More Money More Fun: Stop Following The Rules, Start Trusting Your Voice, And Unlearn Everything They Taught You About Sales

By Will Richardson

What if the most effective sales strategy had nothing to do with selling?

You've probably heard the commonsense tips and tactics:

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ethos Collective
• Release date: Jan 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9781636802312

Book preview

Will Richardson is one of the funniest guys I know. What makes him so likable is that he’s comfortable in his own skin. His authenticity is both disarming and refreshing. He gives us the confidence to be ourselves and sell with strength.

—Dr. Kary Oberbrunner, Wall Street Journal Bestseller

and USA Today bestselling author

I love the way Will humanizes the sales experience and offers practical ideas and language that pull people in rather than push them away. More Money More Fun: Stop Following The Rules, Start Trusting Your Voice, And Unlearn Everything They Taught You About Sales should be in the hands of every sales person who wants to be more effective with people and grow more meaningful relationships. Will has cracked the code for building trust and driving impact! This book will revolutionize the way you think about sales. Truly a home run!

—Jordan Montgomery, owner of Montgomery Companies, Performance Coach and Keynote Speaker

More Money

More Fun

STOP FOLLOWING THE RULES,

START TRUSTING YOUR VOICE, AND UNLEARN EVERYTHING THEY TAUGHT YOU ABOUT SALES

Will Richardson

A black and gold logo Description automatically generated

MORE MONEY MORE FUN © 2024 by Will Richardson.

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

Published by Ethos Collective™

PO Box 43, Powell, OH 43065

www.ethoscollective.vip

This book contains material protected under international and federal copyright laws and treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the author.

LCCN: 2023920250

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63680-229-9

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-63680-230-5

e-book ISBN: 978-1-63680-231-2

Available in paperback, hardcover, and e-book.

Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers printed in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Ethos Collective™, nor does Ethos Collective™ vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the salespeople who have survived and are looking to get to the next level and enjoy their work more. May the lessons I learned the hard way help you make progress faster!

Table of Contents

Introduction

A Different Way

Are You Ready to Change?

Chapter 1: The Hard Sell

A Numbers Game

Turning Points

Finding My Own Voice

Chapter 2: The Old Ways Fall Short

A Poor Fit for Today’s Buyer

Rethinking Rejection

The Experience Matters

Purpose and Authenticity

Competition vs. Collaboration

Ideas in Practice

Chapter 3: Put Yourself in the Buyer’s Position

Make It Easy to Be a Client

The Beginner’s Mind

Patient, or Desperate?

Be Inclusive

Pay Attention and Engage

Chapter 4: Elevate Your People Skills

Be Authentic

Better Listening, Richer Insights

Affirm and Reorient

The Soft Close

Asking for Referrals, Tactfully

It’s All About Value

Chapter 5: Find Your Niche

Advantages of Specialization

Fit and Financial Outcomes

Finding Your Niche

Chapter 6: Let Go of the Wrong Clients

What Constitutes a Poor Fit?

Abundance vs. Scarcity

Chapter 7: What Do Clients Want?

Understand Your Client’s World

Clarity and Simplicity Are Golden

Lead With Value

The Appeal of Social Proof

Chapter 8: Putting New Ideas Into Practice

Good Discomfort or Bad Discomfort?

One Step at a Time

Find Your Support Team

Focus on Your Why

Be Open to Feedback

Dealing With Naysayers

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

Anyone who’s been in sales for more than a few minutes knows that the process can be downright painful for both the seller and the buyer. Pushing someone to buy something you may or may not believe in, that they may or may not even need, feels awkward and uncomfortable. That’s true when you’re just starting out as a salesperson, and it can still be true years later—if you’re using the conventional tactics that most salespeople start learning the moment they begin their careers.

How many times have you heard the following rules or passed them along to a new salesperson who was just starting out?

Overcome three objections. Don’t leave a meeting without a meeting. It’s a numbers game. Always be closing. Don’t let them off the hook. Keep asking for the business. You’ve got to hear no five times before you get to yes.

We’ve been taught, both directly and indirectly, that we won’t succeed unless we are pushy. But I believe the hard sell is misguided and old-fashioned. By that I mean it is not well-suited to today’s buyer, and it is no longer effective—if it ever was. The hard sell makes everyone involved uncomfortable: buyer and seller alike.

My first exposure to sales came in 2000 when I joined a stock brokerage soon after graduating college. I decided fairly quickly that sales was not for me, and I spent the next several years working in operational positions, including compliance. There, I had the opportunity to see how salespeople worked, and I started to gain a different perspective on the job. I realized that the top salespeople were great people and were doing great work on behalf of their clients. So, in 2008, I decided to give sales one more shot as a potential career path.

Resuming my career in sales at the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008 gave me the perspective that the economic environment can change at any point, and we need to learn to communicate effectively so our clients and prospects respond even in the most challenging environments. Spending a few years honing my speaking skills in Toastmasters International—more on that later—helped me realize the importance of communication. I learned every lesson in this book the hard way: repeatedly saying cringeworthy things and thinking to myself, "There has to be a better way." Since then, as a financial advisor, I’ve presented seminars on sales in approximately thirty cities and spoken at conferences to audiences of up to 10,000 people.

Along the way, I’ve felt many of the same frustrations that you may feel. I’ve struggled—and failed—to adapt my personality to what I thought a salesperson should be. I’ve doubted whether I’d be able to succeed in this career if I didn’t have that hard-charging, never-stop-pushing, never-take-no-for-an-answer attitude. I’ve worried that even if I did succeed, I would never feel a sense of pride and enjoyment in my work.

Often, the clues that we need a change are right in front of us. But if you’ve approached your work in the same way for years or decades, you may have become so accustomed to those signs that they’re hard to see. I encourage you to start paying attention to internal and external clues to how you feel about your work and how you’re making your clients feel.

For me, after about two years of surviving in our business, one of the first indicators that I needed to make a change was that I began to notice that everything I was doing still felt difficult. I had hoped that as I gained more experience, clients would start to respond favorably or my message would resonate more consistently. I was constantly pushing, but it always felt hard to get clients to do anything. The work had become exhausting, not energizing. I’d also felt, for a long time, that the aggressive tactics I felt I had to use on people simply didn’t suit my personality. I reached a point where I was tired of trying to shoehorn myself into a method that not only didn’t feel great, but that didn’t even work all that well. In truth, my early experiences in sales were beyond unpleasant. They were downright dreadful for clients and for me.

At the beginning of my second year in the business, I met the person who would become my biggest mentor, Tom Lipscomb. When I attended one of his training programs, I began to see opportunities to move the sales process away from these negative experiences and toward a more enjoyable experience for everyone involved. I remember thinking, Wow, this guy Tom seems normal. He sounds calm yet assertive. When he says things, I imagine clients want him to lead them. He doesn’t come on like a bulldozer, and nothing feels forced. I wonder if I can be like him?

I began thinking about the way that most of us tend to make any major purchase, whether it’s a used car or a new mattress. Most of us dread these sales interactions and hope we can just get out of them without being taken advantage of. But I knew, from my own experience and from watching advisors like Tom approach sales differently, that there are far more effective techniques than the aggressive push that we’re told is necessary.

The most successful financial advisors, I saw, follow a technique that focuses not on closing, but on adding value. They’re curious. They’re intentional. They’re attuned and aware if a prospect or even an existing client isn’t a good fit, and they don’t try to force it. They move on because they know their own value, they’ve identified their most successful niche, and they are confident that saying no to the wrong client frees them up to connect with the right client.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? That type of interaction is miles away from the conventional approach, and I can attest from my own experience that it is far more successful and far more fun.

A Different Way

The behaviors that people associate with a typical salesperson have given our entire profession a bad reputation. As a result, many people are reluctant to even admit that they’re in sales. The stereotypes are so strong—and, frankly, so negative—that many professionals would rather call themselves anything else.

In my work as a financial advisor, we tend to avoid the word sales. Sure, two colleagues talking privately will discuss how many referrals we obtained or how many new clients we closed. But we aren’t called salespeople, and many people in my field would resist that title. Instead, we’re called financial advisors, financial planners, wealth management advisors, or insurance agents.

Well, all of those people are selling something, right?

The reality is that sales is a crucial aspect of any business. Healthcare organizations have to find customers. A surgeon needs people to operate on, and that only happens when they convince the patient to have the operation, but most doctors would tell you they’ve never sold anything. Some of you may think doctors are somehow above selling. Law partners are expected to bring in clients. An attorney may find it demeaning that getting new clients is considered sales, but it is. The attorneys who become senior partners aren’t necessarily the smartest attorneys; they’re the ones who know how to bring in business. Business development directors are another example. They don’t call themselves salespeople, but that’s their primary role: to sell the value of the company they represent. Because sales is so prevalent, it’s worth finding a way to make the process less painful for everyone.

The principle that drives so many of the conventional tactics is that sales is nothing more than a numbers game. From this perspective, a steady volume of prospects and pitches is more important than whether the product is actually a good fit for a buyer. It’s more important than whether you as the salesperson have the ability to offer genuine value. And it definitely matters more than how you feel or how your clients feel when you take on that aggressive sales role.

But there are several problems with the belief that aggression generates sales and that it is the only way to generate sales. First, this approach leads to burnout, mediocrity, and a poor reputation for everyone in the sales profession. In addition, hard-sell tactics will only carry you so far. They don’t work well on sophisticated, high-level prospects, and often, they don’t even work on prospects who are theoretically more attainable.

One of the biggest reasons many salespeople fail to achieve the next level of career success is their lack of awareness that other approaches can be equally, if not more, effective. I believe these alternatives are necessary if you want to engage with high-net-worth clients, most of whom will not do