How to Sell: Passive Vs. Aggressive

I have two stories about two salesmen I met recently. One was aggressive, and one was a little more passive. Both were talented at their craft, except one had a much better approach and here's why.

How To Sell Aggressively

The other week, I received an invitation to attend a free real estate investing course here in Santa Barbara. It was an invitation from Robert Kiyosaki from Rich Dad Poor Dad. I had not read his book yet, but I heard of friends who had.

Sounds like a pretty good use of time right? It turned out to be a multi level marketing plan, not my favorite business models. Here's why.

Don’t be weak minded

The events starts off with the main speaker, Melvin Rich, who’s from Florida. He starts off with his story. Having two kids and financial debt lead him to a financial breaking point. He knew he needed to get his financial situation back on track. He was living paycheck to paycheck and living off credit cards.

He joined the Rich Dad Poor Dad industry and has not stopped since. I check out his LinkedIn and in 12 years, he’s done 2,000 presentations.

Choose your mentors wisely

There was one memorable part in the speech that Melvin reaches out his hand with a book, “But it, Rent it, Profit!” He says, “one determined individual will get this book.” Everyone pauses and looks at each other. He says it again, “one determined individual will get this book.”

Then someone in the front seat reaches and grabs the book. It’s this image of “taking.” He also was admit on using "other people's money."

Do your research before making a purchase

At the end of the speech, there was a high pressure call to action to attend the 3 day real estate investing course held at the Hyatt the next month. It was $299. It sounded like a good deal. I went to the back and sign my name on the paper, “Joe Strandell and or assigns”

The moment that I felt suckered in was when the next speaker offered the same course for half the price, $150.

Say what?!

I Googled Robert Kiyosaki and the reviews of his Rich Dad Poor Dad company. I wasn’t impressed from hearing how many unhappy disappointed people there were. Robert Kiyosaki might be worth $80 million, but I think it has been an “ethically challenged” journey for him.

So much depends on reputation. Guard it with your life

When you Google your name, what comes up? Hopefully a bunch of positive things. People are searching you. It takes work to maintain a good reputation over the long term.

The more expensive something is, the more thought should be put into it before the purchase.

If something is expensive, more time should be put into research before purchasing. Spending $299 from an hour and thirty speech is not a good price/time ratio.

If you’re going to purchase a house on the shoreline, more time should be thought into it. Several years. If you are thinking about what mints to buy from the gas station, hurry up and make a decision for peet’s sake. People are waiting in line behind you.

Looking back, I would have slept on it. The bigger the financial decision, the more time you should spend thinking about it.

How to Make Passive Income Through Podcasts

Another really interesting salesman that I ran into lately is John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire.

Ironically, part of John’s story is that Law School, Corporate Finance, and Real Estate made him lose his smile until he found his passion and fire for Podcasting.

I found out about John Lee Dumas from Dale Partridge’s podcast interview.

The thing that makes John special from the other top tier business podcasters is that he releases a new podcast every day. That’s super dedication. Last month, he made $300,000 which is not bad.

Personally, I think video is a much more powerful educational tool to invest time in. Robert Kiyosaki got that part right.

Here is the 8 steps to making money through Podcasts

1. Deliver valuable content consistently for free
2. Build an audience
3. Listen to your audience
4. Record similar needs, struggles, and pain points
5. Create an outline that provides a solution
6. Drive traffic to a Live webinar
7. Provide incredible value and the solution on the webinar
8. Convert the solution to sales

And then he gets into talking about live webinars and why they work so well. He puts down 4 points:

1. It’s an event and people enjoy events. People chat back and forth with each other.
2. They build trust.
3. Social proof, other people are on it and it’s critical.
4. Answer questions and remove barriers.

Then he starts talking about the benefits of recorded webinars. And then the Ah-Ha moment hit me. I was most likely listening to a pre-recorded webinar.

According to him, he did 60 live webinars last year. Knowing this, I knew Step 8 was coming. I’m not ready for a podcasting course but I think it’s a great idea.

So, I start copying and pasting all the names of the attendees.

I leave the webinar and start Googling these people. It turns out that a majority of the attendees are professionals from the UK. So, I was sold to yes, but it was a much better approach. The right products were being sold passively to the right people.

Even though I do not really care for the term, “passive income,” the idea is good.