Recently by James Altucher: Yoga Has Shamed Me
Someone I don’t know at all just wrote me with the worst selling technique of all time. He wrote, “I really need to talk to you. Can I have 20-30 minutes of your time?”
The answer is, “no”. Not that I think I’m so great. Or my time is so valuable. But his message sort of suggests that my time is worth zero. He is offering me nothing, even less of nothing since there’s opportunity cost to 20 to 30 minutes of time. I could be watching half an episode of Mad Men, for instanace.
There are some variants on this horrible technique. Like, “I have a great idea I’ll give you equity in if you give me 20-30 minutes of your time.” I don’t know if his equity is worth anything yet so it’s the same problem as above.
Another sign of a bad salesman is a good negotiator. This might not always be true but its true for me. I am horrible at negotiation. If I say “this car is for sale for 10,000? and they say, “8,000? I shrug my shoulders and say “okay”.
When you’re negotiating you have to say “no” a lot. When you are selling, you are always trying to find the “yes”.
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Everyone has a “yes” buried inside of them and a good salesman knows how to find where that “yes” is buried and then how to tease it out. Great salesmen know it instinctively.
When you’re a negotiator you have to be willing to say “no”, regardless of what the other side says.
So although they aren’t total opposites, the goals are completely different.
But big picture:
Negotiation is worthless. Sales is everything.
Why? Because when someone says “yes” to you, you are in the door. Eventually then, you’ll get the girl in bed. (or guy, whatever). If you negotiate right at the door, then you might have to walk away and try the next house. That takes time, energy, and still might not work out. In fact, often “bad negotiation” will result in great sales. (I’d rather be in the bed then walking door to door).
Some examples of my bad “negotiation” that have worked out for me.
A) I sold my first business for much less than other Internet businesses were going for at the same time. But it was 1998, the Internet was about to go bust, but first all the stocks went up, and many businesses in the same category held out for more and ended up going bust. Even the guys who sold for a lot more, went broke when they didn’t sell their stock.
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B) I gave 50% of Stockpickr to thestreet.com for no money. Blogs were written about how bad my deal was. But when someone owns 50% of your business, they care about what happens. They had to buy my company four months later rather than risk someone else owning 50% of it. For companies they only owned 10% , they gave up on them. I was able to sell about four months before the market peaked. After that, it never would’ve happened. My one employee quit on me because he was so disgusted with the deal I did. [See, How I Sold Stockpickr, Osama Bin Laden, and the Art of Negotiation.]
C) I sold Claudia’s car for $1000 less than she wanted to. But now the car was gone. We didn’t have to worry about it. That was worth $1000 to me.
D) I got my old company to do websites for New Line Cinema for $1000 a movie. That was 1/200 what we got for doing The Matrix even though some of the sites were the same size. Why did I do that? The best designers wanted to be hired by us to work on those movies. Meanwhile, they stayed late on Saturday night to work on Con Edison sites that paid a lot better. I didn’t negotiate at all.
E) I’m selling my last book on Kindle for almost nothing instead of a higher price. But this got my ideas out more and 20,000+ people have downloaded the book.
And if you want to buy my new book, I Was Blind But Now I See you can GO HERE.
F) I get offers every day to advertise on my blog. I say “no” to every one of them. Not my big picture.
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The key is, only negotiate with people you really want to sell to. Else it boils down to money.
You don’t want to be stupid. Only sell something you love to someone you love. Always think “what is the bigger picture here?” In many cases in the bigger picture, the negotiation is not as important as the “sale”. Hence, the rise of models like “freemium”.
Ten Keys to selling:
A) Ask what’s the lifetime value of the customer? When I give away a book for free. It gets my name out there. That has lifelong value for me that goes way beyond the few dollars I could maybe charge.
B) Ask, what are the ancillary benefits of having this customer? When we did Miramax.com for $1000, we became the GUYS THAT DID MIRAMAX.COM! That helped get 20 other customers that were worth a lot more. I would’ve paid them money to do that site.
