When I was a kid I was shy.

My first sales presentation was in ninth grade.

Our assignment was to research a topic of interest and create a compelling presentation around why this topic interested us and how it impacted our lives. This was to be my first attempt at "selling" my ideas.

The three days of presentations started, and I dreaded the day I had to speak in front of my classmates.

Standing in front of them to talk about my interest was terrifying. 

I spent more time scheming a way out of doing the presentation than actually investing the time in researching, refining, and rehearsing my pitch. 

That lack of preparation turned me into a mumbling bag of nerves that no one could understand. I kept my head down, flipping through my notecards, and reading off them the whole time. They could barely hear me, and it ended in complete disaster.

If you would see the video of that presentation (yes, there's a video somewhere), there is no way on earth you'd write "Most likely to succeed" in my year book.   

I made my first sale.

I sold the manager of that department on myself and told him I would be his best employee. 

My job was to wash the cars on the lot during the summer, clean the snow off and around the cars in the winter, detail trade-in cars to resell, and detail any car that was sold on the floor that day for customer pickup. 

Trade-in cars were always my favorite because they usually came in full of mud, grim, trash, and looking like they never were cleaned a day after they left the lot. 

The pressure washer was my sword, the steam cleaner was my shield, and my work ethic (growing up on a farm you get one of those) was my secret superpower. I cleaned hundreds of cars during my year and a half season with that dealership. In that time, I was surrounded by different career paths. There was the technicians, the office admin, the managers, finance, the janitors, the detailers, the parts people, and then their were the sales guys and gals. I was fascinated with them because they got to talk to strangers. Something I didn't know how to do.     

Watching car sales professionals work their magic wasn't my first introduction to this world.

I mentioned I grew up on a farm.

One of the things my parents had was also a ranch part to that farm. There we raised pure bred Charolais cattle. We sold the bulls to beef cattle ranchers. 

Every year around fall time we had the Froehlich Bull Sale Auction at the cattle barn in town. My parents would invite as many beef ranchers as they could find (my first lesson in marketing). The bulls we raised all spring and summer we separated and got ready to sell at the auction.

I remember my parents making calls, sending letters, and talking to anyone and everyone they thought were prospects to invite to the Bull Sale Event.

I was around them hearing every interaction they had with past customers and possible future customers.

Selling was their number one profession, not farming or ranching. 

So, why was I so shy? Why couldn't I do what I saw my parents doing? Was I not cut out for doing this kind of work?       

I left my first job, car washing, to take a pay raise to deliver appliances and furniture for a local home furnishing retail store. I loved it because every day my co-worker and I loaded up the truck, jumped on the road, and headed off to meet new people.

Meeting and talking to new people was my favorite part of the job. It started to build my confidence because I had to knock on doors and speak to strangers who wanted the goods they purchased. 

It also gave me a little bit of sales training because we could "upsell" them on a few things we offered that they didn't purchase in the store. 

I wasn't good at it, but the guy I worked with was pretty good. He had a good pitch, but what he did best was ask the right questions at the right time. This seemed to give him the magic touch. 

I watched, listened, and took notes (which by the way I NEVER did in school). 

When I was sent out alone to deliver, I started experimenting with what he did and got immediate success out the gate.

It was exhilarating. A rush. And it became like a drug. I wanted more.

But I got laid off because the owner decided to close shop and move out of town.            

My third job I took was a parts runner for a local auto parts store. 

I took it because the manager told me that this was the starting position available, and if I did good, he would promote me to a sales position.

After six months of being the best parts runner I could, one of the sales positions opened up and he hired me for it. 

I was nervous! 

I still had the fear of talking to people, but at least with this position, we had a bunch of customers who called in their orders. So, I didn't have to be face-to-face. They didn't have to see me fumble around trying to look up the parts they needed. 

I could write down the order, put them on hold, and then proceed to look it all up. It was the customers who came into the store that made me the most nervous. But, I had to face my fear if I was to ever overcome it. 

One-by-one, I helped customers and slowly built the confidence to talk to people. I wasn't smooth by any means, but I started to wear down the edges of my clunkiness one person at a time.

Within months, my sales skills were improving nicely.      

After almost two years at the auto parts store, I realized I wasn't going anywhere in life. I needed to make a change, so on a vacation to see my cousin in Colorado, I joined the Marine Corps.

The recruiter had good sales skills...LOL...no not really. It was actually the question my cousin asked me that got me thinking, "What are you doing with your life?"

Innocent question, but powerful none the less. 

Why the Marines?

Because I wanted to join the toughest force that had the reputation as having the toughest training from the start. I wanted a challenge, and I wanted something that would challenge me every day. The Marines offered that option. 

While in the Marine Corps, I was introduced to Network Marketing. Several different ones. Even though I ended up disliking all of the ones I got into, what I loved was the fact that they trained you. They give you sales training. They give you personal development training. They teach you how to network and do marketing. They are patient and continue to build you even if you don't produce. In the corporate world, that doesn't happen. You get fired if you don't produce.        

After my four year tour, I left the Marines.

I loved it, but again, it was time to move on.

I tried my hand at being a business owner by starting up my own massage therapy business. I epically failed because I didn't know what I didn't know.

So, I took a job at a local gym that had five gyms in their little chain. They quickly promoted me to an assistant manager (thank you Marine Corps for leadership skills). As part of the managers duty, you have to enroll new members, basically, I had to sell. 

They gave us a thirty-day crash course with one of the gym managers at their largest location. Not all of it was sales training because we had to do manager duties as well. 

Before they sent us out to roam the five clubs, I was promoted to a manager position at one of the location, so all the sales and management fell on my shoulders. 

I'll be real with you, I sucked! 

I was a good leader and manager, but when it came to sales, I was terrible. It became clear after watching an out-of-shape sales guy enroll new prospects like it was easiest thing in the world.      

While managing the gyms, I was in college.

After graduating college, I left the gyms for a job working at a national bank as a financial analyst. 

My duties were to review the financials of the small businesses they had provided loans to so we could determine our level of exposed risk on the loan portfolio. 

I loved it because I got to work with numbers and businesses. It was like a perfect combination of my interests.

But I watched the sales team with envy and I wanted in that world again.

So, after nine months of doing that for the bank, I interviewed with one of the sales managers. 

I guess my sales skills weren't that bad because I got the job. Truthfully, my sales skills did get better. After watching that sales guy at the gym, I got to work studying everything and anything I could to become a better sales professional. 

When this job opportunity came, I was ready for it. 

This was going to be my first full sales professional position. So, I had to either sink or swim. They weren't going to train me how to sell, just what to sell and who to sell it to.             

My studies and interest in sales took me everywhere, but one of the most interesting places I stumbled across was direct sales. 

This is also known as direct marketing.

What I loved about it was its core fundamental of driving prospects and potential customers to you rather than you going and knocking on doors or making cold calls - I did both and it wasn't my cup of tea, but I did learn from those experiences. 

What caught me was the fact you position yourself as the best choice for your customer. Some people use hard tactics to sell, but this wasn't how you had to present your product or service with direct sales.

With this strategy in hand, I got to work in my new position. I had another thirty-day crash course and then they threw me to the wolves. My first market was South Carolina - it was a territory no one wanted because it lacked a track record of producing, and the previous sales rep destroyed it. So, they ignored it for over a year before handing it off to me. 

It was all I got, so I took it and immediately implemented my outreach strategy. For three months, NOTHING HAPPENED. Right about the time I was going to beg for a new territory, I got a lead.

With that first lead, I got a loan through the pipeline.

It wasn't that big ($350K), but it was a start. 

The word got out about what I did and how I helped the local banker close a big deal for them.

All the calls and emails that got ignored for three months, were no longer getting ignored.

I had bankers, VPs, Presidents, Regional VPs, and District Presidents calling me to get their teams onboard with the programs I had available to them. This meant presentations and talking to a whole lot of people - and not just one-on-one. I needed to stand and deliver a sales pitch to other sales professionals - not just customers. Now, that was nerve racking.

I had several stumbles along the way with several loans not going through, but at the end of the year, I had built over a $4.25M sales pipeline. It took work and effort, but what it took more than anything was to challenge my reality of self-doubts. 

I was capable of more and I proved it to myself by becoming Rookie of The Year for our sales team.                

After turning the South Carolina market around, they sent me to Pennsylvania to do the same thing.

All I did was take the strategy I used in South Carolina and implemented it in Pennsylvania. Again, I had to struggle through the first two to three months of nothing happening. But, like the first market, it only took one loan and I was off to the races. 

After the first loan in PA, the word got out and I was again on every imaginable call with bankers and customers. 

This was a much more mature market, so I was able to build a $6M+ sales pipeline within that first year. 

Immediately after PA, they put me in Maryland to turn that market around as well. I was quickly beginning to be known as the fixer. Maryland was turning nicely just like the first two, but then the crash of 2008 happened.

That year spelled disaster for banks and our bank wasn't immune. 

We went out of business and merged with one of the few survivors. 

I left before they downsized my whole team.        

Because of my leadership and management skills, I landed a job with, at the time, was a business mentor of mine. 

He had a small $1M+/year business helping people eliminate lower back and neck pain. He was also the person who introduced me to direct sales and taught me how to do direct marketing to attract an ideal prospect and turn them into customers. 

I wanted to work with him for years. He just wasn't ready to hire me at that time, or maybe I blew my chance back then. 

Either way, when this opportunity came, I jumped on it. I took a pay cut to learn what he knew. While the economy was in downfall, lay offs were happening daily, and businesses were closing their doors overnight his business was thriving.

I wanted to know why and how!

This was my real first introduction into the secret world of psychology, human nature, sales, and ultimately marketing. He was doing things that defied business reality at the time. 

He would place an ad, book sales appointments full, and then close over 70% of the cases. How can anyone do that?           

As I watched, learned and started to understand more, it wasn't hard tactics that moved people to purchase his services. 

It was a simple equation between human nature and logic. 

Because I did 99% of my sales at the bank on the phone, my phone skills came in handy at my mentor's business. It was vital that we booked appointments from the marketing ads we placed. His approach was much different than anything I'd done before. He had a clear cut script that I needed to follow to assure any employee reading it would get bookings. 

I took that script and made it mine. By the end of month three, I used 90% of it, and improvised the rest to make it sound less robotic. Within just a few months, I had a 93% booking rate. 

That meant if 10 people called, I booked 9 people into the first sales consultation. He would then come in and take those 9 people and close 85% of them to the second "closing" consultation = 7 new potential patients. 

Out of those 7, he would then close anywhere between 65-75% = 4-5 new patients per week. 

Now, the numbers were much more than 10 new prospects a week. We generally had between 20-30 new prospects going through our sales pipeline each week. If you do the math, you'll see how we generated a $1M+ sales pipeline. Not bad, right?                

I got a taste of being a business owner working for my mentor.

And that itch just needed to be scratched. 

So, after two and a half years working and learning at his side, I decided I wanted to follow my dreams and open up a martial arts school. 

It had been something I wanted to do for decades, since I started back in 1991.

Equipped with now leadership and management skills, admin skills, production skills, and sales/marketing skills, I was ready to try my hand at being a business owner again. So, what does any sensible person with limited resources do? Sign a five year lease on a VERY expensive unit in a shopping area and open your doors, right? Well, that's what I did. 

I had zero students, prospects, and leads when I signed the lease. But I knew how to do marketing, specifically direct marketing, to attract people. I had three months working capital, and used every penny of it to do outreach marketing.

So, with three free months rent, I had to make it or go bankrupt. But I only closed 15% of the people who came in the first week. At that rate, I would never make it. What to do?         

One of the things I learned from my mentor was you can't improve what you aren't measuring. 

In order for me to improve, I needed to "measure" my sales presentation part of my new business. I had leads, I got bookings, but I had a terrible close rate. At a 15% close rate, I was only enrolling 1 new student a week - that would have been 4 per month. If I kept that up, I was doomed and destined to close my doors in three months. 

I didn't have anyone to consult with for guidance, so I did the next thing I was taught - record every sales presentation so you can evaluate yourself and find your mistakes. Let me tell you, role playing with someone to improve your skills can be tough, but listening to yourself to evaluate your errors is another level of anxiety. 

Within two weeks, I found most of my mistakes and moved the 15% needle to 33%. But, that again is way below standards to get to breakeven within three months. Some may accept it, but I was tired of being average.

I listened and tweaked more. Within another two weeks, the 33% moved to 52%. 

After six months, I was consistently getting about 65-70% enrollment rates. 

But, I hated what I was doing. Every night I drove home asking myself, "How can I shut the school down and walk away?"                

It wasn't that I hated martial arts or business. 

What I hated was who I attracted and who I accepted as students. Even though I heard whispers of this before, it wasn't until I was the owner that I realize I needed to guard my time and who I surrounded myself with. 

I quickly realized not everyone is meant to be in your life. So, after six months in business, I made the decision to send out an email stating how I was going to change the way I conducted business going forward. 

All the parents and adult students got it, and the ones who didn't want this new way were given the opportunity to leave. They did. With that email, I lost 50% of that student base. I was back to breakeven and worrying again I was going to go out of business or bankrupt.

Neither happened. But for the decade that followed, I used my sales (and marketing - which is just another way of selling) to build a fantastic business. I learned why selling is important, how to sell, and how to not hate selling. I went from a 65% enrollment rate to a consistent 83% enrollment rate. I then taught my staff how to do it without having to use hard tactics or bullshit lines to get enrollments. They also kept a 83% enrollment rate.             

That first successful business (martial arts school) was my way of practicing running and operating a real business on my own. I learned how to build something from scratch, how to run it into the ground, and then how to build it back up again. I shut it down in 2021, but it will always be one of the best things I ever did. 

My sales and marketing career has taken me down many fascinating roads. What I learned was that your not defined by your close rate or the number of sales you generate - these are important, but these factors don't make up what sales are about.

It's about the connections you make along the way and the relationships you build with others. Transactional sales are easy, relationship building is hard. One makes you a quick buck, the other provides you a lifetime of wealth building potential. 

Our society is seduced with immediate gratification. I want fast as well, but I want to go far, so that requires building relationships and diving in to determine if what I offer is going to help a customer or not. If I don't think my product or service will help you, then I'll be honest with you. If you buy my stuff and I feel you are NOT getting what I intended you should be getting, I won't keep selling it to you. 

My opinion is only mine. It isn't better or worse than anyone else's. But real selling is about who you serve, how well you can do that, and what kind of relationship will come from the encounter. 

One third will love me, one third will hate me, and one third won't even care. I'm here to share my stories, lessons, and services with two of these three groups. Thank you for the attention, time, and effort it took you to read my short story. 

Dive into my blog posts and learn more about me and the power of sales.

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