Written by Sean McPheat | 
The Wolf of Wall Street’s story; his rise, his lies, his demise and now the resurrection of Jordan Belfort’s career has fascinated me.
So much so that when he came to London at the Excel Centre to run a short, 3-hour seminar, I just had to go!
“The Truth Behind His Success” seminar inspired 6,000 people to be go-getting animals, but ethically!
I don’t condone what he did back in the nineties, it’s estimated that The Wolf owes 1513 victims $110 million as part of a sentencing agreement but it seems now that he’s a reformed character and is now on a year-long quest to pay back the vast majority of that to the unlucky ones that he duped.
Whenever I attend an event, I make copious amounts of notes so here are my 53 takeaways from the event. Some are detailed, some are not. I hope they help you.
“Fail Quickly”
1. Try different things out and see if they work. If they are not going to work then find out quickly, move on and then go again
“What’s Your Worth?”
2. Work out a figure of what you think you’re going to be worth until you die. What is the figure? £200,000? £2 million? £20 million? Would an investor pay you £100,000 for a 10% stake in you? Would they get a return?
“Get Honest With Yourself”
3. The first step on the road to improvement is to get honest with yourself. See and evaluate how life is right now.
“There Are 2 Types Of People”
4. There are REASON people and there are RESULTS people. The REASON people will give you all the excuses as to why they can’t do or achieve something. That they are unlucky, they never had the opportunities, they blame their parents, upbringing – you name it. They give you the story of why they can’t do something. The RESULTS people are action people, they have a “I can” internal dialogue and see the opportunities and possibilities in everything.
“What’s Your Business System?”
5. Marketing provides leads for the sales team to close. But what is your business system to make this happen and do you have a system in place to monetize your activity and to make a profit?
“There’s an Inner World and an Outer World of Wealth & Success”
6. Inner World
a. Emotional State Management
b. Empowering Beliefs
c. High Standards
d. Vision Focus
7. Outer World
a. Entrepreneurship
b. Sales & Influencing/Persuasion
c. Online & Offline marketing
d. MSI (Multiple streams of income)
8. Two Bonus Others
a. Expertise At Raising Money
b. Desire To Learn & Be Mentored
Emotional State
9. Your state is how you are feeling right now. You need to get into the right positive state before you do anything. Try and anchor positive feelings.
10. When anchoring most people think of a time that they were invincible and create a movement associated to that feeling. Try also to use the sense of smell too when anchoring, you’ll find this really intensifies the anchor and feeling.
11. Positive states/emotions include: certainty, clarity, courage, confidence, compassion, love, patience, happiness
12. Toxic states/emotions include: uncertainty, overwhelm, fear, self-doubt, cruelty, hate, impatience, misery
13. These are the “silent killers” of success
14. They hold you back and stop you from being what you want to be. What are your limiting beliefs? You need to question the crap out of them to make you doubt them.
15. A limiting belief is the story that you tell yourself of why you can’t achieve or have a certain thing.
Vision Focus
16. You need to create a compelling vision for the future. A vision is different than goals and objectives and sits above both of these
17. How and where do you see yourself in 5 years-time and why?
18. The “Why” is very important as you MUST have a compelling vision that moves you and motivates you to jump out of bed every day to achieve and strive towards it.
19. What can your vision include? Where you’re living, your job, work, business, kids, spouse, charities, holidays, car you drive, achievements – you name it. Anything to get you going and to give you a purpose
Focus
20. You need to train yourself and force yourself to focus on your vision everyday
21. What you focus on becomes your world. If you “focus on shit” you’ll become a “shit magnet!”
22. Focus on the end vision but have peripheral vision to opportunities. Don’t be blinkered.
High Standards
23. Do you have high standards all of the time? You should in the areas that are important to you
24. Think about the standards you have for your body, money, relationships etc
25. Do you have high standards in one area but not in another? i.e the rich man who weighs 25 stone
Entrepreneurship
26. “Fail elegantly” – test out ideas/new divisions of your business/work without destroying your company. If it fails then make sure it fails quickly
27. “Succeed Wildly” – turn small business and turn it into a profit generator
28. Leverage your business and sales, work smarter and grow it
29. If you own a business think about: its structure, staffing, IT, operations, sales, accounts, finance, delegating, brainstorming, OPM (other people’s money!)
30. The art of brainstorming – this is really important to generate new ideas. Have sessions with your teams to come up with new ideas
Marketing
31. Should be made up of online and offline marketing
32. The role of marketing is to generate leads for the sales team to close
33. Methods can include: direct mail, telemarketing, door-to-door, tv/radio, promotional, newspaper/magazine adverts, direct response/offer based, outdoor advertising like billboards, bus stops, word of mouth campaigns, network marketing, referral based marketing, community outreach programmes, educational marketing, joint ventures, testimonials – written, audio, video, PR, pay per click, SEO, email marketing, affiliate marketing, social media, banner adverts
34. Can you collect email addresses through a squeeze page and put them into a marketing and sales funnel?
Receive a 19-page personalised report on the findings
Get an analysis of how you sell along with
some recommendations on how to improve
Raising Money
35. The purpose of seeking venture capital is to fund your projects and to give your VC a return for their money.
36. Two fundamentals to raising the cash:
a. You have to ask for it! Obvious but many people just don’t have the balls to ask
b. Your have to structure the deal in the right way or it can cost you tons of money
37. Deal structure; always make sure that the deal includes earn back options. For example; someone pays you £1 million for 85% of your company. Over time if you hit certain financial goals or growth targets then the 85% becomes 80% and then down to 70% so you effectively earn back your company over time
Sales
38. Tonality and body language are vitally important in the sale. They make up 90% of all communication
39. You need to sound and act like an expert in your field
40. To create different tonalities you need to move your body in different ways. i.e when you are being certain do you clench your fist, when you are talking quieter do you lean forward like you are telling a secret. Find out what your moves are
41. On the phone or meeting someone in person you need to demonstrate 3 things within the first 4 seconds of meeting them:
a. You’re sharp as a tack
b. Enthusiastic (not overly so and cheesy but confident and assured)
c. You’re an expert in your field. An authority figure
42. Contrary to what you were told as a child, people DO judge a book by its cover so pay close attention to the way you present yourself physically, your body language and how you sound.
43. Jordan’s Straight Line System is about getting from the OPEN to the CLOSE and the steps you need to take “along the line” in order to make this happen. If the prospect goes “off the line” your job is to get them back on it
44. The steps you take along the line include your opening tonality and body language, building rapport, gathering intelligence, the presentation and the close
45. Building rapport. You need to get into rapport because it
a. Unconsciously shows that you care to the prospect
b. Demonstrates to your prospect that you’re “just like them”
46. Building rapport is not about using cheesy lines or making small talk about your shared hobbies or comments about the family photo on their desk. Stay on topic and professional and build rapport by showing that you care and that you know your stuff
47. Gather intelligence. You need to gather:
a. Their needs
b. Their beliefs
c. The pain they are currently facing
48. Presentation. After gathering their needs you need to present your solution to meet them. Start by saying “John, based on what you’ve told me our XYZ product is the perfect fit for you”
a. Love your product
b. Love your company/brand
c. Trust you
50. The prospect has got to score you 10 out of 10 for each of the above or you will not close. If there are doubts you need to go back and resell.
51. Remember that as you travel along the line you are building up more and more trust as you go
52. You need a water tight emotional business case of why they should buy and also a water tight logical case. People buy on emotion and they back up their decision with logical reasons.
53. At the close your prospects are running two movies through their mind:
a. The best outcome that will happen if they buy
b. The worst outcome that will happen if they buy
It’s your job to ensure that the picture they run is the loaded with all of the best outcomes they’ll experience by doing business with you.
That’s It!
So that’s my 53 takeaways from the Wolf of Wall Street’s seminar. Take from it what you will.
It’s a wonder I could read my writing! At the start of the seminar it was very legible but come the final 10 minutes my writing looked like a 3 year old’s scribble!
What’s your favourite takeaway from the 53 above? If you went, did I miss any out?!
Please check out our Advanced Sales Training programmes for some more help.
Alternatively, here are some excellent B2B Sales Techniques and our article on Why Sales Case Studies Are Important throughout the sales process.
As a Sales Training Provider, we can help you develop further check out our wider range of Sales Courses that can help you.
Happy Selling!
Sean
Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training
Updated on: 30 May, 2014
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