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Welcome to the Sell or Die podcast.
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I m your host, Jeffrey Gittimer.
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And I m your host, Jen Gittimer.
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Well, in this podcast, we re gonna help you attract more qualified, unbelievable, ready-to-buy clients.
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We re gonna help you build loyal relationships.
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And the one thing you re hoping for, close more deals.
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Let s get into it.
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It s time to sell or die.
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Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, diehards, wherever you are in the world.
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We are honored today to have with us the great Tim Rohrer.
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And he is an old friend, actually probably past 50, but an old friend anyway.
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And he s written a book
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on selling, because he was sales, he is sales, and he teaches sales.
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And your job, not like regular sales, not like, you know, the sharp angle close, I m talking about the emotional side of sales, and the softer side of sales, which includes getting advice from people and actually taking the advice.
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So I m going to ask Tim a bunch of things about his book, which is Sales Lessons from the World s Greatest Mentor.
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And I want to make sure that you guys have an opportunity to buy the book on Amazon.
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Not that hard to do, but in the chat, we ll have a note in there in the chat about where you can go and get the book.
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But in the meantime, Tim, welcome to Sell or Die.
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Thank you.
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It is great to be here, Jeffrey.
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I ve been looking forward to this for two months now because we booked it out that far in advance and the day has finally come.
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I must say that, and just for the audience, I knew Tim when he had black hair.
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It s true.
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Well, I knew Jeffrey when he had hair.
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That s true.
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That s also true.
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So tell me about how you decided on the title for your book.
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Oh, well.
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So originally, about a dozen years ago, I called my mentor, Dick Harlow, up and I said, Hey, Dick, I m going to write a book and I m going to call it Sales Lessons of Dick Harlow.
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And he says, I hope you won t do that.
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And I said,
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I said, why not?
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And he says, I work for a company that they probably wouldn t really like that.
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And I said, you probably work for the wrong company if they don t want you celebrated in a book.
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So he didn t want me to write the book a dozen years ago.
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And so I set the project aside and I did all kinds of other things.
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I went back to school and
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graduated with a bachelor of science degree in leadership from Northeastern University, and I decided I also was going to become a nationally ranked pickleball player for my age group.
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And I went out on the very first day and tore the fascia on the bottom of my left foot.
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And that ended my pickleball career before it started.
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That s a blessing in disguise.
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So then I had this free time because I wasn t going to school anymore and I wasn t playing pickleball anymore.
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And so I decided I was going to I was going to write the book.
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And so I called Dick up and I said, I m going to write the book, but I m going to call it Sales Lessons of the World s Greatest Mentor, because frankly, nobody knows who you are yet.
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And I don t think they would buy a book called the Sales Lessons of Dick Harlow.
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And he says, great, go ahead and do it.
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I m looking forward to reading it.
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Cool.
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That s cool.
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Yeah.
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So there s at some point, and this is a pretty interesting question, because I coach a lot of people that write books.
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At some point, there was that trigger that s first put the thing in your mind that I m going to write the book.
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And I m going to feature this guy s lessons that have really helped me.
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Correct.
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Yes.
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And were there two or three that really like the outstanding ones that made that really lit the fire in your butt to be able to go write this?
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Yeah, so a long time ago, back in the early 90s, when you were writing an article for the Charlotte Business Chronicle, they would occasionally allow guest writers to send in columns.
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And I sent in a couple of columns and I got published in there.
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And that was so exciting to me that I decided that I was a writer.
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And I started writing a blog and I called it Sales Loudmouth.
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And I wrote a hundred and something articles, and then I just didn t have anything more to say.
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And I stopped writing.
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Other people just keep on writing, even though they have nothing more to say, but I just stopped.
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Yeah, I write every day.
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Yeah, I know you do.
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So anyway, so I went back through these articles and I realized that I d written about Dick several times.
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And I said, wait a minute.
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I said, I ve written probably a dozen articles that featured the lessons I learned from Dick Harlow.
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So why not use these as the basis for the book?
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And so then I did, and I sort of put them in some sort of
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chronological order, the order that you might learn your lessons as a rookie salesperson.
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And then I added, then I had to add some additional lessons in there.
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And then I had to add some color and it started to come together.
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And after I got to about 30,000 words, I said, I, I think I can do this, you know, and I, I kept going and, um,
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You know, I think it turned out pretty good.
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I hope people like it.
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It s fun.
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Tell me about Dick Harlow.
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So, Dick Harlow is the world s greatest mentor to me because he s an empathetic listener who helps you grow and helps you learn.
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He allows you to make mistakes.
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He is even-keeled, right?
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But he s passionate about what he does.
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He s just a unique combination that really makes him a great coach.
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And I was very lucky that I ran into him
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when I first started in radio advertising sales.
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And do you feel like you ve emulated some of those qualities in your process?
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I do feel like I have emulated some, but I am I m a little bit less patient than Dick.
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And so I m not always as good a coach as him.
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But I think I ve studied it more than he did.
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He s just sort of a natural coach.
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You know, it just comes easily to him.
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And I ve read all kinds of books.
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on coaching and leadership and mentoring.
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And I ve had to incorporate those things into my practice.
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And I ve had to really think hard about what it is I m trying to get other people to do and to learn.
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And I just think for Dick and for other coaches, it just comes more easily.
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So I m a student of the game and he s sort of a natural.
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Give me a couple of examples of lessons that you have in the book.
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All right.
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So one of my favorite lessons is the one featuring you.
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I went to a Brian Tracy seminar, me and the whole sales team at Magic 96 Radio went down.
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We went to Uptown Charlotte.
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You remember when they changed the name from downtown to Uptown?
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No, exactly.
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Yeah.
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So we went to Uptown Charlotte and we went to this Brian Tracy seminar and I saw you there and I thought, wired, Jeffrey, what are you doing here?
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And you said, this is what I want to do.
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And I got to learn from the best.
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I said, okay, cool.
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And so I m sitting in the audience and I m not paying attention to what Brian Tracy is saying, because I m too busy counting the number of people that are there and thinking how much money is this guy making?
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Right.
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Exactly.
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Right.
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And so I started to do the math.
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I m like, holy cow.
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And I m thinking, radio stations don t do a great job of monetizing their listeners for their own benefit.
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They monetize their listeners for the advertiser s benefit, right?
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And then you just charge the advertiser a fee for access.
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So I thought, well, why can t the radio station just get the money directly from the consumer?
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from the listener.
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So I went back to the station.
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I said, Dick, we got to put on a seminar.
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We got to get some high profile speakers to come and we do the advertising.
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And maybe we team up with the Charlotte Business Chronicle and you know, we sell the tickets and we keep all the money.
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And he s like, well, who would you get?
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And I said, we get Ken Blanchard and we get Harvey McKay.
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And he said, how are you going to get those guys?
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I said, they do this for a living.
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I said, our money s as good as anybody else s.
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I just got to find it.
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Right.
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This was pre-internet days.
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So I had to go get one of the books.
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and find out who published it and make some phone calls.
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But eventually got it all worked out and rented Ovens Auditorium.
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I don t even know if that s still a place there in Charlotte.
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Yes, it is.
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And we started selling tickets and immediately ran into
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all kinds of problems that we did not anticipate.
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People would call up and they say, well, what s Ken Blanchard going to talk about?
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I said, what s Ken Blanchard going to talk about?
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He s the preeminent author about sales leadership.
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He s going to talk about that.
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People are like, yeah, but what s he going to say?
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Like, have you ever read the One Minute Manager or any of his books?
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He s going to talk about that.
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And they go, all right, well, are there going to be any takeaways?
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Like what?
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And I m like,
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you know, like pamphlets or handouts or, I don t know, I never did this before.
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Right.
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And then people are like, what s Harvey McKay going to talk about?
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I say, you can talk about sales.
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He s going to talk about how you always have to be number two to somebody s number one, in case something happens to number one.
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I said, haven t you read swim with the sharks?
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I mean, come on, what s Harvey McKay going to talk about?
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So it was not as easy as I thought it was going to be.
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And ultimately we ended up selling like 300 tickets and we, and 2,400 is like the capacity of that place or something.
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And it was very embarrassing when Ken Blanchard took to the mic and he invited everybody to come down a little closer and fill in the gaps.
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I thought I was going to die.
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But the reason this story is partly about... I remember that so clearly.
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Yes, because you were there, because you called me up and said, hey, can I introduce the speakers?
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And I m like, sure, whatever, because
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Somebody may as well get something out of this, because I m probably going to get fired.
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So you came and introduced the speakers, but I introduced you, which was very cool.
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So I remember that distinctly.
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You told me the things to say.
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You wanted me to mention you were a college dropout.
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And I think at that time, you were just starting to become king of sales.
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So I think you may have only been the prince of sales.
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I was kind of a nobody.
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The world creates a lot of millionaires.
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At the time, I think I was a thousandaire.
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But this is my challenge.
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I introduced Harvey that day, and we have remained friends for the past 30 years.
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That s crazy.
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He s been like my dad.
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He said, don t say that.
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Say I m your brother.
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Okay.
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He s not that much older than you, right?
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Maybe 10.
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No, he s a, he s a 13 years older than I am.
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Okay.
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Right.
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But he just had his 90th birthday.
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Wow.
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And Blanchard was there.
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He took 300 people to the Elton John concert.
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Oh my goodness.
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300 people.
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That s awesome.
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And there was a lot of celebrities there.
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But when I was in the audience, I realized that was Elton John s final tour.
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I saw Elton John on his first tour 50 years before.
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Wow.
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It was like I my whole musical life came together in that audience.
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But that s amazing.
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He s one of the smartest people you ll ever meet.
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He s been nothing but nice to me my whole career.
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And we ve, you know, we talked, I just literally, I hung up from him before my interview with you.
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Well, he was, he was great that day.
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And Ken was great that day.
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I think the highlight for me was having lunch with those guys.
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Right?
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thinking, you know, look where I am.
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Right?
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Right.
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Exactly.
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Yeah.
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Incredible.
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But then a couple days later, I got called into Dick s office and I honestly thought I was going to be fired.
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And Dick gave me this little speech about this promotion that had gone horribly wrong at his station in Greensboro, where they ended up giving away like three times as much money as they had budgeted in this contest they did at the mall.
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And he said, you know, in the end, we did go over budget on that.
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He said, but we got a lot of good publicity out of it.
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We ended up with a lot more advertisers signing up than we otherwise would have.
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He says, so there was a silver lining.
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And I said, why are you telling me all this dick?
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And he said, I m telling you this because projects fail and people learn.
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And I said, thank you.
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And he said, yeah, here.
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Yeah.
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So that s the title of that lesson in the book.
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One of my favorites.
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Now, when something like that happens to you, it gives you incredible inspiration.
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You re grateful.
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Yes.
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You ve been humbled as low as you can go.
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But the inspiration that sits inside of you as a result of that never goes away.
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I agree.
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Yeah.
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And it gave me the opportunity to teach that same lesson to other people in the future when they took big swings and they failed.
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you know, under under my watch, you know, I had to take responsibility for the for the money that they lost when they took a big swing.
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And I told her the same thing.
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Hey, you know, we re going to we re going to learn from this and do better.
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Carry on.
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That was 30 years ago, you know, or close to it.
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Yeah, it was 1993.
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Yeah.
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And I stayed friends with Ken Blanchard.
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I stayed friends with Harvey McKay.
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Ken Blanchard endorsed my book, The Sales Bible.
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Harvey McKay endorsed my book, The Customer Satisfaction is Worthless.
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And, you know, you never know where things are going to go to or grow to.
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Absolutely.
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And when you re looking at these, looking at this episode, look what it did for me, as opposed to you looked at it as a dismal failure.
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I looked at it to me.
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It was like, was one of the coolest things that ever happened to me.
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I launched your career with my failure.
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You did.
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Literally.
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You know, it s funny, on that Brian Tracy seminar, if you remember, the first presenter was Zig Ziglar.
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Oh, I don t remember that.
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But that s pretty awesome for an opener.
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Yeah.
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And Brian Tracy was second.
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And somebody walked out of the audience and recognized me and looked at me and said, you were not as good
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as the first guy, but you re better than the second guy.
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That s high praise because Brian Tracy was pretty good.
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It stuck with me literally forever.
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Oh man.
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Well, Zig Ziglar was tough to beat, man.
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He had a certain charisma in front of a crowd that s just really tough to replicate.
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Hey, but something really cool happened to me.
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I sent my book to Ken Blanchard.
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You know, he lives here in San Diego.
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Yeah.
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I sent my book to him
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And I put a sticky note in the chapter about him and you and Harvey.
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And he called me, just called me out of the blue, said, is this the famous Tim Rohr?
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And I said, well, not yet.
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He said, this is Ken Blanchard.
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And I fell out of my chair.
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That s cool.
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Yeah.
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He s a very nice guy.
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He turned very religious, but he s a very nice guy.
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Yeah.
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And he s more than happy to help another writer.
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I define a difference between a writer and an author.
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Authors don t always write their own books.
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That s what I found out.
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One of the questions I get pretty frequently from interviewers is, did you write your book?
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Excuse me?
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Who else would have written it?
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They said, there s ghost writers out there who could have written your book.
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I said, no, I m a writer.
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I write my own stuff.
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Exactly.
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And you can also put, I m a writer, comma, and authentic.
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There you go.
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I think that s a real important part of writing because you re talking about lessons that you learned, not lessons that you heard about.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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I lived through these.
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All the stories are firsthand.
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Yep.
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I ve got the scars to prove it.
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Exactly.
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And you re, well, when you start to lose your hair, you realize that there s a reason.
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Yes, it s not just age.
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And no, oh no, no, there s anxiety that goes with that.
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So tell me about another lesson.
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All right.
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So I was off to a pretty fast start my first year.
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You know, I was calling on a lot of people that other salespeople had given up on.
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And so I was talking to people who had purchased Magic 96 Radio before, but for whatever reason had fallen through.
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And
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So I was doing pretty well, but then I, when I worked my way through all those, I really entered into this sophomore slump and I was getting very frustrated.
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I wasn t selling stuff.
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I was not really always getting appointments and I didn t know what I was doing wrong.
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So I was looking for Dick and I was looking for some guidance.
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And Dick wasn t around.
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I mean, he was there, but he wasn t returning my voicemails.
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His door was always closed when I went by.
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I was getting pretty frustrated with Dick.
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And then one day, I m walking in to Magic 96.
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We had these stairs that you had to climb to get into our radio station.
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And he s coming down the stairs with Tommy Glover, who s another salesperson on our team.
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And I said, Hey, Dick.
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And he says, Hey, Timmy.
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And by the way, Dick was only the second adult male I ever let call me Timmy.
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The first thing my first was my father.
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I really couldn t do anything about that.
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I got it.
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For whatever reason, it was okay when Dick did it.
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Yeah.
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He says, Hey, Timmy, I know you ve been trying to get ahold of me.
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But I ve been really busy.
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And I said, Yeah, well, Dick, you know, things aren t going that great.
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And he said, Why?
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I know.
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But you know,
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I ve got a lot of responsibilities.
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I ve got the whole sales team.
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I ve got the promotions team.
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I ve got the programming team.
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I got to run the whole radio station.
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I can t always just be there for you. 
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And I said, well, that s not so great, Dick, because things are not going well.
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Well, Dick was not too impressed with my insolence, but I doubled down on it, saying, you re just not there for me, Dick.
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He did not like that.
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He got this scowl on his face, but then he recovered.
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He says, Tommy, why don t you go get the car?
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So Tommy leaves.
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He says, Timmy, did you watch the Olympics this summer?
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This was 1992, Summer Olympics.
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And I said, yeah, sure.
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Yeah, sure.
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I watched the Olympics.
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He said, did you watch the kayaking event?
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They make this giant concrete river and then they put these boulders in it.
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Then they hang flags over the top of this river.
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Then they shoot hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to create this turbulence, right?
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in these rapids.
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And then these guys get in there with their kayaks and they have to go downstream.
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They have to turn around and go upstream.
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They got to go through these flags.
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He says, inevitably, one of them flips over.
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And while you re watching, you know, he s going to die.
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because nobody can jump in there to save him because they can t jump into this raging river.
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You can t just stop the water.
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So this guy s upside down in the raging river, probably banging his head on the boulders, and he s going to die right there on national TV.
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And then while you re watching, he flips his kayak right side up and resumes the race.
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That s what you have to do in sails.
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It is an individual sport.
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Tim, and while I am here to help you and coach you, I m doing it from the sidelines, watching you in a raging river of boulders and rapids.
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And there s nothing much I can do if your kayak flips upside down, except to hope that I ve trained you well enough that you can write your own kayak.
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And just then Tommy pulls up in his Mustang and Dick jumps in and drives away.
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Totally cool.
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I guarantee you that you can never look at a kayak the same way again.
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That was a really hard lesson to learn, Jeffrey, I ll tell you that.
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But I started, you know, after a couple of hours of being depressed about it, I started thinking, well, what can I do, you know, to right my own kayak?
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And the first thing I thought of was, I probably should have been paying more attention at that Brian Tracy seminar.
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Instead of counting the money, I should have been listening to what he was saying.
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So I went to the library and I got his book, The Psychology of Selling, and I dedicated myself to reading another book, you know, once a month from then on to try to figure out this sales game.
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Yeah.
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It s amazing how many people complain that they re not making any sales, but don t do anything about it.
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Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
And that s the thing about sales is it s on you, you know, and if that s not the kind of business you want to be in, then you need to get out of sales.
SPEAKER_00
I did a seminar in Trinidad and one of the guys from the audience, I said, what s the secret of selling?
SPEAKER_00
And he said, fish, don t just jump in the boat.
SPEAKER_00
It s a good point.
SPEAKER_00
Really classic.
SPEAKER_00
If you don t have all the gear, if you re not, you know, if you re if you don t know where the fish are, you got a problem.
SPEAKER_01
I always say that that everybody looks good riding a bicycle downhill.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
What separates the the riders is the climbing.
SPEAKER_00
I used to jog until I realized that jogging doesn t help you live longer.
SPEAKER_00
It just seems longer.
SPEAKER_00
That s for sure.
SPEAKER_00
It hurts your knees.
SPEAKER_00
There was a slight incline on one of the streets that I would jog up in the morning and Kenilworth Avenue, and I refer to it as Mount Kenilworth.
SPEAKER_00
It s pretty flat.
SPEAKER_00
It is.
SPEAKER_00
It was flat as hell.
SPEAKER_00
But when you re jogging, you see every incline on the planet.
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
SPEAKER_00
It becomes, you know, you have to work twice as hard to get up that slight incline.
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
SPEAKER_00
But you never feel bad when you re taking a shower when you ve done the wrong ever.
SPEAKER_00
I know that s the best part.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_00
It s hard to put on your sneakers.
SPEAKER_00
It s hard to go outside.
SPEAKER_00
It s hard to turn left or right.
SPEAKER_00
And but you always feel great when it s over.
SPEAKER_00
Always.
SPEAKER_00
As a salesperson, I was a cold caller in the very beginning in Manhattan.
SPEAKER_00
And if you ve never cold call in Manhattan, you really have no claim to fame as a salesperson because up yours is a greeting and everybody wants a bribe.
SPEAKER_00
But you were smart enough to stay a student the entire time.
SPEAKER_00
And I think that salespeople, Diehard, we re talking to you right now.
SPEAKER_00
What are you reading and how is that impacting your thinking?
SPEAKER_00
And what are you reading and how is that impacting your actions?
SPEAKER_00
What are you doing when you re done the book?
SPEAKER_00
And Tim is giving a very valuable lesson from the people that he literally learned how to succeed from, and he succeeded well.
SPEAKER_00
But he succeeded well because he listened and then did, not just listened and said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00
I think that s a real important part of this whole process.
SPEAKER_00
These are lessons from his mentor that drove his revenue and drove his success and drove his fulfillment literally to a point where he could write a book about it.
SPEAKER_00
What was the process like in writing?
SPEAKER_00
What did you have to do on an everyday basis?
SPEAKER_01
I m going to answer that question, but I was just thinking while you were saying that one of my favorite days in Charlotte was the day you invited me to your office and showed me your collection of sales books, which many people probably don t realize this, but you ve got this huge collection of sales books that goes back all the way into the early 1900s.
SPEAKER_01
And it was so fun to pull one off the shelf and read what they were talking about back in 1920.
SPEAKER_01
It s the same stuff we re talking about in 2020.
SPEAKER_00
The language might be slightly different, but it s all about building a relationship, telling the truth, and making a connection that s somehow emotionally based.
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
SPEAKER_01
So back to the answer to the question.
SPEAKER_01
So I would usually retire to my office here after dinner
SPEAKER_01
And I would write for maybe a couple of hours every night, maybe four or five nights a week.
SPEAKER_01
And after I got three or four lessons or stories down on paper, I would then spend the next week going back and rewriting them.
SPEAKER_01
You ve done lots and lots and lots of writing, way more than me.
SPEAKER_01
And you know the old expression, writing is rewriting.
SPEAKER_00
And that is just true.
SPEAKER_00
One of the secrets that I came upon pretty much on accident, actually I ll give you two.
SPEAKER_00
One is I let anything I write sit for a day and then go back to it.
SPEAKER_00
I m not going to throw it away and say this is crappy.
SPEAKER_00
I m going to fix it in a way where I m satisfied with it.
SPEAKER_00
And then in order to make sure the grammar is correct, I read it aloud to myself.
SPEAKER_00
And by reading it aloud, that shows me every flaw.
SPEAKER_00
It shows me where my sentences dangle.
SPEAKER_00
It shows me where my commas need to be.
SPEAKER_00
It shows me everything I need to know about that particular piece.
SPEAKER_00
And it s so unknown that I almost feel like it s a deep, dark secret.
SPEAKER_00
But if you write something, and you re diehard if you write something, just read it aloud when you re done, see how it sounds.
SPEAKER_00
If it sounds like shit, it probably is.
SPEAKER_01
So it took me about six months to write it all and about another month to edit it all.
SPEAKER_01
And I had a lot of it written, you know, from, from prior years, from the, from the blog.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
And from columns that I d written, but the process of rewriting it really was, was lengthy and it s amazing how much editing you have to do.
SPEAKER_01
You know, after the fact you, you say something and then you realize 40 pages later, you said something that, that disagrees with that thing you said.
SPEAKER_01
And you re like, how did that happen?
SPEAKER_00
I believe me.
SPEAKER_00
You have to develop your philosophy before you write the book.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think you also have to have a voice, you know, you have to you have to decide what is going to be the voice of the book, you know, and for me, it was this this young sort of know-it-all student of sales going through his journey.
SPEAKER_01
And and so that s that s the sort of the voice the tone of the book.
SPEAKER_01
You know, there s plenty of times when I m snarky in the book and, and, you know, my oldest son read the book and he said, it seems like in every chapter, something terrible happens to you.
SPEAKER_01
I said, that s because that s good.
SPEAKER_01
Something terrible is always happening to me.
SPEAKER_00
No, I think what you re doing subconsciously is explaining what happened.
SPEAKER_00
And then when you learn from it, yes.
SPEAKER_00
You know, you re, you re, you re ASAP.
SPEAKER_00
Here s the story and here s what happened at the end.
SPEAKER_00
And there s nothing wrong with that because you didn t die at the end of the episode.
SPEAKER_00
You learned at the end of the episode and that got you to the next episode.
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
SPEAKER_00
But you were smart enough.
SPEAKER_00
And this, I think it s important for you to understand, Diehard, if you re listening to this, you can t gripe about what happens.
SPEAKER_00
You look in a barn full of horse shit.
SPEAKER_00
You look for the pony.
SPEAKER_00
Because he s there somewhere.
SPEAKER_00
And what Tim has done is taken his hard lessons and shown you the emotional side of it and the recovery.
SPEAKER_00
And once you understand that, you can way better understand sales.
SPEAKER_00
You want to do one more?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I d love to do one more.
SPEAKER_01
Go for it.
SPEAKER_01
So I was complaining to Dick about how terribly things were going for me.
SPEAKER_01
And he says, well, it sounds like you re having good meetings, you know, but you re just not getting them over the finish line.
SPEAKER_01
Why don t we go out together and, you know, you can say, you can show me what s going on and I can meet these people.
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, maybe I can ask a couple of questions and we ll see what s happening.
SPEAKER_01
I said, okay, sure.
SPEAKER_01
So we jumped into his new BMW five series that he had just bought.
SPEAKER_01
but that he did not have time to learn how the technology worked because he was in a big rush to just take delivery of that car.
SPEAKER_01
So we re driving down to South Carolina, which is not far from Charlotte for those people who are not familiar with the geography.
SPEAKER_01
It s just part of the Charlotte DMA.
SPEAKER_01
And we re driving down there and we cross over this creek.
SPEAKER_01
We suddenly get hit by a dozen giant moths just smashing into his windshield.
SPEAKER_01
And Dick tries to push the button at the end of the
SPEAKER_01
wiper wand to spray the water onto the windshield and it wasn t working.
SPEAKER_01
And he had to pull off the side of the road and complain about the car.
SPEAKER_01
And I said, well, there s no button at the end of that wand.
SPEAKER_01
That s not how it works.
SPEAKER_01
And he eventually figured it out, right?
SPEAKER_01
And he spread moth guts all over his windshield.
SPEAKER_01
And we got down to the place that we were going to first, which was a marina, a boat sales place.
SPEAKER_01
essentially.
SPEAKER_01
And I had been meeting with this guy, the general manager, several times, and he always seemed interested in Magic 96 and about marketing and stuff, but he d never committed to buying anything.
SPEAKER_01
And he came out to meet us and he says, why don t you guys come back to my office and we ll have a chat.
SPEAKER_01
And before we went anywhere, Dick said, hey, can you tell me about this boat?
SPEAKER_01
What is this, a bay liner?
SPEAKER_01
And I rolled my eyes like this, like Dick, if you had questions about boats,
SPEAKER_01
I could have told you all about the boats, the bay liners and the master crafts and the sea rays that this guy sells.
SPEAKER_01
I ve read everything there is to know about these boats.
SPEAKER_01
I could have given you a chapter and verse.
SPEAKER_01
I can t believe you re wasting this guy s time with questions about a bay liner.
SPEAKER_01
I didn t say any of that.
SPEAKER_01
That s what I was thinking.
SPEAKER_01
But this guy lit up.
SPEAKER_01
like a TV screen coming to life when Dick asked about the Bayliner.
SPEAKER_01
And this guy s like, oh, this is a Bayliner.
SPEAKER_01
This is the best family boat we sell.
SPEAKER_01
You know, for people who can afford a $20,000 to $30,000 boat and want to take their kids out on the lake, I mean, this is the boat.
SPEAKER_01
Take a look at this.
SPEAKER_01
The guy starts showing us the boat.
SPEAKER_01
Dick is asking questions about the boat.
SPEAKER_01
You know, who s the kind of person who might buy this boat?
SPEAKER_01
And he s describing the person who would buy the boat.
SPEAKER_01
And eventually we end up in his office.
SPEAKER_01
And now he s the most animated I ve ever seen him.
SPEAKER_01
I could barely get five words out of this guy.
SPEAKER_01
He s kind of like a lumberjack.
SPEAKER_01
He s like six foot four, 240.
SPEAKER_01
He wears a flannel shirt.
SPEAKER_01
I think he s out back chopping wood in between customer visits.
SPEAKER_01
And he s always, you know, quiet with me, but with Dick, he s just jibber jabbering.
SPEAKER_01
And in the end he says, you know, I like your radio station and Tim s been great at explaining it all to me.
SPEAKER_01
You know, if we could do co-op with our Bayliner funds, we d be happy to buy $5,000 advertising in the month of May.
SPEAKER_01
Like, holy shit, sold, right?
SPEAKER_01
So then we go to the next place, the Pasta Cafe on Independence Boulevard and sort of the same thing happens.
SPEAKER_01
And then we go to Stereo Sound across the street and sort of the same thing happens.
SPEAKER_01
And we get back at the end of the day and we go to conference room A
SPEAKER_01
And Dick says, what d you learn today?
SPEAKER_01
And I said, you re some sort of a wizard is what I learned.
SPEAKER_01
And he says, no magic, no magic at all.
SPEAKER_01
He says, people want to talk about their business.
SPEAKER_01
You just have to let them.
SPEAKER_01
He says, you ve been talking about our business.
SPEAKER_01
They know everything about our radio station.
SPEAKER_01
He said, they want to talk about their business.
SPEAKER_01
And after they talk about their business, they re going to be like, we should do business together.
SPEAKER_01
He said, that s all.
SPEAKER_01
He said, I just crossed the T s and dotted some I s for you.
SPEAKER_01
You did all the heavy lifting.
SPEAKER_01
And I said, okay, great.
SPEAKER_01
Starting tomorrow, I m going to go out there.
SPEAKER_01
I m going to, I m going to make it happen.
SPEAKER_01
I m going to start having these conversations with people.
SPEAKER_01
He says, take it easy.
SPEAKER_01
Take it easy.
SPEAKER_01
He said, you have to let things come to you.
SPEAKER_01
He said, you can t force it.
SPEAKER_01
which was hard for me because when somebody told me that there was a way to do something, I wanted to do it that way.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Well, you re a driver.
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, I agree with that.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
So that was really a great lesson, which was the lesson was, Hey, you know, you got to let it happen.
SPEAKER_01
You got to let the game come to you.
SPEAKER_01
You got to let people open up to you.
SPEAKER_01
You got to give them a chance to talk about their business.
SPEAKER_00
Think about the times that it happened when you did it the right way, how easy it was to make that sale.
SPEAKER_00
It s like magic.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
SPEAKER_00
Well, Tim Roar, if you look in the upper right hand side of the screen, if you re watching, his book is Sales Lessons of the World s Greatest Mentor.
SPEAKER_00
Is it of or from?
SPEAKER_01
It s of.
SPEAKER_01
And there s a poster of it right there.
SPEAKER_01
A lot of times people ask me if that s the actual size of the book.
SPEAKER_01
No, it is not.
SPEAKER_01
The actual size of the book is normal sized, normal sized book.
SPEAKER_01
Perfect.
SPEAKER_01
So, yeah, you can get that on Amazon, you know.
SPEAKER_01
Or if you want to buy more than five, you can contact me, go to timjmroarer.com and just send me an email or something.
SPEAKER_00
I m going to tell you that every salesperson who s listening, and we have a lot of them, can take great lessons from our talk today.
SPEAKER_00
And I really, I appreciate our reunion, but I appreciate your lessons.
SPEAKER_00
You have done a great job in capturing the wisdom that you yourself put into action and made a success out of it.
SPEAKER_00
So diehard, if you re out there and you re impatient, I m telling you right now, grow some patience because if you don t, you re going to grow bankrupt.
SPEAKER_00
And that s the best we can do today.
SPEAKER_00
I m challenging you get out there and sell something, even if your ass falls off.
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for listening to the show.
SPEAKER_00
Don t forget to like, share.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, share with both your friends.
SPEAKER_00
And subscribe to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00
And remember, we have a free 22 day sales challenge.
SPEAKER_00
Just go to gitter.com slash sales challenge to start you on your way.