

Your replacement is eagerly waiting in the wings. He wants to take your business, and he’s ready to earn it.

DollarMakers specializes in showing people how to add massive value and differentiate themselves from the competition with no additional cost, through the use of Joint Ventures.

Knowledge and skills will always come to your rescue.

In a recession, when advertisers are scratching at the door and losing business hand over fist, you can set up a lucrative Joint Venture with them, as well as with your Joint Venture partners.

Advertisers have space to sell, and it’s a perishable commodity; if it’s not sold, it’s lost forever, whether it’s space ads in magazines, newspapers, or billboards, or whether it’s radio or TV time or banner ads on websites or e-zines.

How to Set Up the Deal with the Advertiser

You simply offer to pay them for RESULTS, not promises. It’s called Contingency Advertising.

It doesn’t cost the advertiser anything, since he or she already has the space, and you only pay for converted leads / sales made. Any set-up fee, artwork, or other incidentals will naturally have to be paid for, but it’s a fraction of the cost of the advertising itself.

This way, even if there are no initial sales, you get great exposure and branding, and, when the advertiser sees this concept working, he will never run open space again.

Only EVER Pay for Results

We have done this for more than twenty years in every conceivable kind of media for ourselves and our clients, and it really is “no money, no risk” – it‘s a win/win.

I never pay salaries or for advertising – I pay generously for results, so I’m not easily disappointed by big promises and BS.

Do the Math and Propose it Like This

First ask the advertiser if he believes advertising with him will make sales.  Of course he will say “Yes” and if he doesn’t, it’s easy to show him the door.

When he says “Yes”, propose something like this: If you pay an average of $100 per sale and a $2,000 advertisement generates 40 sales, the advertiser doubles his money.

Ad responses can go via the advertiser for tracking and spot-checking purposes.

Joint Venture Brokers can triangulate this system to earn residual income from other people’s businesses.

Many years ago, a relative of mine made an appointment to confront an evil church pastor about a serious issue of hypocrisy and double-dealing in her church. She prepared her case very well, and there was no doubt about the fact that the “pastor” was, in fact, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’ll never forget what she told me when she got home from that meeting.

She said she felt as though she had imagined the whole thing; he made her feel foolish, he actually laughed at the facts she presented, and she left feeling convinced that she was wrong, that he was right, that she was guilty of being disloyal and negative, and that she actually owed him an apology for wasting his precious time.

The Deceptive Art of Distraction

Politicians and psychopaths are good at diverting one’s attention from the important things and questions they would rather not answer. They know that attack is the best form of defense. Salespeople are singularly adept at sleight of hand or legerdemain:

• Answer a question with a question.
• Baffle with unimportant facts.
• Use complicated explanations and trickery to throw your pursuers off track.
• Make light of exigent issues.
• Brush off serious accusations with a condescending smirk.
• Hug them while you knife then in the back.

Magicians use distraction all the time.

Even Good People Do This to Avoid Responsibility

My point? I used to attend regular, weekly sales meeting with a group of other SMI Distributors. At every meeting, we Distributors would tell our amazing stories to the meeting leader.

We would talk about all the leads we had “in the pipeline”, all the sales we had narrowly missed, all the things we were “working on”, and all the promises we had heard from our prospective buyers. We also spent a good deal of time making excuses, blaming the weather, the competition, holidays, pricing, traffic, the products we sold, the packaging, the economy, and of course our leader.

At one meeting our leader got up before anyone could start mouthing off, and his words have stayed with me to this day. He said,

“Today, I don’t want to hear any stories, promises, excuses, or lies. Don’t you dare say a word, any of you. This is a silent meeting.

Walk up to the board, take the sharpie, and write down the amount of sales you made last week. That means PAID sales. I will check your figures. Then get out of here, and don’t contact me until the next meeting.

I am only interested in results. Next week, I will fire the Distributor with the lowest sales. Now get out!”

We doubled our sales as a result of that valuable lesson.

Shape Up or Ship Out

Losers and underachievers specialize in the deceptive art of distraction. They will:

• ask you irrelevant questions
• create rumors
• seem very busy
• make excuses for everything

If you allow this kind of behavior, you reinforce their failure to take responsibility and you encourage them to become parasites and posers.

When you focus on results and refuse to be distracted, you’ll get them to shape up or ship out. And you’ll save loads of time.

Talk is cheap, and money buys the whiskey.

I went to the jewelry store to buy my wife a piece of jewelry. The sales clerk showed me the cheapest item in the range to start with. I said I wanted to see the most expensive item, since my wife deserves only the best.

When I had purchased the item, I asked the clerk why she offered me the cheapest piece, and she replied that she would rather have a bird in the hand than two in the bush.

She didn’t’ understand how to “drop down”, but she also didn’t understand that you get what you ask for, and you will be surprised what you will get, if you just ask for it.

Think abundance, not scarcity.

You Literally have Access to UNLIMITED Resources

You can go to the beach with a teaspoon and a cup and get some seasand, or you can go with a forty-gallon drum and fill it with sand. Or you can take a dump truck and fil that – the sand won’t run out. You can take a train and fill it with sand. Sand respesents, in this case, money.

You can make as much as you like if you simply offer a great product and service and then go ahead and ASK.

Be audacious, be courageous, and expect great wealth.

Mark These Words

“I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store.
For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.
I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid.”

Adjust Your Estimation Skills

Bamboo grows more rapidly than any other plant on the planet. It has been clocked surging skyward as fast as 47.6 inches in a 24-hour period.

We’ve all heard, “First year it sleeps, second year it creeps, third year it leaps.” Bamboo trees grow very little for the first 4 years. But then, suddenly in the 5th year, they grow 80-90 feet tall.

We tend to overestimate what we can do in the short term, but we vastly underestimate what we can do in the longer term. Be the bamboo!

How to Double Your Sales Immediately

I once had a life insurance salesman ask me how he could double his sales. I answered, “If you’re presently asking people to buy $200,000 worth of life cover, start asking them to buy $400,000 worth of life cover. It’s that simple. But you should start off by making sure that YOU personally have at least $400,000 worth of life cover.”

Think BIG. Expect great things. ASK.

I saw this on BBC World this morning:

“One Quarter of the Honey Industry in England Destroyed.”

Yes – a mite infestation wiped them out.

• Beetles in Canada closed down lumber mills.
• Locusts invade an area in Australia, just as the farmers are about to reap.
• In Vancouver, the new Skytrain development on Cambie street, in preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics here, bankrupted local businesses that depend on their walk-in trade.
• The digital photography development caused thousands of conventional photographic businesses to go under.
• Fires destroy properties and businesses in California.

Are You Putting All Your Eggs In One Basket?

When you have 90% of your income based on one anything – one geographical area, one product or service, one industry, one major marketing system, or one or two big clients or key employees, you’re in a precarious and dangerous position.

When you slave for three weeks per month just to cover your payroll and overhead, you’re on a slippery slope.

Beware of People Pitching “Focus”

People who pitch “Focus” usually have a selfish, vested interest in taking everything they can get out of you. This is particularly true of the Network Marketing business. Although I enjoy being involved in that business, it is only one income source amongst many, but most MLM companies operate more like cults than businesses, demanding absolute focus and attention, in spite of the fact that there is a higher way.

What Joint Ventures Has to Offer

Joint Ventures offers you the opportunity to:

• spread your risk
• lower your overhead
• remove all limits from your income potential

Your JV’s can be designed to “feed” each other, resulting in exponential growth through strategically created synergy.

Understanding business, value, supply and demand, and most importantly, Joint Ventures, removes the ego and desperation that most business owners demonstrate in the way they operate. An inclusive, reciprocal, unthreatened approach shows an abundance mindset and maturity and sophistication that is scarce in today’s world.

Don’t Panic… Profit!

As the world-wide recession bites deeper, Joint Ventures becomes the only viable alternative to conventional sales and marketing, and will save many business owners from bankruptcy, shortage, and loss.

DollarMakers is the world leader in JV’s for small and medium sized businesses and professionals. We provide the training, access, and support that will open your eyes to a whole new way of running a successful, bottom-line oriented business.