Money Study: The Learning to Earn Fast Fivesome

How to Master the Art of Selling
by Tom Hopkins

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Money study-I call it that to emphasize how vital it is to learn how to acquire new knowledge quickly and thoroughly. Knowing how to learn fast is the key to rapid personal growth and quick sales success. As adults, it's easy to fall into the habit of skimming over new knowledge, of avoiding any organized effort to grasp and hold new knowledge. That's no good at all. That's how you achieve the status of being average. Superior earning ability grows out of the superior performance that superior learning makes easy. The place to start being superior is to acquire and use a superior learning system. Here it is:

1. Impact. You've noticed that the more you're interested in a subject, the more easily you remember details about it. To learn something with greater thoroughness and speed, first take a few moments to psych yourself up. Dwell on how much the knowledge is going to help you; visualize the benefits you're going to get from possessing it. Form a clear and vivid picture in your mind as to why you're learning this material. Then, each time you start to study it, take just a second or two to recall that vivid picture of the benefits you're seeking. Do that, and you'll intensify the impact of the material, and make it yours faster.

2. Repetition. Repetition is the mother of learning. Repeat anything often enough and it will start to become you. All the great salespeople I know started with words they knew worked. They tailored those words to their own products and services and molded them to their own personalities. Having done that, they proceeded to repeat and review the statements until they controlled those words. Then they delivered them with conviction-and the results they wanted were there.

In four words, they used repetition effectively. What is effective repetition? It's far more than bleary-eyed singsong in the middle of the night. Effective repetition means your review is wide-awake and intensive. Effective repetition means you cut the material apart and sew it back together to fit you. Effective repetition means you hear it, write it, read it, and speak it. Effective repetition means you dramatize the material and make it dance in your head. Effective repetition means you pay a good price in an effort to make good material yours.

These first two steps are vital. They're the foundation and the floor of a powerfully constructed selling career. But don't stop when you've completed them-don't even slow down-because you can't live in a house with no walls. Push on immediately to the next step of learning.

I frequently return to cities where I've already given my sales seminar, and on these occasions, I always see dozens of Champions who are coming back through the program again. The ones who tell me they've doubled or quadrupled their incomes say that this happened because they worked energetically through the next step.

3. Utilization. The basic law of possession is Use it or lose it. This law applies to all learning, and it applies with special force to sales skills. Use them or lose them.

There's a wonderful truth about skills and knowledge: They don't wear out with use. Quite the contrary. Knowledge takes on greater depth and meaning through hard use; skills become strong and tough through hard use.

And the hard use of sales skills and knowledge is the only road to high earnings. Learning for the mere sake of learning is sterile. It's a form of play. For any kind of learning to have meaning, it must not only be capable of utilization, it must be used. Unused learning is fertilizer left in the sack.

Bring out your skills and knowledge; spread them on the fertile soil of your territory. Let them bloom.

Discover the golden hours when your offering sells best. Then get in front of as many people as possible during that time. Put the strategies, words, and phrases to use. If you use them properly, they'll work. You'll earn money while honing your skills for the next presentation.

Get in front of the executives considering corporate jets, computers, or whatever you're marketing. Meet with the families in need of your appliances. Get into the kitchens of the people now wasting the money they should be ensuring the futures of their loved ones with. Now is the time to use the powerful sales statements you've organized for the benefit of others. You've turned yourself into a sales machine; now turn that machine on. Produce results.

The moment you get into high gear and start using your material efficiently, you'll glimpse your bright new destiny. At that moment, you'll be ready to break out above average and join the ranks of the excellent. You'll be ready to fly higher and farther because of your newly learned abilities. You'll be ready to take the fourth step toward learning and toward greatness.

4. Internalization. This occurs when you've exploited impact, when you've molded the standard material to your needs and made it yours, when you've made your new skills strong through hard use. You've utilized them so efficiently that your first good results generate the energy to accelerate you into superperformance. All of a sudden, these new concepts stopped churning within you and a new reality was born: You and the concepts are one. They have literally become you. You have become them.

I've had Champions bring their spouses to my program to say hello. In a few minutes, the spouse says, "My husband [or wife] sounds just like you."

But it really isn't that way. They aren't hearing their spouses imitate my words and manner of speaking; they're hearing their spouses express themselves with the language of achievement that's common to both of us. We have been using the same techniques. Now we voice the similar experiences of success that have grown out of the shared knowledge we've both internalized.

Internalization is the next-to-last step to completing any learning. When the day comes that you can truly say you've internalized all the concepts of this book, or have internalized all the concepts of any other body of learning you aspire to, then and only then are you capable of greatness with that learning. In the case of the learning we're primarily concerned with here, you'll be capable of going on to greatness in sales-and you'll also be in great danger of sliding back into average performance. That's where step 5 comes in to play.

5. Reinforcement. When you achieve the status of superprofessional salesperson, you'll be tempted to despise the very labors and methods that put you there. When you're still struggling upward, you'll find it easy to say, "Oh, no, not me. When I get there, I won't forget how I did it." But you will, and some of that is good. You don't want to dwell on past difficulties except to laugh about them. Still, the toughest task I have as a trainer always is with the superprofessionals who are slipping. They don't want to believe that the explanation for their troubles is that they've stopped doing what made them superprofessional in the first place. Can there be any other reason for them to slip back into average performance? You might say, Maxie Kwotabuster's sales are down because of his three-martini lunches, because of his three-hour handball games during the golden hours, or because of the manner he's adopted since becoming successful. But when old Max was fighting his way clear of being average, his lunches were businesslike and left him refreshed for an effective afternoon; he guarded his golden hours jealously and used them effectively; he treated people cordially. And you can be sure that when Max was making his first run at success, he found the time necessary to effectively perform all the basic functions of sales work.

When you entered the profession of selling, you learned your product. You learned some sales techniques, you got out there among your potential clients and put your knowledge to work, and you started to make some money. Then all of a sudden, you got smart. You quit doing what your company asked you to do. And you started to slip.

You might finish reading these words, put this book down, and in six months double your income. Then you'll stop doing what I've asked you to do. You'll stop doing the things that caused your income to double. Your income will begin to fall, and you'll wonder why. There's a way to keep that from happening.

Don't stop.

Instead, do what professional athletes do. There's a lot of similarity between the professional athlete and a professional salesperson.

You know that high school teams practice. That doesn't surprise you-the kids have to learn the game. You know that college teams practice. Okay, they're still quite young. But before every season starts, the pros are out there sweating it up. The first string is out there. The star quarterback is out there. He's making a chunk of money but he's running. He's perspiring. He's spending some of his time on new plays, certainly, but most of the time he's drilling on fundamentals. Reviewing the basics. In fact, what's interesting is that the more professional and talented an athlete is, the more that athlete-man or woman-practices and trains. This comes back to that neat little thing called discipline. It calls into play that business of making yourself do what you know you should do.

Jump ahead in your calendar. Put a note there to review this book a year from now. When the time comes, I know there's a good chance you'll say, "I'm not going through that stuff again. I know it. I've milked it for everything it's worth."

I hope you won't say that. I hope you won't limit the effectiveness of your learning. I hope you won't put a ceiling on your income-earning potential. I hope you won't decide to slip back into the quagmire of mediocrity. Reinforce your learning. Do it at least annually. Preserve your hard-won skills. Enhance your knowledge. Add to it.

Reinforce.

Keep your greatness.

Instead of letting your greatness wither, fertilize it regularly to make it grow. You'll find this true of all learning that's important to you: Every time you review the material in depth, you'll see things you never saw before and discover concepts you weren't ready to use before. Whenever you review effective knowledge, you reinforce your previous insights with richer insights.

YOUR PRIMARY TOOL

Let me ask you a question. If the professional golfer uses a club, the tennis player a racquet, and the carpenter a hammer, what do we professional salespeople use?

We use something that's gotten us in lots of trouble, don't we? But is there a pro on the golfing circuit who hasn't used his club to drive the ball into a sand trap? Is there a tennis player who hasn't used the racquet to feed an opponent a sure winner? Is there a carpenter out there who hasn't used a hammer to smack her thumb?

Is there a salesperson who's never used his primary tool to say something that lost an account?

Your primary tool-the opening in your face called a mouth-must be used with confidence. But it can malfunction. The words you speak can destroy sales as well as create them. That's why you should think of your mouth as a sharp-edged tool that has to be used intelligently if it's going to do you more good than harm. But set reasonable goals. You can't reasonably expect to never say the wrong thing to prospects and clients.

Hitting the ball wrong in tennis is much like saying the wrong thing in sales. Every year at Wimbledon, the eventual winners use their racquets to feed a few easy shots to their opponents, and they lose the point every time they do. But far more often, they use their racquets to hit winning shots for themselves.

In both activities, you can learn to avoid making the common mistakes. But in the profession of sales, you're constantly involved in new and unique situations, which means that you're faced with a steady stream of opportunities to make new and unique mistakes-usually by saying the wrong thing.

The good news is that if you learn enough right things to say, and if you concentrate on warmly saying them to your prospects and clients, there'll be very little time left for saying things you'll regret. And there'll also be less chance that you'll lose any vital point if you do happen to let out an unfortunate remark. Work toward having the relaxed, cheerful, and confident manner that comes from dwelling on what you know you'll say right rather than worrying yourself into a tense, gloomy, and fearful attitude because you've occasionally blundered in your choice of words or topics. Accept the fact that what you say will sometimes come out badly. Then cultivate an honest respect for all people, and learn all the right statements to make. Do that and you'll never cut yourself with the sharp edge of your tongue.

Accentuate the positive through knowledge. That's my program for developing your primary tool into a reliable instrument for winning success in the profession of sales.

My life is working with people who have the desire but not the skills to earn more. Usually I work from a seminar stage-just now I'm working in a quiet room on this book-but the object is the same: to deliver that needed training. After I've done that, it's up to you. I know that I can do my part because I've been fortunate enough to have trained thousands of the top salespeople in this country and abroad. They had the desire but not the training or the income. They came to the seminar. They learned the material. They used it daily. And then, all of a sudden, they not only had the desire and the training, but also had the income they wanted.

The highlight of my life comes when people take my training, go out with it and win whatever amount of success they need, and then tell me about it.

Now let me tell you about some of the Champions who've done that. Here's a Champion whose actions may startle you. Until he was eighteen, Robert Burns worked on his father's ranch. It was dependable work, but he wanted more from life than he could lift with a pitchfork, so he decided to enter the profession of selling. He took my training. When Robert celebrated his twenty-third birthday, his sales earnings were headed over the half-million mark for the year. I don't know any better word for it than excitement. It's exciting to know that if you learn the material and then go out and do what you know you should do, there's no ceiling on your income. People often tell me that they're too young for sales. Robert Burns wasn't too young. Today, he's a major developer and multimillionaire.

And other people say they're too old. Let me tell you about Gertrude Nunn. I met her years ago, not too long after her former employer had said that she was getting too old for the job and should retire. She walked out, puttered around for a month, and decided that she wanted to be where the action is. Gertrude had no background in sales, but by happy accident she heard about our training and took it. At seventy-five years young, she was earning more than a hundred thousand dollars a year.

Jimmie Walker is another Champion. He started learning about professionally selling insurance when he was sixteen. He dedicated himself to greatness in the field and succeeded. How many people do you know at any age-let alone their early twenties-who earned enough money to acquire a major professional sports team? Jimmie Walker did.

Our next Champion, David Bernstein, became one of the top four in luxury car leasing at a very young age. For years, I've preached the importance of sending thank-you notes, but I'd never seen anyone use this technique more effectively than David Bernstein did. Within a week of meeting him as a prospect, a member of my staff and I received four of these notes from Bernstein, all of them well-written, sincere, personal notes that made a solid impression. David Bernstein, a true Champion.

Aside from being graduates of my training, what do all four of these people have in common?

The twelve characteristics of a Champion are what they all have. In the next chapter, we'll take a careful look at these marks of the Champion.

Copyright © 2005 by Tom Hopkins International, Inc.

About the Author

Tom Hopkins conducts live seminars around the world. Hundreds of thousands rely on his video training programs. Millions listen to him in their cars daily and reach for his books whenever they need a new strategy or idea to make more sales. Mr. Hopkins lives in Arizona.