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Encyclopedia Sales to Multi-Billionaire 📚️

Sales Lessons From John Paul DeJoria

Happy National Fruit at Work Day! As long as it’s not fish in the office microwave, we’re all for it. 🍎 

In today’s Follow Up:

  • Sales tips from John Paul DeJoria 👑 

  • Personalized cold emails with AI 📞 

  • Sales across the internet 💻️ 

  • An email list building tool 🛠️

  • 4 new sales jobs 💰️ 

Sales Lessons From John Paul DeJoria

John Paul DeJoria is on the Mount Rushmore of billionaires who started in sales.

His track record includes:

  • Door-to-door encyclopedia sales

  • Insurance salesman

  • Co-founder of Paul Mitchell hair products ($1 billion+ / year revenue)

  • Co-founder of Patron Tequila (sold for $5.1 billion)

The odds of starting a billion-dollar company are 0.00006%. Which means you have a higher chance of winning the lottery than starting a second one.

John Paul is in a league of his own.

As an entry-level sales rep turned billionaire, there are more than a few things we can learn from this guy.

So we made ourselves a double espresso and went down the John Paul YouTube rabbit hole to find the best sales tips and lessons he’s given.

Here they are 👇️ 

1. Your Product or Service Needs to Be The Best.

As salespeople, we typically don’t have control over the quality of the product or service.

But we do have control over the company we choose to sell for.

When John Paul started Paul Mitchell Hair Care and Patron Tequila, he made sure the products were the best in their category. This meant he still needed to go out and sell them, but once someone tried them, they’d re-order and tell a friend.

Whether it’s shampoo, software, or landscaping, sales get easier when your users love your product.

Things you can do:

  • Do your research. Use websites like G2, TrustSource, and Gartner to see where a company’s product ranks in the market.

  • Use a tool like RepVue to find sales team ratings and the percentage of sales reps hitting quota.

  • If you really want to go above and beyond, reach out to the company’s customers, ex-customers, and non-sales employees to get their feedback (this is a sure way to impress a hiring manager).

2. Be Prepared For A Lot Of Rejection.

When John Paul sold encyclopedias door to door, his managers told him the average sales rep would make it 3 days on the job.

But the ones who made it past the 3 days would overcome rejection better than anyone else.

And they were right…

The reps who succeeded were just as enthusiastic at door number 50 as they were at door number 1.

John says it actually took closer to 101 doors to get his first sale…

The same thing is true in B2B sales. The best reps are just as enthusiastic on cold call number 1 as they are on cold call number 100. You’re going to get more no’s than yes’s. But the most successful reps will detach themselves from the no’s and only focus on the yes’s.

3. Sharing The Risk With Customers.

John Paul knows objections are a part of sales.

If they say no, don’t walk away. They have to say no three times before you walk away. They’re just saying you haven’t convinced me.

- John Paul DeJoria

People object for dozens of reasons → pricing, trust, timing, fear of change, fear of commitment, etc.

John Paul says the best way to overcome these objections is by presenting an offer that shares the risk with the customer.

This usually sounds something like:

  • “We’re just concerned it won’t work for our specific business.”

    • If you’re not satisfied in the first 90 days, cancel with no questions asked.

  • “We’re concerned we won’t see the results we need for this kind of investment.“

    • If you’re not seeing results after using our system for 60 days, we’ll work 1 on 1 with you until you do.

To close deals with hairdressers, John shared the risk by offering training, sales help, and limited-time money-back guarantees. Every business has an offer that will make the customer feel that risk is being shared. The key is to use them to overcome objections.

Bonus: Keep Your Prospects Engaged

These days, it feels like 99% of B2B sales pitches look something like this:

Get on a Zoom call. Brief intro. Pull up a PowerPoint. Go into your presentation pitch. “Any questions?”

And what’s the result?

Your prospects are zoning out, answering emails, and nodding off like a 16-year-old in Honors Chemistry.

Instead, get your prospect involved. Ask them questions and customize your pitch to their exact company and needs.

Check out this video where John explains how he got hairdressers involved in his pitch and sold them on Paul Mitchell conditioners.

@thefollowupnewsletter

How John Paul DeJoria ran his sales pitch via @Noah Kagan #sales #salestips

Which one is your favorite?

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Sales Tip of The Day 💡 

Generate personalized cold email lines with the help of AI.

  • Upload your leads list to a tool like Claude.ai 

  • Write a prompt for the AI bot.

  • Get personalized cold email lines based on the information in your leads list.

Check out our video tutorial on creating cold emails with AI → click here.

Sales in the News 🗞️ 

We apologize for the broken links in last week’s news section. Find all of the updated links from Thursday’s newsletter here.

Sales Weapon of The Day

ListKit: Build a leads list with automatically verified B2B emails. Only pay for verified emails from a database of 500 million contacts.

Cool Jobs at Cool Companies 🤑 

Sales Meme of the Day

Reader Review of The Day ✍️

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