Why Sales Skills Are the Most Important Skill for Entrepreneurs

17:57Blair Singer:I still couldn't sell. I come back from the extra week training and then I said, what's happening? So I go to my rich dad and I said, what's happening? And he says, how many sales calls do you make a day? And I said on a good day three He says what are you doing the rest of the time? I'm at Arthur's coffee shop drinking coffee Trying to dull the pain You know the fear the fear is intense I don't like rejection So finally my rich dad said to me The reason you're failing is you're not failing fast enough You have got to find a way to fail faster And that's why most of these people don't make it Because they went to school This is what schools teach you.

18:41Blair Singer:This is poor dad on this side. Don't fail. Don't make mistakes. And Rich Dad is saying you have to fail faster. So that's when, I mean, Blair and I, we lived in the same town, Hilo, Hawaii. We kind of grew up on the streets of Honolulu, Waikiki. And then I'd go up the street. So I said, how can I fail faster? So I got a job with a nonprofit dialing for dollars. And so my goal was sit on that phone and make 30 cold calls a night. So I could fail faster. I didn't care if I sold anything. I just had to go through the fear of dialing the, you know, you get a card and say, call Joe Schmo. And I call him and say, hi.

19:26Blair Singer:Hi. And if I got 30 rejections, I was done. I didn't care if I sold the damn thing. I had to handle rejection. And that's why this book here, Little Voice Mastery, that's what you do. You have to master.

19:40Robert Kiyosaki:That's right. That's this. Yeah, the good news is, like Robert says, you just repeat, keep going through it again and again and again. Just like anything you're trying to master, you can get past the fear. After a while, it's no big deal. It's like, you know, give me your best shot as opposed to being afraid and being paralyzed by it.

19:58Blair Singer:Yeah. So that's why Sales Dogs is based upon this here. So tell us what is Sales Dogs about?

20:06Robert Kiyosaki:Well, sales dogs, what I found is working with entrepreneurs all over the world for the last 15, 20 years is that sales is your number one skill. Okay. As an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur. If you can't sell, there's no income. Sales equals income. Pure and simple. If you can't sell, there's no income. So people complain, well, I don't have enough income. Every excuse in the world, I can't sell. Little voices in their head, I can't sell.

20:31Blair Singer:The economy is bad. The product's bad.

20:33Robert Kiyosaki:I'm not that type of a person. Yeah. I don't like to be pushy. Yeah, right. I'm not interested in money. All that garbage that goes on that plays with your head. So the reason we wrote Sales Dogs is that this whole image that you've got to be some sort of an attack dog or you've got to be some kind of an aggressive goon in order to sell is not true. That you have a personality. You have your own unique, authentic personality. And when you understand what that is, there are five different personalities that all can sell equally well. So what we did is we created the book Sales Dogs to take the fear out of it, to take the little voice out of it, to say maybe you are a pit bull, which is the aggressive one.

21:15Blair Singer:I could look at the five types of dogs, sales dogs.

21:18Robert Kiyosaki:Well, stereotype is the pit bull. Tack, never take no for an answer, love handling of judgment.

21:23Blair Singer:And people hate those guys. They bite you on the leg and they don't let go, right?

21:26Robert Kiyosaki:That's right. Right? Right. Then there's the poodle charming. You know, they look good. They wear nice clothes. You know, maybe they can't afford them, but they always look good. And these are the people that are schmoozers. They're connectors. You find them at every social event. The poodle. The poodle. Yeah, the poodle. Right. And so those are poodles. So that's a that's a strength. Great networkers. The other is the chihuahua. Chihuahua. These are the the data freaks. Right. These are the guys. if you like social media marketing and you want to chat by bot and all this other garbage that people do, I mean, that's for them.

22:03Robert Kiyosaki:It's like all the bits and bytes and all that stuff. And that's very good too.

22:06Blair Singer:And they're called wonks. Is that what they're called? Well, you know, they're just really smart people and they go down the rabbit hole. They know everything. That's right.

22:14Robert Kiyosaki:But they're good because they can provide irrefutable evidence. Data. Data. And then there's the golden retriever. You know, if you don't understand a golden retriever, That's the dog at the park where you throw the stick and they just leaping across the flowers, drool flowing to pick that thing up, bring it back and drop it at your foot and go. Do it again, right? Why? Because they love to serve. And in this economy, in any economy, that's called law of reciprocity. If you give, you receive. And as you know, if you do any kind of marketing online, you know that that's the primary way that you build a community and build a network.

22:51Robert Kiyosaki:You give first, receive later. And so that's also a very powerful personality type.

22:57Blair Singer:That's the golden retriever.

22:58Robert Kiyosaki:The golden retriever, right. And then finally, there's the schlumpy basset hound, you know, the hush puppies. You know, they have those big eyes. They look you in the eye. They love you no matter what. These people aren't flashy, but they're great one-on-one because they build rapport. They build trust. And you've been with them for two minutes, and you feel like your best friends. So these people make great coaches, by the way, because they're really able to build and establish rapport.

23:24Blair Singer:They're nice people, very kind. What about the big dog?

23:29Robert Kiyosaki:Well, then, of course, there's not a breed of dog, but then there's the big dog. The big dog only does big deals, and they only talk to big people. And they wouldn't be bothered by doing little deals with little people because there's no glory in that. And they fail big, and they win big. And so even when they fail, it makes for a great story later to tell everybody else and they brag about that. So if bragging were an Olympic sport, they'd win gold medals all day long.

23:56Blair Singer:So I kind of fit the big dog. That's right.

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26:38Blair Singer:I don't like small deals. You know, the way I wanted Xerox was, you know, I'd go out there, I'd make my 30 fail calls, I'd fail 30 times a night, come back in, and I had to sell this one machine called the Xerox 660. It was two points. You know, and then they had this, I forget the name of it now, not the Xerox machine. I got 60 points. So most sales guys, you know, they're kind of the little chihuahuas. They're after the little two points. And I said, I've got to sell 10 of those a month to make 20. So why am I wasting my time selling small machines? So once I understood rejection and all this stuff, I went after only the biggest deals.

27:21Blair Singer:And I became number one in sales for Xerox. But I got in trouble because I didn't sell small machines. And finally, they said they're going to fire me unless they sell small machines. Because they've got to clear the inventory, man. Yeah. So I'm sitting there, I'm going to get fired. I'm number one in sales. I'm 600 % of my budget. And they're going to fire me? And I said, I'm in the wrong business. I'm in corporate America. I hate it. Time to move on. At the same time, my best friend, Larry Clark, he's number one in another division. And he and I decided to move on. And we became entrepreneurs in the nylon and velcro software wallet business.

27:58Blair Singer:And we failed miserably. That's right. But we're big dogs. anyway so that's what this book is here for and this book is here for now the question is why do you need to know these books and I'll tell you why you need to know it so you can train other people to sell because if your organization is not selling what you have well you're broke okay so what

28:24Robert Kiyosaki:happens is not only do you have to sell but you have to learn to teach other

28:27Blair Singer:people in your team how to sell right teach the team how to sell because

28:31Robert Kiyosaki:Well, that's this here, you see. Yeah, because they're not going to learn it any other place. And by the way, for people that are in the network marketing business, this is the key to their success.

28:41Blair Singer:If you're in network marketing, you've got to have this book and this book for yourself and for your team.

28:47Robert Kiyosaki:That's right.

28:48Blair Singer:Right.

28:48Robert Kiyosaki:Because you guys know that you teach your team how to sell and they teach the next team member how to sell. Now you build depth in an organization and you're churning money. You know, and in our organization, organizations I work with, one of the rules is everybody on the team must sell, whether you're a bookkeeper, whether you're in customer service, whether you're in sales, whatever you're doing. So everybody at some level has got to learn the skills and practice the skills. You don't have to be great at it, but you got to do it. And that's how it works.

29:18Blair Singer:And that's why when you look at this BI triangle, all of these people have to sell. They speak different languages, but they have to sell. That's right. Like an attorney speaks a different language than your accountant. The sales and marketing people definitely don't get along with these guys or these guys. You know, the system guys at the engineers don't get along with any of these guys here. And then you have the product design guys, and they're going, hey, you've got to sell my product, but no, no, I don't want to sell your product, you know. And so that's why this BI triangle is essential here.

29:53Blair Singer:So as you're playing the cash flow board game, keep this picture in mind and keep this picture in mind. Let me say it again. If you're on this side, this is my poor dad's side, this rich dad's side, you really don't need to sell. I mean, most of these people, you know, they can sell for themselves and all this. But to grow, you have to teach others to sell. That's the difference. And so these guys, a lot of times small business people don't grow because they can't teach other people Well, they'll sell for them, right? That's right. That's right. Anything you want to say about that?

30:28Robert Kiyosaki:Well, yeah, because what you were saying before, if we go back to the BI triangle right here, is that sales, outward sales or outward communication in sales and marketing is critical. But if this is dysfunctional, one of the biggest liabilities in every organization is these guys can't communicate or sell to each other. And so what happens, they're stuck in silos and the egos get in the way and it becomes dysfunctional. People don't show up for calls. They miss meetings mysteriously and they just – They sick all the time. All that stuff. So that's why in order to drive – to sell a mission, to sell people, to recruit people to be on your team, you've got to be able to sell.

31:05Robert Kiyosaki:And a leadership – sales and leadership are very much the same. It's getting people to do things that maybe they weren't inclined to do to begin with.

31:12Blair Singer:So as you're playing the cash flow game and you're watching and you're learning, just remember these guys here don't really need the cash flow game. And these guys here really don't need this here. But if you're going to make the transition to here, you've really got to understand these two here. Because as Blair says, this is the financial statement. So as you're playing your cash flow game, this is what you're looking at. So when I look at somebody without money and they have a sucky salary Sales equals what income and when their assets aren't performing sales equals income And that's why if you're going to be a network marketing, you know practice being a big business guy or person woman You have to learn how to sell it's you don't just do it once you do it all the time practice practice practice So as you're playing the cash flow game, you see we go all the way back to this here.

32:14Blair Singer:You know, the biggest sales job is you've gotta be a great leader. I mean, to be a good leader, you have to be a good salesperson. Can you get people to show up on time, leave on time, clean up their desk, and all this stuff? Can you do that? So if you really wanna practice this, practice leadership, practice being a team member who is supportive, and get everybody aligned to the mission. I meet a lot of these guys here, you know, S's. They play the cash flow game online by themselves, you know. You know what people do by themselves. Anyway, if you're going to become a B and an I, you've got to have this skill here.

32:56Blair Singer:Those are sales skills. And that's why I started this whole thing. I went to military school, And I had to lead at the south admission. I had to drive a team. So when we flew into Vietnam, we're a team You know and then when I came back from Vietnam I went into the MBA program and I found these guys here all fighting amongst themselves I entered the business world. They're all fighting amongst themselves. You don't need an enemy. You know, you just need a company Employees got enough problems on your side of the net. That's for sure meet employees who don't want to work don't want to sell I don't have to sell.

33:32Blair Singer:Why are you here?

33:33Robert Kiyosaki:Or so-and-so wasn't nice to me, and so-and-so didn't, all that stuff, right?

33:38Blair Singer:If you have a team that's not selling, you have no income. And so that's why it shows up. It all shows up here. Right. And if you're on this side here, E's and S's, You pay the highest taxes so you're screwed so it's best to learn how to sell that's right And so do anything you possibly can join a network marketing company You know lead a forum but lead teach right take rejection take criticism, right? That's right. And the more you take the more you learn that's all that's all there's to it When the cash flow is low, it's because communications suck. And when cash flow is high, it's because communications are strong.

34:29Blair Singer:If you understand that, that's why sales equals income. And if you don't have enough income, it's probably because you can't sell or you're working for a leader who can't sell or you have an organization that's trying to kill each other. They're dysfunctional inside the company. Am I correct?

34:45Robert Kiyosaki:That's it. That's totally right. So it's those three areas of communication. communication it's being able to sell within your team it's being able to sell out to the public and again remember the most important one is you selling you to you so say well it's not worth it i don't want to do this these people are are dysfunctional no that's your lesson to be learned to learn how to become a better communicator if you can't control this you cannot transition from here to here there's nothing right or wrong with it but just keep that

35:16Blair Singer:in mind because as Blair says the only difference here is what's between this year and this year what's inside your head right what are you saying to yourself and that's that's really why this whole BI triangle is the real world of business again as you get stronger take more opportunities to be a leader because when you're leading, leading a network marketing company or leading a charity, you're practicing this here, but what you're really practicing is communications and sales. Final word?

35:55Robert Kiyosaki:Well, the final word is the people that do this the best are the leaders. The people that do this do make the most money, and these are the people that build the organizations. So it's a requirement of the skill.

36:07Blair Singer:You don't have to do this if you're a doctor or a lawyer.

36:10Robert Kiyosaki:No, no, no.

36:11Blair Singer:You communicate differently. You're omnipotent. But if you look at what I do in the Rich Dad Company, I do my communications for a product. It's called a book or a game or seminars. And you and I have been in all those businesses, right? Right. So basically, I'm in the communications business. I have Tom Wheel right here for cash flow, Garrett Sutton for legal, and I have other people running systems for me. But I still have to be the leader. I'm responsible for them. That's the difference. And to help manage that communication inside. So remember, as you're playing the cash flow game, remember you're playing this, but keep this in mind here.

36:50Blair Singer:So thank you, Blair. Thank you. And see you next lesson. Thank you.

36:57Robert Kiyosaki:This podcast is a presentation of Rich Dad Media Network. Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads.

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