Now I don’t like this fact. I would philosophically argue against this fact. But it is a fact… and the evidence is all around us.

Who makes the best-tasting hamburger in the world? Doubtful you’d anoint McDonald’s with that title, but they outsell everyone else by many billions of dollars.

What is the best wine in the world? Certainly Franzia (which comes in a box!) wouldn’t be your first or 100th guess, but it is the best selling.

What is the highest-quality bottled water? If you tested it, it certainly wouldn’t be Aquafina (owned by PepsiCo), Dasani (owned by Coca-Cola) or Poland Spring (owned by Nestle Waters), but those are the number 1, 2 and 3 best selling.

Nine times out of 10 it is not the best or highest-quality clothing line, automobile, restaurant, CPA firm, real estate agent, lawyer, furniture manufacturer, refrigerator, etc. that sells the most or becomes the biggest—it is the ones who market themselves the best.

This is the business axiom that I witness all around me every day:
The ultimate success of a product or service is 10% the quality of the product and 90% the quality of the marketing.

Now while I don’t necessarily LIKE that fact, as I believe the success of a product or service should be what’s most important and it should stand ENTIRELY on the value it delivers, that is just not how it works in reality.

Even if you are simply an individual in a sales organization this is true. It is not necessarily the best, the highest quality, highest class, most refined people that make it to the top… it is the ones who market themselves, network themselves, position themselves with credibility amongst their peers and demonstrate their growing and developing selves to the circle around them that end up at the top of the sales organization.

Now, let me also add this: If your product or service is bad… or even if you are bad, unethical or without integrity, no amount of marketing will make you or your product or service successful—especially in this day and age of Yelp, Twitter, Facebook and Google. You and your product or service reputation will die a certain and expedient viral death.

Here is a not so funny (literally) great example of this: read more »

John Lennon is my real estate agent in South Beach, Miami. Seriously, that is his real name.

John sells exclusively on a single street called South Pointe Drive, located in an exclusive area called SoFi (South of Fifth). His sales territory consists of six über-luxury high-rises along the cruise ship waterway and Miami Beach front.

In the past 15 years, John has sold more than $3 billion in real estate on this street (do the math on 3 percent commission—that’s almost as much as the other John Lennon made!).

John took Georgia and me to lunch a couple days ago to give us an update on our property and the market. I took the opportunity to try and pry out the secret to his extraordinary success.

I found it! And now I will pass it along to you too… read more »

Contrary to what many might think (and many practice), the most important job of a leader is not to speak, preach, direct or advise….

The most important job of a leader is to listen.

In a recent interview I did with management guru Tom Peters, he revealed the four most important words in business leadership are “What do you think?”

Tom said listening should be a leader’s full-time profession. They should be the professional gatherer of input, ideas, feedback, opinion, perspective and personal experience in order to make informed, well-thought-through leadership decisions.

Richard Branson once said to me, “If you are a good leader, you are a good listener.”

This is true for everyone in every aspect of life, but it’s one of the most neglected skills I observe every day. I am always fascinated by how poorly people listen. There are many ways people invalidate and hurt their relations with others by their lack of listening skill.

Here are a few…

The Offenders. These people are the worst. They make it clear you are read more »

*From Glengarry Glen Ross, 1992.

Introducing the March SUCCESS magazine edition – The Selling Issue

Nothing happens until someone sells something. I mean, nothing. I’m not referring solely to the selling of products and services; I’m talking about selling yourself—your ideas, opinions, values, desires and objectives. There is nothing you can obtain in the human experience without the skills of selling or influence.

We learned how to sell before we even learned how to speak. We learned quickly that we can influence the attention and actions of our parents with the right facial expressions or the appropriate cry. They are methods we used to sell or make someone do what we wanted. Children are some of the most effective salespeople there are. A child who wants ice cream or a toy in a grocery store aisle will apply every selling skill in the book, with relentless persistence, until he or she closes the sale. Children know how to overcome objections, push through stall tactics, handle rejection, seek the higher authority, not take no for an answer and continue to ask for the order until the deal is sealed.

Here is what’s most important to understand: read more »