There are at least a dozen things that can go wrong on a sales call during the first 10 seconds— and that’s BEFORE you even start pitching yourself or your product. Some of these mistakes just sneak up on you, but some are big obvious blunders. Either way, the effect is the same: you find yourself stuck in the low-status position, probably for the rest of the call. It’s nearly impossible to convince someone of anything from the low-status position. In this episode I speak with Carmine, a...

What does it take to nail an interview so thoroughly that you get hired on the spot before they even know how much money you are asking for? In this episode, Rick and I break down a set of advanced interview techniques that are guaranteed to get you on the short list for any position you could possibly want. Rick has hired hundreds of employees for his company, Select Blinds, and for the first time ever he reveals the hidden performance metrics he looks for when he’s interviewing new employees.

What should you do when a potential customer misses three calls or blows off a meeting at the last minute? Bad customers are tricky because you want their business but you don’t want to give them the message they can walk all over you. The solution is to treat the customer as if you have a strong friendly relationship. Then you can tell them you refuse to tolerate their behavior. I reveal exactly how to do it in this episode and I even provide a word-for-word script you can follow.

Yes, negotiate hard. But you have to know when to call it. If you squeeze every penny you can out of every single client, you’ll quickly burn through all of your good will. If you’re the guy who doesn’t know when to quit negotiating, you’re going to wear everyone down and pretty soon nobody will want to do business with you. In this episode, I reveal my philosophy about how to know when to stop negotiating. It’s pretty simple but it’s very important. I also discuss the difference between a...

You speak, they listen, right? Doesn't matter if it's a business meeting, sales presentation, education seminar, Ted Talk, or speech. Your job is to speak. But those listening will start to tune out, fade away and get distracted. How do you break up a presentation or sales pitch to keep the audience interested and engaged? I've found most people do this wrong. In this episode, I speak with Jim Davies, the author of Riveted, about the science of giving the perfect presentation. These...

In my two businesses, I've sent 25 million emails. Along the way I've learned a lot about how people respond, and have discovered there are two key ingredients that cause people to open, read, and respond to an email: social relevance and problem relevance. In this episode, I break down a simple formula you can use to apply these ingredients to your emails and send your response rates through the roof. When I really need an email to be read and responded to by a sales target, my response...