How To Sell More & Make Millions: The Ultimate Sales Masterclass If You Hate Sales

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0:37Owning 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 at linkedin.com slash MBA show. I have a confession to make. For the first few years of my entrepreneurial life, I was terrible at sales.

1:17And it's not because I didn't believe in my product. It was because 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.

1:55I 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.

2:26Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host Omar Zinhome, 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 resist sales all my life.

3:03You 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.

3:42It'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 nine o 'clock every Saturday. I would go wash cars and then he would go sell cars. and my shift ended at 3 p.m. The washroom closed at 3 p.m. So I would go up to the showroom from 3 p.m.

4:16to 9 p.m. 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.

4:59Now, 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 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, Omar, 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.

5:35I 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 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.

6:12I 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.

6:53I've made millions and millions of dollars a year, in multiple businesses and 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 X, Y, Z 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.

7:28But 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.

8:05Now, the reason why this is the golden rule is because it dismisses all the things that people inherently think they hate about sales. 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.

8:39Missed calls and slow follow-ups are silent killers for your business. And that's exactly how businesses leave money on the table without ever realizing. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business communication system built so you never miss a call. With Quo, calls, texts, voicemails, transcripts, the contact details, they're all in one clear view. So your team always has the full picture and can follow up for every customer conversation, ensuring a seamless and more personalized experience. Everyone on your team sees the full thread, replies are faster, and customers actually feel like they're taken care of.

9:17And Quo works wherever you are, right from your phone or computer. Keep your existing phone number, add teammates in minutes, sync your CRM, and let the call routing handle itself as you scale. Money's on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash MBA. That's q-u-o dot com slash MBA. 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.

9:58Since 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.

10:37I 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.

11:10Don'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 than 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.

11:49When 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 that as a question. Well, you know, I'm kind of like sick of my car. And there's a few things I don't like. And he'll ask, well, 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.

12:17He 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.

12:49Now, 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.

13:32Right. How much is your car? Your car does about half that. OK, so you're going to be saving double money. Right. And check out this hatchback trunk. OK, 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 zero 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? He focused 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?

14:16What 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 one, two, three. You just showed me that your product solves problem one, two, three. 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.

14:51But one of the things I did at the start of the webinar is I would go into the chat or 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.

15:23Why? 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 one, two, three, four, 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.

15:52That 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 insurance. So you don't have to worry about that. Sends them the replay 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 they're 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.

16:25I 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 Sethi, New York Times best-selling author, Rameet Sadie, star of the Netflix show, How to Get Rich, Rameet Sadie, okay? And we discuss at length an incredible question. Is starting a business really the best way to get rich? Because that's how Rameet got rich, but is that the best solution or the best way to get rich for everybody?

16:57Hit 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 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.

17:39Number 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.

18:15A 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.

18:51Now, 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 then next week. For months, they would be on the same webinar, the same workshop. I've had people attend seven, eight, nine 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.

19:27Maybe 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.

20:05You 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.

20:36They'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. I 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.

21:08That'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 is going to deliver on their products. It's going to be a valuable product. It'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.

21:45This 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.

22:28Do 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. OK, 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.

23:10That'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 products and 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 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.

23:46And 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 no's than yes's, four 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 fifth contact. The fifth. Why?