[nabentre] learning how to sell?

[Brandon Keith Biggs]

Hello Kane,
Thank you for all your input. I will check out those books and in fact I 
am a huge fan of the Rich Dad books. I have almost read all of them and 
I've started reading his book recommendations.
One of his adviser series is "Sales Dogs":
http://www.salesdogs.com/
by Blair Singer.
According to his book, I'm a Pit Bull Chihuahua mutt!
I have no aptitude in being a Retriever, so that is my difficulty and 
why I would like to start selling with a trainer or group behind me.
I have done the sales I'm good at, grabbing random people and selling 
them something on the spot or getting their contact info, but not only 
do my techniques alienate the other people who I have on my teem, but 
once I grab people, I have no natural tendencies in keeping my clients 
after the initial burst of interest.

What are some more transactional companies I should consider working for?

According to Rich Dad, Xerox was the best sales company when he was 
learning, but that was in the 80s. I honestly don't know if Xerox even 
has a sales teem anymore...

I agree, the financial industry is not for me. I would like to learn 
about the skills that I need as an Entrepreneur, but I'm more into 
seeing markets and filling them rather than focusing on one market for 
15-30 years and getting really good at that one thing, unless that one 
thing is building businesses.
I've looked for sales classes at my school, but marketing and sales are 
two different subjects and the marketing classes don't go into sales at 
all. Sales is dealing B2B or B2C and marketing is dealing with the 
materials and tools that the salesmen can use and the over-arching 
marketing plan. I would rather higher someone else to do all of that, 
but I can't higher someone to sell ideas for me. I need to do that myself.

My talent is showing those young blind know-it-alls that I can do things 
twice as fast on my special device than they could ever hope to do on 
the IPhone. Granted I have an IPhone and I use it for lots of things, 
but I also have a Braille Sense and a computer. Each have their place. I 
have used almost all of the blindness related technology and I do know 
that field backwards and forwards, but the blind person also has to be a 
salesman to the rehab agencies. I'm really good at dealing with rehab, 
so I love getting all the government support I can get because I can and 
it is fun.
But as everyone keeps saying, sales is not about me, it is about my 
client. I am fantastic at getting what I want, but I tend to leave other 
people in the dust. I am helping my parents build their business plans 
for their own businesses and I'm coming up with ideas and asking guiding 
questions so that they come up with the same ideas themselves. It is 
working a little bit, but not like I thought it would.
I'm also not experienced at all, so I'm really just repeating what I read.
Again, I don't mind if I'm working at a fast-food place at minimum wage 
or if I'm selling a product that makes pennies on the dolor, I just want 
to sell. I will start thinking about money when I'm not able to get 
scholarships or SSI anymore.

WFG doesn't really believe in term life, they are big into Universal 
life. The saving account that is also life insurance. I was sold for one 
day when they first told me about it, but a quick google sirch told me 
that Universal life is slow and costly to use as a savings plan and 
after reading the perspectis, I completely agree. I could be reading the 
numbers wrong, but if so, why would so many people make money when 
selling Universal Life if it is supposed to help me make money? Also, 9% 
is a very slow gain if you really think about it and as a young person, 
I don't find paying $200 a month attractive in any shape or form.
I'm going to point out all the numbers in the prospectice to my trainer 
tomorrow and ask him to give me the sales pitch of his life, and 
convince me that I should sell this to other people. But with other 
financial advisers I've talked to against Universal Life as a savings 
plan and the large fees staring me in the face, it is going to be 
horribly difficult to make myself believe in it.

So I am looking for other sales teems I can work for. I would just like 
some guidance of where I should look?
Thanks,

Brandon Keith Biggs

On 2/20/2014 8:43 AM, Kane Brolin wrote:
> Hello to Brandon, Cheryl, and others interested in this thread.
>
> I don't often weigh in on the Blind Entrepreneurs list.  But this is a
> fascinating discussion, and it is close to my heart, because sales
> represents a big part of what I do as well, and I have been totally
> blind for all of my life but have been connected to direct sales only
> since age 33 (or 15 years ago).  Since this type of business was not
> in my blood or in my wife's blood whatsoever, this is something we
> have had to figure out, much like old dogs learning new tricks.
>
> Brandon, I understand from a previous posting that you believe your
> true calling might lie in the fine arts.  Yet I want to tell you that
> I respect your guts and your courage to reach out and do something of
> an entrepreneurial or sales nature, especially when you are young.
> What you will get out of this is not just the commission from selling
> a product or service; you also will refine your networking skills and,
> if you play it right, you will make personal connections and
> friendships that may help to land other opportunities for you that
> aren't necessarily connected to sales.  And you will gain a mechanism
> to cope in a healthy way with rejection.  I believe that blind persons
> often are poor, underemployed, and lacking in confidence because they
> never have been encouraged to push through rejection, gain from the
> positive side effects of failure, and persist in following their
> dreams.  The message I send to all blind persons who seem to have
> people skills is that if you show some promise in a sales-related
> vocation, you won't have to worry about whether the government chooses
> to give us the right to earn a minimum wage.  As much as I stand
> behind HR-831 and fixing the Workforce Investment in sync with Act
> with NFB political agitation, I know I don't want to be living on
> minimum wage either, and I am more interested in blind persons' having
> power over our future rather than just the legal right to a presumed
> benefit.  If you prove you can make money for someone through selling,
> you won't ever have to settle for Third World pay and you won't have
> to bend over backward proving why someone should hire you as a blind
> person; the numbers will speak for themselves.
>
> Brandon, probably the most informative thing that has stuck with me
> through sales training and the sales experience is that selling is not
> telling.  If you want to be an effective salesperson, you should use
> your two ears and one mouth in the proportion that your Creator gave
> them to you.  If you become sincerely good at caring about what the
> guy or the lady on the other side of the table needs, and if you
> wholeheartedly believe in the rightness of what you are selling, then
> approaching your friends and family should not be a point of
> uneasiness.  It should constitute an opportunity--one that is far
> superior to cold-calling.  If you listen more than you talk, you might
> also find it increasingly easy to get out of your own way and avoid
> prejudices that will limit your sales success.  I cite an example from
> your own e-mail of earlier today, related to financial products:
>
> On 2/20/2014, Brandon Keith Biggs <brandonkeithbiggs at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I don't believe life insurance is for students at all and I think the products [World
>> Financial Group sells] > are just way too much upkeep for any person to manage > over their whole life.
> As long as you honestly feel this way, then you shouldn't be selling
> their products.  I know nothing about World Financial Group or the
> specific products they sell or their techniques for selling those; but
> as a general principle, I stand by what I said just above irrespective
> of which firm is training you.  But keep in mind that life
> insurance--at least term insurance--might well be appropriate for a
> student.  Keep in mind that in this day and age, many young students
> entering college already have children of their own.  Do you think it
> might be important for even the infant daughter of a 21-year-old or
> 31-year-old college student to be covered adequately for her own needs
> in the event Mom or Dad suffers a fatal accident or illness?  Even in
> the small community where I live, I know a lymphoma survivor who got
> cancer when she was 19.  Another of my business associates, still in
> his twenties, has symptoms that resemble what some leukemia sufferers
> start with.  A diabetic who does not need to depend on insulin can
> still get affordable life insurance coverage.  One that comes to a
> point of needing to take insulin injections, even while young, is
> unlikely to get any type of coverage. Think outside the box and you
> might come to somewhat different conclusions--as long as you know what
> is motivating someone to sit across the table from you to talk about
> their situation in the first place.  Learn how to ask questions and
> make sure your prospective customer gets the message that you have
> internalized what he has said.
>> Let me say that I'm only looking for a place to get to the top sales spot and hold it > for a couple years. I'm not doing it really for the money, just the education and
>> experience.
> Then this is another reason, Brandon, that I caution you against
> financial planning or money management/brokerage as an industry.  As
> someone who has done this kind of work for 14 years, I will tell you
> that this is not primarily about sales; it's about advice.  Actually,
> it's primarily about your client.  There's nothing that confuses or
> alienates a client more than the experience of being passed from
> advisor to advisor to advisor, because usually this happens without
> prior warning as a certain broker or financial planner gets fired,
> gets disciplined for wrongdoing, or changes firms without the legal
> sanction to speak with their clients about what is about to happen.
> When you work in financial services with the intent truly to do it
> right, you don't simply play around with it for a couple of years.
> It's about being committed to the well-being of your client in the
> long term, not just being involved with him in the near-term.  If you
> do become a financial planner or money manager, you do need a great
> deal of proven experience and, in all likelihood, advanced
> professional designations earned through test-taking, to demonstrate
> your worthiness to serve those who are affluent. Taking board
> examinations is very difficult--especially if you are blind and
> especially if the testing organization does not give you the type of
> accommodations for which you are best suited.  So judging from why you
> want to do sales, my belief at this stage is that you should try your
> hand at something more transactional in nature.  I agree with you that
> hitching your wagon to the limited world of blindness products--APH,
> HumanWare, Freedom Scientific, or HIMS--is not a good long-term play.
> I'm sure you are hip to the reality that more and more blind young
> people are telling the makers of expensive, limited,
> blindness-specific high technology to go fly a kite, as they do much
> of what they do via their off-the-shelf mobile phone or via lower-cost
> or free access solutions such as System Access or NVDA.  As a young
> man, I was determined not to get pigeon-holed in the blindness/rehab
> industry, and this is why I chose to take paths that were quite hard,
> particularly a generation ago.
>
> As for sales philosophy?  Self-help and sales training books,
> Websites, and DVDs have been popping up like mushrooms in the last 30
> years or so.  But before I ever set foot in the office to get licensed
> as a broker, I read some classic work authored by Dale Carnegie, who
> got into the sales training business before anyone else of note was
> doing it.  His book "How To Develop Self-Confidence And Influence
> People By Public Speaking," published in 1956, is available as a
> digital download through Learning Ally.
> http://teacherally.learningally.org/BookDetails.aspx?BookID=HQ048  I
> read the earliest edition I could get, authored by Dale Carnegie
> himself, instead of the updated editions published by his heirs since
> the 1980s.
>
> I also see lots of value in Stephen Covey's writings, some of which
> are voiced by Covey himself and made available through Audible.com.
> Covey's work is misquoted and mis-applied in the business world almost
> as much as the Bible is misquoted and mis-applied in the wider world.
> But taken at face value, Stephen Covey puts a lot of things in
> perspective--not just in connection to sales.  Covey has been sorely
> missed since his recent death.
>
> Lastly, Brandon, you also seem interested in financial literacy and in
> working through your own understanding of how life and business
> opportunities should work for yourself.  Robert Kiyosaki has been an
> inspiration to many; he wrote the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" along with
> a lot of sequels.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kiyosaki
> Although I have not studied his work in detail, I know much of it,
> too, is available from places such as Learning Ally and Bookshare.
> One blind acquaintance who studied Kiyosaki's books tells me gained
> inspiration and mastery over his life through taking Kiyosaki's
> teachings to heart.
>
> I wish you success in whatever way you turn.  Don't forget that it is
> about cultivating relationships and leaving the persons you encounter
> in better shape than when you found them.  Do this enough, and the
> money you need eventually will come to you.
>
> Cheryl, I value your comments, too.  It sounds as if you definitely
> learned a lot through the school of hard knocks.  It would be
> interesting to converse with you at some point.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> -Kane
>
> _______________________________________________
> nabentre mailing list
> nabentre at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabentre_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nabentre:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabentre_nfbnet.org/brandonkeithbiggs%40gmail.com