First Customers episode 19 with Warren Greshes:
Warren Greshes is a legendary sales pro, award-winning speaker, and author of several books over the past 30 years. He was inducted into the National Speakers Association hall of fame in 1998, and one of his books is considered to be in the top 10 best sales books of all time. The title says it all. It’s The Best Damn Sales Book Ever. Listen to his hilarious energy-packed stories in this episode and level up your sales game. Side note: He once owned a minor league baseball team.
Show Links
- Listen/Watch on Spotify
- Listen on Apple Podcasts
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/warrengreshes
- Twitter: @WarrenGreshes
- YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/user/WarrenGreshes
Warren’s Books & Courses:
- Udemy Course, Supercharged Prospecting: https://www.udemy.com/course/supercharged-prospecting/
- The Best Damn Sales Book Ever https://amzn.to/3IylOOB (Amazon affiliate link)
- The Best Damn Management Book Ever: https://amzn.to/3kzNV81 (Amazon affiliate link)
- Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
Warren’s Volunteer Work:
- Caring House: https://caringhouse.org/
- The Helius Foundation / Echo: https://www.heliusnc.org/.
Show Transcript
Paris Vega (00:01.998)
welcome to the first customers podcast today i am honored to have warren gress on the show he spent thirty years as a professional speaker author podcaster blogger and more he was inducted into the national speakers association hall of fame in nineteen ninety eight and one of his books is even considered to be one of the top ten best sales books of all time and he even owned a minor league baseball team at one point so warren looking forward to this welcome to the show
Warren Greshes (00:30.860)
thanks paris i’m very happy to be here
Paris Vega (00:34.998)
let’s start off by just telling us how you got your very first customer
Warren Greshes (00:38.020)
my very first customer okay this was my first what i call real job you know when where you got to wear a suit and tie it was nineteen seventy three july of nineteen seventy three i was not quite i was about three months shy of my twenty second birthday so is still twenty one years old i had a job working in new york city’s infamous garment center i was working for a dress manufacturing company and i was a salesman and quote because that was really more
Paris Vega (00:40.918)
yeah
Warren Greshes (01:08.360)
of a lackey slash train and every once in a while they let me into the show whatever but i used to sit behind this desk in the front of the show room and we had this particular company had three different divisions and in the other division that was right on the other side of our show room they had a show him the there was a guy who was one of the top guys in that division and he came over to me one day with a dress that he had and he said i want you to
put this in a box i want you to take a cab over to diana’s stores there was it was a changed big change store at that time probably way out of business a long time ago like so many others said i want you to take it over to this guy the buyer whose name i don’t remember to this day because let’s face in paris that was fifty years ago he says he’ll give you an order for a hundred of him i said great okay so i took the box and went over diana store so one way on the
side of man i get there i show him address this address i’m supposed to pick up an aldea gives me the order i come back guy approaches me again same guy from the other division he happens to be one of the one of the owners he happens to be his stepson one of the owners step sons he comes to me with address and watch take this address put it in a box goal for diana’s stores and see the buyer he’ll give you order for a hundred i do it again a few weeks later comes over to me again a third time finally i said to myself with
clown i said you know what i’m going to do i put his dress in the box and i took one off of my line and i put it in the box and i went over to the diana stores and i pulled the dress out his dress out i said i’m supposed to get an order for a hundred of these but i got to tell you something i pulled my dress out i got one here that’s even better this is the one you should buy guy gives me an order for a hundred of em of my dress not the er ess i come back and i am on cloud nine now right after i come
to my boss calls me in the office he says shut the door shut the door he says i’m supposed to yell at you right now but take my credit card go to mass buy yourself a shirt and tie on me great job
Warren Greshes (03:24.740)
but now you’ve got to understand something about my boy sale ruse this guy was
Paris Vega (03:24.838)
that’s awesome
Warren Greshes (03:32.720)
he was like one of the worst bosses of all time he was but i got to tell you something i learned more from him than anybody ever in my entire life i learned more about sales i learned more about business i learned more about dealing with people i mean he was just the son of a bitch i mean he was the worst but and he was also cheap as hell you know how you say he probably has every dollar he ever earned well this guy took the first dollar and bought a wallet
Paris Vega (03:59.998)
yeah
Warren Greshes (04:02.720)
and if you even jumped off his bank books he would have broken both of his legs so i go i take his credit can i go to mass and i buy myself a real nice shirt and tie calls him in this off he says what that you spend thirty dollars on his shirt now thirty dollars on his shirt back in nineteen seventy three was real money he says i want to see where the thirty dollar shirt works like looks like i mean this guy was so cheap he used to wear pants to cast dollar he once said to me what do you think my wife got these pants for a book i think someone’s
Paris Vega (04:20.138)
right right
Warren Greshes (04:32.540)
a buck so and so i started to sir but he left he loved it he loved what i did and that’s probably i’ll never forget that the other guy wasn’t too happy with me but what the d i care i made a good sale and that vaulted me right into the role of being a full time salesman
Paris Vega (04:43.578)
that’s a yeah
Paris Vega (04:52.698)
so was that the other guys address was that somebody else at your my like another sales when you were competing with got a different company okay okay
Warren Greshes (04:57.340)
no it was the same company but a different division yeah in fact the guy was the step far he heard the story he loved it too because he was that guy and guy he really liked me he was the owner of the company in fact the company was going through some hard times because they were owned by a bunch of and this is the truth you never heard the term philadelphia lawyers
Paris Vega (05:20.398)
i don’t know that i have
Warren Greshes (05:20.560)
well it’s a term for guys that you know crawl on their belly these guys were actual philadelphia lawyers the other three guys that owned the company and the company was in chapter eleven and they decided they were going to cut everybody’s salary ten per cent i went to my bust i said what are you kidding me i said making two hundred dollars a week these guys at driving mercedes benes and rolls royces what are they gonna do with my twenty bucks so he said talk to jack who was the owner was he was the only one that
Paris Vega (05:30.818)
okay
Paris Vega (05:47.078)
yeah
Warren Greshes (05:50.360)
dress person he was the owner though i went into i was the only one who ever complained that i went into messagjack come on what are you gonna do with my twenty books he said your right he said you’re not getting cut so yeah i learned a long time ago key selling if you don’t ask you don’t get and that you know my story i could tell you million stories about selling dresses in the garment center that was on that is one crazy business
Paris Vega (06:03.258)
really
Paris Vega (06:05.598)
huh
Paris Vega (06:11.598)
there we go
Paris Vega (06:20.578)
okay so nineteen seventy one now when was it nineteen seventy three okay and
Warren Greshes (06:24.020)
nineteen seventy three that’s when i started
Warren Greshes (06:28.320)
i lasted in that business till nineteen eighty three then i went to work for a small i decide i couldn’t stand it any more i was really good at it but i was never going to be as great as i wanted to be because i just didn’t like it enough to put in the time
Paris Vega (06:32.558)
okay
Paris Vega (06:37.638)
m
Paris Vega (06:43.458)
so who were you selling dresses to that those are bulk orders so is it like smaller okay okay department not
Warren Greshes (06:45.640)
department stores mostly department stores you know mass most of them are gimbals i mean i can you name your city and name your department still it’s probably out of business i sold all over the country
Paris Vega (06:58.438)
so you guys were addressed manufacturer like okay got you okay so that’s the ributer
Warren Greshes (06:59.240)
we manufactured the dresses that’s correct yea i did that for ten years and then said i can’t do this the rest of my life i’ll just either die of boredom or just kill myself so i wanted to stay in sales got a job as a head of sales and sales marketing for small training consulting company worked there two years tripled their business and in that time in that time and then decided as i’m going selling all these training seminars i’m sitting in the back too
watching him saying myself
Warren Greshes (07:32.000)
that doesn’t look very hard i can do that i bet you i’d be good at that i said you know why and if i could do that i could start my own business i said you know i’m bringing in all the business i’m getting the short end of the stick i’m getting the short end of the cut if i could do that with the i need these guys for so i quit and started my own company that was nineteen eighty six
Paris Vega (07:53.538)
okay and what was that company at that
Warren Greshes (07:54.020)
well that was my that’s my speaking company would call it the name of it was the corporate name was lino incorporated but i used to call it speaking of success because that’s what i spoke about success i did a lot started out mostly doing sales training that eventually evolved into key note speeches
Paris Vega (07:57.458)
okay
Paris Vega (08:04.318)
okay
Paris Vega (08:07.798)
all right
Paris Vega (08:12.798)
all right so how did you get your customers for that business when you started
Warren Greshes (08:13.960)
well my first sale in that business i had this great idea now it’s nineteen eighty six so it’s really no internet nobody’s using it to nothings online i said i’m trying to get i’m trying to get into companies with sales people so i can train them so i decided i’m going to go to the help wanted section of the new york times on sundays because there’s a separate section for sales help wanted and i’m figuring if companies need sales are hiring sales people they’re going to need to
Paris Vega (08:22.338)
m
Warren Greshes (08:43.740)
trained and the best thing about the help wanted the sales help wanted ads they gave you the phone number and they gave you the manager’s name so i would call up manager would answer the phone and and not answer the phone company someone would answer the phone i’d say i’m calling to speak to you joe smith what’s this in reference to its reference to the ad in the newspaper in the sunday times they put me right through get on the phone i said listen i’m not looking for a job but let me tell you what i do i know you’re hiring
Paris Vega (08:54.958)
okay that’s your lead
Paris Vega (09:09.358)
yeah
Warren Greshes (09:13.840)
people need to be trained i can train you sales people we should get and i asked him for a point that we should get together house next tuesday at three so i got an appointment with a guy from metropolitan life sales manager of agency in brooklyn and i went to meet him i went into brooklyn to meet him i sat down them and i said which i knew the i don’t ask a lot of questions unless i know the answer to them ahead of time i said i’m figuring uf sales meetings on friday he said well you know all of people have to pay for their own
training so i said okay that makes sense and back then in the old agency system life insurance agents were asked to pay for their own training i said this is what i’m going to do for you he said if you can get them to pay for it you can come back and speak i said okay you got friday meetings right he said yeah cause i’ll come in friday i’ll do fifteen minutes i said then after fifteen minutes i’m going to pass the pad around and find out how many guys are interested if i can get twenty guys to each give me twenty five dollars
i said i’ll be back the next friday and i’ll do two hours for you he said okay and that’s what i do i come in i do fifteen minutes i used to do this routine where i take a dollar bill on a business card from everybody in the audience i had no idea why the whole exercise was they don’t give me money and never ask why and walk away with their money and then i’d stop and i say how do i get this nd they said you asked i said that’s it you don’t ask you don’t get they on sign up for the next week i’d come back the next friday and that’s what happened here i came back
next friday they gave me five hundred dollars most of it in cash which is great don’t tell the government that and my speeches and then from there it got easier because i’d say to the manager that you know here’s a lot of me life offices in this tri state area i said you got three other friends who are managers so you could refer me to you gave me three other names from there then i’d start to hit the prodential offices from there then finally one guy a prudential gives me a a directory he gave me a freak in directory and he circled
Paris Vega (10:50.098)
yeah
Warren Greshes (11:13.720)
the guys he knew who were managers and who i should call and use his name next thing i know i’m all over new york new jersey and connecticut i get a call from boston from the vice president of the entire north east he said who the hell are you i said who the hell are you said i’m vice president the whole north east my agency is supposed to pay the northeast office for training he said but they’ve given you all that money i said maybe i’m better than you are i said you know i’ll fly up to boston let’s meet i flew up to boston we met he hired
to train every agency in the entire north east and then from there my name got around and next thing i know i’m key noting big insurance conference so you know you got to be a little creative and you got to ask for refers but you got to ask to begin with
Paris Vega (11:57.778)
yeah
Paris Vega (12:01.478)
so what what led you to the idea for just taking their money like taking the one dollar in the business card was that just okay
Warren Greshes (12:05.960)
i’ve seen someone do it years ago but i took it to a whole new level i did it in front of audiences as big as three thousand people i was in singapore this was nineteen ninety one i’m in singapore i got three thousand people in my audience now they have dollars and not us dollars but the singapore dollars so i start off my keno keno in this big the asia pacific life insurance congress three thousand people there from all of south east ation as everybody before we start everybody take out of p
Paris Vega (12:18.858)
excell
Warren Greshes (12:35.820)
a paper a business car piece of paper a pencil business car he dollar bill and they all do i said no you know no coins no subway tokens blablablah and then i started speaking about twenty minutes and i said you know what before we talk about that just pass up the business cads the dollar bills now i can’t get everybody fast enough but i got people volunteering to help me i said you you take the group on the right you take the group on the left you take the up level there you take the bottom level in the middle and i’ll just stand up here and you pile it in front of me well they piled up thousands and thousands
all s in front of me and well because i asked in fact what i used to do was after collecting a lot of money i’d say if you want it back you can get it when i’m done please take your money back i don’t keep it but if you don’t want it back we can give it to the charity of your choice and in fact we ended up buying a mine van for an orphanage with that money in single port yeah so it was it was i used it all over the world i did that thing all over the world i did one where where this was a
Paris Vega (13:26.558)
oh that’s awesome
Warren Greshes (13:35.940)
one i walk into a room and it took place in my walking and the problem was i would i had been there before half the room had seen me speak before half the room had never seen me speak the half the room that had seen me speak before before they even sit down they wiping out dollar bills and business cards because they knew the routine they knew they’d get it back so they’re already ready they’re wiping it out the other half is looking at them that’s that’s too easy this must be a catch so half the room stops half the room stops i’m dead man so i do
so all right let me try something i walked up to the first guy said you want to in or out he said i want to give me a twenty me a twenty dollar bill i walked up to the next guy said you want to in or out he said i want to give me a twenty and you know the twenty dolabowent to the third guy that in er out he said i’m out get it you know what all you’re out he said no no please i walked away said no please come back i want in he give me another twenty at sixty dollars extra had no idea what inner out meant either but you got to ask and there was another good lesson because it just shows if you want to get bigger sales you got to ask for bigger
sales i mean the first time i ever spoke in the u k i was doing working with a promoter over there and on the phone with him and i’m telling him what i’m going to do is again around nineteen ninety one and i said listen this is what i’m goin a do i’m going to ask everybody to take out a piece of paper a pencil of business card and one pound note passed up to business cards in the one pound notes he said no you’re not i said what do you mean i’m not he said you can’t so wha yo an i can’t this is my thing i’m known all over the world for this he said no no you don’t understand we know
Paris Vega (14:37.938)
m
Warren Greshes (15:05.820)
longer have one pound notes i said what do you hate he says we got coins i said coins my hands are small hat am i gonna do with all these coins i said what’s the next thing he said we got five pound notes and now i got to decide do i have the guts i did so i asked him everybody taking out a five pound note let me tell you paris i was getting five tens twenties one guy holds up a hundred pound note he says all i got is a hundred that’s okay just give it a right in my hand had no idea why i was asking for it so just
Paris Vega (15:09.478)
oh wow
Paris Vega (15:32.778)
yeah
Warren Greshes (15:36.020)
if you don’t ask you don’t get and that’s now that sales in a nutshell there’s there’s two things you’ve got to do you got to throw enough crap against the wall until something sticks and you got to ask and if if you keep doing that then you’re gonna you’re going to do fine you know the sale the people that don’t that don’t succeed in sales don’t talk to enough people that’s it they just don’t talk to because they’re afraid someone is going to say no and the other lesson i would teach people is when i was taking the dollar bill
Paris Vega (15:38.638)
yeah
Warren Greshes (16:05.940)
there was always people in the audience that wouldn’t give me so i just go right past myself and then i just go to the next one and i say what did i do when people not give me a dollar bill they said just kept moving on i said right because you don’t argue with someone who’s saying no because all the time if i was arguing with someone would give me a dollar bills all the time i’m losing when i just got a picked up dollar bills that were waiting for me so you don’t argue with people who saying just move on go to it’s a numbers game
Paris Vega (16:27.098)
yeah
Paris Vega (16:32.358)
that’s good so simple when you put it like that oh
Warren Greshes (16:35.300)
it is but it’s not brain surgery if it was i wouldn’t have been doing it
Paris Vega (16:41.058)
all right let’s talk a little bit about about you now i mean you’re like a whole force of sales on your own just as a person personality um but let’s back up as a kid where did you grow up and did you have any sales experience like you know fund raisers door to door of type stuff that kids do sometimes okay
Warren Greshes (16:45.100)
oh
Warren Greshes (16:58.620)
not really not really you know i’d run a few baseball pools and stuff like that and i was always pretty slick with my mouth you know as i said when i played ball i’m slow but i’m small and so you know i couldn’t outrun everybody so you know i had i had to be able to talk my way out of things and i was really good at that you know as a friend of mine once said he said you’re amazing at being able to convince people you’re right even when they absolutely positively know you’re wrong
Paris Vega (17:05.018)
okay
Paris Vega (17:08.998)
yeah
Warren Greshes (17:30.020)
and so you know i grew up in brooklyn and i always had a ability to get people to do what i wanted them to do for me and and you know i was that way i got through college because i was a fast talker i didn’t get through college because i was trying very hard i can tell you that but yeah well
Paris Vega (17:51.818)
really
Warren Greshes (17:58.660)
listen i was not very good i was determined to show i had this plan that i could get through four years of school without going to summer school and never going extra just just four years period no summer school and without doing a damn thing and i did and like an council once said to me in college she said you’re never getting out of her i said nuts i said i only i getting out of i’m getting out here in four years and i’m not going to summer school because summer school goes against everything i believe in
Warren Greshes (18:29.000)
and i did in fact i learned how to game the system i was really good at that you know you know it’s funny the only the only course i ever got in a in that i earned the other courses i got as once here’s a good story about asking i took a course of educational psychology and never showed up the class i never bought the text book during the final example i just sat there during courtoons on the page as we’re handing in our papers for the final example
professor had the professor saying what do you think you deserving this course people have given him answers and my friend is in front of me is a nice guy but he was dumb as a rock and you know he tried to be slick well you know i didn’t work my hardest i probably you know only deserve see got to see comes to me next he said what you think deserving this question i said i think i deserve an he gave me an
Warren Greshes (19:24.120)
i mean if he would have said no what would i have done i go for a b c but i’m figured listening if he’s dumb enough to give it to me i’m dumb enough to ask for it so you know and but the only course i ever earned the a was public speaking which is kind of ironic because i had no idea i would be in that business some day and i just had a knack for it i had no fear and never had any fear and the professor loved me she even exempted me from the final and so
Paris Vega (19:29.578)
right
Paris Vega (19:40.098)
okay
Paris Vega (19:46.238)
yeah
Warren Greshes (19:54.240)
but this is always something i was good at and when i found it finally it was it was like you know the whole world opened up to me you know there’s nothing like really enjoying what you do you if you don’t love what you do then find something else to do because then it becomes work
Paris Vega (20:07.398)
for sure
Paris Vega (20:13.938)
so when did you so you started the speaking business okay and then you’re training different insurance company sales people
Warren Greshes (20:15.760)
nineteen eighty six
Warren Greshes (20:20.160)
i was i was doing a lot of sales training courses and then eventually i started to get the key no big meetings and so i switched my marketing and sales efforts towards key notes speak and i like that a lot more now
Paris Vega (20:32.838)
so you say you said key note speaking so describe what’s the difference there what is what do you mean by that
Warren Greshes (20:36.360)
okay you’re training seminal come in you usually get you know maybe twenty thirty forty people a knot speech is a big conference you know how companies have big sales conference or big incentive conferences i did a lot most of my most of my clients are the big corporations or big associations big associations have their annual members meetings big companies have either a big sales meeting a big management meeting or if they sell through a dealer network to have a big dealer and distributors meeting and that’s what
Paris Vega (20:45.478)
okay yeah yeah
Warren Greshes (21:06.100)
i did that’s what i love the most you fly in you speak for anywhere from forty five minutes to an hour and a half and you’re out of there and you’re on stage and i love big audiences i’m am i love big audiences the bigger the audience the better i just love it and you know you can really when you got a big audience you can just blow the energy out of the building and i just love doing that so that’s what my business evolved into you know aside from books and other pro
Paris Vega (21:14.398)
wow
Warren Greshes (21:36.160)
cause you know i had audiocasets at one time audiocaset albums and videos and then c des and then on line products and stuff like that
Paris Vega (21:46.758)
is that are those things you were just launching like as soon as you got into the speaking business or how long before we started the document
Warren Greshes (21:50.260)
well i started to that’s that’s another interesting first sale the first product i ever made was an old video tape you know like a tape it was on telephone prospecting it was called don’t count the yeses count the nose i’m a big believer in getting more people to say if you get more people to say no to you than anybody else does you’ll get more people to say yes it’s a numbers game and so i approached this insurance company up in hartford i forget which in
Paris Vega (22:01.358)
yeah old v h s h
Paris Vega (22:10.338)
m
Warren Greshes (22:19.980)
this company it was and i said listen i’ve got this great program i want to make a video because i want to make a video out of it but i can’t afford to produce the video on my own this is early in my career i said if you produce the video
Warren Greshes (22:35.020)
i’ll give you the master and you can use it but you can only use it in house i get the sub master and i’m allowed to sell it to the rest of the world they said great so they took care of all the costs of productions gave me a beautiful master from for myself and i started selling that video in fact that program is now that program has evolved to the point where it’s now on ou to me as an online video program called super charged prospecting
Paris Vega (23:01.918)
okay
Warren Greshes (23:05.880)
and so super charge prospecting it’s on ou tom and it sells all over the world i’ve got countries from i got people from all over the world buying that program but yeh so that was great okay and so you know it’s yeah you got to be creative with these things sometimes and that’s how i got my first product i got my next product by up from my promoter in england he said we got to approach one of these
Paris Vega (23:06.738)
awesome super charged prospective
Paris Vega (23:11.198)
okay
Paris Vega (23:18.378)
okay we’ll put a link to that in the show notes
Paris Vega (23:30.138)
m
Warren Greshes (23:35.160)
like a nightingale conant or back then with something called dart nell and he approached them in chicago and they agreed to do me on audio cost so they made an audio cousin album and then i said you know you should really do it live i’m a live show so they recorded it live in front of an audience in chicago and then turned it into a five video series called quest to be the best it’s old you know but it’s amazing super charged selling is still on it’s on audible dot com
Paris Vega (23:38.278)
yeah
Paris Vega (24:01.418)
yeah
Warren Greshes (24:04.960)
as an e book as as an audio book and by the way all my audio books even the ones that i wrote that were in print there all recorded in my voice that’s when when i was approached to buy my they approach me to buy my audio writes i said i’ll only do it if you’ll let me record it in my voice because my stuff is me when people right when people read my books they hear my voice even though it’s in print so i insisted on that
Paris Vega (24:09.138)
okay yeah
Paris Vega (24:18.258)
okay awesome
Paris Vega (24:27.398)
yeah yeah that makes it so much better too when it’s the author
Warren Greshes (24:35.860)
that was fun too so i enjoyed that
Paris Vega (24:40.258)
yeah i’m definitely on to check those out and well put links to all those in the show notes to make sure you can look those up about those books so looking back at like the seventies eighties nineties it seems like almost like a like a golden age of that like sales training and that kind of era because you had like zig zigler like some of those big names and then eventually yeah tony robins came up i guess the nineties or whatever
Warren Greshes (24:44.060)
great thank you that’s great i appreciate
Warren Greshes (24:57.220)
right
Warren Greshes (25:01.860)
tony robins was first then denis waihtley was big back then yeah ran into all these guys in fact one of the reasons i left the dress business to go into the sales training business but as a sales person was it was the early eighties and the economy was changing it was changing over from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy and i figured with all these new industries popping up is goin
Paris Vega (25:29.958)
okay yeah
Warren Greshes (25:32.100)
all these new sales people popping up and sales training was going to become a very very important service and i was right sales training exploded during the started to explode during the eighties and i got in right at the right time so and it really did and now you know a lot of stuff is going online and i’ve done my share of online stuff and i enjoyed doing that too i’d rather be on stay
Paris Vega (25:57.318)
yeah
Warren Greshes (26:01.860)
in person but i enjoy doing it too
Paris Vega (26:04.198)
yeah
Paris Vega (26:06.658)
it definitely helps you get a whole lot of reach what reached way more people than you could have in an individual event even though different energy yeah all right so then eventually you got into the speaker’s hall of fame talk a litle bit about that
Warren Greshes (26:11.960)
no no question about it no question about it
Warren Greshes (26:19.860)
right
Warren Greshes (26:22.280)
well i remember the national speakers association stock as soon as i started my business i joined the national speakers association nineteen eighty six if you want to you know succeed in the speaking business it’s a good organization to join that because it’s going to get you business that’s not the purpose but you’re going to be able to network with other people who were doing what you do other people who have been successful in what you want to do and so it’s a unique opportunity to network and learn from people who have done or are doing what you
Paris Vega (26:28.518)
okay
Warren Greshes (26:52.160)
self would love to do and i got to meet a lot of good people in that business and learn a lot from them and really help me to grow my business and and you know and become better what i do it’s more it’s not so much about they’re going to teach you how to be a better speaker although there’s some of that but they’re going to teach you how to succeed in a speaking business and speaking and training business and that’s important because a lot of people can give a speech but then a lot of people can run a business or succeed in
business you know i can shake a tree i can find fifty people who can give a speech but i shake that tree and i find maybe a couple of people who can actually go out and get a client it’s a lot harder to get you know the toughest part of speaking is finding the client you know the easy part is doing the speech i can fall out of bed i can start i can go right now and do three hours for you
Paris Vega (27:23.878)
right
Paris Vega (27:43.178)
yeah
Paris Vega (27:45.338)
that’s good all right now somehow along the way you ended up with a minor league baseball team you said okay
Warren Greshes (27:51.800)
well that was when i first started out yeah i got involved in starting a minor league baseball that was a little bit ahead of my time minor league baseball as i think i thought it was going to explode and it has but i got in and out pretty quick i got into this league where they came up with an interesting idea was it was a small league where they’re going to have four teams in the connecticut area and but all play out of one ball park so there being no travel expenses because that’s one of the biggest expenses for minor league baseball owners was an independ
league we weren’t we weren’t getting any major league affiliation so we’d have to pay the players and i made a good deal the other owners i said listen let me do the sales and marketing for the league let me promote it because that’s my strength and they did and while i was promoting it i was going around the state of connecticut talking to companies and organizations and what not i was also promoting my speaking business and and the league did all right for a while then when billy up but when i went belly up i went back to all these
Paris Vega (28:26.298)
hm
Paris Vega (28:35.458)
sure
Paris Vega (28:47.438)
okay
Warren Greshes (28:51.720)
i said remember me you know you ut ads in the program sponsor ships and all that stuff like you know i do sales training i got a ton of big you know i got southern new england telephone which was one of the baby bells at the time i got i got one of the big banks in cannetiti get high a number of companies in connettiget hired me i was doing so much business in connecticut i don’t know how many miles i put on my car driving back and forth from manhattan to connecticut all the time but you know you take lemons and you make lemonade you know you know sucks
Paris Vega (29:21.298)
yeah
Warren Greshes (29:21.700)
stuff doesn’t work but it leads to other things you know you know and it did i got i met a lot of people who became clients and so the minor league baseball team was a fun thing to do i walked away with money because they paid me to promote the league and and i walked away with a ton of clients who made me even more money so it was a good experience and i love baseball
Paris Vega (29:43.898)
yeah so that brings you to a question i want to get your feedback on kind of this the theory of how to get your first customers that i’m kind of learning and developing as i’m doing this podcast and talking to diferent people and trying to find patterns about how different entrepreneurs or sales people are marketing people approach getting those first customers and so far just tell you kind of my overall view and then love to get your feedback on it so it seems like
Warren Greshes (29:54.980)
okay
Warren Greshes (30:11.700)
oh
Paris Vega (30:14.298)
regardless of the type of business or the type of industry the most successful people that i’ve seen they build some kind of connection with their target audience that they’re going to be selling to whether they they would like to serve with their new business or their new job or whatever and the ones that have that best connection whether it’s through physical events or even social online connection or something but it seems like those ones that have the that spend the most time talking to their target
Warren Greshes (30:25.360)
m
Warren Greshes (30:32.700)
ah
Paris Vega (30:43.758)
audience have the most success getting those very first sales because they’ve already built up relationships beforehand instead of the first time the customers seeing them is when they’re asking them for money you know um but i just like to hear kind of your thoughts on that idea of how important is it like defining your target audience like that relationship
Warren Greshes (30:47.960)
hm
Warren Greshes (30:55.940)
hm
Warren Greshes (31:03.180)
no it’s very important you don’t know who your customer is how do you formulate a plan to sell them you know you just you know i do you know i’m retired now but i do a lot of volunteer work and one of i volunteer to organization is one of the organization s i volunteer at is an organization that helps people to start their own business people who don’t have a lot of money and have no training to start and grow their own businesses and you know so i work with these people and not only count
Paris Vega (31:27.958)
yeah that’s awesome
Warren Greshes (31:33.160)
so then but i do some classes for them and whatever and you know we go over who’s your customer said well anybody can buy my what i’m selling yeah that’s great but how do you how do you how do you have how do you put together a marketing plan of sales plan for anybody it’s like if i said to your paris you know it’s like when when you ask for refers you ask for specific amount of refers i always ask for three i say you know i always say you know if i was selling to you i’d say do you know three other plots
Paris Vega (31:41.858)
right right everybody is my customer
Paris Vega (31:50.898)
right
Warren Greshes (32:03.180)
as hers i could talk to who might be interested in my product i wouldn’t say it’s like i said paris can you name me everybody you know you couldn’t do that i said but cause you name me a three best friends that you can do it’s the same thing when you’re deciding who you who yes anybody could buy it but you can’t sell to anybody you can’t sell to everybody you need to find your niche you need to find who you look i started with life insurance companies and that’s who i targeted now i didn’t start making there was no intind that that then so i wasn’t doing social met
Paris Vega (32:18.938)
that’s good
Warren Greshes (32:33.200)
that i’m a guy that picks up the phone and makes calls okay and listen don’t don’t get me wrong social media i think is great social media is great email is great but let me tell you something about social media and email social media and email are not selling there marketing and there’s a big difference social media is great to find the people you need to sell to but it’s not selling its marketing now a lot of a lot of salespeopl
love social media and love email why because you never actually hear someone say no there’s no rejection but you rarely hear someone say yes now if you you use the social media correctly in the email correctly a again marketing like i used my podcast and i used my block that was marketing but once they got interested you got to pick up the phone and talk to somebody i’ll give you a great story my father in law may rest in peace he was a sales
i mean he was a sales guy he so he charlie romano he called himself charlie the glue guy he sold glue but not airplane glue he sold industrial adhesive okay now charlie charlie died about five six years ago he was he was ninety one when he died and even into his late eighties he was still selling fu he would only he lived on long in
Paris Vega (33:47.758)
okay
Warren Greshes (34:03.360)
and he’d only worked one day a week because he was in his eighties he didn’t he didn’t need the money just like doing it now you’d only see customers on long island he didn’t want to drive too far now charlie did not have a computer which was good because he had no idea how to use one which means he also didn’t have an email address now he had a cell phone but it was a flip phone and all he could do was make calls now charlie worked on straight commission working one day
Paris Vega (34:11.318)
yeah
Warren Greshes (34:33.100)
week in his eighties with no technology no social media because social media was around at this time and just a flip phone charlie brought in about a hundred thousand in commissions in a year why because he talked to people because he had relationships with people he go to a factory and bring bagels and bagels and cream cheese for everybody on the factory floor my sister in law works in the music business he’d bring a box
Paris Vega (34:50.578)
yeah
Warren Greshes (35:03.180)
the c d s you like this group you like that group he he made relationships with every everybody neutral the glue guy and he showed up showing up as any percent of success so you know i’m not going to tell you don’t i’m telling do social media and do email but remember it’s marketing it’s not selling eventually you got to talk to somebody and let me tell you something if you keep showing up in
Paris Vega (35:31.998)
that’s good
Warren Greshes (35:33.100)
welcome to people you can sell no matter how hard or how good times are i have been hired by many companies to talk about selling during the recession because recessions sales people love recessions and you know why sales people love recessions because there great excuse to not have to sell because if you boys what ellis going on you haven’t brought in any business you know recession out there and nobody’s buying have you ever heard people say that nobody
Paris Vega (35:40.118)
okay
Paris Vega (35:56.658)
blame the economy yeah
Warren Greshes (36:03.780)
nobody’s buying the gross national product united states is twenty three billion dollars if if the economy goes down by one percent people are panicking in the streets yet there’ll still be twenty two billion twenty two trillion i’m sorry twenty two trillion dollars worth of business o somebody’s buying somethin i love selling in recessions you know why because most of my competition is given up now while it might not be as much bus
Paris Vega (36:03.798)
oh yeah i’ve probably said that i know i’ve said that
Paris Vega (36:09.538)
yeah
Paris Vega (36:24.038)
yeah yep
Warren Greshes (36:33.420)
and the sales might not be as big a lot less people going after those sales because those people are hiding in the coffee shop or the bar while i’m out there talking to people and let me tell you something i just had this conversation with my daughter yesterday she started a sales job a little over a year ago and i’m happy to say she’s done extremely well and i said she says you know it’s tough she’s in the recruiting business and she works for a head hunter she said you know people aren’t hiring this much these days i said keep plugging them keep doing what you’re doing i said because you know why
Paris Vega (36:38.738)
gotch
Paris Vega (36:55.998)
okay yeah
Warren Greshes (37:03.500)
because if it gets worse your competition is going to give up but if you’re still out there banging away at that phone and talking to people every day you’re going to get whatever business is out there and i say to people understand this this what i told my daughter yesterday when times are good and business is booming and your customers don’t see you you know what they assume they assume you’re busy but if times are tough and your customers don’t see you you know what they assume
that you’re gone
Warren Greshes (37:37.060)
so showing up even is always important to eighty per cent of success but showing up during tough times is even more important because they’ll know you’re around and the people that keep showing up at the ones that are going to do the business and if you keep doing business during a recession or a tough time your business will grow even more when it turns around and it always turns around i’ve been through since nineteen seventy three i’ve been through a lot of thought it selling in a recession i mean the year i thoughted selling in new york the city was going broke stuff
Paris Vega (37:38.738)
yeah
Warren Greshes (38:07.200)
so you know i’ve sold through many recessions and you know if you if you keep going through those you’ll come out stronger because you’ve you’ve created more relationships than your competition has because they’re too busy hiding you the don’t want to pick up the phone because they’re convinced it’s only going to be a complaint and that’s there’s my story
Paris Vega (38:07.398)
wow
Paris Vega (38:28.678)
i’m getting fired up and i’m about to do a cold call live on the show here
Warren Greshes (38:30.820)
there you go
Paris Vega (38:34.858)
this is awesome yeah i think that’s that’s huge and that’s it’s so easy to fall into that these days of you know going on to linked in or different social media and feeling like hey i put in a full day’s work of sales and you haven’t talked to one person
Warren Greshes (38:46.460)
it’s easy it’s a nice easy comfortable rejection you don’t hear people deleting your email or not returned not replying to you on linked in but you still you eventually got to talk to somebody eventual you’re gonna have to talk to somebody and that’s that’s that’s it you’ve talked to more people than anybody else and you’ll do more business than anybody else i knew a guy he was he worked for metropolitan life
Paris Vega (38:53.058)
yeah
Paris Vega (39:13.978)
it’s a good mode
Warren Greshes (39:16.380)
now this guy is probably dead by now because when i knew he was really old and his name was made fackazati
Paris Vega (39:26.798)
it all sounds like movie characters that you keep going
Warren Greshes (39:27.420)
i met this guy back in the nineties he was an immigrant from i ran he came to this country in the nineteen fifty so i met him in the nineties so you imagine who he was then came to this country because he wanted to go to law school but he needed money so he got a job digging ditches he really hated that as he tells the story says you know hot in the summer time cold in the winter i’m dying out here s terrible so he’s looking for another job so he looks in the newspaper and he season had from metropolitan life it’s said met life two hundred
Paris Vega (39:36.098)
yeah
Warren Greshes (39:57.220)
it’s a week now back in the fifties two hundred dollars a week with serious money that was big time money a hundred dollars a week was good money and this is two hundred dollars a week so he goes to this met life office in new jersey he sits down with the manager and he says listen i don’t want to sell insurance he said what do i got i don’t want to sell insurance guy says you don’t have to sell insurance he said really i don’t want to sell insurance so okay he said you don’t have to tell in sell insurance here’s what you do because you at least talk to people about insurance he said
i could do that because this what i want you to do i want you to go out every day i want you to talk to people about life insurance and if you can get ten people to say no to you every single day at the end of the week on friday afternoon come here and i’ll give you a check for two hundred dollars he said alvar a second he said you mean all i got to do is get people to say no to me he said yeah i can do that all day he said all right go ahead to it so as he tells the story so i went to have the first day and i talk to people about insurance and getting people to say
Paris Vega (40:52.078)
yeah
Warren Greshes (40:57.200)
to me and he said i could never get to ten because somebody would always ruin my day and say yes
Warren Greshes (41:05.040)
and this guy ended up the top top agent in the world for metropolitan life he made so much money and commissions he was making more money than the president of metropolitan life or because he tried to get people to say no and he couldn’t do it because they kept saying yes great thor
Paris Vega (41:25.218)
that’s an interesting way to do it just to flip the logic on yourself to kind of snake yourself out
Warren Greshes (41:27.080)
that’s it try to get more if i always tell people and this is this is what one of my specialties is is prospecting and as i told you about my program on but my thing is my thing is rejection sucks and if any sales trainer says to you don’t take it personally it’s not personal just let it roll off your back i guarantee you that that sales trainer has never sold a dent
Paris Vega (41:42.258)
yeah
Warren Greshes (41:56.960)
in their lives okay rejection stinks i was selling for forty fifty years i still slam down the phone for somebody names why because i can’t rejection thinks you got to get it though you have to get it now how do you handle rejection now to me the only way to handle rejection is to know how much rejection you need in other words i find out how many times i got a dial the phone in order to get to a decision maker on the i don’t mean a decision maker
Paris Vega (42:09.038)
yeah
Warren Greshes (42:27.000)
how many decision makers do i got to speak to in order to get an appointment how many appointments do i got to set and what’s my cancellation rate that i can make a presentation how many presentations do i have to make on average to get to a sale and what my average sale put in my pocket if i know that then it becomes easy probably with most sales people as if they did the numbers if they knew the numbers like for instance if you found out that every two times you do the phone you got to one person every five people you spoke to got to an appointment every
Warren Greshes (42:57.840)
four appointments you got one you got twenty five percent cancellation you saw three people you got one sale let’s say put thousand dollars in your pocket so you know do the math you know how many people you got to speak to you know one three time four that’s twenty that’s you got to make at least you know forty calls or whatever to make forty tiles on the phone to make a sale and oh yeah okay whatever i can’t do the math in my head i’m old what
Paris Vega (43:24.958)
yeah i got you
Warren Greshes (43:27.040)
if you know that you know how many times you got to dale the phone in order you know if if i know i want to make a hundred thousand dollars i got to make a hundred sales which means i make three presentation to get four hundred appointment otto speak you now two thousand people make four thousand calls whatever it is and you find out you got to make eight calls a week or whatever it becomes that’s how you know you know if i know that if i make et say fourteen telephone calls a day just dials the phone a day i’m going to get to where i want to be when i’m done with fourteen i reached my goal see
Paris Vega (43:37.478)
right
Warren Greshes (43:57.340)
it’s not enough to have a sales goal you gotta have an activity goal because activity drives sales you know sales people feel like they failed if they don’t make a sale every day even though they didn’t have to make a sale every day so if you don’t have to make a sale every day why feel like you failed on the day you didn’t make a sale but if you reach your activity goal on those days you succeeded so the whole thing is reach the activity goal on a daily basis you can’t tell me if you don’t if you reach your activity goal on a daily basis you
Paris Vega (44:19.698)
yeah
Warren Greshes (44:26.860)
goin to make sales you’ve got to be a complete idiot if you can’t make sales and you’re reaching your activity goals on a daily basis
Paris Vega (44:35.718)
yeah that i guess that’s a whole different discussion making sure that you’re the right person for this role if you’re hitting all the activity goals and you’re getting zero percent conversion rate that there’s something else going on
Warren Greshes (44:40.820)
well but you know
Warren Greshes (44:44.740)
yeah but you know i’ve seen i’ve seen people who were idiots who did a lot of business because they made more close than anybody else
Paris Vega (44:52.538)
yeah
Paris Vega (44:56.838)
no this is awesome um so all right activity goal focused okay yeah that’s right i had a question like you’re saying that prospecting it’s huge i’m involved with a couple o different businesses it’s a big part of all of them trying to figure out how in the world do we you know figure out all right who the target customer is once you figure that out then who are they literally as real people and how do you actually get to them because you mentioned
Warren Greshes (45:05.080)
go
Warren Greshes (45:13.060)
absolutely
Warren Greshes (45:18.640)
right
Paris Vega (45:26.998)
getting to the decision maker um do you have any advice for getting through you know the gatekeepers so to speak
Warren Greshes (45:33.040)
well gatekeeper is going to be tough to get through let’s face it first first thing
Paris Vega (45:36.438)
yeah because it can burn up a lot of your calls if you’re jus sang i gotta make fourteen calls and you talk to fourteen gatekeepers okay
Warren Greshes (45:40.500)
well that’s okay that’s that’s okay somebody will call you back so i’m gonna all you back you leave a message but you leave name rank and serial number
Warren Greshes (45:52.200)
you don’t you do not sell to the gatekeeper the one thing you don’t do you do not sell to the gatekeeper because what you basically done is you’ve made the gatekeeper yourselves for and the gatekeeper s going in talking to his boss and saying like this some guy called i forgot his name i wrote it down but he wanted to do this i thought it sounded good but i wasn’t sure so that’s what you get so you i want to speak to i want to speak to miss smith who’s calling paris vega from
Paris Vega (45:56.758)
the
Paris Vega (46:01.018)
okay
Paris Vega (46:13.398)
oh yeah so they’re doing a worse version of your pitch if you if you try to sell to them
Warren Greshes (46:22.000)
why corporation what’s this in reference to they ask me what’s this in reference to i’d say speakers for your conference that’s all i say speakers for your conference and that’s a and that was it and nothing name rank in serial number basically if they call you and people do call you back you’ll be surprised people do call you back but a good thing would be also to you know you go on social media and find out you can find people too on social media then you figure out how do you contact them and so that that’s what that’s good
Paris Vega (46:29.938)
yep
Paris Vega (46:51.418)
yeah
Warren Greshes (46:52.040)
for you could also join organizations and clubs where the if you know who your client face is go find the organization and clubs they belong to and join one of them and get active and get active in those organization don’t just go to net working because that’s like you you might as well throw your membership money down the drains just pe aple trying to sell them life insurance but what you want to do is you want you want to join an organization you want to get active in that organization want to be import
Paris Vega (46:58.158)
okay yeah
Paris Vega (47:02.078)
right
Paris Vega (47:04.838)
yeah because it’s not
Paris Vega (47:11.178)
all the sales eve
Paris Vega (47:16.358)
right all the sales people come together
Warren Greshes (47:22.060)
in that organization and then they start coming to you you know i did that with the national speakers association i joined it to get business i joined it to learn how to build my speaking business but i got very active in the national speakers association next thing i know i’m on the board of directors of the national board of directors and i’m doing big key note speeches at their meetings and my name is getting out there and business is coming through the national speakers association so there you go so you get you know
Paris Vega (47:49.938)
yeah
Paris Vega (47:55.518)
yeah that’s that tactic of going around gatekeepers because this is something hat’s come up in our business before we
Warren Greshes (47:59.880)
you can go around gatekeepers call when there if you’re looking for business owners called early in light gatekeepers work nine to five business owners don’t you know the the standard line about owning your own business i give all the young entrepretrs owning your own business is easy you only have to work half a day problem as figuring out which twelve hours to work
Paris Vega (48:05.978)
yeah
Paris Vega (48:08.578)
okay
Paris Vega (48:11.998)
right
Warren Greshes (48:25.120)
so business owners are in early and they’re in late executives too in early and late gatekeepers work nine to five you might want to call during lunch gate keepers go out for lunch a lot of business owners in a lot of executives at their desk so you know try to call when they’re not there but but the biggest thing is never sell to the gate keeper if you guys talk to gatekeeper and get friendly with the gatekeeper always be nice to the gatekeeper because the one thing he has the key gatekeepers
Paris Vega (48:26.738)
yeah
Paris Vega (48:29.018)
right
Paris Vega (48:31.498)
yeah
Paris Vega (48:52.578)
yeah
Warren Greshes (48:54.960)
gatekeepers can never never ever ever ever have the power to say yes but they always have the power to say no so the one thing you don’t want to do is be eliminated by the gatekeeper
Paris Vega (49:05.258)
the main function of their tub
Paris Vega (49:11.578)
i think something that maybe some younger sales people run into that that i’ve talked to is thinking that there’s rules and what i mean is like they’re thinking okay i have to go through this gate keeper or whatever but doing things like you said finding out what association or club or sport or whatever the person you’re trying to get to is involved with there’s nothing saying you can’t go off hours and meet him at the thing they’re going to the event whatever like use all your connections or or whatever you can yeah
Warren Greshes (49:37.900)
you’ve got to use everything you have at once drove three two and a half hours to an appointment i get in there guy i say like two words the guys that i’m the wrong person at this company drove two and half hours now i could have turned turned around and going back but i didn’t know what i said
Paris Vega (49:44.538)
m
Warren Greshes (49:56.300)
who’s the right person he told me the name i said you know so yeah does work in this building yeah because you introduce me yeah you know why because sometimes the best thing that can happen is someone says no to you because once someone says no to you they’ll be more than happy to say yes to anything you ask as long as it doesn’t cost them money
Warren Greshes (50:20.180)
great time to get a referalis when someone just turns you down say listen i understand our service or a product is not for everybody but you have three people three other managers you know or three other business owners you know who you feel might benefit from our service and be more than because they feel bad they said no be more than happy to give you the name and phone numbers because as long as it’s not as to them any money this guy took me right down the whole to the right person i give you an other one i was sitting in a sales coal once with a guy and i was getting nowhere absolutely no
this guy was like a blank he was like i wanted to put a mirror under his nose to see if he was breathing but the one thing you always do be observant i look all around the room i look at the pictures on the walls i look at the pictures see if we can find some common ground and i noticed a garbage can in the corner and on it was those little basket ball back boards with the little net and it was a new york giants backboard and i’m a big giants fan
Paris Vega (51:13.978)
yeah
Warren Greshes (51:20.140)
i said oh you’re giants fan yeah i said have season tickets and i did at the time like to go to a game where that opened up the whole thing that was you got to be observant that’s why face to face is so good so i love face to face if you can get face to listen think about it and i always use this analogy if you were doing fund raising for an organization and you wanted to get a twenty five dollar donation or even a fifty dollar donation what do you do
Paris Vega (51:30.398)
yeah
Paris Vega (51:35.998)
yeah
Warren Greshes (51:49.900)
you send out an email blast so you send out a postcard why because the market for that is huge thousands and thousands and thousands of people can afford twenty five fifty dollar donations you send out a postcard because if you get one half of one per cent or even one percent return that’s fantastic but now what if you want to get five hundred dollars donations you want to get thousand dollar donation s going to send out a postcard on to send at an email the market for that is shrunk you can’t afford to get half of per cent return so you start making phone calls
Paris Vega (52:15.338)
yeah
Warren Greshes (52:20.140)
because you figure you got to get at least one out of ten people to say yes but what if you want to raise fifty thousand dollars donations were you’re going to send the postcard i mean the market for that’s about this big send the postcard an email even a pun i mean you can’t afford to get one percent or ten per cent even you got to get like thirty five to fifty per cent so what do you do you go knocking on doors you go you get on a plane you fly to them and you get in front of people
Paris Vega (52:32.918)
yeah
Paris Vega (52:48.938)
right
Warren Greshes (52:50.020)
so now you got to decide what kind of return do you want you want one percent return a half percent return a ten percent return or thirty five to fifty per cent return that will determine how you go and approach people
Paris Vega (53:03.238)
so from your opinion like the higher ticket the sale the more personal interaction is going to take closing that sale
Warren Greshes (53:06.940)
well of course absolutely the more time it’s going to take to and face to face never hurts i mean i’ve got no airplanes to do it
Paris Vega (53:16.518)
yeah
Warren Greshes (53:16.860)
it was worth it to me
Paris Vega (53:20.478)
yeah we’re definitely not doing enough of that
Paris Vega (53:24.578)
because we’re like and this is probably a lot of companies these days uh depended on the industry rein like we’re fully remote the projects i’m involved with and you know pandemic and everything change the game for a lot of people that had to go remote and like some companies we just stayed that way after the fact because it was like we reduced office space but it does affect things like sales and that kind of thing because if you get into that remote lifestyle thinking that you can just do everything over email and video or whatever it’s still not his power
Warren Greshes (53:31.220)
sure
Warren Greshes (53:40.080)
and that’s fine i got no problem with that out
Warren Greshes (53:54.060)
it’s not it’s not it depending on how important the sales is i mean you know i m back in two thousand it was i was contracted to speak at the bridge stone firestone annual dealers meeting to have it every year in las vegas three thousand independent tire dealers show up and they hired me to do the meeting and this was early in the year they hired me for like i think it was a november meeting in the summer i’m in italy with my family my wife and my two kids were in italy
Paris Vega (53:54.578)
it’s being in person yeah
Paris Vega (54:08.978)
wow
Warren Greshes (54:23.840)
and i see this by the international herald tribune there’s an article about i don’t know if you remember but remember the scandal firestone went through when the tires started blowing up on the cars at happened in two thousand and i see this and oh crap what happened was left retires were blowing up cars were rolling the they were rolling over people getting killed i said oh crap this is this is just this is terrible i said i’m going to get canceled out so i get home from italy the first thin
Paris Vega (54:35.598)
i don’t remember that no okay
Paris Vega (54:48.078)
thank you
Warren Greshes (54:53.740)
i do as i call my client now the american headquarters in nashville i was living down here at the time i’m in durham north carolina and i was in chapel hill at the time i said john i am i done am i out he said no why i said what’s going on i said i was supposed to just speak for fifteen minutes just getting wrapped up and fired up he said no i said what you want me to do so it’s just now do the same thing i can’t do that so i started to do my research i flew
nashville and i started to really do detective work and i talked to them and let me tell you what happened what happened was every tire that blew up was a left rear tire every one every tire that blew up every left retire blew up was on a ford explorer every one and every ford explorer that rolled over was in a very warm climate arizona mexico so and so so more
Paris Vega (55:38.538)
m
Paris Vega (55:51.958)
okay
Warren Greshes (55:53.780)
researching this and talking to the people at firestone and gathering stuff off the internet what happened was now firestone has been around a long time back to harvey firestone the early nineteen hundreds harvey firestone and henry ford were like this so firestone and ford always had a very close relationship so when this broke ford approached firestone said look we’re a lot bigger than you we can handle the p r w you let us handle it for you so they said fine
so they handled it and you know what they said to the media it’s not awful it’s the tires
Warren Greshes (56:30.080)
and that just now at the time firestone still it’s bridge stone fire stone song by the japanese well they went bad crap crazy and they fired a lot of the top people firestone u s a brought in a new guy really good guy real sharp guy and this guy decided we’re going a fight back because as it turned out the problem wasn’t the tires ford explorer had a role over problem but instead of instead of fixing the role
Paris Vega (56:30.238)
m
Paris Vega (56:58.158)
right i do remember that being in the news a lot
Warren Greshes (57:00.020)
a problem they told people to under inflate the tires now if you under inflate tires in a hot climate they expand and boom that’s what happened
Paris Vega (57:08.578)
yeah
Paris Vega (57:11.358)
because i guess you’re supposed to get more traction if they’re a little inflated so they’re thinking that solve it uh yeah
Warren Greshes (57:12.640)
right right right right more more base let’s say it’s a little flat or whatever but it expanded and blew up so this guy said we got to fight back and that’s what i decided to do i decided we’re going to fight back and you got so i got up in front of the audience and i said let me ask you a question
Paris Vega (57:22.838)
wow
Warren Greshes (57:34.620)
who are the most full of crap people in the entire world the many people more full of crap an the main stream media i said no i said he and they did a great job by the way they returned they took back and reimbursed people for millions of ties like in like a couple of months no questions asked they were getting people returning sets of ties that had fifty eighty thousand miles on them taking them back no questions asked they did a great job they did such a great job was written up in the havin business review and so i got up there
said listen folks how many you have clients out there who have been with you for five ten fifteen twenty years they’ll raise their hands i said how many have clients out there just walk in your store they throw their keys on the counter and they leave because they know you’ll take care and they’ll raise their hand i said we know this story
Warren Greshes (58:23.760)
you know the story i know the story we all know the real story i said but if you don’t tell the story who are your clients going to listen to they’re going to listen to the main stream media and the main stream media doesn’t care about truth they care about sensationalism they care about just the story they care about selling newspapers and raidings on the t v news i said you tell you or these people will trust you long before they trust the mainstream media and if you don’t want to tell you a story here’s what i suggest you do when you
at home go to the kitchen draw open it up pull out the sharpest knife you got put it right over here and just move it right to the other side because you’re cutting your throat you might as well do it for real the place went back crap crazy they went nuts it was in fact to this day firestone still says we give you some credit for having helping us turn this around and what happened was because of that i got hired by firestone on retainer basis to go all over us and cattle and speak to all the dealer groups
Warren Greshes (59:23.640)
the next couple of years but there’s another lesson you don’t tell people what they want to hear you tell them what they need to hear that’s how you develop relationships because if you tell them what they want to hear and what they want to hear is what not what they need the first thing they’re going to figure out they don’t need is you so you got to constantly tell in a sales situation and delivery anythin you got to tell people what they need to hear now had a very good
friend who was one of the great sales trainings of all times since best way unfortunately too young and he used to say tell them what they need to hear disguise this what they want to hear but couldn’t i wasn’t good enough to do i’d always just i’d tell them what they need to hear because i had to because i wanted to be back if i give them what
Paris Vega (01:00:06.438)
m
Paris Vega (01:00:12.558)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:00:16.338)
yeah and for you to even figure out what that was you had to flit nashville do all that research you were heavily invested
Warren Greshes (01:00:21.020)
listen i did all my re you listen i did my research before the internet i tell people send me information on your company send me information on your customers send me all the inform i get stacks of information i said i won’t read every word but i’ll look through every piece of paper you send me and when we got to the into that give me a website i’ll go through every single page on your website i will learn about your industry i will learn about your business the best compliment i could ever get and i’ve gotten hundreds of thousands of standing ovations and that
great but the best compliment i get was when people would come up to me and say you’re sure you’ve never worked in this industry because that’s that means you did your home work i think it’s important to do your home work i think it’s always important to deliver more than you promised to
Paris Vega (01:01:10.338)
and so that goes back to like the more valuable the sale is to you put more effort into the home work
Warren Greshes (01:01:12.100)
m
Warren Greshes (01:01:15.100)
absolutely i mean you know you know i would come up with you know i’d look at the website and i’d come up with phrases for their industry that nobody outside their industry would ever know but i knew what to say i would go to if i went to a convention i was like speaking of a convention a fly in the night before i’d go to their reception the night before even though nobody knew who i was at that point i’d go the night before just to pick up stuff get a field for the audience do do that extra bit and even if you
Paris Vega (01:01:41.398)
yeah
Warren Greshes (01:01:45.040)
usually after i was done i had to fly out but if i had some time to wait i stay and have lunch with them why because now they know who i am they like me and and now is the time easy to do new business so you you got to do more then you’re contracted for you always got to give them more
Paris Vega (01:01:55.458)
yeah yeah
Paris Vega (01:01:59.818)
right
Paris Vega (01:02:06.758)
get more than the competition by doing more than the competition
Warren Greshes (01:02:08.980)
very you know you how easy it is to be the competition when i would get to avenue now i’m speaking of big conference is don’t forget first thing i would do is when i get to my hotel room i call my client just to let them know i’m there that’s it just so that’s one less than you’re putting on a big conference you’ve got a million things to worry about just that’s one less thing they have to worry about the keno speaker has arrived say i just want to let you know i’m here ou know now how many people
Paris Vega (01:02:15.458)
yeah
Warren Greshes (01:02:36.900)
thanked me so profusely i’m saying i’m saying myself you know the fact that that thanking me so profusely tells me something that i’m one of the few people it’s doing that come on it’s common courtesy but these are the little things that you can do to beat out your competition it’s easy to beat out the competition most people just not willing to do you know it goes it goes beyond being a sales person you’ve got to be an expert and advisor of resource in a single point of contact that’s it just re
bears a r s
Paris Vega (01:03:11.138)
what’s that
Warren Greshes (01:03:11.360)
expert advisor resource and single point of contact most sales people that just product and price pushers
Paris Vega (01:03:16.098)
okay
Paris Vega (01:03:20.598)
yeah
Warren Greshes (01:03:20.840)
but you want to sell price that’s great you’re the easiest guy for me to beat out because somebody’s eventually going to come along you know but if you’re selling quality service convenience and value if you’re selling if you’re being an expert advisor of resource in a single point of contact who’s selling quality services convenience and value if you’re selling save me time make my life easier sell digital marketing you’re the save them time and make their lives easier and you’re selling them knowledge experts and from
Paris Vega (01:03:45.958)
yeah
Warren Greshes (01:03:50.600)
to an education if you can sell those ten things they don’t care what your price is because go find someone else willing to do that it just doesn’t happen
Paris Vega (01:03:59.078)
yeah it’s interesting that the ears thing that you said it lines up like almost exactly with what google is trying to do like their changing their algorithm or whatever to wear the way they rank websites is based more on experience expertise authority trust it’s a t they call it or it’s a t it’s like experience expertise authority and trust and they have these guide lines where
Warren Greshes (01:04:11.640)
oh really
Warren Greshes (01:04:20.160)
okay
Paris Vega (01:04:28.818)
people at google have to go through websites and rank manually do you think this website lines up with our eat standards and then that that kind of influences where people rank now and so that yeah and it’s it’s trying to humanize yeah trying to humanize the searchers also make it more accurate and it’s a similar kind of thing i guess with any relationship if you somebody has more authority if you trust them more they have more expert tens yeah you’re going to do more business with them
Warren Greshes (01:04:35.420)
well that’s interesting that’s great
Warren Greshes (01:04:41.280)
and that’s important just in this day age
Warren Greshes (01:04:46.680)
right
Warren Greshes (01:04:54.080)
sure absolutely
Paris Vega (01:05:01.438)
interesting warren this has been amazing thank you so much for being on the show why don’t we wrap it up with you let people know what books the names of your books and where they can find your different products and things online
Warren Greshes (01:05:04.180)
thank you my pleasure
Warren Greshes (01:05:16.180)
well you can find my two books that are in print are called the best dam sales book ever sixteen rock solid rules for achieving sales success and the best management book ever nine keys to creating self motivated high achievers so best damsels book have the best management book ever you can find them easily on amazon now those two books are also audio books on audible dot com along with four other audio books and let me see if i can even remember them one super charged selling when super charged goals setting one is on time
i met and i can’t remember what hey i’m seventy one years old give me a break but
Paris Vega (01:05:55.078)
but they could search your warren gress author name on audible
Warren Greshes (01:05:55.740)
they could go to war they can go to audible dot com and just search war in gressiosand i’ll give them a list of all my audio books also go to u to m u d e m why you can find my prospecting program called super charged prospecting and you’ll find that on ou to me that’s been very successful program for you to me and so that’s where all my stuff is i do not have a website you can find my outube page also just plug in war in gressios i still have a youtube page and you can see i’ve got a boat i don’t know i have done
Paris Vega (01:06:00.818)
yeah
Warren Greshes (01:06:25.580)
video on there and more than a decade but there’s about fifty sixty videos on there easily short ones mostly of me if you want to see it and so there’s plenty of places to find me and that’s pretty much it i really enjoyed this paris we should do this again
Paris Vega (01:06:37.598)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:06:44.718)
definitely thank you so much and everybody look up warn stuff buy it get better at sales get those customers appreciate it
Warren Greshes (01:06:45.400)
my pleasure
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