A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed Go Givers Sell More. Last week, I emailed Bob and asked if he’d be willing to be interviewed for my blog. To my everlasting delight, he agreed.

As you can see from the picture, today is the launch day! If you use the link above, you’ll be able to buy the book and get some great free extras. Go ahead, you can buy the book and then come back for the interview. We’ll wait for you.

Back from buying the book? So here’s the first of what I plan to be a periodic series of interviews with influential people in networking, both in face to face and in social media.

Enjoy hearing and learning from a master of sales and networking!

Q: I see you’ve been a speaker and presenter for 20+ years. What did you do before? Why did you decide to begin speaking, and why on the topic of networking and referrals?

Bob: I began as a television broadcaster, wasn’t particularly good at that and realized it wasn’t going to be my career. I graduated into sales but very quickly realized I had no idea what I was doing. Fortunately I found a book called How To Master the Art of Selling by Tom Hopkins, read that, and it immediately accelerated my sales. I then studied some books and tapes by Zig Ziglar, and I made a study of sales. Eventually I made my way up to sales manager of the company.

Q: Curious, what were you selling?

Bob: I started out by selling media time for radio and television commercials and then I sold solar energy hot water heating units to homeowners. That’s the one where I worked my way up to sales manager of that company. I found I really enjoyed that because I got to go out and sell, and I could lead a team of sales people. I enjoyed teaching sales. I enjoyed learning and then teaching what I had learned. Informally a couple of other companies asked me to come in and show their sales team what I was doing, and I thought wow, this is fun, and I think I could make a living at it. So I went into that business. And it’s been just about 20 years.

I found that the networking aspect was really my forte. Creating relationships with people that lead to a referral based business is certainly a lot more fun than gathering business in other ways. I found I was able to master the art of referral marketing, and then it was a matter of putting together a system for it that I had been using and being able to teach others how to do the same. And that’s where my first book, Endless Referrals, Networking Your Everyday Contacts into Sales came from. That’s been sort of mainstay book that’s been used by a lot of companies, and then with my excellent co-author, John David Mann, we came out a couple of years ago with The Go-Giver.

Q: You’ve shared the stage with many famous people, including former President Gerald Ford. What person were you most excited to be on stage with?

Bob: It’s tough because there have been so many: Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracey. All those guys were more exciting than the celebrities to me because these are the people who helped shape my career. So to actually be on stage with them was just a huge thrill for me.

Q: You say in the book, Go-Givers Sell More, that the ideas didn’t originate with you, and I agree. Much of what you say I’ve heard in other books or presentations. So why this book? And why now?

Bob: Well, first I am fairly certain, Juli, that I have never had an original thought in my life. There is so much great information out there, dating back from thousands of years to a hundred years to new books coming out all the time that I just find terrific and so helpful.

I think the key is not so much coming up with something new as either a new application of an idea or putting something together in way that is relatable and duplicatable. I have to totally credit my co-author John David Mann here. He is the writer. I’m a how-to guy, but John is a storyteller, and boy is he good. He can take an idea and just absolutely masterfully word it.

But we’re a little bit contrarian in Go-Givers Sell More. As you saw, we say most people look at sales backwards. Most people think it’s trying to get someone to buy something they don’t want to buy when sales is finding out what someone does want to buy and helping them get it.

The biggest misconception is that sales is a matter of getting from others. It’s not. Sales at its highest level, at its most profitable, at its best, is all about giving. And as you saw, the Old English root of the word “sell” is “sellan” which means “to give.” So when you sell, you are giving. You’re giving time. You’re giving attention. You’re giving counsel. You’re giving empathy. And most of all, you’re giving value.

We take some of those ideas and we turn them on their head a little. However, and this is important, these ideas are only contrarian to those who are the average producers. The superstar, mega-producers: it’s not contrarian to them. This is just how they’ve been doing business.

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Thanks for that, Bob. Tune in tomorrow for the rest of the interview where Bob tells us a bit about the 5 Laws presented in the book, including which one is the hardest for people. He’ll also give us some words of wisdom for both new and established sales people.

Until then!

Tags: communication, Giving, Referrals, Relationship building, sales

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 11:27 am and is filed under Referrals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.