Dave Sharpe – The Closing Call

Okay guys, Dave Sharp, co-founder of Empower Network, we're ready to get rocking. And guys, as I said just a second ago, go ahead and grab a piece of paper and a pencil if you don't have one already, because really what we're going to do tonight is we're going to give everybody again, no matter where you're at inside of your business, whether you're experienced or somebody's been in the industry, network marketing, affiliate marketing, or just sales and marketing industry for a long time, or whether you're somebody who's just getting started, which is the majority of the people on this call tonight, we're going to talk about closing. We're going to teach you how to close the Empower Network way. We're going to teach you, more importantly, how to close in a way that actually works, and how to close in a way that you don't actually have to be a salesman to close sales, okay? And that sounds kind of funny. How do you close sales without being a salesman?

Well, I can guarantee you that nobody on this call wants to be a salesperson. They want to make money, they want to learn how to market, but they don't want to be a salesperson, because when they think about salespeople, they think about — and I want you to envision this for a second, guys, really think about a salesman or a saleswoman. Really, most of the time when we think about salesmen, I can tell you what I think about. I think about the guy in the plaid jacket at the used car lot who's slapping his jaws and sucking on his lips back and forth because he's got a big wad of gum in his mouth, looking cheesy, looking corny, standing there kind of figuring out the next person that he's going to go and try to talk into buying some piece of overpriced junk. That's what I think about when I think of a salesman and a salesperson, and nobody on the call wants to do that, especially inside their business, when they're wanting to really, guys, let's be honest, look fast and go fast and look cool. That's one of the favorites, you know, something I love to say — people like to just get in this business and look cool and go fast. And if you don't want to be a salesperson, you want to look cool and go fast, and why the heck are you even in this industry in the first place? Because you can go slow and kind of look blobbish in a cubicle somewhere, kind of like how I used to be, which was on a dog leash at a telemarketing cubicle, kind of pacing back and forth trying to close people into debt consolidation deals. And that's not why any of us are here. We're here to build a business, have success, and close deals, and we're going to teach you tonight on this call exactly how to do that.

But before we get into that, let me go ahead and tell you who's talking to you and why I'm talking to you, and why tonight could really be a turning point in your life. No matter why you're here — you're already a member of Empower Network, or you're somebody who's just kind of was invited to this call and has maybe taken a look at what we got, maybe heard of us, maybe has been standing on this, on the fence, on the sideline, kind of watching what's going on, where we're going, if we're, you know, going to really be here long term, and be, for all these guys, really as tenacious as they look, are they really as dedicated as they seem — and I think that on this call tonight you're going to get the answer to that question. You're going to be able to make a decision whether you want to push all your chips in and move forward with us and let us help you build a business. Not only let us help you build a business, but let us help you learn how to help other people and create value inside of yourself so you can go out there and make a difference inside of the world. Because I can tell you, guys, that your results, your success, is going to be dependent in direct proportion to the value that you hold.

So by you being on this conference call tonight absorbing the information, your pen should already be moving. You should be taking notes. You should be writing down the fact that I said your success is going to be in direct proportion to your value, the amount of value that you give to the marketplace and to the community, because that's really what drives success, what attracts people to you and makes them want to buy from you in the first place, isn't it? That's what makes closing a lot easier, isn't it — that if somebody comes to you and they respect you and they're already attracted to you because you're over delivering on value, which is something that we talk about all the time, and we talk about value a little bit differently than a lot of other people talk about value, but we talk about value, and isn't that the real key. So tonight you're really going to have the opportunity to make decisions, create more value inside of yourself, and also learn a lot and really become a part of something that's a lot bigger than you or me. Okay, and that's the beautiful thing. Now that wasn't interesting to you, and we're going to want to ask some questions here in the standard school, but here's our first question.

Just four years ago I called my way — I dragged my butt into a room and asked somebody to help me save my life. Why did I do that? Because at that time I was struggling with alcoholism and addiction. I had been homeless off and on for 10 years, ran the streets, involved in gang activity, or anything and everything else you can possibly think that a young buck can get involved in, I was involved in. I left home. I was 14 years old. I had a daughter by the time I was 16 years old, and I left home and lived the next 10 years in pretty much confusion and not really knowing where my life was taking me, what direction it was going. And I pretty much, again, made every mistake that somebody can make, up until the point to where I was just utterly beat up, not only physically, but also mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And I needed something to change, and I needed to change fast. And those people who I asked to help me save my life, and that man in particular who I asked to mentor me and kind of give me a leg up, they did. And from that point on, I made a conscious decision that I deserved more inside of life, that, you know, I had hit my bottom, and I had saw what bad was.

I knew what the bad and the ugly was, and I wanted to experience a little bit of the good. And I started to do that. I got and stayed clean. I've now been clean and sober, absolutely 100% clean and sober for four years now. I actually just celebrated four years clean back on the third of this month.

My anniversary is 2308. And it's been a beautiful run. I've experienced love. I've experienced fighting to get my family back, fighting to get my daughter back, fighting and regaining the respect of my community and working and doing everything that I possibly can to be able to contribute to society and give back to people. I go into treatment centers every week and talk to kids, talk to men, do what I can to be of service to people, to human beings in general.

And that's one thing that gets me up every day, is actually doing that. I'm passionate about it. I'm passionate about people. I'm passionate about helping people become better men, become better women, become better fathers, become better mothers, become better sons, become better citizens, and just be all around better people and live to your full potential. Because I truly believe, after experiencing and going through everything that I've gone through in the past four years and in the past 28 years, that, you know what, a lot of times, most times, we don't live up to our full potential.

And I can tell you that even these days, some days, knowing what it really is to live up to my full potential, sometimes I'm even disappointed, because I'll lay my head down at night and I'll say, you know what, you could have done better today, Dave. You could have done more. You could have reached out and picked up that phone and called one more person, or reached out to one more person, or said I love you to your daughter or something like that. Well, that's what I've experienced over the past four years and completely transformed my life. I was a construction worker.

I slung a hammer on a construction site. I drove my first big buy, I'll never forget, four years ago when I — a little before four years ago, you know, maybe a week or two before, you know, back in, you know, January of '08, December of '08, I was really kind of at my bottom, and I called my boss, brought up onto my dad's porch, and I said, you know, can you help me kind of get on my feet? And I struggled for about the next month or so really getting clean, but he let me stay on his couch, and my first big buy was a bed. I bought a twin bed. Now, the funny thing is, four years later, I just bought a king-size bed, top of the line, the most not-daddy bed that you've ever seen in your entire life, and tonight will be my first night sleeping on it, so I'm actually excited about that.

But that was my first big buy four years ago. My next big buy was my old 1990 Ford F-150. Bought it from an old used car sale, used car lot. It had the paint peeling off of it. The hood was all rusted, and the paint was peeling off the hood and the top of the cab.

The rims were so rusty that I literally took it home and spray-painted them black because I wasn't doing anything I could to make this thing just look a little bit better. And I drove that thing around and worked on a construction job for about, I don't know, 10 years, until one day I was on a construction job dying for something to change in my life, dying for something different to happen. And a guy came up and started talking to me about an opportunity, a business that he was in. Now, he was a guy that I knew. We had done some work on this particular street.

My dad and I — he's also in the construction trade. We were working together. We were doing a bathroom. And this guy named John came up and said, hey, you guys have got to take a look at this deal. And, of course, I was so pessimistic and negative, I was like probably the majority.

The majority of the people that you talk to on a daily basis, to where I was like, hey, no way, I mean, this is, I mean, no way. I'm inside, I'm dying for something, but on the outside I'm just too negative to think anything could possibly happen to me.

I'm going to talk about that a little bit tonight on this call. I'm going to talk about the three questions that you really need to ask yourself before you're going to start closing more sales. But that's the mindset that I was in. So I finally gave in. I took the money from that particular job and went and joined this business.

It was a network marketing business, technology, cell phone deal. And I crashed. I crashed cars. I face-planted this bad boy. I mean, I stuck signs in the yard, magnets on my car.

I was that guy. I couldn't sponsor anybody. As a matter of fact, the only person that I did sponsor was my dad. And I'll never forget that he got a commission check. Well, I put him above me.

I put him above me. So I thought to myself, I'm going to help him out. I'm going to get him rich, you know? That was my biggest commission check that I got for a little while inside of this industry.

And I just couldn't get it. I had no sales skills. I didn't know how to talk to people. I didn't know how to close people. And the world of network marketing and marketing was something that was just foreign to me.

All these other people were growing and building these teams, and I just couldn't figure out what it was, what I needed to do different. I was inviting friends and family. I was inviting people to hotel and home meetings. There was this crew around my town that would go and do meetings at these restaurants. And they were all — I mean, even people who I looked at and I said, how are these people getting better results than I am?

I couldn't figure it out, because I did have skills, I did have dedication, but I just couldn't make it work. And then I jumped on the internet. And I started to say, what in the heck can I do with this so-called internet thing? Because remember, at this time, just two years ago, I was pretty much an internet dummy.

I didn't even know how to really turn on the computer and work the thing. I said, there's got to be something here. And I started to stumble upon capture pages and put my name in email and capture pages and kind of explore what was going on the internet. And I stumbled across some information, not all of it, but some information that led me to some more information, that led me to some more people, that led me to start developing some skills and understanding how the online marketing space really works, and really how marketing in general works.

And I started to meet some people and build some relationships. I started to network with people like Dave Wood and some of these other leaders inside of the industry, and started to get results. And I was working long hours. I would work all day on my construction job and then come home at night and work another four, six, eight hours on my marketing business, to the point to where I was working two full-time jobs. And again, I started to have success.

I was outworking everybody. That was the secret to my success at first. And I started to have some success. I became successful. I became one of the top producers and top recruiters in a big business.

Back in the beginning of 2010, end of 2010, I started to just really hammer out sales, really sell a lot of stuff, make a lot of money. But a lot of my team wasn't doing the same thing. I noticed the same thing was happening with other leaders like Dave Wood and some of these other guys who were making a lot of money, but the people around them weren't. And we saw that there was a problem with what was happening inside of the industry. There were so many gurus, so many courses, so much overwhelm.

So many people doing so much, that people's heads were spinning. They were spending so much money, and they were never really getting ahead. This is what I experienced. This may be what you're experiencing. You may be on the phone tonight.

You may have been excited about your business one or two or three or six months, maybe 12 months ago, and you're still holding on. And you're buying courses. You're attending training calls. You're on webinars. You don't know why you haven't had that breakthrough.

You're leading to breakdown after breakdown with no breakthroughs. Well, what we did back in late October of 2011 is we launched a platform that is Empower Network. And what happened was, and what our real vision was, is to give the average person the opportunity to get in and get started and leverage our skills to sell. Because Dave and I do have skills to sell. We can sell a lot of stuff.

We can write really good copy. We can write really good sales videos. We do understand marketing funnels, marketing sales psychology. We can sell on conference calls.

You can leverage our ability to close sales for you. But we needed a platform to be able to do this with. And we wanted to give average people the opportunity to leverage our skills and really get in and get started. And we wanted to actually have an opportunity to help average people not only make a lot of money, but also get really big results. I want to say that again, guys.

Just for those of you on the call who are on the fence, who are looking at other hot deals, who are jumping from space to space and acting kind of confused because you don't know what the secret is — excuse me, I almost said six months. Not even close.

Last three months. Guys, we've also indexed almost 300,000 pages inside of the search engines, and people have leveraged what we have here, which is a content authority network of blogs all in one domain. And if you don't know anything about marketing, I don't really need or want to get into it, because this works whether you understand it or not. You can get in and get blogging. And if you're on this call and you don't know what blogging is, well, you should go and look it up, because it's where the economy, it's where the marketplace is going.

It's a new phrase. It's a new fad that's happening. And the reason why it's a fad and it's happening — it's a new thing that's happening that you see everybody doing, it's a new thing that's happening around you — is because it works. It works. And what we've done is simplify the whole process so an average newbie or an 80-year-old grandma can get in and blog on a daily basis and create content and create value and take what they learn on these conference calls and write about it and add value to other people's lives and share it with their friends, their family, and their prospects, all on one domain in an authority site.

And what that means is that you can rank your blog post on EmpowerNetwork.com a lot faster than you can anywhere else, because Google looks at EmpowerNetwork.com — because we're getting a million-plus page views a day and we're ranked in the top 400 or so in the entire country on Alexa.com, which is one of the leading website ranking authority sites on the entire internet. They look at us and they say, well, that's a badass site, those people are badass, they're getting a lot of results, there's a lot of original content there.

And they say, you know what, I'm going to rank that post about how to get network marketing leads, or close more sales. I'm going to rank that really high on the search engines above everybody else's. That's the reason why so many people are getting so many results so fast. So what's happened over the course of the last three months is the industry has been somewhat flipped on its head a little bit, because a lot of people have realized that, you know what, confusing yourself, overwhelming yourself, and feeling that you need to know everything on day one and paralyzing yourself before you even have the opportunity to get started, is not the solution. The solution is leverage an actual system and a process that works and surround yourself with people who know what they're talking about and are willing to give you that information, whether you pay for it or not, which is exactly why you're on this conference call tonight.

Leverage that information, leverage that skill, leverage that system, and leverage that ability to make money quick and get started. Somebody invited you to this call tonight. If you haven't gotten involved with Empower Network, that's okay. You should just do it right now, right on this call. Go back and click the link.

It's $25 to get started. We're about to relaunch the Empower Network. Now, you can completely and absolutely use the system and go and do anything that you want, whether you want to blog or get in the Inner Circle or tap into some of the more advanced training if you're really ready for those types of secrets and skills in the Costa Rica Intensive, and you can completely just submerge yourself in some of the best education, if not the best education in the entire industry, as well as blogging on a daily basis, and start to generate traffic and leads for your business. But you can also participate in our what? 100% commission affiliate plan, guys, which is so powerful. Why is 100% commission so powerful?

Well, because so many people want to make guru money, but they don't have a system that pays them like a guru. But here's the other key: nobody really wants to be a guru, they just want to make guru money. Well, the cool thing is, is there's finally something here where you can make guru money, but here's the interesting thing.

100% commissions is not a new concept, but I'll tell you what is a new concept: it's mixing the dynamic elements of 100% commissions as well as a system with leaders and people inside of it who know how to sell and who can actually help you close sales. Guys, our sales funnel is the most compelling, highest converting sales funnel in the entire industry, hands down. How do I know? Because I've tested it, and that is my specialty.

It's high converting sales funnels, building and focusing on conversions, copywriting, tweaking things so it converts 50% and 60% on the front end and 20% on the back end. Those numbers may not mean anything to you, and they don't need to, but I can tell you that earning 10% or 20% commissions, waiting for the check to come for two months in the mail, and only converting at 2% on the front end, stinks. Now, did I know any of that when I first got started? Nor did I care. My goal on this call is to educate you and start speaking the language with you so you start to understand exactly what marketing is all about. Not only what marketing is all about, what business is all about.

Because if you don't really understand the ins and outs of business, the psychology of what really happens when your customer comes to your website and says, huh, do I want to put my email into this page — education is going to be your most important thing that you need inside of this industry to take it to the next level. So guys, bottom line, what you have an opportunity to do tonight on this call is, if you're on the fence, get off of it. And if you're not in the game yet, get in it. Go back and click the link.

Get in the back office and go through some of our training. Go through the setup process. Go through the system as I'm talking on this conference call tonight, and just commit. Just make a decision. Just get in.

Don't be a wussy. Just decide. That's what we're here for. We actually built a system that we always wanted to be involved in. Now, isn't that refreshing?

Here's the truth of the matter: I'm a simple guy. I don't need much. I lived on the streets for 10 years. I made my living from doing illegitimate business opportunities. It wasn't until I — I finally said, you know what, this ain't working.

I need to get into a legitimate business opportunity. I've always been an entrepreneur. I just needed a place to channel my energy in the right direction. I can go back to that. I can go back to construction.

It doesn't matter to me. My career is going to be built on doing something that I actually want to be involved in. Why did I quit construction in the first place and take a risk to go full time to my business? Because I was burned out. I wasn't doing what I wanted to do.

That's big. Do you know what it's like to have that first sale come through and have that first breakthrough? Do you know what that feels like? If you haven't experienced that yet, then you're missing out.

Guys, go back to the email. Go back to the link. Go back to the Facebook note. Go back to whoever invited you to this call tonight. Click that link and get involved.

What we're going to experience and go through over the course of the next couple of weeks is really an opportunity for you to do a lot if you want to participate in our affiliate program. Really, it is. Guys, go back and click the link and get involved. We're going to get into some of the training now.

Take 30 seconds here, guys. Take 30 seconds if you're not already involved and go and just sign up. Go through the sales funnel and go and just sign up. We're going to take a 30-second break here. We're going to come back and we're going to do some training.

I'm going to talk about, guys, not only am I going to talk about three of my favorite lines that just work over and over again to close sales, I'm going to get into a little more of the psychology with you too. I'm going to teach you not only what to say but why it works. I'm going to give you basically the skills that you can use even to close people without picking up the phone. That's where some of this internet marketing conversion stuff comes into play.

I'm going to teach you kind of how to look through the eyes of your prospects. That's really going to give you the ability to look at your business outside of yourself. So many people look through life through their own eyes and never get a different perspective. That holds people back. I'm going to teach you tonight how to step outside of yourself, be a fly on the wall, and say, what would I feel like or want to do if I was my prospect?

And what would make me either take a left or take a right? I'm going to teach you a little bit about that psychology and how that process works online without picking up the phone, and for those of you who do pick up the phone — here's the disclaimer. Even though I don't really pick up the phone now and prospect, because I don't need to — if I did need to, I would. And there's been a whole lot of times, as a matter of fact, I've built the majority of my career running around and talking on the phone and getting in front of people and doing presentations, and doing not only one-on-one but group presentations.

And there's been a whole lot of experience here that's taught me what works and what doesn't. Guys, I can remember when I sponsored 100 people in a week, the last time. It was the last big organization I built, network marketing, ground grassroots-type style. It wasn't too long ago.

And I made 500 calls in a couple of days, 500 phone calls. You should have seen me. I think my phone bill, it blew up that month. Everybody was mad at me. But the truth of the matter is there's things that work and don't work.

And there's one rule that you can live by. There's a whole bunch of people who get up every day and they say, you know, I'm talking to you, whatever your name is, John — don't you say Susie — they say, how can I waste Susie's time?

We need to know how to not let those people waste your time. You need to know how to stay focused, how to get the tire kickers out of the way so you can focus on people who want to give you money. But more importantly, you need to know how to accept that money and how to ask for that money, how to feel okay about yourself. I also want to help you kind of look past all the bull crap and maybe take a deeper look inside of yourself to see maybe why you feel like you don't deserve money. Now, this is getting into a little bit deeper of the psychology.

But my goal here, and our goal inside of Empower Network, is not just to help you grow a business and make more money, but it's also to become a better person, learn more about yourself. Because when you know and you learn more about yourself from the inside out, you're able to get results. Guys, success starts from the inside out, not from the outside in. It starts from the inside out. Every transformation in life starts from the inside out.

You've got to start there. You can't start from the outside. You can't start just going off with parrot syndrome, as I like to call it, just repeating stuff, thinking that it's going to work. People will see through that stuff.

You have to know how to transform from the inside out. I'm going to talk about that tonight. 30 seconds, guys. Grab a little snack, whatever, a cup of coffee, a piece of paper and a pencil. I'll meet you back in 30.

But heck, who can go to the bathroom, take a drink of coffee and a drink of water all in 30 seconds? If you can, send me an email, and I'd like to talk to you. Anyways, I know there's a bunch of badasses on the call, and I — excuse my French. If my French offends anybody on this call, then maybe you're not quite ready to kind of take it to the next level, because we're passionate around here.

I just say what's on my mind. Sometimes cuss words slip out. I apologize in advance. I always just kind of ask for forgiveness after, and sometimes I apologize in advance. So, guys, let's get into this.

Let's talk about really how to transform your closing game. I can tell you that I started closing sales back in telemarketing. I'm not even going to lie, that's where I started out. I went in and out of drug treatment centers back when I was a kid, and the only jobs that I could get when I was in drug treatment centers was telemarketing gigs.

And I'd just hop around from telemarketing gig to telemarketing gig, and I became top producer in one of them. And I've got to tell you, there's a lot of sharks that hang out in telemarketing gigs. And what I can tell you is that it's not easy to become a top producer in a telemarketing gig because there's always usually some just mac daddy. There's a lot of times they're the females, the women. Go women.

Women rock. They, you know, kill it. And I'll never forget, there was this lady named Trista there, and she would just kind of sit back in her cubicle. And I wouldn't say anything — I don't know that I even saw what her face looked like for like a couple of weeks, because she was just kind of this mysterious creature that just sat back.

And the guy who was the manager would just get up and just mark more lines to her name every day as she closed more sales, because she just sat up there. And of course, you know, as a telemarketing manager, you know, they just smoke pot and just mark the board and, you know, just count their commission. So, you know, that's all he did and that's all she did. And I would try to walk around in front of my cubicle with my dog leash on.

It's what I like to call it — my headset, my dog leash, pacing back and forth, just kind of talking smack all day. And it came to the point where I started to write my own scripts, and I started to, you know, really learn how to talk to people and how to communicate to people. And that's where it all started for me. And, you know, I grew to love the phone and hate the phone.

And nowadays, I try to avoid the phone as much as possible, just quite frankly, because after a certain period of time of going through and earning your badges and earning your stripes, you don't have to prospect 24-7 on the phone like maybe you once did. And we all did when we first got started. And anybody who knows me or who's watched me grow over my career will tell you that, you know, I've burned up more phones than anybody may know. And I still am on the phone all day and night.

It's just not always prospecting. Now it's more masterminding. It's training. It's mentoring. It's working deals.

It's being an entrepreneur. It's not just hard-core prospecting. You just got to go through certain places and walk through certain steps to be able to get to the point where you can have that influence to be able to do that. I just want to tell you up front because I think it's important to tell you that everybody starts somewhere. Dave and I are a couple of young guys in our late 20s and early 30s that were

homeless, living in a van at one time, and I was broke, addicted to drugs on the streets, running the streets and, you know, in and out of drug treatment centers and, you know, running away from home. And we all started somewhere, you know, and no matter where you're at, the skills you possess tonight on this call, you can go just like we went from homeless, broke, beginner, whatever, wherever you're at. Your bottom doesn't have to be our bottom to the point where you can do millions of dollars in sales online, like we've done. But how did I get to that point?

Well, I started to learn how to convert sales. I started to learn the difference between traffic, leads, and actually what really mattered, which was sales. See, a lot of times you see people brag. They're bragging about how much traffic they're getting or how many leads they're getting. And you ask them how many sales they're getting, and they kind of avoid the question, because the truth of the matter is they don't really know what or how to get that traffic and those leads and convert them into sales.

And I'm talking about whether it be online or offline. So let's talk about online a little bit. It's been one of my specialties. It's been something that I was kind of attracted to when I got started, that, you know, I really realized that if I could understand how traffic works and how to convert sales inside of this industry or any industry, just how sales were converted, then I can start to have a lot more success.

And one thing that I want to point out is a great example is the funnel that we built here at Empower Network. And I really want to just give you a brief kind of lesson on what direct response marketing is and why it's so important to understand that, because direct response marketing comes into play with pretty much everything that you do if you want to increase or sharpen your conversion rate. Which, no pun intended, even though my name is David Sharp, I didn't mean to be clever there, but it's really about sharpening your conversion rate. And what I mean by that is basically taking out all of the filler and leaving only the killer.

Okay? Now, that's one of my favorite things to say — all killer, no filler. But a lot of times in direct response marketing, what you'll find is it's very, very key. It's very keyed around words and language. It's very keyed around colors.

It's very keyed around psychology. It's very keyed around emotion. And how I can simplify that for you is tell you that all of the fluff, all of the graphics, all of the stuff that you think matters really doesn't. Making your website look good, making your capture page look pretty doesn't matter. I did a copywriting training a couple of weeks back, and it's actually in the Inner Circle membership.

If you don't have the Inner Circle, you should go and get it now, because you can listen to that copywriting training, and it's absolutely worth a year membership, because if you can understand language, if you can understand what to write and how to write, it'll drastically improve or sharpen your conversions. And how do I close more without ever picking up the phone? Well, the way that I do that is I start to understand how to convert traffic into leads and leads into sales. And a lot of you on this call don't even understand the dynamics

of building a list, what that even means. And if you haven't plugged in or gone and purchased an AWeber account — well, this is if you're an affiliate with Empower Network and want to actively promote, or if you want to collect leads back there, then you should be building your list, okay? And this is just kind of a side note that's above and beyond the closing training. But, guys, you should be building your list. You should be collecting leads.

If you don't own an AWeber account, you can go in the back office. You can get an AWeber account. But, obviously, you'll be making more, hopefully, if you're using your list right. But I started, or needed to learn, the sales cycle. And the same cycle can be applied.

It also can be referred to as a sales system or a sales process or the life cycle of the customer. And, essentially, what you need to understand is it's the only thing that matters. The first thing that matters, if you want to close sales, is you need to build a list of prospects to actually close those sales. And you need to understand that only between 5% and 10% of people, sometimes even less than that, are actually going to buy on the first time around, the first contact. When you talk to somebody for the first time offline, or somebody visits your website for the very first time online, only 5% to 10% of those people are going to buy on the first time around.

Why is it so important to collect their contact information? So you can follow up with them. Just plain and simple, the fortune is in the follow-up. I'm not reinventing the wheel here.

I'm just reiterating the important facts that you need to learn and understand. So, the bottom line was I started to understand the conversion process and how to build capture pages and how to convert leads. And the cool thing is, if you want to use Empower Network as your marketing system and you want to let us do that for you while you sharpen your skills, then you certainly can, because our capture pages and our sales funnels convert really well, okay?

So, what's the key to converting sales online without picking up the phone? Well, it's using a very keen, very sharp sales funnel, okay? What is a sales funnel? Well, a lot of people think that they need all this fluff, all this filler, to be successful on the internet. The truth of the matter is you really don't.

I don't care what your blog looks like. I don't care how much you spend on your logo. I don't care how pretty your website is. The truth of the matter is, I can make money on the internet with three things: a capture page, a sales page, and an autoresponder.

Let me say that again. I can make money online — more money, enough money, it would blow your mind — with three things: a capture page, a sales page, and an autoresponder. Why are those things so important?

I'm duplicating the offline process. You should be duplicating the online process offline. I want to break down the sales funnel and the sales psychology so you understand why Empower Network works so well. Why does it work so well, guys? Well, the truth of the matter is it works so well because we've added a couple of different elements.

We've added the blogging feature and the blogging network so you can generate the traffic. That's what actually brings in the traffic if you don't have a list. Now, of course, blogging is not instant gratification. So those of you who think you're going to post your first blog post tomorrow and be rich in three days, you're wrong. But it's a traffic hub, and we've added that around the capture page and the sales page funnel.

It's part of the sales equation. But we drive all of our traffic, whether you're buying traffic, whether you're buying solo ads, whether you're doing Facebook pay-per-click, whether you already have a list — I don't care, I don't care how big your list is. You should be building it, FYI, just to reiterate that.

I know I've said that 20 times. I'll probably say it 20 more times. You should be at least trying to build your list. We drive all that traffic through a sales funnel. Now, what should you be doing offline?

You should be driving all of your traffic through a sales funnel. Now, offline, do I encourage you to market offline? Well, sure, if you want. I don't need to market offline anymore because I've got enough span and influence.

And so do a lot of the people who have been doing it for a little while, FYI, they did start somewhere. We don't particularly need to market offline as much, although there's a lot of potential there. And some of, if you're network marketing, the biggest organizations have been built offline. But a lot of people who build offline, who are savvy and smart, use the internet to build their network and build their reach and build their span.

They build their network and their list to be able to tell people when they're coming to town. They leverage the platform of the internet to be able to build a bigger list and generate more traffic and generate leads. But again, back to the funnel — you should be creating and sharpening your sales funnel offline as well. That's a whole other call.

Right now, just understand and feel good, warm, and fuzzy inside that you can leverage and borrow the Empower Network sales funnel if you want to be an affiliate and you want to use it as a marketing system that can generate you big, upfront, 100% commission, and as well help you build your list, and at the same time, get this — teach you, influence, and give you the ability to model good marketing. That's probably one of the best features here at Empower — is we actually teach you on a regular basis, whether you're watching our boot camps, whether you're digging into our videos, whether you're going through our blog posts, whether you're in the Inner Circle listening to the leaders tell you what they do to build their businesses, which, if you're not a member of the Inner Circle, you should be.

If you're not a member of the Inner Circle and you are serious about your business, I got to ask you, how serious are you? That's a whole other call, though. But you can dig in and leverage our skill sets, the knowledge, and the mistakes that we've made to understand how to market a little bit better. But again, back to the sales funnel.

I can make more money than you could ever imagine with three things, and that's a capture page, sales page, and a sales funnel. Simple, isn't it? Isn't that simple? Isn't that mind-blowing, that so many people waste so much time doing so much stuff that doesn't even matter? And that's essentially how myself and all of the other leaders who have really done big things online — that's how we've done it.

If you look at Dave Wood, if you look at me, if you look at some of the other online phenoms out there, all their traffic is drove through a specific funnel process, and it's a direct response model. And we take people and we bring them in to low-cost, high-value introductory offers. And that's the best way to get somebody in the door. It's the best way to close somebody. If you don't have any influence, if you don't have any span, and you're out there trying to sell somebody a $1,500 or $2,000 price point item, or even a $500 item can be difficult for some people, you need to rethink your strategy, which is why so many people are leading with Empower Network to build a list.

And build value and build a customer base. So then you can back-end somebody and sell them whatever the heck they want to sell them. But you have to have something that converts up front for you. The cool thing about Empower is we've pretty much perfected that process. And some of the things that we're going to be rolling out to continue to test and tweak and to really help you improve and sharpen your converting ratios is going to blow your mind, guys.

Okay? So the cool thing is, you can borrow that. And we bring people in at a low-cost offer on the front side, high value, high presentation, compelling, intriguing. They take the offer and we take them through the upsell process, which is a whole different story.

But what should you do, guys, when somebody comes in and says yes? What should you be doing? Well, the minute that they say yes, and the minute that they have their credit card out, you should be taking them and offering them something else. Thus, hence, the upsell funnel. Do you have an upsell funnel on your offline game?

Do you have an upsell funnel when you're on the phone? Are you constantly upselling people? Are you constantly looking for the next move? Are you constantly looking for the next sale with the same person? Are you constantly looking to build your customer base and realizing if somebody bought something from you, then they're most likely going to buy something from you again if you actually deliver on what you say?

So many people lose 300%, 400% of their business because they don't have a good upsell process, hence why you should be driving all of your traffic through Empower Network, and then you can do whatever you want with people on the back end. Why? Because we know how to convert sales. We've done it to the tune of $3.6 or $7 million in the last three months.

More money, in my knowledge, than any other affiliate program has paid out in history. Again, we may have a buff on the line that's been around for 30 years, and maybe some other affiliate programs paid out more than that, but I don't know of one. They've been paid out — they've not done total revenue.

I'm talking about paid to the affiliate. So do we know what we're doing? Yeah. Borrow it. Leverage it.

And as you're going through tonight, if you're a brand new member while you're buying, go ahead and take close note to the sales funnel. Understand how it works. Watch it. Watch the videos. Tune everything out.

Turn off your cell phone. Turn off Skype. Turn off Facebook. Get your credit card out, and as you're buying, pay specific attention to what's happening.

Why are we doing certain things? Why is the sales funnel constructed in this way? What's coming next? What do I have an opportunity to buy next that can give me more education about how to close more sales? Because I can tell you that if you buy it, you should pay attention to it, because it did something that made you want to buy.

Whenever I go and read a sales letter and buy it, you want to know what I do? I go back and read the sales letter again. And I say, damn, that was a good sales letter. What in the hell made me buy? And I study it.

So as you're going through tonight, if you're a guest on the line, go back to the person who invited you here. Click the link. Go through our sales funnel and find out why it's converted $3.6 million over the course of the last 90 days. Why did it do that? Well, damn, these guys know how to market.

Maybe I should leverage their ability to market for a while I'm out here trying to learn how to do it. I should do this thing instead of going out there trying to figure all this stuff out on my own. Don't do that to yourself. Let's talk about closing people on the phone. I've used a very specific principle so I can essentially put myself in somebody else's shoes.

Why? Because I'm constantly intrigued with being around people who are closing and selling. I was just buying a bed this last weekend, and the guy was a good salesman. I went to the first place. I bought the first time.

That's my personality. Some people need to think about it. They need to crunch numbers. I don't give a crap about the numbers. I don't want to waste my time going to five different places, haggling for $100 off on a bed.

I just want to buy. I don't know that he recognized that was the type of buyer or the type of personality that I was, but I knew it. He was a good salesperson, though. Why was he a good salesperson? It's because he was personal.

He was personable. He was knowledgeable. I was laying on the bed. The guy was like, oh, I was looking at the Tempur-Pedic. Everybody knows about the Tempur-Pedic.

The guy was like, are you a hot sleeper? If you're a hot sleeper, you don't want to sleep on the Tempur-Pedic, because it sleeps about a degree or two hotter than the rest of the beds. And I thought to myself and asked my girl, she's like, oh, you're a hot sleeper, you don't want to do that, every time I touch you, you're burning up in the bed.

Now, yeah, I'm releasing some of my dirt on this call. I really don't care. That's who I am. I'm a student of the game. This guy was telling me what was going on.

He was telling me all the nitty gritty about the bed industry. I don't know anything about the bed industry. They all look the same to me. This guy was educating me. He made me feel good.

He made me feel like he was the person who had the answers to all of my problems. What was my problem? My back was hurting. I'd been sleeping on this bed. I needed to upgrade.

I wanted to make sure I didn't screw myself and get a bad deal, and then he over-delivered on value. Now, again, back to the personality types, I don't know if he noticed or realized that I was the type of buyer who quickly makes a decision. I'm going to teach you tonight the approach to use with those type of people. Or if he recognized the fact that I wasn't somebody who needed to crunch numbers and shop around, look for the best deal.

And, you know, the majority of those people, I'll be honest with you, in network marketing or affiliate marketing, or if you're trying to recruit them into your deal, aren't going to do much anyways. I mean, you know, a lot of people like to do their due diligence. They're analytical. I get it. Don't take offense to that.

But what I can tell you is that the people who always need to ask so many questions, need to figure it out and talk to their dog, aren't always the people who are going to do big things. The majority of the times, the people who are going to do big things know how to make a decision pretty quickly. And then they go and they take action pretty quickly. Oh, I know there's a couple of you, and I'd love you to death, who take your time in making decisions.

Everybody is not as A, B, C as I am. And you're still a heavy hitter and you've got great potential. But the important thing here is not to get defensive or take anything personally. It's just my experience of what I witnessed inside of the industry. Now, there's some very analytical people.

And the majority of the analytical people who have a lot of success right out of the gate are very influential. They're business people. They sit back. They're the type of people who pick up the phone and just ask somebody for their credit card and they get rid of them. Okay?

The important part about that, though, above and beyond my experience of what I've seen inside of the industry, is you learn to recognize the type of person that you're dealing with. And a lot of times entrepreneurs, people with experience, they like to make decisions fast and they like to be given the facts. They don't want to run around. They don't care about all of your feelings.

They don't care about your dog. They want to know what the facts are, what the loopholes and the weaknesses are, and what it takes to get started. They want to know just the nitty-gritty. When I'm talking to somebody, my time is valuable.

It's precious. I want them to get to the point, period. It doesn't matter if I'm talking to a lawyer or if I'm talking to a homeless person. I want them to get to the point. It's just my personality.

Some people need to be stroked. They need to be kind of padded and kind of walked around the bush a little bit. And they just want to feel lovey-dovey. I like that. I like feeling lovey-dovey, but I also like to be told the facts, to understand who you're talking to.

But anyways, I went in to buy this bed, and yes, I did. I got the top-of-the-line, Sealy, sort of deal. And as I was buying this bed, I noticed that he was talking to another couple. They were laying on a bed, and this guy was a little more standoffish. He was more of the type — not that anything's wrong with this guy, because there's a lot of, you know, a lot of analytical superstars.

But this guy — he was a little more reserved. He was a little more skeptical. And what he needed was somebody to just touch his butt, honestly — not him playing around, he needed somebody to just touch his butt a little bit, just kind of tickle him, just call him by his name, let him know that he was special, and the guy cared about him.

And what I saw the guy doing was calling him sir, acting standoffish, not really kind of making the guy feel warm and fuzzy. And as I decided to buy, this guy was walking out the door. He didn't hook him. He didn't try to loop him back in.

He didn't try to keep him there. He let him go. And that's okay. He was closing my deal. Maybe he was just okay with two deals that day.

I'd have gone for three. But understand that what I noticed with this particular guy is that if you are talking to somebody, first thing that you should do is find out what their name is and remember it. And you should call them by their name every couple of, about every 30 to 45 seconds as you're talking to them, because what that does is bring them back into the conversation and create a little bit more of an emotional attachment to somebody. And what you want to do when you're talking to somebody is you want to create as many emotional attachments as possible.

You want to make somebody feel obligated to buy from you because you've A, given them so much value, and B, because they feel like you're their friend. And maybe you are their friend, I don't know. I'm just talking about closing sales here. A lot of people are natural.

And that's why a lot of times when you're talking to somebody, you want to make sure that they feel like you're their friend. And that's why a lot of times I talk about salespeople being found, not trained. Okay? And I actually learned that from Tony Robbins. He was talking about it.

Good salespeople are found, not trained. But I believe that even if you're not a good salesperson, you can learn some of these skills and implement some of these strategies that I'm telling you about, as long as you're aware of certain things, and you can have success. It's really about how you talk to people. Are you too serious? Are you too tight?

You shouldn't be taking yourself so seriously. After all, nobody else is. I love that. Let me repeat that.

Stop taking yourself so seriously. After all, nobody else is. Selling stuff is a game. Start looking at it like that. If you're looking at it like, if you don't make a sale, you're not going to be able to put food on your table, you're not going to make a sale.

You'll still put food on your table. It will all be all right. It'll all work out in the end. But you won't make the sale being down at the food pantry. Loosen up.

Lighten up. Have people in a fun environment when you're talking to them and selling to them, when they think — building relationships — a lot of times people build the relationship, but then they don't know how to close the sale or ask for the sale. Let's talk about that now. A lot of this stuff is simple stuff, but a lot of people are overlooking it and not having success in closing sales because they're maybe doing one thing, or they're not remembering the other thing, or maybe they're not identifying the type of person that they're talking to.

And usually we've got a small window at the beginning of the conversation to be able to get somebody's attention. Why do you think in some of the sales videos that we do we have a big bold claim or statement in the very beginning, and we do something that's outlandish to get somebody's attention at the beginning of the sales video? Because we want to catch their attention. We want to make a claim or a statement that is going to pull them in and say, huh, how the heck can they do that? Well, that's a great way to start up a conversation too — make a bold statement, do something that's shocking.

Look around at what's working inside of society and start modeling that. What is modeling, for those of you who don't know? Modeling is just essentially looking at somebody and doing what they do. Now there's a little more to it, it's part of the NLP process, neuro linguistic programming. But modeling is a very specific, advanced strategy — or I don't know if strategy would be the right word, but it could be a strategy, it's a tactic that you can use to learn from people and implement what works.

So a lot of people are not doing a lot of things right. But again, how do you deal, or what do you say to somebody, once you start to understand a little bit about their personality? Let me give you the three lines and the three ways to approach somebody. Before I do that, I want to tell you that you have to ask yourself three questions. The first question is — these three questions are absolutely important that you ask yourself tonight, you should write them down as well.

The first one is: how do I feel about money? Broad question, right? But how do you feel about money? Do you feel good about money? Do you feel guilty about money? Did you grow up in an environment where money was always talked about in a negative way? I see so many people, they go to their jobs, they get a 30-cent raise, and they don't know if they deserved it or not, they feel bad for the company — can they afford it? Funny, isn't it? But how does that person feel about money? Not good, bad — as we're all born into money.

Pay attention to how you feel and react when money comes up in certain situations. Do you feel good about it? Do you feel entitled to it? Do you feel guilty about it? If somebody offers you a ride and offers you two dollars or five measly dollars, do you feel guilty about taking it? I'm not talking about your daughter, I'm talking about maybe your friend, somebody who's maybe an acquaintance. I'm not saying not to ever do anything nice for anybody, but do you look the gift horse in the mouth? Did you grow up in a circumstance where money was always dirty — oh, we're so broke, we can't afford it — where, when you finally got some money, you just felt bad about it, felt like you needed to get rid of it, needed to go out and spend it, needed to go out and blow it?

Maybe you don't feel good about money, and maybe it's not your fault, maybe it's nobody's fault, maybe it's just the environment that you grew up in. Maybe you need to be more aware of that. Maybe you need to build your self-esteem more, build your confidence more, so you can go out there and learn to ask for money.

The second question, and this is important, you should write it down: do you think that you deserve some? Simple question, there's a lot to it, and it stems from the first question, how do you feel about money. Ask yourself, do you feel that you deserve some? First question, your first answer is always going to be yes, of course. But the truth of the matter is, deep down, which is stemming from the first question, you don't really feel like you deserve some, which is exactly why when you got that 30-cent raise a year ago on your job, you didn't quite feel like you deserved it, but when somebody gave you that Christmas gift or that birthday gift, you felt so guilty about it, you could hardly say thank you, didn't know what to say. I'm not saying to not be humble, I'm just asking you to take a look at your feelings and emotions of what really happens in those situations.

Money is an uncomfortable subject, because guess what, it's always easy to live life, but nobody wants to talk about money. When money comes up, it's always awkward. Why do you think it's so awkward when it's time to go and tell somebody how much your product is? Well, I don't know, what do you make? How much is my product? You start stumbling and fumbling like a bumblebee. The truth of the matter is you may not feel like you deserve some — simple question, which leads us to the third question: are you willing to ask for some?

Are you willing to ask for some money? Are you willing to ask questions, period? Which is one of the best traits of a good closer, is to always be asking intriguing questions. It's like a counselor, it's like a psychologist. Do you know the best trait, the best quality of a good counselor or psychologist? It's the fact that they have a head full of information. Guys, I've had a head full of information and a body full of dope, or a body full of alcohol, whatever. Oh, I knew better, I still did it. The good quality about a counselor or a psychologist is the fact that they know how to ask good questions.

But do you know how to ask, or are you willing to ask for money along with maybe some good questions? See, these are three questions that you need to ask yourself that can answer a lot of the questions of why you feel so uncomfortable when it comes time to close. See, so many people act like they're closers. That doesn't impress me. I've been closing since I was 12 years old.

Do you understand why people buy stuff? Closing is no big deal. It's not a big deal. I've closed more sales without picking up the phone than most people have picking up the phone. The truth of the matter is I've taken a look inside to understand why I used to feel guilty when I got a $50 or a dollar raise, why I felt bad when I was a kid.

Why I was negotiating my pay, or why I didn't want to negotiate it at all, because I felt so awkward even talking about money. Oh, yeah, I'll take it, oh, that's fine. Do you know how many times that I've heard that or seen that go on? Part of the problem with the economy is there's a few people at the top who know how to ask for money, and the rest of them are so damn scared that they ain't taking none.

$20,000 used to be a big deal to me. Now spending $20,000 is not that big of a deal anymore. Unfortunately, sometimes, but it's the truth. Why? Because I look at money as a thing.

Nothing. I can go make more of it. I've never felt any emotional attachment to it, especially after I started to really look at it for what it was. Nothing. It doesn't define me.

It doesn't make me. It's nothing. Oh, it's something if you don't have it, right? Right. Right.

Tony Robbins said, you know, there's four real things that drive people, that are the most meaningful things inside of people's lives. The first thing is intimate relationships. The second thing is physical health. Third thing is time. The fourth thing is finances.

Money doesn't matter, like I said, except when you don't have any. And the truth of the matter is, one of the reasons why you may not have some, if you're in sales and marketing — if you're in the nonprofit business, or you're Mother Teresa, I don't know, she might make more than I do — but you probably shouldn't be on this call tonight. This is for sales professionals and marketing people who want to make more sales and do more business.

Business and sales drive the world. You need to understand how it works, how you work. So when you understand what makes you tick and what makes you feel guilty, bad, excited, that's when you can start to get more results. So what approaches, what three approaches can you take with people to close more sales? Well, it's simple.

I've got little names for them and everything, because I've been using them for so long that I can't even remember when I first started using them. They've been working so well that I ain't fixed what ain't broke. The first approach is one of my favorites, and I like to call it the Dave Woods special. It's just assuming the sale, real simple. Let me give you exactly what I've said, what Dave has said, what so many people have said.

That's what I've said. It's worked so many times, which is, after you talk to somebody and you ask the right questions, what do you like, what do you think about what you saw, what do you like best about what you saw — you just simply say, sounds like you're ready to get started, and you start filling out the application.

How simple is that? What do you like best about what you saw? Well, man, I tell you what, that 100% commissions thing, man, that thing is serious. I don't care who you are. That's a lot of money.

That blog, that blogging platform, my gosh, I can put my own picture up there and customize it. Holy smokes, I've been trying to set up my blog for six months.

I can get in for $25 and start blogging and generating traffic and leads tomorrow. Sign me up. I'm like, you're ready to get started, where do you want your checks mailed to? Loosen up a little bit.

Stop taking yourself so seriously. After all, nobody else is. So it's called assuming the sale. What are the majority of people doing? Well, they don't assume nothing.

They assume that the person doesn't want to buy. That's why they go into the scenario with kind of a defeated attitude, and they end up defeating their chances of closing a sale, because they go in assuming that the person is going to be skeptical. Or assuming that the person is going to think it's a scam. Or assuming that the person is going to think it costs too much.

What does that mean, cost too much? I know how much money you've got hidden in your mattress. Now go get some of it. Let's get you started.

Why do I feel okay saying that? Because I know that the majority of the people are liars. What do I mean by that? Buyers are liars. How many times have you gone down the street and the homeless guy asked you for money and you said you didn't have none?

Buyers are liars. Come on, guys, come on. Assume the sale. Assume they got the money.

And be appalled when they don't. What do you mean you don't have the money? What do you mean you don't have $25 to get started? Where are you from? Twenty and a five.

Are you kidding me? Assume the sale. Sounds like you're ready to get started. What made you think that? I don't know.

You picked up the phone. You started talking. Sounds like you're ready to get started. Just get in. Stop being a wussy.

First strategy is just assume the dang sale. Second strategy is what I like to call the frank approach. I don't mean cranking her, or cranking anybody, I mean being frank with somebody.

A lot of times somebody starts haggling and fumbling and fumbling. You know what I do to those people? I say, hey, look, I'm going to be honest with you. You're in a situation right now to where you can make a decision, yes or no. I don't really need you to buy anything.

So if you don't want to buy, let's just go ahead and call this quick and we can still be friends. You can implement a little bit of takeaway with the frank approach. What is the takeaway? Well, the takeaway is, hey, it's probably not for you.

It's okay. Take it or leave it. Want to know what happens when you start getting frank and taking things away from people? They want it even more. It's like a baby.

It's like a dog, as a matter of fact, is a better example. The bone can be sitting there all night long. It's sitting there. It stinks.

It stinks, as it was, until the other dog came and picked it up, and then all of a sudden Scruffy went over and had to have the bone, didn't he? He had to have the bone. Well, guys, the same thing happens with your prospects. They start bumbling and fumbling. You say, hey, look, it's okay.

I've got 50 other people to call. Let me go ahead and get you off the phone because I've got people who are ready to get started right now. If you're in a network marketing company, you can say those people can either be above you or below you. It's the frank approach. Frankly tell people who you are, where you are, where you're sitting, and if they're not ready to get started, get off my phone line.

I'm not saying you still can't be warm and fuzzy, because I know there's some Grandma Susies on the line that are just too sweet to just get all mean. And I love you, because guess what, I love Grandma Susies, I love all grandmas, and aunts and even nice men who just don't have a mean bone in their body. And this ain't being mean. This is just not playing the beat-around-the-bush buyer — excuse me, buyers-are-liars game.

It's saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, look, let me just be frank with you here. Another way to do the frank approach is to ask them a question. Let me just be frank with you here: what do you see that you like best about what you saw, and what is keeping you from getting started? I've used that a million times.

What do you like best about what you saw, and what is keeping you from getting started? What do you do? You set them up. You start letting them sell themselves. And then you find out exactly what their problem is.

Hey, man, look, let's just stop BS-ing each other. Let's just stop beating around the bush. Look, what do you like best about what you saw? What is it really that's keeping you from getting started here? Because it sounds like in your voice that it's just something that you actually want.

And if you don't, then let's just — it's okay, I'm still going to love you, we can still be friends. But what do you like best about what you saw, man? And what is it that's keeping you from getting started?

I love that. It's the frank approach. Last but not least, one of my all-time favorites, it's the dummy approach. And this is for those people who've got a million questions. You face them every day.

I don't care who you are or what your name is. You talk to them all the time. Remember what the number one rule in sales is. I'm not saying that we've all got to be sales professionals, but you are selling stuff, buddy. The number one rule in sales is almost every person that you talk to, every person that you come into contact with, woke up that morning with one specific goal in mind: to waste your time.

If you don't believe it, pay attention. And if you don't pay attention, you'll be so broke you won't be able to afford to pay attention. So I like to use the dummy approach in this case. But the dummy approach is just, very simply, when Mr. John Doe Questioneer has got a million questions, I stop him and say, hey, look, wait, Frank, I don't know the answer to that question, but if I can go and find out, are you ready to get started tonight?

It's just a redirect. Hey, look, I'm not a know-it-all, and I don't have to sit here and pretend like I know it all. But I'll go and find that answer out, and when I do, are you going to be ready to get started? What does that do? Let me break down the psychology of what that does for you from a prospect's perspective.

A, it proves to that person that you aren't BSing them. You don't have to know everything. And this is a great rule to live by in life. Do you know how many years I lived my life thinking I had all the answers? The more that I learn now, the more I realize I don't know.

So A, it's showing somebody, man, this guy's real. He's not trying to act like he has all the answers. What else is it doing? It's telling somebody that you're going to go and get the answers for them. How powerful is that?

You're going to work on their behalf. You're going to take your time out of your busy day to go and get the answers for them. And remember, you are busy. You've got 50 other people that you need to call that are ready to get started. And whether that's true or not, it's the posture that you can have whether you say it or not.

Am I telling you a lie? A hundred percent no. But it's the mentality. Remember how do you feel about money? But remember, you're going to get the answer for them.

So what is that doing to somebody? It's obligating them to wait on that answer, and it's obligating them to wait for you to come back so they can buy from you. Hold on real quick — so it obligates people to want to buy from you. It's very, very simple.

Very, very simple, guys. It works in ways that you just wouldn't even imagine. There's a couple of things that you really need to do if you want to have success. And I don't care if you're here to have success in this business. I don't care if you're here to have success in that business.

But what I do care about, and what I think you care about too, is learning how to communicate, be more effective, be more influential, be more persuasive, be more compelling. Ask better questions and learn the strategy and communication patterns that get results. And that's what I think you're here for. In layman's terms, what does that mean? It means how to close more sales and make people love you for it.

And that's exactly what this stuff does. What I've taught you essentially tonight is a formula that, if you took notes — and if you didn't, we'll post it in the Inner Circle. We'll put the free recording up for a couple of days, but we will post it in the Inner Circle for you to listen to over and over again, and for your future customers and prospects to come in and listen to over and over again. And if you use these principles, it is a formula to sell more stuff and have people love you for selling it to them.

And it doesn't matter cost. When you use these principles, it doesn't matter how much you're selling stuff for. Cost starts to go out the window. Guys, today, I charge upwards of $1,000 an hour for my time. Why?

Because I value it so much. And because other people value it. People want it because of the value that I give when somebody actually buys it from me, or uses it, or I'm working on Empower Network, which is obviously what I'm doing right now. So cost starts to become something that you don't even think about. And therefore, you're not embedding that in your prospects.

You're not walking into it with that aroma that you feel like you don't deserve money. That you basically feel so bad about money that you don't even want to talk about it. That you don't want to tell somebody that they can get in for the steal of $500. It's a steal. I'm not even selling it to you.

I'm giving it to you. It's only $1,500. What are you even talking about? Guys, it's the way that you think about sales and marketing. It's the way that you look at the world.

And the biggest problem is that you're looking at the world through your own eyes. That's the biggest problem. You should write that down. My biggest problem is that I'm looking at the world through my own eyes. And I should be looking at the world through my prospects' eyes.

And trying to get as many different perspectives on a daily basis as I possibly can, because what happens when you start to do that is you start to really understand why people are doing what they're doing, where they're coming from, why they're saying the things that they're saying, and how you can overcome them.

This gives you the ability to sell anything, anytime, to anyone. It gives you the ability to overcome all objections, and to make closing, quote unquote, closing, something that is not even an issue to you anymore. You just start to close sales. You just start to get money.

You have the ability to ask for money because you feel like you deserve it. You feel like not only the value that you have, but the value that your products give, are worth every single dime and more. And if you're selling something that's not worth every dime and more, then sell something different. We sell products here at Empower Network that are worth every dime and more. We sell products here at Empower Network that are worth 100 times more than they're worth.

Because people love the products. So go sell them. Proudly. Send lots of traffic to the funnel and let us convert them while you enhance and practice your sales skills. While you go and listen to this training three or four times.

And really understand the psychology and the dynamics behind closing, which we've covered almost entirely in this call. Guys, every single one of you has the ability to become a great person inside a business. A great entrepreneur. A great marketer.

But you have to understand one thing. Marketing and entrepreneurialism is a lifestyle. It's not a hobby. It's not something that you get up and you do for fun. No, you can't.

You can do it as a side business. But I can tell you that the majority of the people who have success doing it as a side business are either part-time or dead-ass serious about it. And if you want to have success, you've got to get dead serious about it too. There's a lot of things in life that you can play about and screw around about. But making money and doing business and having success has to be a passion for you.

And I know that it is, because you're on this call. So that's not really a question. That's not your problem. The problem is, how do I channel my energy in the correct way to get the results that I want? How do I do that in my personal relationships?

So I can tell you that's not easy. We all struggle with that stuff. The goal here is to learn something from it. Do it a little bit better next time. Be a better man.

Be a better woman. Communicate better. Ask better questions. Study the game just a little bit better to understand how people work. And strive not to be understood but to understand people.

And start looking at the world through other people's eyes. And Empower Network, what we're going to embark on over the course of the next year, is a journey to become more successful human beings. Money is not an issue when you're on that path. When you're on that journey, earning income, making money no longer becomes your problem. Your problem becomes, how can I become a better student of the game?

How can I use my time more wisely? How can I stop paralyzing myself with crap and listening to people that don't know what they're talking about, and falling for the next best thing, and getting screwed around with the next hot deal, and staying one place long enough to actually get something from it? Guys, we're about to embark on a journey that's going to affect more than 17,000 or 18,000 people, like we've done so far. We're about to embark on a journey that's going to touch, influence, impact people all over the world. And we want to know if you're coming with us.

If you're not, that's fine. It's not going to hurt our feelings. You know, there's hundreds of thousands of people who are dying and waiting for you to come to them with a message like what we have, which essentially is, let's teach you how to build a business and have a life. Let's teach you how to close sales without having to sound like that guy we were describing at the beginning of the call.

Nobody wants to be. I saw a funny picture on Facebook, I think my friend Stephanie Denke posted it, about — and of course it was one of those pictures that were being shared — about what your friends think you do. There was a picture of the used car salesman, what the world thinks you do.

And there was a — I forget what that picture was — what your mom thinks you do. There was a picture of, you know, the guy in a suit and tie or something. And what you actually do — there was somebody who had the phone, and, you know, their hair was sticking straight out.

They looked stretched out. The truth of the matter is it doesn't have to actually be like that. And what happens is, and this is the beautiful part about life and business, you learn to start expecting situations where they're not that big of a deal, because you've encountered them before and you've been here before. It's not that big of a deal when somebody comes back and says they don't have the money. Who's talking about you don't have the money?

Of course you don't have the money. Go get it and let's get started. So many people, when they first come in, get freaked out about the smallest things. What you're going to experience here at Empower Network is us sharing our experience with you so you can experience it yourself. We're going to encourage you to experience it yourself.

But you can also borrow our experience. Now, there is no substitute for your own experience, but you can borrow our experience. You can get on these calls and invite your prospects. Invite your prospects and your people to these calls every single Monday night. We haven't missed a Monday since we started.

And learn the strategy. And let us close sales for you. Throw people through our funnel and let's help you make some money. And again, let's help each other become better human beings over the course of 2012, because what we're on is a journey to become better marketers, entrepreneurs with a lifestyle, and a journey to become better people. And when we become better people, and we strive every single day

to learn the ins and outs and learn the dynamics of becoming more successful human beings, finances is not on the top of the list. Did you notice when I read off the four most important things in the world, or to human beings, the last one that I mentioned was financials? Right now, to a lot of you, the first one that I should mention was financials. But I mentioned four for a reason.

Because I was reading it off my list. If you're reading it off your list, maybe financials is at the top. Maybe intimate relationships is second. Maybe your physical health is third and your time is fourth. Your time doesn't matter right now because you're spending it all on a grind, spinning your wheels, paralyzed, not really being productive.

Now do I work 15 hours a day? You're damn right, because I'm an entrepreneur. It's a lifestyle. I'm passionate about it. And it's not just a hobby.

It's what I do. It's not my job. But I'm productive. And I'm always moving forward because I know how to channel my energy. I know when I get a phone call,

cut it down to the brass bones of what the phone call is about, and don't let people waste my time. You've got to figure that stuff out too. And the best way to do it is surround yourself with people who understand that, have been there before, and can lead you in the right direction. And that's why we do what we do.

That's why we're constantly releasing videos, conference calls, new products, new training, new stuff that actually will give you measurable results inside of your life and your business. That's why this community is so valuable. That's exactly why. So if you're on the fence,

you haven't gotten started, you should. Just go click the link and get in right now. And if you're on the fence and you haven't really put your foot on the pedal, tonight's the perfect night to do it. This month is the perfect month to do it. 2012 is a perfect year to do it.

Because isn't it nice to think about where you can be this time next year, if you spend a whole year channeling your energy in the right places, focusing on your time and your conversations, what you're saying to people, making sure that you're always spending your time wisely, focusing on things that get results,

and learning how to become a better student of the game — which is exactly what made the difference inside of my business and my life. Which is why I'm talking to you at 28 years old on a call at 11-something, 10:25 at night Eastern time. And two years ago, I was driving a 1990 Ford F-150 with the paint peeling off, swinging a hammer on a freaking construction site, and couldn't afford to pay attention. Now I still can't pay attention because I'm severely ADD.

But I've learned how to channel that curse into a gift. We've all gotten gifts on this call tonight. How are you using your gifts? How are you communicating with people? When somebody says something to you, do you get emotionally involved?

If somebody says something to you about an objection, about something they don't like about your business, and you take it personally — would you look at it for what it is and quickly act on it? Sharply and swiftly react to it, and convert that person into either a believer or a customer. What we're in the business of doing is creating solutions and really selling people on believing in what we're doing, believing in themselves.

And if you can empower somebody, if you can make somebody feel comfortable and reach out and spend a little bit of time with somebody to make them feel like you care a little bit more than the next person, to be successful — that's what this business is about. It's about connecting with people. And you can connect with people offline physically, and you can also learn how to connect with people online automatically, if you understand a lot of the psychology of closing and what gets people to actually do things like get out their credit card and buy.

What we're going to teach you inside of Empower Network is how to understand all of those concepts, which is what I've spent a lot of time on this call tonight doing. So here's what I'm going to encourage you to do: go back, re-listen to this call a couple of times. If you haven't fully committed inside of Empower Network, commit. Get inside of the Inner Circle. What I've done, and Dave's done, and some of the other big-time leaders inside of this industry have done, is we have followed a very specific mindset.

We really mapped that out in the Fast Start training. If you haven't watched all those videos, you should, because what we've done is we've downloaded audio and we've listened to some sort of educational training audio program on a daily basis. Why do we do that? Because we're moving. We're always on the go.

We don't want to be tied up to our computer or whatever. So I would encourage you to listen to a piece of audio training for at least 30 minutes a day while you're washing the dishes, exercising, whatever you're doing. Get in the Inner Circle. Download those audios and invest in your education. And then get inside of the Costa Rica Intensive and really understand some of the real concepts, the real advanced, the full circle, the whole pie, the whole enchilada, the full monty of really what guys like I've done.

Guys like Dave Wood has done. Guys like Orrin Woodward has done. Guys like the MLM Brothers have done, because we broke down in Costa Rica at an intensive advance retreat for about ten entrepreneurs, back in mid-2012, live in person. Didn't know that we were going to sell the course. Didn't know that it was going to get released to the public.

But it did. And all of that information is inside of the Costa Rica Intensive. We talk about the nitty-gritty of conversions and sales funnels, copywriting. What to write on a capture page. The two types of headlines that you put on a capture page to convert leads.

Dave talks a lot about hypnotic language patterns. Orrin Woodward gives you hours of outsourcing training. Then he breaks down every little thing on the whiteboard. If you don't own that product, why don't you? It's only $500 one time.

It is a steal. We were going to charge $1,500 to $2,000 for that product. We're literally giving it away. As a matter of fact, we're not giving it away unless you're buying it from me. Your sponsor, your affiliate, is giving it away.

Pay them for it. Invest in your future. And if you're not blogging on a daily basis, why aren't you? That is going to pay off for the people who are blogging on a daily basis a year from now. Same time.

It's going to pay off for a lot of people a lot sooner than that, because that is your traffic source. That is your funnel. It will help you convert those leads. Some of the things that we're going to be releasing here over the course of the next couple of weeks and months is really going to give you a lot more support.

Guys, we are just getting started. If you're listening to this call a year from now, you're going to be crapping your pants because we've done so much. So guys, commit. Make a decision. Take the notes that you took tonight and implement them.

Go and re-listen to this training over and over again, a minimum of three to four times. Use what you learned. And guys, go out there. Make a difference today. Not tomorrow.

Today. Tomorrow will never come, guys. Dave Sharp, co-founder of Empower Network. On behalf of Dave Wood, my partner, all the leaders, all the members, we love you.

I'm going to unmute the line. We're going to all scream 100% commission. I love you guys. Good night. We'll talk to you soon.

Look out for the emails. Make sure that you're watching your email box like a hawk. Don't let your email screen let you down. Love you guys. 100% commission.

100% commission.