Harrison Barnes » selling

You Need to Be Able to Close

Harrison Barnes — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 05:01:04 +0000

The ability to ‘‘close’‘ and get the sale is the most important skill in selling. It is something that few people know how to do. Many people can get a consumer, an employer, or others to the cusp of making a purchasing or a hiring decision; however, it is the final ‘‘push’‘ that makes all of the difference. It takes a tremendous amount of skill to sell yourself and get a job. It takes a tremendous amount of skill to go from someone who a potential employer will consider for the job to someone who is hired. Your job in getting hired, in getting a better job and when looking for a job, is to push the employer over the fence and make them hire you. This is all there is to it. You need to get hired. There is nothing wrong with developing the skills of a master salesperson and ‘‘closer’‘ in order to get the best job you can. The desire to get a good job and ‘‘close’‘ the deal is a desire for employment, which leads to a richer and more abundant life and the desire to better yourself is praiseworthy. If you do not desire to have a better job or to find a job when you are unemployed, you are not living up to your full potential. It is absolutely essential that you give your best efforts to ‘‘closing’‘ and getting a job when you go out on interviews and apply to jobs. If you neglect to do this, you are not fulfilling your duty to yourself to be everything you are capable of being. When I was around 18 years old and starting the asphalt business, I did what anyone in the business was doing at the time. I drove around and put fliers in all of the mailboxes in front of every house with asphalt that I could find. Once I did this, the next step would be to wait for the phone to ring. I would put around 100 brochures in mailboxes for every phone call I received. Once someone called me I would then go out and give them an estimate. I would have to drive to a home at an appointed time, measure their asphalt and write up a complicated one or two page estimate describing all of the work I was going to do. For twenty minutes or more, the person would want to stand on their driveway and talk about what might happen were I to do the work. After I gave the estimate I would then hope the person chose me out of the three or four other estimates they might be getting. Since the work was rarely more than $300, a few dollars here or there could make the difference as to whether or not I actually got the work. I would then wait some more for the person to call me. Under this business model, someone in the asphalt business spends most of their time driving around, giving estimates and waiting for the phone to ring, and very little time doing work. When you are waiting for the phone to ring you are not working. At some point I decided that this did not make any sense. I wanted to make money and I did not want to have to sit around not working. I needed be be able to ’‘close’‘ people and I needed to be able to close people on the spot. Instead of waiting for the phone to ring each day, I changed my approach. I decided I would only try and sell a homeowner on asphalt service once each year. I would go down a street and knock on every single door and announce that I was going to be on the street the next day, and the next day only. In return for allowing me to do the work the next day I would charge them half of my normal price for the work. I would also leave them a bill and they could send me a check if they were satisfied with the work. This method of closing worked incredibly well. Here is what I would do. I would not measure the driveway. I would drive down the street around 6:00 to 8:30 pm when everyone was home and state the following when someone answered the door: ‘‘Hello. My name’s Harrison Barnes. I come down this street once a year doing asphalt work and because I do several driveways at once, I typically save homeowners at least 50% over what they would pay if you called me and I had to come out and give an estimate. I’ve looked it over and your driveway is something I would normally charge $300 for. I will be on your street tomorrow and will do it for $150. I will leave an invoice and you can send me a check when you get around to it.’‘ Here is what 95% of the people said in response to this:

‘‘Sure’‘
‘‘Yes.’‘
‘‘Go ahead.’‘
‘‘Please do it.’‘
‘‘You’re hired.’‘
‘‘Great.’‘
‘‘Excellent.’‘

I was always paid and I never spent more than 5 minutes at each house ‘‘selling‘‘ and ‘‘closing’‘ the homeowners. Since the product I was selling was my labor, and the stuff I put on the driveways cost only a few dollars per house, my profits were great no matter what I charged. I went from doing one or two houses on a street each year to doing virtually every single one of them. My business boomed and I am confident I became the largest residential asphalt sealing contractor in Michigan almost overnight. Each night I would come home and there would be so many checks in my mailbox the postman would have then banded together with rubber bands. None of this would have happened if I had not developed the ability to ‘‘close,’‘ push homeowners over the fence and turn them from casual snoopers into buyers. This is about the ability to ‘‘close’‘ and get the sale. In your business the most important ability you can have is the ability to ‘‘close’‘–without the ability to close very little is likely to happen. You will be on the sidelines and others will be hired instead of you. It is easy to get in the door anywhere. Getting in the door, however, is only 1% of the battle. The most difficult thing to do once you get in the door is to close the sale and move the employer from a ‘‘browser’‘ to a buyer. In a poor economy, the price of things typically starts coming down. The reason for this is that stores and other merchandisers are doing everything within their power to ‘‘close’‘ you and get you from someone who may not purchase something to someone who will. A short time ago a local Ford dealership in Los Angeles discounted a bunch of new Ford Mustangs by around 50% to move them out quickly. This gimmick works. When I drive down the street in Los Angeles these days I have been seeing people standing on corners promoting incredible going out of business sales at various businesses, offering 90% off of retail price in many cases. Low prices are a very effective tool for closing consumers. One of my favorite scenes in the movies that highlights the incredible importance of closing, is from the 1970s movie, Kramer v. Kramer. In the movie, the protagonist, Ted Kramer, is going through a divorce and is unemployed. He wants to get custody of his son, but his wife is about to tell the judge in an upcoming hearing that he is unemployed and she should be granted custody. Ted has to get a job immediately. He first goes to an employment agency and finds the only job available in the entire city, but the recruiter tells him that now is not a good time to set up an interview. Ted fights with the man in the employment agency and finally manages to coerce the man into setting up a very quick interview. Ted manages to get a few minutes with some hiring personnel while they are having a Christmas party on the Friday before Christmas. He goes into the interview and knows this is his one shot. Here is the dialogue from the movie script

91 INT. OUTER OFFICE, J. WALTER THOMPSON - LATE AFTERNOON The large room is crowded with secretaries, junior executives, researchers, editors, ad-men, etc., etc. They all have drinks in their hands and there is a good deal of kissing and general conviviality going on. THE CAMERA TRACKS WITH ACKERMAN as he steps out of his office, closes the door behind him and makes his way across the room to MR. SPENCER, the Advertising Director. At the moment, Spencer stands with his coat over one arm and a drink in his hand talking to a very pretty young woman. Ackerman approaches him, whispers some- thing in his ear. Spencer shakes his head and points to his watch. Ackerman says something else and finally, with a look of weary resignation, Spencer excuses him- self from the pretty young woman and follows Ackerman back to his office. THE CAMERA FOLLOWS THEM. As Ackerman opens the door to his office, THE CAMERA IS ANGLED so that we can SEE past them, into the office where Ted stands waiting. ACKERMAN (as they enter) Mr. Spencer, Mr. Kramer. SPENCER (not wasting any time) So you're the go-getter. All right, you've got ten minutes. As the door closes behind them, blocking our view, THE CAMERA PANS UP to a clock over the door. It reads five-fifteen. MATCH DISSOLVE TO: 92 INT. ACKERMAN'S OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON ON A CLOCK--which now reads five twenty-two. THE CAMERA PULLS BACK TO REVEAL Spencer, now sitting in Ackerman's chair, his feet on Ackerman's desk. Ted has just finished his pitch. SPENCER (sipping his drink) That's very interesting, Mr. Kramer. I must say, it's very interesting. Let me think about it. I'll let Jack... (indicating Ackerman) ...know and he'll get in touch with you. Spencer gets to his feet, starts to retrieve his coat. ON TED--as he decides to take a gamble. TED Excuse me, I believe you said I had ten minutes. ON SPENCER--almost at the door, looking around. SPENCER Well? ON TED--checking his watch. TED That means I've got two minutes left. I understand you're paying twenty-five. Spencer nods. TED (a deep breath, then a real huckster) All right, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do--I'll take the job at twenty-two-five. Now, that's twenty-five hundred less than you're offering. The only thing is, you have to say yes right now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not after the holidays. It's worth it to me for a yes right now and I'll take twenty-five hundred less. There is a long beat of silence as Spencer and Ackerman look at one another. They were clearly not prepared for this. TED (watching them) Today only. One day only. Twenty-two five. SPENCER Mr. Kramer, can we talk privately for a moment? TED Certainly. CUT TO: 93 OUTER OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON ON TED--as he steps out of Ackerman's office, sits down. Now, all of the fear, all of the anxiety that he has been fighting down comes welling up. What if he pushed too hard? What will he do if he doesn't get a job? If Ted Kramer could fall to his knees and pray, he would. CROSS-CUT WITH THE CHRISTMAS PARTY-- that swirls around him. We notice in particular, one very pretty young woman flirting with a number of men. She is wearing a dress with straps, one of them has broken and she has patched it with a piece of masking tape. Finally the door to Ackerman's office opens and he steps out. ACKERMAN Mr. Kramer? Ted jumps to his feet, starts into the office. CUT TO: 94 INT. ACKERMAN'S OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON ON SPENCER--He looks at Ted carefully for a long time, then: SPENCER (grins) Welcome aboard, Mr. Kramer. C.U. TED--There is an instant of relief, then, with astounding cool: TED Well, gentlemen, I'm pleased to be with you. ANOTHER ANGLE--as they shake hands, say their good- byes. THE CAMERA TRACKS WITH TED as he makes his way through the Christmas party that is still going strong. Then, suddenly, as he passes the very pretty woman we noticed earlier, he turns and kisses her.

This is one of my favorite scenes from the movie because it shows the absolute power of ‘‘closing’‘ in getting a job. In this particular example Ted used money to close. He also used the power of a deadline. This is similar to what I did in the asphalt business by telling the homeowners they had to make a decision ‘‘right now’‘ and not later. The ability to pressure people to make decision now, and not later, is one of the most important things you can do in ‘‘closing.’‘ However, it is not something that is always going to work in getting a job like it did with Ted. I would like to tell you a quick story about how I once hired someone and how this person ‘‘closed’‘ me to get a job. It is an unusual story but it is something that taps into something that I believe is one of the more powerful methods out there of ‘‘closing’‘ to get a job. I used to work in downtown Los Angeles and worked in a building called the Oviatt Building, which was directly across the street from the Los Angeles Athletic Club. The Los Angeles Athletic Club is a nice club, however, anyone can join for the most part. I believe at the time it cost $500 to join the club and then cost around $100 a month to keep your membership. This is in contrast to several other ‘‘downtown’‘ social clubs which could cost $30,000 or more to join and sometimes require years of evaluation and references from other members in order to be accepted. I was perfectly happy with the Los Angeles Athletic Club but the longer that I was around people in Los Angeles and got familiar with the scene downtown, the more I realized there was a giant pecking order among clubs. In fact, the people who were from the oldest families and the more prestigious people in terms of their professional accomplishments and so forth tended to belong to these more prestigious clubs. The situation was compounded by the fact that you had to be invited to the more prestigious clubs by a current member, then they introduced you to current members and then a board would vote on you after a certain length of time. One day I had been with a recruiter of ours from Texas and we had walked into one of the more prestigious clubs to see what it was like and how to join. We were kicked out of the club and they threatened to call the police since we had come in from off the street. It was at that point I realized that there was an entire subculture in my midst of extremely private and exclusive clubs in downtown Los Angeles. They were far different than the Los Angeles Athletic Club. One day I was interviewing a man a few years older than me for a position in our company and the interview ended about 5:00 pm. The man was from an old waspy sort of Los Angeles family and was pretty classy and well spoken in all respects. Generally, if an interview ended around 5:00 p.m. I would take someone out for drinks or to dinner, but on this occasion I simply asked the man if he had plans. He told me he was going to his club to exercise and I asked him which club. He informed me that it was the same club that I had been kicked out of with the recruiter from Texas just a few months previously. He then did something extremely smart: ‘‘Would you like to come to the club with me and have a look around?’‘ he asked. This is something I was definitely interested in. He took me to the club and then proceeded over the next few weeks to introduce me to other members. In the process, I ended up hiring him. While he was very qualified for the job I hired him for at the time, I am not sure if from an economic standpoint he was someone that made sense for me to hire. He was a great guy, but at that point the company simply was not at the level where it needed him. In retrospect, and this is a sad thing to say, I think a part of me hired him because I had a desire to belong to his group which I had been an outsider of previously. This brings me to you and ‘‘closing’‘ and getting a job. When someone is hiring you or making a decision about whether or not they should hire you, one of the things they are always asking themselves is ‘‘What’s In It For Me’‘–or WIFM. You need to look at getting hired and getting a job from your perspective, and from the perspective of the person who is doing the hiring. I once heard a well known copywriter, Ben Mack, say something along these lines. I wrote this down so these are probably not his exact words, but I wanted to share them with you because they are so powerful: People will follow you anywhere to the extent you encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies. For the past several years, a great deal of my time has been spent interviewing and working with the very best-educated attorneys throughout the United States. One of the things you will find in the resumes of attorneys who went to law school from the 1990s onward is that, if they went to most of the top 10 law schools, they generally have an extreme amount of liberalism in their background. By this I mean they are extremely liberal politically and were involved in very liberal organizations in college. They generally were the head of these liberal organizations. Why this is relevant is due to the fact that most of the administrators and admissions officers at top law schools around the United States are extremely liberal as well–I do not know why this is, but it just is. I know this because I have met most of them. It probably has something to do with the fact that a good portion of these admissions officers were student activists during Vietnam. If the admissions officers are young, their predecessors were probably activists during the 70s and hired their replacements based on having similar views. When these liberal admissions officers are making admissions decisions for top law schools they are faced with an overwhelming number of highly qualified applicants. Accordingly, they need to ‘‘look beyond the numbers’‘ when they are making admission decisions. What I believe happens is that they do everything they can to admit people who share their same ultra liberal views and this is what their ‘‘looking beyond the numbers’‘ means. Admitting ultra liberal students:

Encourages their dreams of a liberal society
Helps confirm their belief that social action is necessary
Helps them ‘‘throw rocks’‘ at their conservative enemies.

These are the people who ultimately ‘‘get the job’‘ and get into many of the best law schools. This same thing also occurs at most top colleges throughout the United States. Admissions officers are seeking to admit the most liberal people they can among a pool of similarly highly qualified candidates. I once worked for a very conservative federal judge. Most of the people that he hired to work for him were also extremely conservative. I once worked in the office of a law firm where almost everyone was the Catholic religion. What ends up pushing many employers over the fence is a powerful group affiliation. Why does this occur and what does this mean for your job search? People who are offering you a job want to hire people who they believe are part of the same group as them and confirm the way they feel about the world. This is something that is incredibly important for your potential employers and they will be more likely to hire you, and you will be more likely to ‘‘push them over the fence’‘ and close the deal, if you are able to identify with a particular group or cause that is important to an employer. When I was in high school I remember being invited to a college to spend the night there as a prospective student. Something very strange happened when one of the hosts (who was a college student) came up to me and said: ‘‘You seem too white bread and boring. This school wants people with passion.’‘ Actually, I am the opposite, but I was acting very subdued because that is what I thought it was going to take to fit in. When you are yourself and have passion one way or another, that is something that often closes the deal. The student who told me I was ‘‘white bread’‘ was right in many respects because he was pointing out that the more normal we seem the less likely we are to influence people one way or another. Pushing an employer over the fence to make a hiring decision is no easy thing to do. There are a million closing techniques that I could write about, and a discussion over every closing technique could compose a 1,000 page book. I think you have the ability to close because we all do. Your ability is instinctual. What you need to do is tap into your instinctual closing ability and push employers over the fence to make them hire you. You need to push employers that little extra bit to ensure you get the job. Anyone can go out on an interview, but only the most talented can actually close the deal.

Government Bailouts, Groups and Your Career

Harrison Barnes — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 05:01:27 +0000

Recently, something quite interesting has been happening in the American economy. The government has decided to get involved in running various businesses. These businesses include insurance companies, banks and automotive companies. This is something that I am almost 100% confident is going to likely be a disaster. In fact, it is already turning into somewhat of a disaster as far as I am concerned. History has shown time and time again, that when a government tries to operate a business, this ultimately fails. It never worked in Russia, for example, and China and India have only started expanding and growing in relation to their ability to run a “hands off” approach to businesses in the country. The more freedom people in a country have to operate their businesses, the more innovation is likely to occur, and the more businesses are likely to be started. What is needed to start the American economy are people willing to take risks and start and operate businesses. In order to take risks and start businesses, people need to be able to have the prospect of large rewards. There is no reason to start various businesses unless there is a prospect of substantial reward. First, I do not think the government has any business being involved in business to begin with. The idea that the government is loaning money to failing auto companies, insurance companies and others is sheer lunacy. I grew up in Detroit. The American auto companies have been losing market share and failing since the 1970s. I love America and drive an American car, but the point is that it does not make sense to put money into a failing industry. America has some of the greatest companies on earth, and many of the largest companies on earth–companies that are expanding. Putting money into something that works seems a heck of a lot more intelligent to me than putting money into something that is contracting and is broken. Putting good money after bad is something that stifles innovation and will not lead to the sorts of changes needed in the American automobile industry. If the auto companies were allowed to fail (and they should now), then someone would be able to come along and purchase their assets very cheaply. They could start a new auto company with a lower cost, or labor structure perhaps. They could innovate in other ways to keep the costs down and profits up. More money would likely end up going into the American economy over the long run. Instead, we are putting money into something which has been slowly failing for over 30 years. Second, the government has no role legislating our paychecks. Limiting peoples’ ability to make a certain amount of money is something that will serve to undermine industries in an incredible way. Businesses operate with a set of incentives and rewards. People go to work in various businesses due to the salaries they receive and the potential rewards they can receive in terms of bonuses. In addition, businesses also take various risks and make various investments in the hopes of getting large windfall rewards. For example, if a company invests $1,000,000 in something that is unproven, it hopes to get a reward that may be twice that. This is just how it works and it has always worked this way. In order to attract the sorts of executives that will take the risks and see the opportunities out there that will turn $1,000,000 into $2,000,000, a company will need to incentivize them with various potential bonuses and rewards. The best executives will almost always go where they believe they can make the biggest impact out there, and create the most opportunities for themselves. One of the strangest things the government is doing now is providing a tax on bonuses of 90% on people earning more than $250,000 a year who receive government bailout funds. This is just going to force the best people to not go to work for these companies. It is as if the government is investing money in companies which will not be able to have the best people working for them. Due to this, these companies are likely to do poorly. Several years ago I was taking a sales class from a man who had recently started a school to teach other people how to be salespeople. In the class, day after day, the man told one story or another about what an incredible salesman he was and gave multiple examples to the class about how much of this and that he had sold. The man was pretty well known and incredibly good at sales. After a career in sales in which he had made millions of dollars selling everything from real estate to jewelry, the man decided to start a sales school. He had a lot to teach, and his material was very, very good. One of the strangest things about the school; however, was that the man who was in charge of the school never once tried to sell the product he was selling (sales training) to the public. He never answered the phones in the school, and never had anything to do with selling the product. The only people who were allowed to sell the product in the school were the salespeople in charge of selling the sales school. The sales class I was in was pretty small. There were no more than 10 students in the class. The class cost a couple of thousand of dollars, and after several sessions of the class I started to feel that this salesman was selling himself short. I remembered when I had called the school the people who answered the phone had been very poor at selling me on the sales school. It was only due to my knowledge of the particular man that I had taken the classes. It occurred to me that if the salesman’s salespeople had been more effective, he could have sold numerous people on the school when they called. It did not make sense to me that I was taking a class with someone who was such a great salesperson, who was not out there selling his own product. One day after class I decided to stay late and speak with the salesman about his operation. “If you were in charge of selling your own product, you would likely have 100+ people in this class. You are a much better salesperson than the people you are employing to sell this for you. Why aren’t you selling the product yourself?” I asked. The man looked at me and smiled. He seemed very happy that I was asking this particular question. He looked up at me and his answer was very simple. “Because if I sold my own sales school the people who worked for me would very quickly feel undermined and quit. Also, my company would never grow if I sold my own product. No matter how well I sold the product, I would always be extremely limited if I sold this myself.” This was something that I forgot about until just recently. The lesson is that an organization can only function and grow when there is freedom of movement among the people in it. In effect, when there are groups within the organization that are allowed to function independently of oversight, the business grows. When you see small local businesses you will generally find an entrepreneur or other business operator who is intimately involved with all aspects of the operation and doing most functions. He may be assisting with accounting, filling in with various sales functions and more. In such a situation, the business can never really grow and reach its full potential. A business will only reach its full potential when it is allowed to operate independently of one individual, or one power. The mistakes the government is making with the economy and American business at the moment are quite relevant for your career, as well. You need to be working in organizations and with groups where there is a freedom of movement and where both you and the company can expand. The more constraints there are in your movement, and the more a company is managed by one individual, or one organization, the more problems there are likely to be, and the more likely you are to eventually be out of a job. It makes no sense to participate in organizations where the organization and your growth is constrained by outside forces. Organizations need multiple independent groups to survive. THE LESSON In business, innovation comes from the freedom to operate; stagnation and failure result when a government attempts to legislate business. Limiting peoples’ ability to make a certain amount of money undermines business in an incredible way. Similarly, you need to associate with businesses and groups where freedom of movement will allow both you ant the company to expand. When you have more constraints placed on your movement, you face greater problems and eventually the loss of your job.

Allow People Around You to Feel and Believe Whatever They Want

Harrison Barnes — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 05:01:29 +0000

When I was about nine years old I was driving down the street with a relative of mine and we saw a huge, pale man who was walking down the side of the road flipping off cars and screaming at them. The man did not have a shirt on and seemed extremely angry. He was wearing dirty jeans and had long hair that was sweaty. The man was large, probably at least 6′ 4″ and quite heavy. It was a terrifying site because the man’s movements were exaggerated and he seemed to be in a lot of pain. My relative saw this man, slowed down, pulled over close to him and rolled down the window on my side of the car. “Hey, screw you A##hole!” my relative screamed at him. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever for this display, and the man sprinted towards the car screaming and looking as if he would kill my relative (and perhaps me as well). My relative pulled away and the man found a rock and tried throwing it at the car we were in. I was very frightened and felt as if we were going to be killed. For whatever reason, my relative seemed to really be enjoying himself. I remember how fast my heart was beating and how frightened I was. Instead of driving away, my relative turned around and drove past the man again, screaming and making various hand signs. It was a very disturbing episode and I really felt at that moment as if I might have been killed. It was also an extremely dangerous thing to have done. Had the car stalled or something along those lines, I am pretty sure the man would have gone into a full-fledged attack. The man was crazed and extremely angry about something. This was one of the more frightening episodes of my childhood. One of the biggest mistakes any of us can make is not allowing people to experience whatever they are experiencing:

If people want to be angry about something, then we should allow them to be angry.
If people want to be sad, then we should allow them to be sad.
If people want to feel intelligent, we should let them feel intelligent.
If people want to feel that someone has done something very nice for them, then we should let them feel that someone has done something nice for them.

Some time ago, my wife and I had dinner guests over to our home. One of the guests presented my wife with a bottle of wine, declaring that it was a $100 bottle of wine and we should all enjoy it with dinner. The guest had apparently received the bottle of wine as a gift from a friend, who told them it was a $100 bottle of wine. Sometime later, as my wife was opening the wine, she said: “Isn’t it nice that they brought such an expensive bottle of wine!” I looked at the bottle of wine and knew that it was not a $100 bottle of wine at all. In fact, it was a $7.00 to $10.00 bottle of wine (depending on where it was purchased) that looked expensive because it had a bunch of French writing all over it and not a single word of English. I had purchased multiple bottles of this wine for a party of 100 people a year or so before, and had remembered the wine quite well. “This is not a $100 bottle of wine,” I said. “It is a $10 bottle of wine.” Everyone sort of fell silent and I could tell my wife was very upset with me. She said something about how what I said was not very nice. The wine was not a $100 bottle of wine and it had really bothered me quite a bit that the guest kept declaring this. Instead of just letting this pass, I decided to let everyone know the truth. What did this accomplish? It certainly did not endear me to the guests. Instead, it embarrassed the guests. No one cared if I knew the true price of the wine or not. The alternative would have been to let the guest feel good about bringing a $100 bottle of wine and the fact that her friend had given her a $100 bottle of wine. Instead, I chose to make her feel bad. It made my wife feel bad as well. It was simply not the right thing for me to have done at all. When I was practicing law, I would often go into the offices of various attorneys who would give me one assignment or another. When I listened to them speak, occasionally some of them would quote various laws and legal precedents they knew nothing about. I would generally choose to “set them straight” and let them know the real truth. This also did me no good. Instead, it would upset my audience a little bit. Some attorneys enjoyed being disagreed with, but for the most part this didn’t do me much good. When you look out in the world and see various employers and people in general, most people are living under one delusion or another. They are running their lives under one belief or another that is not true, and believing certain facts that may not make sense or are not true. You can see it everywhere. There are an incredible variety of beliefs out there and people have different ways of running their lives and businesses. Most often (not always) the best thing you can possibly do is just allow people to think and believe whatever it is they want to think and believe. Several years ago, I was speaking with an old man I knew who ran a gas station in Grosse Pointe, Michigan which was on a small corner that was not very busy at all. He hardly made any money selling gas because there just was not any business and not enough cars drove by. His best business was buying and selling cars, and he made more money doing this than anything else. He would purchase a used car, polish it up, fix small mechanical things wrong with it, and then sell it for a nice profit. One day I was speaking with him and he was telling me that the business of selling cars was slow. He told me that he wished he had more customers. He had around 10-15 cars he was selling at the time, and I looked around his little lot and noticed that you could not tell any of the cars at all were for sale. They were all sitting there and it looked like they might even have been in the process of having work done. “You ought to put a sign up that you sell cars and then put the prices in big letters on the windows of the cars,” I told him. To me, it looked like a pretty obvious thing. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that for years he had been sitting on that corner with no pricing information or any other sort of indication that the cars were for sale. It did not make a lot of sense to me. It was something that he had not seen. The man got extremely angry and told me that I needed to mind my own business and should not concern myself with stuff I knew nothing about. I ended up leaving because he was so angry. A few weeks later, I drove by and saw he had put up a sign announcing that he sold cars and that each of the cars had prices and little descriptions like “RUNS LIKE A TOP!” written across the windows. He had taken my advice, but it had cost me a friend. In James Harvey Robinson’s book, The Mind in the Making, he writes:

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self esteem, which is threatened. We are by nature stubbornly pledged to defend our own from attack, whether it be our person, our family, or our opinion. A United States Senator once remarked to a friend of mine that God Almighty could not make him change his mind on our Latin-America policy. We may surrender, but rarely confess ourselves vanquished. In the intellectual world at least peace is without victory. Few of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished convictions; indeed, we have a natural repugnance for so doing. We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to believe as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. … The “real” reasons for our beliefs are concealed from ourselves as well as others. As we grow up we simply adopt the ideas presented to us in regard to such matters as religion, family relations, property, business, our country, and the state. We unconsciously absorb them from our environment. They are persistently whispered in our ear by the group in which we happen to live. Moreover, as Mr. Trotter had pointed out, these judgments, being the product of suggestion and not of reasoning, have the quality of perfect obviousness, so that to question them. “… is to the believer to carry skepticism to an insane degree, and will be met by contempt, disapproval, or condemnation, according to the nature of the belief in question.”

In our jobs, interviews and elsewhere, we are constantly given the opportunity to question those around us. The people we meet come from all different sorts of backgrounds. The odds are very slim that we are ever going to change anyone’s mind about anything they feel or want to believe. You will begin to experience far more success in your job and your job search when you let people around you believe what they want to believe and feel, and do not question them. People generally get fired from law firms and employers not for making serious errors, but for lying about them. When I was practicing law, I remember there was a girl who had failed to file a very important paper in a certain case called a “Response to Requests for Admission”. This was a devastating mistake due to the fact that if you fail to file this document, the information that is requested is deemed admitted. She had made a mistake in not filing this and, consequently, the client of the law firm (a large and important client) lost a very important case. Despite such a serious error, the girl did not lose her job and the rest of her career was perfectly fine. THE LESSON The people we meet come from all different backgrounds; they live their lives according to facts that may not make sense or appear to be true. People are unlikely to change each other’s minds about their respective core beliefs. One of the biggest mistakes is opposing people from believing whatever they want. You will experience far more success by stepping back and allowing people to follow their own beliefs without questioning them.

You Need to Sell, Sell, Sell

Harrison Barnes — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 05:34:43 +0000

A strange misconception among many people, especially professionals, is that there is something wrong with selling. When I talk about selling, I am referring to any number of sales activities: -Selling yourself in an interview -Selling yourself in a cover letter to an employer -Selling yourself to a client -Selling yourself to any other person -Packaging yourself in a ”sellable” way In every single interaction we have with others, we are selling. The more you sell, the better you will do in your life and career. The best and most successful people are always selling. You should have no preconceived notions about the value of selling because it is among the most important skills you can have. If you understand sales, you understand and control your life. Several years ago, I was sitting in the office of my friend, who was a window washer. While he was on the phone, I picked up a magazine about window washing from his table. In it, I read an article which appeared to be part of a series. The series was about a man with a window washing squeegee and a towel who was transported to various American cities with no money and given the task of getting back each day. He might be transported from Chicago to Miami one month. The next month they might send him from Chicago to a small town in Oregon. He could be sent anywhere in the country. The article was titled something like this:

Give me a squeegee and a towel and send me to any American city with no money. By the end of the day, I will have a steak dinner in the most expensive restaurant in town, spend the night in a nice hotel, and take a flight home in the morning.

After being dropped off in a city in the morning, the window washer would go from business to business asking to wash their windows. Regardless of the city, he would always make enough money for his steak, hotel, and flight home. When I read this in the early 90s, flights often cost close to $1,000, so what this window washer was doing was really impressive. Without any knowledge of the city he was in and with no contacts, he would end the day with clients and plenty of money. I remember this series exceptionally well because it inspired me to understand the power of sales and how it can completely change your life regardless of your other skills. When you know how to sell something, you can do exceptionally well wherever you go. I want you to take a moment and think about the power of the window washer’s story. What makes this story so remarkable to me is that being a window washer requires no education and no investment. All it requires is the ability to wash a window, which is teachable in a few minutes, and to find people who will pay you to do this. The ability to sell the service is obviously among the most important elements of this job. What impressed me so much about this particular story is it shows if you have the ability to sell, you can make something from nothing. When you have the ability to sell you are in control of your life and what happens to you. Knowing how to sell something is a key to survival, advancement, fame, and fortune – if you are after these things. I believe selling is the most important career skill you can have. All people are involved in sales, even if they do not realize it. However, there is some sort of bias against effective sales people. It is often considered ”uncouth” or not businesslike to be good at sales. People often feel if they try to sell something it will reflect badly on them. People feel sales is a low-class profession. When I hear people talk about sales like this it nearly makes me sick. Selling is the most important possible career skill imaginable, and the most important people in the world are absolute masters at sales. Every time there is a presidential election in the United States, the winner is determined by the ability to sell to the public the idea he or she would make the better president. The winning candidate debates with his or her opponents, gives speeches, creates taglines and slogans, and travels all over the country trying to spread his or her ideas. When the candidate gets into office, he or she travels all over the world trying to sell those same ideas to other countries. The President tries to sell these ideas to the congress and the senate. The President tries to sell to constituents. If you are the CEO of a corporation, your job involves sales. Think about auto industry CEOs traveling to Washington asking for money. Their ability to obtain money involves their ability to sell to politicians. They too are in sales. The most important jobs involve sales, as do the least important. If you want time off from a job your ability to get that time off will depend on your ability to make a sale. If you want a raise, it may depend on your ability to sell your superiors on the reasons why you deserve a raise. Every single thing we do is about making a sale. Getting a good grade in school is often about making a sale. Everything we do is about making sales. I used to know a guy who sat in his apartment all day not doing much of anything. He watched television and occasionally made a few phone calls. He smoked a lot of cigarettes and had about five or six beers each night. He was also single and probably always will be. He had had a pretty lousy career. He was at least 40 pounds overweight and, despite being in his mid 30s, he had not had a girlfriend since he was in high school. What was this guy’s problem? He did not think it was cool to sell himself. He would not sell himself to an employer, a potential mate, or anyone. He did not care. I have not spoken to the guy in a long time, but I remember he was always making fun of people who sold stuff, making fun of commercials on television and making fun of people trying their hardest to do well in life. This guy was someone who needed to learn how to sell. Think about the people you know who are not selling themselves or putting their best foot forward. What would be different for them if they did? How would your life change as well? Selling yourself is about more than simply telling others how good you are. It’s also about showing others the value you can bring them. Things like being fit, being enthusiastic, taking care of yourself emotionally, taking advantage of opportunities presented to you, are all related to sales. Because you are paid by the market you are a product, and because you are a commodity you need to sell yourself and do so exceptionally well every chance you get. A huge mistake a lot of people in the job market make is forgetting they are a product. Yes, you are a product. Everyone is a product. We are products because in order to make money and add value to the world we have to get people to ”buy in” to whatever services or skills we are offering. Regardless of the job you have, people need to like you and/or what you are personally selling if you are going to reach your full potential. Selling yourself will really help you stand out in your job or in your job search. This means packaging yourself in the right manner. This is all about how you look and how you come across. In the most competitive jobs, employers can afford to be incredibly picky. If you go into a high paying investment bank, for example, you will see most new recruits are fit, sharp, and enthusiastic. Most investment banks can hire anyone they want, and they hire the people who make the best impression. This is how it is in a competitive industry such as this. In fact, one of the first times I met a group of investment bankers I thought they were male models – these people are very good at packaging themselves. What I want to see you do is make the most of who you are. This means packaging yourself to the best of your ability, always being at your best, and selling yourself. I want you to develop your sales skills and not be afraid-ever-to sell anything. Whatever your goal in life may be, becoming an effective salesman will help you achieve it.

You Need to Delay Gratification

Harrison Barnes — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 06:28:02 +0000

When I was around 14 years old, I moved in with my father after living with my mother for my entire childhood. Although I was a good student in elementary school, once I got into middle school there were lots of fun things to do. This included taking my parents’ cars out at night without a license, and riding around on bikes through the neighborhood with other kids. If it was too cold outside, I could always watch television, play video games, or make other trouble indoors. While I had been a very good student in elementary school, once I got into middle school I was on a downward spiral for several years because there were so many fun things for me to do. My troubles resulted in me getting kicked out of a private middle school and earning a 2.0 GPA my freshman year of high school. There are lots of reasons why I had so many troubles, but when it came right down to it, the biggest was that when I was living with my mother I had no discipline. For me the most important thing was to enjoy myself at all costs. I enjoyed watching television more than studying so I did that. I enjoyed playing video games more than studying so I did that. At school I enjoyed cutting class more than going to class so I did that. In fact, I pretty much did whatever I wanted in my search of enjoyment. I remember at the time seeing kids I grew up with whose lives moved in different directions. These kids would study at night, go right home from school to do homework, and pay attention in class. I also remember at the time the kids I was associating with all loved to make fun of these same kids whether it was in class, or elsewhere. It was absurd to me that these kids were working so hard. When I moved in with my father he was appalled by my grades and scholastic performance, as was I. His first order of business was to make sure I studied for a set number of hours each night. From 7:00 pm until 10:00 pm I was forced to stay in my room and study. For over a year this did little good. I made sure to distract myself with other things besides studying. I would call friends on the phone and chat. I would call girls in school and chat. I would do everything I could to enjoy myself instead of study. In 1985 our family moved to Bangkok, Thailand, where I had no friends and I was again forced to study between 7:00pm and 10:00 pm. Because it was impossible for me to sneak out of our high rise, I had no phone in my room, and no television to watch, I started studying every single evening. Within weeks my grades miraculously improved and my life was on a different path. When we look at the people who are most successful in the world and their jobs, one of the most common themes to emerge is they have the ability to delay gratification. Every single one of us is interested in enjoying life to the maximum extent possible. However, we need to realize long-term enjoyment of life may require that we delay gratification until a later time. In my case, this meant it was important for me to consistently do schoolwork before other things. Delaying gratification as an adolescent is also something that sets our lives up for significant success in the future. Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled, writes:

While many have a well-developed capacity to delay gratification, some fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds seem to have hardly developed any capacity at all; indeed, some seem even to lack the capacity entirely. These are the problem students. Despite average or better intelligence, their grades are poor simply because they do not work. They skip classes or skip school entirely on the whim of the moment. They are impulsive, and their impulsiveness spills over into their social life as well. They get into frequent fights, they become involved with drugs, they begin to get involved with the police. ‘Play now, pay later’ is their motto. So the psychologists and psychotherapists are called in, but most of the time it seems too late. These adolescents are resentful of any attempt to intervene in their lifestyle of impulsiveness. Even when this resentment can be overcome by warmth and friendliness and a nonjudgmental attitude on the part of the therapist, their impulsiveness is often so severe it precludes their participation in the process of psychotherapy in any meaningful way. They miss their appointments. They avoid all important and painful issues. So usually the attempt at intervention fails, and these children drop out of school, only to continue a pattern of failure that frequently lands them in disastrous marriages, in accidents, in psychiatric hospitals or in jail.

The difference between success and failure in many of our lives comes down to our ability to delay gratification. This is what changed my life and it’s also what can make a difference in your life and career as well. Failure is the result of not delaying gratification. Our lives change when we begin to focus on how we can create long term results by delaying gratification. People often become addicted to drugs and alcohol due to their inability to delay gratification. Faced with a decision between instant enjoyment and dealing with pain, people often choose substances. We do the same thing with our problems. If we have an issue we do not want to face we may ignore it because facing it would be too difficult for us. For example, if we do not like our jobs we may not face it because to face it would mean we need to look for a different career and give up the daily security of a paycheck, or where we live. But when we delay gratification we are setting ourselves up for better lives and careers. Not facing problems is something related to our ability to delay gratification. One of the most important things we can do is to confront a problem early. Recently I was reading about what happens to people psychologically when they start to lose money in the stock market. One of the questions I have always asked myself is how people who own a stock often hold on while the stock goes from say $1,000 to $2. This is an incredibly common occurrence and an investor often holds on for months and months while the stock slowly declines to almost nothing. Here is how an investor often thinks while this is occurring:

Purchases Stock at $500 “I’ll sell as soon as the stock gains or loses 10%.”
Stock goes to $700 “This is great. I’m going to hold on to this stock for awhile.” Does not sell.
Stock goes to $1000 “I’m never going to sell this one.” Does not sell.
Stock falls to $700 “I’ve still made money. This is still a good stock.” Does not sell
Stock falls to $500 “I’m still even.” Does not sell.
Stock falls to $300 “I’ll sell when it gets back to $500.” Does not sell.
Stock falls to $100. “I told myself I would sell if it lost 10%. I’ll sell when it goes to $450.” Does not sell.
Stock falls to $10. “I’ll sell when it gets back to $100.” Does not sell.
Stock falls to $5. “I’ll sell when it gets back to $10. Does not sell.
Stock falls to $2. “I’ll sell when it gets back to $5. Does not sell.

This may not seem like it’s related to delaying gratification, but avoiding pain until a later date is another manifestation of seeking instant gratification. This entire psychology is extremely common and illustrates how most fortunes are lost in the stock market. When the stock starts going down people do not want to face the immediate pain that they have lost money, so they hold off selling the stock under the hope it will go up in value again. Instead, this aversion to pain continually keeps the person on the edge and they refuse to confront the fact that they have lost money. By not confronting the issue the investors lose even more money. Ignoring problems is a simple expression of the inability or unwillingness to delay gratification. To confront a problem like a massive stock market loss is painful. To confront a problem early on before being forced by circumstances to confront it means to ignore something less painful for something more painful. This is the choice between suffering right now versus present gratification, with the possibility that future suffering won’t be necessary. Our problems will not disappear. The problems we need to confront are a barrier to our future growth. This is the reason so many people stay in careers and jobs they do not enjoy. One of the reasons people do not sacrifice to get higher degrees is because they want to avoid immediate suffering, despite the fact the education they would receive would likely produce long-term gains. Most of the people who are very wealthy have the power to delay gratification. Albert Einstein wrote that “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.” When we save money we are delaying the gratification we would get from spending the money. Many of the wealthiest people in the world know delaying gratification is the key to their success. I recently finished reading a book about Warren Buffett that asserted one of the main reasons for his wealth is he never sells a stock even after it has increased in value. This means he is not paying taxes on capital gains and the money he would have paid in capital gains keeps working for him. This is an example of delaying gratification. We act mostly out of a desire to avoid pain and gain pleasure. When we procrastinate we do this because we experience less pain from not acting than we do from acting. For example, if we are interested in meeting someone we may not introduce ourselves because we are worried we will be rejected. A better attitude might be to do everything we can to meet that person because he or she could become a lifetime friend or mate. This would be far more valuable to us than the pain of a short brush-off could ever be. The same can be said of dentist trips and doctor visits. We know that the short term pain of seeing the dentist can prevent a much larger problem later. Few people think this way, however, because the desire to avoid pain is so strong. The need to avoid pain is much greater than the desire to gain pleasure. Everything we do in our life is a push and a pull between long-term and short term rewards. One of the sayings I like is “You can pay now or you can pay later. If you pay later it is always going to be more expensive.” It is always better we pay now. Paying now is something that is in our best interest. When you are confronted with choosing between delaying gratification and not delaying gratification for long-term rewards you are almost always better off delaying gratification. The people who delay gratification are most often the people who experience the most success in their careers and lives.