“What’s your excuse, scumbag?”

—Gunny Sargent Hartman, Full Metal Jacket

Imagine it’s your third meeting with a prospect whom some might call a “whale”—sales lingo for a prize prospect who can potentially put a lot of money in your pocket.

You ask for the order, and the objections come flying out of the prospect’s mouth. You wonder if they’re real or just excuses. Unfortunately, you have no way of knowing. (Yet.)

After handling them as best you can, you ask for the sale again, and during the 20 seconds of silence that feels like 20 hours, your palms are sweaty, your heart is racing, and you’re secretly terrified of hearing the word no.

Finally, the silence is broken: The prospect said no. Your fear came true.

You thank the person for their time, put the paperwork back in your briefcase, and head back to the office to make your cold calls for the day and hopefully “drum up some business.” You put on a happy face as you’re leaving but inside you’re devastated and feel like a failure. You even feel contempt for that prospect.

Perhaps its contempt for yourself you’re feeling.

When you return, your sales manager asks if you got the deal or not. Lacking the courage to say no, you say that they’re very interested but they’re not ready yet and you’ll get the deal in a few months. Back at your desk you simply move them to a later date on your sales forecast.

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

What’s wrong is that you had no power, no balls, and never had any to begin with. If you did, you’d have gotten the sale. You’re lacking in self-confidence, and you treat prospects as superiors. You beg, chase, and otherwise supplicate to them. You see them the same way as you see your boss: as the person in charge. You even lied to your sales manager to keep his or her approval.

Now reverse the situation:

It’s only your second appointment, not third, and you confidently ask for the order. You sit back in your chair perfectly calm and quietly excited to close this sale.

The prospect knows from past experience that you won’t tolerate any nonsense so that strategy is avoided; however, he throws out a couple of token objections, but you know they’re not true; after all, you’ve been trained on how to detect lies. You ask for the order again. You’re relaxed, and the 20 seconds that pass actually feel like only 20 seconds.

The prospect says yes, signs the contract, and submits the request for the check.

He trusts you, likes you, loves the fact that you’re a no-B.S. kind of person who doesn’t take any shit from anyone, and is excited to start this new business relationship.

In fact, you’ve been so beneficial, not only in providing an ideal solution to your new customer, but also in guiding him to make a decision and say yes that he’s glad to simply know you as a business associate.

You thank each other as you leave and the prospect agrees to meet you for coffee or lunch soon just to “talk shop.” He sees you as an equal and looks forward to meeting again. You plan on getting high-value referrals and introductions from him and, who knows, perhaps an invitation to a members-only business roundtable group. (Hint: If you can get into one of those, first make sure it’s legit and not based on a national franchise, then … accept!)

You get back to the office and your sales manager, who depends on you to make his numbers while also fearing that you’ll take his job one day, says, “So, did you get the deal?”

He asks with a smirk on his face because he knows damn well that you did.

Your co-workers assume the manager just hands you these deals because you make sales look so effortless.

That’s because you’re not a loser. You’re a Sales Badass.

Sound too good to be true? Don’t worry, because it’s not, and it won’t take a huge amount of effort or time to become one. I’m not going to ask you to say certain affirmations daily or do a silly morning routine or any woo-woo crap like that.

Since I’m the original Sales Badass, there’s no bullshit or fluff in this book. It gets right down to business.

The Problem with Modern Sales Professionals

Life is more stressful than ever, and many experts on the topic believe that our bodies and brains haven’t evolved to handle this level of stress and distractions yet, because it wasn’t much more than a hundred years ago that life was extremely simple.¹ Now we have smartphones, traffic, email to get to, planes to catch, and life is a hundred times more fast-paced than it was yesteryear.

In other words, life is already stressful enough, without throwing a challenging sales quota and modern living expenses on top of it—let alone a barking sales manager.

That’s why the vast majority of sales reps are losers who usually keep track of job openings in case they get fired. Instead of using LinkedIn to generate new business, they use it to have Plan B jobs to fall back on. And anyone who places the fear of being fired and needing a new job above the importance of generating new business is a loser. Plain and simple.

Am I politically correct? No. Do I tell the truth? Yes, and most people can’t handle the truth, which is precisely why they invented political correctness in the first place.

As candidate Donald Trump said in a debate, “Frankly, I don’t have time for political correctness, and I don’t think this country has time for political correctness.”

I’m telling you, right now, that you do not have time for political correctness, so grab your balls and just deal with it. Life will always be hard if you’re not willing to do the hard work—and accept the truth—to change that.

How many times have you heard salespeople say things like, “I’ll be at your beck and call if you become my customer,” or, “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to earn your business,” or, “I’ll even give you my home number so you can reach me anytime there’s an issue.”

Please, someone hand me a barf bag. That kind of weakness makes me want to puke. And you can be certain that I never, ever buy from people like that, nor did I ever once give away my home phone number during my sales career! My home is my castle—not that of my customers.

Worst of all, saying and doing things like that gives 100% of your power over to the prospect, massively hurting your chances of closing a deal and guaranteeing that you’ll continue to struggle to make sales and have prospects walk all over you, at least for as long as you can hang onto your sales job.

Meanwhile, a small percentage of sales professionals are winners. They make selling look effortless. They have an extremely high closing rate. They know when someone is lying. They’re mildly intimidating yet very likable and easy to trust—hallmarks of any great negotiator. They have advanced sales skills that others do not, because they took the time to learn them and practice them. They’re always the best-dressed person in the room, even in casual clothes.

If I could wear dark three-piece suits in 115-degree Phoenix weather, then what the hell is your excuse for not dressing to the nines? (Readers in the Middle East shall be exempt from this particular rule!) At least here in Dallas our 100° summer days are not accepted as excuses to dress like slobs.

(Definition of slob: Anyone considering themselves a “sales professional” who is wearing anything less than full-blown business attire. Golf shirts and khakis are not business attire—they’re golf attire, and we all know that “I close deals on the golf course!” really translates into “I trick my boss into paying for my golf rounds and the dumbass actually thinks I’m hosting prospects.”)

Most importantly of all, the Sales Badass will never ever take any shit from anyone. It’s not about being a jerk, it’s simply a mindset of tolerating zero nonsense from others. Because nonsense = negativity, and the fastest shortcut to success is to eliminate negativity from your mind and your life.

These are the people I call Sales Badasses. It’s not something they’re born with. Believe me, I was the biggest loser wimp my first few years in sales. I cold called, I begged, I pleaded … but at least I didn’t whine about how much my monthly bills were, like one particular loser of a sales manager used to tell us! Yeah, like Barry’s monthly expenses really motivated me to sell something …

You can, and will, learn Sales Badassery in this book. Once you do, you’ll find that sales just happen—people simply buy—when you’re in front of a qualified prospect with a current need for what you sell.

A Modern-Day Warrior

Imagine your job title has nothing to do with sales and your business cards show your position as a “Modern-Day Warrior.”

How would you feel? Would you ever be nervous walking into a sales appointment, or taking a call from an irate customer?

No, you wouldn’t. You’d feel strong and powerful. Most of all, you’d feel ready. You mind is prepared for anything that comes your way. You’re ambitious. You know where you’re going in life. You understand that setbacks and disappointments are merely ways to grow through struggle, or “gain from pain.” You’re an honest person with integrity. You never, ever seek the approval of others. Ever.

As Napoleon Hill once wrote, nature plants the seeds of discontent in all of us, which compels us to “Keep Up with the Joneses” and put on a good showing and finally be forced to experience growth through struggle.

A good friend officiated my wedding, and he wrote the vows and kept them secret, as a surprise for us. We were nervous! In the end, we loved them, and since my friend knows I’m a huge Rush fan, one of my vows was:

“To be a modern-day warrior with a mean, mean stride.”

And that’s what you’re going to be very soon: A modern-day warrior with a mean, mean stride.

And I mean that literally—you’ll learn the importance of how you walk in the body language chapter!

Do you ever look forward to the weekend and love Fridays? Do you dread going to work on Monday? Do you hit your snooze button multiple times and just don’t want to get up for work?

When you’re in the office, do you keep checking your watch, waiting for five o’clock to come? If so, you’re not a modern-day warrior yet, but that will begin to change, starting right now.

The Man without a Smile

Many people comment that I should smile in my headshot photos. In reality, I generally do smile, and especially so when meeting someone for the first time, in a very specific way that you’re going to learn.

• Q: Why don’t I smile on my headshot and business card photos?
• A: First, because everyone else does, and second, because many wildly successful and powerful people don’t.

I got the idea from Donald Trump who, whether you love him, hate him, or are indifferent as I am, almost never smiles in photos, In fact, his original presidential photo had a downright angry face on it! Why? To put America’s enemies on notice that there’s a new sheriff in town. (In other words, to convey power.) Eventually he caved and replaced it with a smile on his face, but only after he succeeded in life and then achieved the ultimate success, being elected president.

Notice also how he avoided phony smiles at all the debates in 2016. You may have also noticed that he always had his suit jacket unbuttoned while all the others were buttoned up. Again, this achieves differentiation, and you’ll learn later on about why it makes people unconsciously like and trust you.

Dan Kennedy is another—unless you see a photo of him on stage speaking, he never smiles in his headshots. And he is the all-time King of direct response marketing. Not bad, eh?

Most importantly, a serious look implies power. That’s why, every time a real estate agent asks me for sales advice, I tell them to replace the smiling photo with a serious look, or better yet, to just get rid of the damned thing altogether.

Not a single one has followed that advice.

It’s too bad, because if any one of them did it, that person would have differentiation. And with differentiation comes a faster and easier path to power.

And finally, with a serious look in your photos, you’ll be taken more seriously by others.

Selling versus Negotiating: The Importance of Power

Every sales interaction is a negotiation. Even the very first contact, whether it’s a cold call or otherwise, is a negotiation; the salesperson is negotiating with the prospect to get a meeting, while the prospect is trying to get the sales rep off the phone. We usually tend to think of negotiating in the form of price haggling, yet all of selling is negotiation, whether it’s trying to get an appointment, trying to close a sale, trying to agree on a price—you name it.

Here’s why having power in sales is so important: In every negotiation, the person who shows up with the power, who grabs it at the beginning and keeps it through to the end, will win. It’s really that simple.

Now think about a typical sales appointment. It’s obviously a negotiation, because the salesperson wants a sale at a good price and nice commission, while the prospect either wants to get rid of the salesperson or wants an absurdly steep discount.

Guess who will win in that meeting? That’s right—the person with power.

The key is to show up as a powerful person, to seize the power at the very beginning of the sales process, and keep it through to the very end. And by the very end, I mean just that; once you’ve closed a sale, you’ll want to build and maintain a relationship with that new customer, which will then lead to referrals and introductions, which are the best leads on the planet.

To put it very simply, the person who needs something loses, and the other person wins.

That’s why I’ve written books and courses on why you should never, ever cold call.

Anyone who makes a cold call is subcommunicating to the other person that he wants or needs a sale. The specific action of making a cold call automatically gives away all of your power to the prospect.

Now reverse the situation: Let’s say you’ve read my other books and know how to get prospects to come to you through a well-organized self-marketing plan.

What happens then?

That’s right, the prospect is subcommunicating a need. That means they handed all their power over to you. In that situation, you’ll get the sale every time and you’ll get it at full price.

Let’s Kick Some Ass

The bottom line is that power is everything in sales, so let’s get started. It’s time to drop your old ways of selling and transform you into a Sales Badass.

Welcome to the world of Sales Badassery!

Frank J. Rumbauskas