Leading with Generosity: a Non-Sleezy Approach to Revenue Generation

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Marketing, Wealth

The worst kind of selling is salesy.

We overuse the tired cliché of the used car salesman for a reason.

But that’s not the only kind of selling; worse, it’s not even the most effective kind of selling.

My first job out of college was salesy, and I hated it deep down in my bones.

Imagine 23-year-old me wearing khakis with a bright blue collared shirt tucked into the belt.

And you will actually have to use your imagination because this is the only picture I have of that entire period: a blurry photo of some shitty business cards.

I was fresh out of college and FIRED UP to learn the subtle art of sales, as you can probably tell by my very professional hashtag #turnup

Jump ahead 30 days from this picture to me curled up on the stiff futon of a 2014 Jayco Jaybird elite travel trailer consumed with anxiety and wondering why I chose to throw my professional life away.

Two days before this humiliating low point, I sat in a new sales guy training course being taught by the sales manager. His overall getup was just like mine with the khakis and all except he had a badge that said “sales manager” instead of “sales associate.”

“The thing you have to understand is that your job is to encourage the decision to buy. That’s the whole game.

When they commit and sign on the dotted-line, you get a check that amounts to 10% of the total profit margin for the dealership.

So if the dealership makes $10k, you make $1000 bucks. If the dealership makes $100k, you make $10k.

You get the picture.”

I was stunned. The words sank into me.

My hand shot up. “So you’re telling me that I can make $10,000 in one sale?”

He laughed. “Sure can, son. Happens all the time.”

My eyes locked onto his.

“So if I sell one of those per week, I can make $40k in a month?”

He took a step back, as if I had struck him.

Then a slow grin developed over his weathered face.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, kid. There’s a lot to this. It’s har…”

I nodded my head feverishly and cut him off.

“Just tell me, is it possible or not?”

His demeanor changed. He stiffened, then bristled.

“For fuck sake, yes it’s possible. But it’s almost never been done. This training session is over. Get out.”

I left the meeting beaming, floating, positively delighted.

The next day, I got to work. Hooked my first customer on the lot.

At first, I was gonna make $2,000 bucks. The same amount I’d made in my best fiscal quarter up then as a college student.

By the end of the negotiations, once taxes were taken out, I made $200.

That’s what forced me into the Jayce futon.

I learned the dirty secret of salesy selling: Your goals and your customer’s goals are diametrically opposed.

For your customer to get a great deal, you can’t make enough to feed your family.

For you to make enough to feed your family, you have to take your customer’s head off.

Four hard-fought years passed before I learned there was a better way.

Seth Godin calls it Permission Marketing.

I call it leading with generosity.

Stated simply, here is the rule:

Make stuff that either solves a problem or inspires beauty for your dream customer, then give it to them for free.

Lots more to come in future newsletters on how to find your dream customer. (If you want to get a head start, check out Russell Brunson’s book ​Traffic Secrets​.)

For now, if you want to apply this other kind of selling and lead with generosity,

  1. Create things (classes, ebooks, guides, cheat sheets, flyers) and offer them to your dream customers in exchange for their email or for them to accept your friend request, or answer your dm, or opt-in to come to your class, or respond to your home evaluation offer).
  2. Offer the things you create to your dream customers for free in exchange for some medium of sharing things with them in the future: email, social friends, online community engagement, etc.
  3. Once this exchange of value occurs, you can bring them into your content giveaway eco-system (another topic we will be covering in later editions).

That person is on their way to becoming a customer for life.

Here’s what it looks like in the current iteration of my business:

My dream customers are aspiring and professional entrepreneurs. (It should go without saying that I love helping all kinds of people. We are just talking about DREAM customers here.)

My primary business is helping entrepreneurs buy, sell, and invest in real estate.

Which works out because entrepreneurs control a disproportionate amount of the total revenue, total profits, and total amount of investable funds in a given local market.

I happen to have a team of real estate pros across North America and Europe who are world-class at facilitating investments into their local real estate markets.

And I get to help personally here in the central Alabama region.

So I made an ebook called ​Top-100 Must-Read Books for Professional Creators​ that contains a curriculum of books I’ve personally read spanning the primary topics important to aspiring and professional entrepreneurs (history, business philosophy, sales, productivity, etc.)

And, as a professional, full-time entrepreneur, I know that if someone reads that curriculum of books, they will 100% figure out how to escape their day job and build their dream business.

My whole business plan is offering that ebook (and this free newsletter) to aspiring and professional entrepreneurs through ads and public writing (on my website and social media accounts), then having some percentage of the people who see those public ideas make the choice to opt-in to my content eco-system by giving me their email in exchange for the free ebook or newsletter.

A mutually beneficial exchange of value. I get their email. They learn how to become professional entrepreneurs.

Then they start reading my newsletter (on the occasions when I’ve figured out how to make it good enough for them to open and choose to read).

And I keep sharing Big Ideas with them and offering to facilitate their real estate investments (and their loved ones too).

Whenever the times comes for them to make a real estate investment, they will do that with me and my team. Hopefully.

And if not this time, maybe next time.

And soon I’m going to build more cool things and offer those to that person, too.

And it’s going to be profitable for us both.

If things go well, we will keep doing that forever.

That, my friends, is what it means to build your marketing strategy around leading with generosity.

And the dirtiest secret in sales is that generous, benevolent, kind-hearted entrepreneurs always have higher net worths than the sleeze-balls.

If you want to learn more about how to lead with generosity to multiply your revenues, here are some resources:

Books:

YouTube videos:

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