Sales Secrets from the Top One Percent
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Mr. Biz Radio: Sales Secrets from the Top One Percent
Unedited transcription of the show is included below:
This is Mr. Biz Radio sponsored by Capital Plus over the next half hour, Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth, a two-time national bestselling author and leading business adviser will cover topics that help business owners operate their businesses more profitably and more efficiently. If you're ready to take your business to the next level, this program is for you. And now here's Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth. All right. Welcome to another episode of Mr. Biz Radio with me, Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth. And we have got a treat for you this week.
So you guys know that I follow Grant Cardone, and I talk about him on the show occasionally. And one of the things you may know about him is that you know, people talk about, you know, trying to limit their expenses and things like that. And his, his response to that always is you don't have an expense problem. You have a sales problem or a revenue problem, right? You need to go out and sell more. You sell more, you don't have to worry about expenses. And so with that being said, our guest this week is a serial salesperson who has sold over a hundred million dollars in sales is built to not one, two multi-million dollar companies. He's currently the CEO of one of the fastest growing SAS companies in the U S who, by the way, this year in 2020 was named a LinkedIn top 50 startup. He's a motivational speaker. He is an 18 times sales author who is obsessed with helping you maximize your success as a CEO and founder of Seamless.ai. His company delivers the world's best sales leads using artificial intelligence to find anyone's emails and phone numbers. And I've actually personally experienced this fantastic in doing so he's helped over a hundred thousand and counting companies flood their calendars and generate millions in sales. And so without, without further ado, Brandon Bornancin well, welcome to Mr. Biz Radio.
Hey, Hey, Hey, thank you so much for having me Ken and Mr. Biz Radio, thrilled to be here and help the audience get from where they're at today to where they need to go tomorrow to be successful.
Absolutely, absolutely. So you guys know the third segment, we always get tips from our guests. And again, I just read you some of the things that Brandon has accomplished and he is going to help us with his top sales tips, of course, during the third segment. So before we get into all that, though, the journey you have had your entrepreneurial journey, especially building 2 companies. Talk to us about that journey. What have been some of the trials and tribulations you've faced along the way, Brandon,
Oh man, how long do we have, do we have like even days or what you know, I, I think it all comes down to, you have to have a, the beginning of it is you have to have a big mission, a big purpose to help a lot of people. I think at an early on in my career, you know, I had the, the fortune, my dad built the first billion dollar software company, and we went from poor to rich out of Cleveland, Ohio. So I saw the, the success that if you could sell a product, build a product, you could do anything. And then that launched my entrepreneurial career when I was 18, did a company that did $12 million in sales for the gambling industry. And then they made online gambling illegal. So I had to launch a second company at the age of 22 in college.
That was a text message marketing and mobile software that company failed for three years, lost $4 million, went a hundred, came debt and bankrupt to then like having to sell full-time for Google and IBM. And then I launched my most recent company seamless because I built it to sell faster IBM in Google and sold over a hundred million dollars in sales and realized I could help. A lot of people sell a lot of products. And I think it comes down to just being all in on your customers and all in on the people that you serve that true all in servant leadership. And if you become obsessed with helping other people get rich, whether that's financially, physically, spiritually, mentally, you're going to be able to get rich. And that's been one of the biggest things to my success in addition to having a list of everyone I need to sell to or connect with.
That sounds a lot like Grant Cardone. So you, so going back, so you started seamless, seamless was kind of, you were developing and not necessarily, I don't think at least from what I've seen in my research for the show and following you on social media or anything, you kind of started the origins of seamless, where when you were selling at Google and IBM and you were trying to develop a way to get hold of contact information for people you needed to prospect. Is that correct? Yeah,
That's correct. So my, my first startup for the gambling industry built a crawler and a scraper that identified all the people in college that wanted to play online poker. And then I built this mass email tool that mass emailed all these people that I built this like search engine for, because I had the list. And then when I launched my second company in mobile, I realized it failed because I couldn't build a list of all the B2B marketers that I needed to sell this enterprise technology to. And it was the longest three or four years of my life. So then I had to quit entrepreneurship and go into sales, which by the way, sales and entrepreneurship are very similar, almost the exact same thing, except as a salesperson, you don't take on any of the risk for liability. So when I started at IBM and Google selling for those guys, I knew I needed the list and I, I got the budget of roughly two and a half to three and a half million dollars to buy all these different databases that should have had the context and companies I needed to sell to.
And then once I got access to these databases, they were missing everyone I needed to sell to like in mobile days. And I'm like, dude, I'm not losing everything. I own going hundreds of thousands of debt and broke living on the street again. So then I worked with the engineers and we built seamless to find everyone in the world that we need to sell to and use AI to get their cell phones in emails. So it was really out of necessity of like losing my job out of necessity to sell. I felt like I got scammed by all these expensive, outdated databases and needed a way to fix it or else I was going to be back on the streets.
Yeah. And I think it's interesting because we've had, you know, I was just talking to Brandon before the show started. We've literally been doing this producer around and either show for four years now, and we've had so many people on and when they talk about their entrepreneurial journey, it's almost always the same. Something came up out of necessity. You saw a need, whether it was for you personally, or you, you know, something you were doing that you found a need and you said, man, I can fill this. I can help people with this. And that is so often what the story ends up being of how things like this come to fruition. Yeah.
Well, you want to hear the epiphany when it hit me? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm hung over in the cosmopolitan, just like you, like I'm working all the time, seven days a week. And the one time I get on a vacation I go to play poker in Vegas with a few buddies of mine and Friday morning, you know, we, we got in Thursday party a little bit, too much Friday morning. I'm hung over, looking up at the ceiling, in my hotel at the Cosmopolitan. I get a call from my accountant and she's like, Hey, we've got a problem by the way, if you're in sales and you can get a call from your accountant that says, we have a problem that you're scared shitless because you're like, they're going to try to take all my commission or something. And she says, Hey, for this month's commission, I owe you $137,000.
And you know, I had too much tequila the night before. So I'm like what? I'm like 13,000. She's like, no, we owe you $137,000 this month. And if I pay that commission, you know, you're going to lose a lot of its taxes. And then I, I was still foggy and I'm like, what do you mean? And she's like, well, you close this deal that, that made you 25, K it closed this deal that made you 50 K you closed this deal that made 10 K she's like we owe you 130, $7,000. And then that year I went on to, to make over a million dollars in sales, as a W2 salesperson. And right at that moment, I knew, you know what, I'm going to go all in. Like this fundamentally changed my life, this platform, this tool, this technology I'm going to help everyone win the seven figure club and make over seven figures in sales, just like I did. And haven't looked back since.
Yeah, no. And I will tell you guys, you should definitely go out and follow. So Brandon shares a ton of stuff on social media. You can find him on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook at Brandon Bornancin. And also I'll mention he's got a Facebook group. He just started about a month or so ago called Quota Crushers go out and join that group because they share a lot of good stuff. That's a lot of like-minded people, salespeople fired up ambitious people. I'm part of that group, myself really good stuff for being in that group. Yeah, for sure. For sure. We're going to hit a break here. Have it pay some bills. We're gonna come back to the Mr. Biz tip of the week, and then we're going to keep talking with Brandon about what exactly seamless does and how it can help generate sales for you. So join us after the break on Mr. Biz Radio
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And the question typically is how much should I be spending on marketing or advertising? And my guidance is that you should be spending, but generally between two and 8% of your gross revenue on marketing advertising, you can go into that up to up to 15%, that nine to 15% range for short-term opportunities. Let's say you've got a new product launch. You've you've started a new location, things like that. But typically those are things are temporary, but you have to, and this is one of the mistakes I see so many businesses I'd implore you right now, go out and look at your P and L and take the marketing spend. You have and divide it by your revenue. You probably are not spending 2% and that's a massive, massive mistake. People have to know you. They have to know you to do business with you.
And how do they get to know you? If you're not doing any marketing, you're not doing any advertising. Now you've got to measure it. You've got to make sure you're getting a good ROI on that spend. But somewhere in that two, eight to 8%, most of my clients are somewhere in that five to 7% range, because I like to stay towards the high side as best as we can. Right? But even when times are really tough, you got to stay at least at that 2%. Think about it. You're regularly seeing advertising from somebody in your local market, national market doesn't matter. And all of a sudden it's, there they go. It's ghost. You don't hear anything. You don't see anything. What do you assume? Especially during a pandemic, Holy crap, they didn't make it through right. They're out of business. So you definitely don't want that.
Right? You got to make sure people know what the heck you're doing, how you're doing it, how you can help them. So make sure that you're spending that that is the Mr. Biz tip of the week. Now let's get it back into talking with Brandon. I love the story and I love the, the, the, of that you were hung over in Vegas, staring at the ceiling and a little foggy when your accountant called you. So talk to us a little bit more about and I'll tell you guys by the way, listeners, one of the reasons, so I started following Brandon, probably not, I don't know, gosh, I was gonna say six or eight months ago, but it was definitely last year, probably a year ago, I guess, time flies when you're having fun. Right. And I got turned on to seamless by a common, a mutual friend of ours Jason alt.
And we went out and used it and Jason Case, another friend of mine, we went out and started using it. And I'm telling you, it is like no other, I'm not just saying that because Brandon's on the show. We have monkeyed around just like Brandon had mentioned during the first segment, we had monkeyed around with a couple of, more than a couple of, probably four or five different of his competitors. And it was super frustrating because a lot of like you were saying, Brandon, a lot of people that we needed, we just couldn't find. And then we got on Seamless.ai and it was like, Holy, like this is, this is awesome. You know? I mean, the amount of information is on there. So tell us a little bit more about how Seamless.ai works and how it can help our listeners generate sales.
Yeah. Look, I believe that all opportunity, the life you want, the houses you want, the vacations you want, the customers you want, the sales you want. The family that you want is, is going to be generated and built by the lists that you can, that you can build and sell to. And my goal is to help you find the people that you need to connect opportunity you faster than ever before. And that's why I built seamless. It's a search engine where you type in any title, any company in the world, instantly, it finds every single person in the world that you need to sell to. And then we use artificial intelligence to research, validate and verify emails and cell phones and insights for all these people. So that way you democratize the ability to connect with someone. It doesn't matter. Your background doesn't matter. The industry doesn't matter where you're from. You can call email, connect with anyone of the world to create opportunity. And that's, we built it to help us sell faster at IBM and Google. And within 24 months, we generate over a hundred million dollars in sales. I personally became a millionaire using it, and now we're on a mission to help other people get everything that they want in life. And we know that the only way to do that is if you have to list and we provide you with that list with our search engine.
Yeah. It's good stuff. So again, guys, it's Seamless.ai is how, w w you can go onto a website and check out exactly what's going on out there, but it is, it seriously was. I mean, I couldn't even tell you how much better it is than the runner-up. At least in the ones we've looked at Jason Case. And I looked at, so I'll tell you it really I implore you, if this is in your wheelhouse, you have to go check it out, right. Go check it out and get on a demo. Have a call with someone on Brandon's team, find out how it can help you, because think about what finding leads like that, and having the information, how much ease that's hitting the easy button, right? It makes your job so much frickin easier. And think about how much time that saves you.
Time is our most precious commodity, right? And that's exactly what seamless can help you with. So really, really good stuff there. So I guess let's, let's transition a little bit. So your most recent book, I know again, 18 time author, but your most recent book called sales secrets. So I should tell you before you even say anything, Brandon, listen to this guys. So I don't want to steal his thunder, but he talks to a lot of different people. And again, I've seen this since I've been following on social media, he's talking, I'm not talking about like Joe Smith, who's in, you know, whatever grand falls, grand Rapids, Michigan, or whatever. He's talking to Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street, he's talking to Jeffrey Gitomer one of the best known salespeople ever people like that, who Brandon's talking to building these books and things like that. So, so tell us more about Sales Secrets, Brandon.
Yeah. Yeah. No, Gary Vaynerchuk. I mean, there's just Ryan, right? Right. There's so many Ryan Serhant, familiar dollar lists and Gary Vaynerchuk, Jared Glandt with Grant Cardone, like the amount of people that, that we've been able to interview is amazing. So in addition to that, my number one secret is you have to have the list of everyone that you need to sell to, to maximize your results to, to, to go from zero to millions in sales. But the second secret is you need to know how to sell to that list. So when I started to go, full-time into sales, when I was like 22, I realized Tony Robbins mentored me and he said, Hey, if you want to achieve success, you just have to model and copy those who have been successful and then go do an execute what they do. So when I started out in sales for IBM, I'm like, okay, I'm going to buy every single sales book.
I bought over 200 sales books from insurance to enterprise sales, to software sales, to financial service sales, to healthcare sales, you name it over 250 bucks. And this was really before Amazon. These are books at Barnes and Nobles and Borders. A lot of these places don't exist anymore. And I spent a decade studying and scouring each book, looking for the secret, like, what is this authors secret? What are their top secret strategies, tools, tactics, and then I'm gonna use them to sell and maximize my sales success. And then one day, you know, I don't know, two years ago I was going through all the hundreds of sales books I've got, I'm like, I can't believe no one wrote a book that just summarizes all the Sales Secrets. And then I had my next big epiphany. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to interview all these sales experts who had a big impact on my life. And my sales results helped me become a two or three time multimillionaire. And I'm going to share their secrets with the world and Sales Secrets, compiles over a hundred sales experts over a thousand Sales Secrets. They're top secret to success from the world's best salespeople and makes it super easy to use all the tools, tactics, strategies, secret scripts, you name it. Everything you need to generate millions in sales is in sales secrets. And you can get it on Amazon today for just a dollar right now on Amazon. Yeah.
Yeah. And I'll tell you guys, so this is you guys hear me talk all the time about it's all about execution. It's all about taking action. So let me tell you a quick story. We only got about a minute left in this segment here, but I want to tell you a quick story about Brandon that I heard and Brandon doesn't even know, I'm gonna tell this story. So I, Brandon, I was on Ken Walls, did a live a Facebook live with Jeffrey Gitomer and Grant Cardone was on it. And you got on there, right? I don't know how the hell you got Ken to get you on, but you, you got, you got on there and you were talking to guitar and you said, Hey, man, I want to interview you and get them or throws out a number. And I don't even remember what the hell it was, but it wasn't, he didn't say like a thousand bucks. Like it was, it was a decent chunk of change. He was like, you know, whatever, 10 grand, 20 grand, and we can make it happen. And Brandon was like done. And so I'm like, okay, I didn't hear much more about it. Like a week later. I see stuff on Brandon social media that he's in. I think New Jersey went to New Jersey.
Yeah. The next week to see, get them ready.
There you go. So good stuff. That's the kind of stuff that you see in this book. So again, we're talking with Brandon Bornancin from Seamless.ai. We're going to hit it for break, come back and he's going to give us more sales tips to help us generate more sales.
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All right. Welcome back to the show again,
Talking with Mr. Brandon Bornancin CEO and founder of Seamless.ai. And actually before we get into the tips, I do want to mention, so we just talked last segment about his most recent book Sales Secrets, which is just out here within the last month or so, which as Brandon mentioned, you can get it on Amazon right now. But he also has a book coming out and it'll be out in about a month or so beginning of January,
Whatever It Takes. Yeah.
It takes maximize habits to transform your business relationships in life. What can we expect from that? Brandon?
Oh man. Master the habits to transform your business relationships life. So my dad built the first billion dollar company in the us. I've been fortunate enough to sell over a hundred million dollars in sales, build two eight figure companies build one Epic failure that lost everything I owned and caused me to go bankrupt. In this book, I highlight all of the, the secret habits that will allow you to survive, thrive, and win in any economic environment, any condition, any pandemic, any recession, you name it. It's full-proof. If you learn these habits, you will maximize your success personally and professionally, you will transform your business. You will transform your relationships. You will transform your life. And I cover the 12 key habits in the book. And if you master them, you will become insanely limitless in anything that you want to achieve in this world.
Good stuff. That's a heck of a promo, man. I can't wait for that one to come out. I'm digging through Sales Secrets right now. As we, as we speak
Is on pre-order right now, you can get that book on pre-order on Amazon. It's already in the top 10 ranking Sales Secrets became a number one bestseller globally in 10 different categories on Amazon. It's over 650 pages. I know you don't have a, we don't have video going live right now, but it's a massive book. Yeah, all the world's best Sales Secrets. Luckily, Whatever It Takes is only a few hundred pages. It's an easy read and I'll give you everything you need to inspire you and give you the tools, the tactics, and the playbooks to go from where you're at today, to where you want to go tomorrow to achieve financial freedom, time, freedom, work, freedom, relationship, freedom, you name it.
Love it. Love it. All right. Well, I don't wanna take up too much time here cause I know we've only got about six and a half minutes left in the show. So I want to give us, give us some tips, man. I know you fired some off already, but what are the things listeners again, most listeners are the vast majority are entrepreneurs, obviously, as you mentioned, very strong correlation to sales and business owners. And they're probably in sales as a business owner as well. So give us some of your top tips along that way.
My first tip is you can't sell anything to anyone unless you have the list. So figuring out who you need to like number one, pick a niche who are your ideal customers. And don't pick like 19 different ideal customers. Pick one title, one company, one industry, one revenue size employee size, like who are the one title group that I need to sell to in one industry that's picking niche secret. Number one, the riches are in the niches secret. Number two, build your list of all the people in the niches. Sign up for free to get Seamless.ai. Jump on LinkedIn, you name it. You got to build a list of all of the people that you need to sell to in your niche. Secret. Number three, everyone underestimates the amount of time ever. Capital resources, commitment, failure. That's required to sell to all the people on the list.
So you need to multiply the amount of people you think it will actually take to sell to that list. By three to five to 10X, I always do three to five X. So if I think that it's going to take a hundred leads to close 10 deals, I automatically assume it's going to take 300 to 500 leads to close five, to close 10 deals. And the reason why I do that is if you always over as if you underestimate the amount of time and people in sales work, it's going to take, you're going to quit. That's why I always overestimate and I'm never led down. And then secret number four, write out all of your scripts in advance. Your cold call scripts, your social selling scripts or emails, scripts, your sales objection, scripts. Make sure you read out all of your scripts for booking appointments.
And then also all of your scripts for closing sales. I'm not interested, no budget. It's too expensive. Already working with someone, send me more information. What's your guarantee. I'm not the right person. Talk to my boss, call me back later. I have no budget. Make sure you're prepared with all the scripts to hit on every single one of these. And I know we got to do secret number five, whatever it takes, go all out. No excuses, no. You have to go all out, selling to the list, going all out warning, do whatever it takes to go from where you're at today to where you need to go tomorrow. One of the best ways to master, whatever it takes is to buy our book on Amazon, whatever it takes, you can pick that up right now.
Awesome. Awesome, good. Actionable things there for sure. And again, go out to Amazon, check out Sales Secrets and pre-order, Whatever It Takes, you can here and again, follow Brandon on social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook join his Facebook group Quota Crushers. Again, it's look, you've heard this a million times and if you don't think this is true, then you're, you're kidding yourself. It's who you spend the most time with. That's who's going to be a reflection of who you are. If you're hanging around with a bunch of slackers and you're half asking things, you're going to feel like you're doing well because you're comparing yourself as slackers. You hang around with ambitious people who are kicking butt and taking names. All of a sudden it's going to cause you to raise your game. Being in that quota questions, crushers group is going to help you associate with people like that, right?
So you're not comparing yourself to slackers. You're, you're comparing yourself to people who are out there, getting it done every day. It's going to cause you to raise your game. Super, super important stuff. So Brandon give me, I'd like to ask this question every once in a while and I know you're still relatively young in your career, but what advice would you give to your 25 year old self? Looking back now you can go back and talk to your 25 year old self with everything you've been through. What advice would you give yourself?
Yeah, I w I wish I, I went all in and did whatever it takes when I started. I was so worried about what people thought I was so worried about being judged. I was so worried about working too hard. Half of my life. Everyone told me I worked too much or I was too, too all in on what I wanted to do. Because throughout my career, I've just whatever I want to do. My passion, my dream, my vision, to help other people. I go all in on that. And I got ridiculed by friends, by family, by coworkers, by peers. Everyone told me I was working too much. Everyone. You don't try to get me to waste time on that didn't serve my mission. So if I could go back to my 1820 year old self, I would just say, don't worry about what anyone thinks, go all in, do whatever it takes, build the list that you need to build, to sell or connect with anyone that will help you get closer to achieving your goals and dreams.
And then go do that. That's how I was able to, to write the Sales Secrets book. I built the list of all the, the people in the world that I wanted to interview. I, you know, I built a multiple eight figure companies because I built the, the list of everyone I needed to sell to and then did whatever it tooks and went all in to sell to those people. And I wish I went all in with studying mastering selling, executing, building lists, you name it sooner in my career. I burned five years, five to seven years because of it. And I I'll never get those years back.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's something we can all follow. And I think most people look back and think that too. I know even cartoons talked about that earlier in his life. Some of the trials and tribulations he went through. All right, we're running out of time here, but one quick one, this one, I love this one, this, this one's kind of a little bit selfish because I like to ask this question as well. What is one purchase? That's less than a hundred bucks that you can't live without.
Ooh, this is good. My Starbucks ver veranda blonde, large Starbucks coffee. I get it every day and that's like my rocket fuel. If I don't have my large black $3 coffee I'm going to freak out. So definitely can't live without that.
Gotcha. Yeah. I think that's pretty common too. Maybe not that specific time, but I think caffeine is fuel is important again, this, this week, as we've been talking with frickin fantastic show, Brandon Bornancin CEO and founder of Seamless.ai, thanks for so much for coming on the show, Brandon really appreciate it. Thank you,
You guys so much for having me. This show's amazing and all of you out there doing just incredible things and honored and thrilled to be able to share what I've learned to help you get there sooner.
Awesome. Thanks to our listeners. And guys have a great week and don't forget. Cash flow is King.
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