I’m not going to lie, watching The Wolf Of Wall Street motivates me to do whatever it takes, to make tens of millions and live a life that few else can, at any and all costs.
Of course once the film finishes my greed starts to fall away and a sustainable business looks more enticing but man, the speech Leonardo Di Caprio gives below still gets me riled up to sell hard.
What I learned from the REAL wolf
The man behind the film, the real Jordan Belfort is a real interesting guy. His new business teaches the psychology of selling and I’ve taken a bunch away from it. Here are four sales knowledge bombs that I credit to Jordan.
1) You need a sales a sales strategy
“By modelling someone who is successful you turn decades into days”
The most important lesson that I’ve ever learnt in sales which was backed up by Jordan was to always have a strategy.
A sales strategy allows you to repeat what works which in turn reduces your stress levels as things become predictable and it allows you to scale up what you’re doing to close more deals.
2) Keep your customers for life
After watching Leo tear it up in the film adaptation of Wolf On Wall Street I see some irony in this one but as the old cliché goes – It’s easier to sell to your customers than it is to sell to someone new.
Your customers already know, like and trust you (otherwise they wouldn’t have bought from you in the first place) and so they’re primed to be sold to again as long as you’ve been looking after them.
3) Your own bullshit stories hold you back from success
I’ve lost count of how many salespeople that routinely miss targets for the simple fact that they believe –
- They’re not an A player and so they’re happy sitting in the middle-bottom of the company’s sales rankings
- They feel they are being treated unfairly and there target is just set too high
Both of these thought patterns are hugely damaging. Your target will never go down and so to succeed you need to be comfortable with it going up year on year. You’re being paid to crush it, not moan about the situation.
If you’re truly happy about being a B/C/D- player then why the hell are you reading a post about Jordan Belfort?
You must have some aspirations somewhere deep within you. It was your subconscious dragging you into this post. The bad news is there is no magic bullet, the only way you’re going to sell more is to stop limiting yourself with the stories that loop around your brain.
4) See things for how they really are
“See things are they are but not worse than they are. That’s what a lot of people do”
I don’t have a zero to millions, rags to riches tale just yet (heck, I’m only 28 give me some time) but I have had a negative account balance a bunch of times in my life.
When something goes wrong I notice this strange phenomenon happen, I remain calm, knowing that everything will work out and everyone around me starts to panic for me. They start to worry on my behalf, I never asked them to do it.
I can only assume that when they have issues all hell breaks loose in their minds. They see their problems as life threatening and their stress levels go through the roof.
Jordan explains that it’s never a good thing to ignore problems (again some irony here or perhaps a lesson learned from his time as the Wolf Of Wall Street) but you shouldn’t see them as worse than what they are.
