Sell Less, Make More: The Secret to Profitable Growth

I've been in business for over 30 years, and during that time, I built over a dozen highly successful companies without being great at sales. I’ve always admired people who are good at selling—those who truly understand what a prospect needs and can sell it to them in an honest, ethical, and moral way.

On the other hand, I've always looked down on hardcore salespeople who sell solely to make money.

I'll give you three examples of how we’ve grown faster than most of my competitors, even though none of my companies are known for focusing heavily on sales. I'm talking about making far more profit than my competitors and building companies that are sellable—companies that other organizations want to buy (and have bought from us in several industries).

That doesn’t mean we’ve always made more revenue than my competitors. In some cases, we have, but in others, our competitors made more gross revenue—sometimes tens of millions more. However, they also spent tens of millions more on advertising, which resulted in a lower margin, lower profit, and significantly lower retention.

What they had was a business that looked terrible on paper. When they were done with it, the only option they had was to walk away, rather than selling it for a 2x, 4x, or even 10x multiple.

So, as promised, here are three examples of how we’ve done this and how you can, too—probably much easier and for far less money than you’re spending on your current marketing.

The first example comes from my time in the health club industry. This was a company I built in the '90s and sold in 2004.

If you’re unfamiliar with the health club industry, it’s similar to the car dealership or insurance industries, where the highest-growth companies succeed because they are sales-driven. Most health clubs grow by driving as many people as possible into their clubs and selling them memberships.

When I was in that industry, my competitors were constantly price-warring. They ran sales to attract more potential members and continuously hired and trained more salespeople, teaching them hardcore tactics to close deals.

Here’s how we did it differently: we opened a club in a highly competitive area, where five other health clubs were located within a mile of our site. In less than two years, three of those five went out of business or were sold. Why? Because my club was taking their members.

What’s surprising is that we were one of the highest-priced clubs in the area. We didn’t offer discounts to attract members, and we didn’t spend nearly as much on advertising. What we did was overdeliver.

We began by studying our prospects—finding out exactly what they wanted, learning about their greatest pains, and then delivering results that addressed those pains and gave them what they wanted.

And here’s the funny part: most of my competitors weren’t just spending a lot on marketing, they were selling the idea of losing weight or getting in great shape. If you know anything about health clubs, you know that sometimes people like to hang out after they work out and have an energy drink, a protein shake, or just chat with friends.

Our clubs were completely different. They were very upscale, and we didn’t aggressively pitch people to join. Instead, we focused on finding out everything people hated about other gyms and everything they loved about working out.

We built clubs that attracted people who would stick with us for the long term. Our clubs offered free towel service, free coffee, and lounges where people could relax before and after their workouts. Our workout areas were always spotless, and our clubs never smelled. As a result, our members had the social experience they wanted—and the side effect was that they came to the clubs more often, which helped them get in shape faster.

Instead of pressuring people to buy, our salespeople were trained to give a tour of the club and then let prospects talk to current members.

If you know anything about advertising, you know there are a few things you can do to increase conversions. One of those things is to add testimonials.

By allowing our prospects to speak with current members, we had the best testimonials we could ask for.

The outcome? People who were members at other clubs joined ours. When prospects toured our facilities, our salespeople didn’t have to sell them hard; our members did the selling for us—without us even having to ask.

This made signing up new members incredibly easy. And we’ve used this tactic, in one form or another, in every company I’ve been a part of since then.

The next example I’ll give you is less about making more sales and more about making far more money from every sale.

When I sold my health clubs in 2004, I came out with my first book. At that time, I had no email list, no publisher, and no idea how to sell books. And by the way, selling a $39.00 book isn’t going to make anyone rich, and that’s exactly what I had—a $39.00 book and no idea how to sell it.

But I wrote it, had hundreds of copies printed, and now I needed to find a way to make it profitable.

I did something in my first book that could either be considered very smart or amazingly stupid: I put my email address in the book and told readers they could send me three questions, and I would be happy to answer them because they bought a copy of the book.

Now, this was back in 2004 when I was still in the health industry. If I were to do that today, there’s no way I could keep up with those questions. But back then, my idea was to overdeliver by giving readers the ability to ask me questions, while also finding out what else they wanted, so I could know what to sell them next.

Every question that came in got answered, but with every answer, I asked them what they would want next.

That one $39 book turned into a large online health company that sold workbooks, e-classes, videos, and audios, and eventually turned into 42 health membership sites online.

I remember being part of a fitness mastermind back then—a group of people in the fitness industry who had online programs. Every one of them was far better at selling their books than I was. Most of them were selling thousands of books a week, which was significantly more than I was selling.

But after a year in that mastermind, there was only one other person who was even coming close to the profit that my company was bringing in. Now, almost everyone in that mastermind was making more gross revenue than I was, but since they were spending so much money to acquire each sale, their profit was far lower than mine.

At the time, that’s what they wanted. They’d all sit around and share secrets on how to sell more books to more people, but they rarely took the time to survey their customers to find out what they really wanted. And when they did survey them, they used that information just to improve their marketing to sell to more people.

But as you mature in business, you learn that your front-end sales are often your most expensive sales. To scale a company, you need to build relationships with your prospects and customers—you need to do things that make them trust you.

When you do that, you’ll help far more people, and your customers will bring more customers to you—whether by referring people to you or talking positively about you on social media. And you’ll make far more profit that you can reinvest into growing your company or into building your personal wealth.

The third example I’m going to give you is my favorite. Out of all the companies in my portfolio, there’s one that I enjoy the most. I only work in that company one day each week.

About 15 years ago, I was invited to speak at a business event. About 30 minutes before I was set to go on stage, the promoter came over and asked me what I was going to sell.

I was super confused because I was invited to speak about how I’ve built and exited multiple companies. I literally had nothing to sell and no desire to sell anything.

The promoter looked even more confused than I was because he was expecting a commission from everything I sold from the stage that day. It was my fault because I didn’t understand that business model. I didn’t know that promoters make money from events by taking a cut of every sale that speakers make when they walk on stage.

So, we sat down in his office to discuss what I could sell. But the problem was that I didn’t have any programs or anything to sell.

After about 15 or 20 minutes, we decided that I was going to sell a coaching program where I charged a significant fee, and in exchange, I would personally get on the phone once a week for an hour with anyone who bought it.

This was a very small event where people paid, I think it was $10,000 each, to sit in the room and hear me and two other speakers. So, these were highly qualified buyers who had businesses, making them perfect for potentially buying this coaching program.

After speaking for about two hours, I literally said something like, “I’m going to put together a program that allows you guys to speak with me personally once a week, and I’ll help you grow your company just like I’ve grown mine and just like I grow the companies I invest in.”

Then I told them the price and mentioned that I would only allow six people in because I thought that was all I could manage at the time. I didn’t want to take time away from my companies, and I certainly didn’t want to take time away from my family. I thanked them and walked off stage.

The promoter, whose name was Steven, literally pulled me back into the room because more than half the people in the room wanted to join, which was far more than I had expected.

That turned into my consulting firm, and I only work in that firm on Wednesdays. The main program in that firm is called Club 28, which is a one-on-one program where I personally work with a handful of companies each year to help them grow.

It's expensive to be part of, but it's the only program like it that I’ve ever seen—where someone who has built and runs a portfolio of their own companies, who’s part of 7, 8, and 9-figure brands, stops what they're doing one day a week to help other companies grow.

But here’s the lesson: I’m good friends with people who own some of the largest business consulting programs out there (far bigger than mine), and anytime we’re together—whether at dinner or discussing business—the same question always comes up…

They always tell me how much more revenue I could be making if I just started doing things the way they tell me is the right way to do it.

And this is what they suggest:

Instead of having people go to my website and apply to get into Club 28, if someone qualifies, I should get on the phone with them for 30 minutes to have a personal conversation. If they find value in that call, and I like them, only then should they be invited to join Club 28.

Nobody can just pay and get in.

But these friends of mine say that if I just hired a salesperson, advertised online, and drove people to those salespeople, the salespeople could sell them into a coaching program where other coaches would try to help my clients.

I know this model; I see it all over. Every time they tell me about it, I understand how well it works for other companies.

But that’s not how I built my company.

Every company I’m part of—whether it’s a company I own, a company I invest my money in, or a company I spend my time consulting with—every company grows because I take their growth personally.

That’s rare, and it limits the number of companies I can help. But here’s what I think makes this so much better:

First, I don’t have to spend a ton on marketing.

Second, I don’t have to pay commissions to a salesperson who’s probably going to make people feel super uncomfortable.

Next, I don’t have to pay for coaches who honestly have no experience growing companies, so they would never be able to help a client grow… let alone help them 2x, 5x, or 10x their growth like I do.

And finally, I don’t have bad reviews. Every other consulting firm out there has a ton of bad reviews because they’re not able to deliver on what they promise, since their clients are being coached by people who don’t have a track record of building companies.

What I do have, and what you will have when you understand what truly differentiates you and how to massively over deliver to your target audience, are:

• An amazing number of success stories
• A very small ad budget
• The chance to do something I love once a week in a way that’s highly profitable… and gives me a chance to give back for all the blessings I’ve had in business.

You’ll grow far faster and more predictably when you focus more on profit than you do on gross revenue.

And you get there by understanding your target audience, over-delivering to them, and not getting distracted by everyone telling you to chase revenue over good reviews.