My Notes

Goodreads: https://goo.gl/TxBRC7

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No matter what happened, she expected us to stay positive, “look happy” (even if we weren’t), and to never, ever quit.

A strong sense of responsibility to be successful.

Recognition is a powerful force in building a team. If you praise and recognize successful behaviour, chances are a person will repeat the performance.

There is something really powerful with public praise, it motivates the whole group to improve.

I never made a sale on the first interview. I’d tell the couple to “get your hands off your checkbook!” I took an educational approach. I used no pressure. I didn’t sell on the first appointment.

A leader is often called on to make hard decisions that affect a small number of people negatively and a large number positively.

Tough decisions rarely come at the “right” time.

Play with your heart with every fiber of your body.

I realized I could beat 90% of the competition just by showing up early! Why relax? Get after the competition. Outwork them.

My goal? Every minute, every day, do what I could to improve, advance and enhance the sales force. Anything else, to me, was just a distraction from winning.

Always, always work within your warm market.

I wanted to dream even bigger, even work harder.

I knew the importance of incentive trips.

I pounded on the podium on warm market referrals. No cold calls, soliciting, or talking to strangers. No passing out to balloons to kids at the county fair, hoping to rope in their parents.

Always be positive, loyal and dependable.

A good coach never lets politics affect who plays and who doesn’t - not even for a son, a friend’s son, or whoever. You just don’t think that way, you can’t, if you want to win.

I wanted a company that viewed salespeople as “king”, where commissions, products, and administrators supported the sales force, not corporate bigwigs.

Success extends beyond financial principles to mental principles - perseverance, hard work and good choices.

You can help anybody grow and get better… except the person with a bad attitude.

What did I offer them? Total intangibles - hope, opportunity, a chance to be their own boss, a long shot at financial independence.

I had total responsibility now. Up at 5am, I’d hit the road, return home at eight or nine that night with no dinner, with a dozen emergency messages from people demanding I call back. I worked in a “zone”. Twenty hours a day, seven days a week, I talked on the phone, met people for meals, visited prospects, new recruits, my team.

Our plan called for 20 licensed people and 25 app the first month. We had 100 licensed people and 100 apps by the end of the first week.

I’d call up people and just sell the dickens out of everything. I’d tell them what we were doing, how great it was, what a great opportunity we had, how we had everything going our way.

There’s nothing quite so refreshing as a good laugh at your own expense.

I told folks to use their own good judgement when it came to promoting people in their organization. “Look, this is your business. Promote people when you want to.”

One thing we could not do was get down. Bad attitudes would kill us faster than any lesser problem we faced.

Greenies held the key to our success.

Replacement was a perfectly wonderful thing. It forced competition, badly needed and long overdue.

It takes five to seven years before a policy begins to make money.

I didn’t tell the sales force. Why mention our fragile state? At meetings, I continued to sell the dream of building it big.

One day, you can hold the world in the palm of your hand. Next day, your hand can be empty.

We continued to sell and recruit with no let-up.

Once Angela did fully understand the crusade and the opportunity, she rolled up her sleeves to help. We worked as a team.

If you want to make a big change in your life then you have to make immediate and exaggerated changes in your activity.

A side-by-side policy comparison sold more term policies than our best agent.

I’d been a little leery of the Opportunity Meeting concept from the beginning. It went against my warm market approach: talking to friends of a new recruit in their home, personally going through the company presentation at the kitchen table. I worried that rushing people in off the street for a one-night Opp meeting would leave them confused, indifferent or misled about our crusade.

Educating means we come back on a second interview, before we ever try to sell them something. That’s how we sell. In 14 years in this business, I’ve never once - ever - made a sale on the first appointment. Never!

Teach and motivate your downlines to be big winners, too. You want more, you give more.

The salesperson is king.

Attitude is everything.

The players have to prove themselves to the coach.

Keep build a big base shop and keep producing successful first-generation RVPs.

But winners do it. What do they do? They do whatever it takes to get the job done. They do it - and do it - until the job gets done.

All you can do is all you can do… but all you can do it enough.

Six strengths of a leader:

1. Loyalty
2. A positive life
3. Creativity in leadership
4. Super intensity
5. A “team first” attitude
6. Mindset that it’s more than just a “job”.

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