Welcome everybody to Facebook live with Knoll Walsh on January 29, 2018, and we have a very special guest.
I did a poll in my group: concur what you chased sales pros and the most voted sales professional sales, closer sales master that everybody wanted to hear from was the legendary Ben Gay Ben Gay is known as the master closer the sales infiltrator in a sales and Marketing expert, if you are not following Ben Gay on Facebook, I recommend you do that right now, so Ben before we get started – and I start asking you the questions on this very special QA interview give us a little background about yourself, an old guy, 70 plus And from Atlanta Georgia been in selling my entire life that I can remember whether we were selling Krispy, Kreme, donuts door-to-door as a fundraiser or saltwater taffy or whatever.
I was always number one, because I worked hard.
My dad gave me a few little tips, so I won Columbia, bicycles and packs of things.
I forget all the thing, but mainly I just I liked the winning aspect, beating my friends in a positive way and went from that to my dad lent me a lawn mower said: go out during the summer.
You know get up and do something and if you not go mow lawns, so I started mowing lawns in the hot growing season and Atlanta quickly discovered.
I didn’t like physical labor came back with a lawn, mower and said dad, I’m sorry.
I don’t want to do this.
He said alright, but you’re going to but I’ll show you a little trick.
You go, sell the jobs hire your friends to do it split the money I said.
Well, they do that and he said sure they will, because you’re gon na get a lot more for the job than they would have gotten individually or that you would have gotten individually.
The little trick was on a mow, your yard.
We have no set fee.
You pay us what you think it’s worth.
He said, then you go inspect the job and collect the money and he said I promise it’ll be more than you’d expected.
Well, it was too three times more than I expected so in the growing season Atlanta.
I always had 20 25 kids working for me and I was making as much or more money in the four or five month growing season than a lot of the adults in my neighborhood were so that sort of hooked me some more and then I went to Work for Macy’s became their top salesperson in the housewares department.
Then left there became a manufacturer’s rep traveling throughout the southeast as a very young man and as in 20, 20 21.
That era worked for my father as a food broker for a while and then one day I answered an ad in the Atlanta journal-constitution Wednesday September 15th 1965.
It said if you know anything about marketing plans want to make more money call this number.
I didn’t what a marketing plan was, but I needed to make more money.
I was putting my wife at the time she’s passed away now, but I was putting my first wife through nursing school on a hundred dollars a week.
Now you young people got to adjust that for inflation.
That would be thousand a week now, but it was not it wasn’t rolled in the hey.
Aren’t we having a good time tight money, so I dialed the number guy answered the phone, his name.
It turned out to be Bill, Dempsey and I began interviewing him.
It’s only a young smart aleck can do to see if I was going to lend my talents to whatever he was doing and about half way not halfway in the interview yeah.
I guess over halfway.
In the interview, because I didn’t know, the interview was coming to a halt, he said mr.
gay before he questioned me any more.
Let me point out: I’m not the man standing in a phone booth answering one ads for you.
Youngsters, a phone booth was a tin box or aluminum box, but when you phone from one you could tell they were phone is like calling from inside a trash.
Can he said? Where are you located, and I said well, I’m on the corner or whatever and whatever, and he said oh you’re, just a few blocks from my office.
You have ten minutes to be standing in front of my desk or never call this number again.
He slammed down the phone, so my running buddy and business partner as it turned out Jimmy Rucker, came around at that moment.
To pick me up from the store we were calling on and I jumped in the car like Batman and Robin.
I said quick.
14:47 Pete 14:47 west Peachtree Street.
He said what’s up, I said we’re gon na be rich, so he made a u-turn in the middle of the street.
We zoomed down a few blocks to that building went in suite 300 and at noon.
With a couple of minutes to spare, I went skidding into the office.
There was a curly-headed guys sitting there and after I checked him with the receptionist, I said hi my name’s Ben Gay and he laughed, and I said why are you laughing at my name? What’s yours and I acted like I didn’t know why I was laughing at my name.
I knew I said.
What’s yours and he said Zig Ziglar, I said with a name like Zig Ziglar you’re laughing at bengay.
You got to be kidding me well Zig.
It answered the same ad I had answered.
He was 18 years older than I was, but he hadn’t had a big hip.
Yet he was selling cookware in Columbia, South Carolina.
So we both went into the interview which turned out to be an opportunity meeting with the three of us in it and when they got finished, I agreed to join 91 dollars and 42 cents for a one pack, one of everything in the basic holiday magic cosmetic Line and we walked out the door and Rutger said I remember he said so – we’re gon na be selling cosmetics.
I said we’re gon na be doing whatever they tell us to do.
We’re gon na learn how to do this.
Well, I went through some ups and downs which we can cover if we have time and it’s pertinent, but I went from $ 100 a week – stacking pork and beaten cans and grocery stores to $ 100,000 in my first year part-time.
In today’s money, that’s a million dollars a year part-time and I had to split it with Rucker and the first six months.
We didn’t make anything because I wouldn’t learn the scripts.
I just thought all you had to do was smile and be friendly, turned out that wasn’t enough and we were off and running so September.
15.
1965.
I began a rocket ride.
I was joining a company, they’ve been going for just almost exactly a year.
Hadn’t done a whole lot yet, but was growing rapidly and joined their business.
I tell people is like walking up a ramp, not knowing where the ramps, when a door slams behind you and you figure out.
You have gotten on a rocket ship and it took off.
By being there, I was associating with Zig Ziglar rather quickly.
I brought in Earl Nightingale to be the voice of the company J Douglas Edwards was one of my personal trainers.
Dr.
Napoleon Hill was hired by the owner of the company to be my personal coach.
We didn’t call it that back then, but Doctrine, Polian Hill had a big part in my life and from that ninety one dollar and forty two investments and investment.
I have made millions of dollars traveled all over the world.
What was then the free world I haven’t yet been to China, although I’m about to and haven’t been to Russia and probably won’t for a while, but whatever I’ve made 5,000 paid appearances over those years and they’ve had a grand time making a tremendous amount of money And, more importantly, once you get money out of the way you’d have to worry about it.
More importantly, is the people I’ve met people like you, the the new young guns and people who’ve gone on before me, almost all of my men.
I was the kid in the group when I joined so they’re, all or either retired or moved on to their great reward and I’m sort of the last man standing from that era through blind luck and age.
When I joined that’s a great share, and so thank you too, for the compliment about the the new young guns and we connected on a call, I messaged you on Facebook just about two years ago.
I remember it was right when I left retail full-time.
While I was doing retail and doing my sales training living in st.
George Utah, where I live and selling cars in Ann Arbor Michigan – and I remember I reached out to you – and I set an appointment with you and so everybody who knows if you want to Talk to Ben you have a set, an appointment and and he’s got a scheduled time which he should have and so anyways.
We scheduled a call, and I think we talked for like an hour half and you know one of the one of the best takeaways.
I had from it was.
The information you gave me was was simple and I knew a lot of it, but what you shared with me made it relative because of my respect for you – and I know how many in so many respected you that, even though it wasn’t this magic dust that So many salespeople want that doesn’t exist.
It was.
It was simple information, but when you shared it with me, it made it that much more relative that it also made it that much more easy to implement in my life and to see the value in it rather than looking past something simple.
So I want to thank you and we’ve had I’ve had the opportunity to have.
I don’t know four or five phone conversations with you and and every time I do have a conversation with you.
You just you know.
You just fill me with with so many nuggets.
The same thing with with some Hogman Dinos books and Napoleon Hills books.
It’s not like it’s groundbreaking information, there’s a lot of stuff that we know, but you know we see the relativity disciplines and it also helps, in my opinion, to see someone who’s done.
It aaaghh was a good friend of mine and he worked for us in, I don’t mean 24 hours a day, but he worked for us in seminars and so on.
And you know I’ve read his books and they were great and you know who and on everything.
But when I sat down and met him and found out, it really was true that he was a falling down dead, drunk alcoholic, suicidal, etc.
But he applied these principles and his life turned around and he became a legend in his own time.
Well, when you’re sitting there, you know table just the two of you and you go.
Oh, these principles work and there he is, he did it and that, I think, is what I bring to people.
If anything, I first of all, I bring the teachings of dr.
hill and augmenting.
You know an Earl Nightingale and so on along, but I also sort of William Penn Patrick who owned holiday, magic and was my boy.
I hate the term boss, but he he was.
He owned the company, and I didn’t when I when I later when I was president of it bill used to say then I’m gon na put you I’m gon na, buy a glass cage, put you in it with a hitch, drag it around to shopping centers.
All over the United States with a sign on it.
If he can make it anybody can, and his point was well-taken – I’m a high school graduate.
Barely I was a Hellraiser I’m in contact with some, my old high school friends and they’re.
I’m glad everybody didn’t get to see him they’re, bringing up situations that we got into that perhaps don’t fit my image today.
So I mean I was headed, probably for a mundane job for the rest of my life or prison accidentally killing somebody drunk in a car or some I don’t know, but if I can do it to all of your listeners and viewers tonight, if Ben Gay can Do it anybody can do it? All I did was take my Southern heritage.
I’m a gentleman learn some scripting and then get into one of the secrets is you know that I teach about selling? Is the vast majority and probably selling goes away problems? If, if I say 85 %, but that’s one of the many statistics in my life I just made up, but it sounds good and I think it’s about right about 85 % of the problems in selling go away.
If you sell a quality product, that’s competitively priced, then that’d be the cheapest but competitively priced and you spend your day talking to qualified people and then, if you remind me, I don’t want to do it now.
But if you remind me, I have a closing rate of about 86 percent and have ever since I started keeping track in the early years.
I didn’t know you’re supposed to keep track, but about 86 percent with basically a magic close.
It’s a couple of sentences long, but it’s dependent on you getting in position to pull the trigger on that people said.
Well, you know I a since I’m out the other day.
There’s people Jade ago said words taught me.
I was asking how you develop a closing instinct and he said too close too soon and too often, and for several years I used that it was the.
It was.
The only thing I use now, although it’s instructive to young people, young and experienced and or aged the truth, is I don’t close too soon and too often I close once and I get about 86 percent of the people.
I say it to to buy because I know when to pull the trigger.
I spend time getting in position so that I, when I ask you to buy, I have the right to you and I both know it.
We agreed in advance.
I gave you certain facts and figures, and so on you would, and so when I finally lay it on you a couple of sentences, long, I’m stunned, if they delay or anything.
You you’ve probably seen some of my posts in the groups where I’m forever saying.
If you were sales infiltrator, you wouldn’t hear that or we sales infiltrators don’t ever hear that problem sales infiltrator is in the closer’s part, 2 page 257.
Best thing I’ve ever run is about 40 pages.
I think best thing I’ve ever written about selling.
I think it’s best everything ever written about selling, but it’s not you grab them by the throat you rest onto the ground.
You grab their wallet, you ask for the sale 15 times and then they’ll buy, and so I saw that thing that’s been floating around even before the internet.
For years 5 % of the buyers buy on on the first attempt to close, and then it goes up.
The line, and so on and 70 I’m making up numbers 70 % buy on the 15th attempt.
Well a whoever made up.
That statistic was not in selling or if he was, he didn’t keep track, because if people didn’t buy to the 15th to town, none of us would be in selling, because no one has the gonads to ask 15 times for an order.
And if you do you’re an ineffective sales for .
