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HOW TO SELL
by GARY VAYNERCHUK

 @garyvee
   
1 year ago · 15 min read

If you want to learn how to sell, how to win in business, and how to get new
customers, this article is for you. 
HOW TO SELL IN 2019 SUBSCRIBE TO MY PODCAST

Sales, sales,
GARYsales.
VAYNERCHUK
MENU 
It’s something I don’t talk about enough, but it is absolutely the foundation
of my career. I’m challenging myself to go deeper in 2019, because it is
1000% the bedrock of business. And if you don’t understand that, you will
lose.

When I think about making something happen in the world, i.e selling
something, getting a donation, getting voted for in an election, whatever the
“transaction” is, I always break down my strategy into sales and marketing.
Obviously, and for anyone reading this, you know that I spend an enormous
amount of time talking about brand, the importance of marketing,
awareness and gathering attention which sometimes distracts you from my
foundation in sales. Marketing and branding is only one part of the
equation. Ultimately you need to facilitate transactions if you want to stay
in the game.  Numbers don’t lie and sales is absolutely the foundation of
your business. There is simply no other way.

So there’s a few tried and true strategies, tactics, learnings and interesting
parallels about “how to sell” that I want to share with you. I have been a
salesman my whole life, from operating lemonade stands to selling baseball
cards, wine and multi-million dollar scopes at VaynerMedia. I can safely say
that over the last 35 years I have seen an enormous amount I have sold
to the masses and to some of the most important CEO’s CMO’s and Brand
Managers of Fortune 100 companies looking to optimize their return and
improve their ROI.

The vulnerability with marketing is that sometimes it can be very up in the

clouds and no one understands the direct KPI. What is the transaction?
Where is the sale?
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So, that’s what I want to focus on, because I think a lot of people here could
have a lot more success if they eliminated a few important things.

WHY YOU CAN’T GROW YOUR BUSINESS

#1 Laziness. There’s a lot of shortcomings when sales are automated. In
most businesses, it’s a high-touch 1-1 conversation where you are
attempting to bring value to the other person. It’s not a LinkedIn messenger
bot that is going to do the trick.  

We see so much of this in 2019 especially. LinkedIn is huge this year and the
organic reach is something every business owner in the B2B world (and
even some in the B2C world) should be taking advantage of.

But the problem is, many people on Linkedin don’t actually know how to
use it. They’re on the platform spamming out message templates to a large
amount of people, or they’re leaving “fluff”
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posts to build their following.

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When you try to automate a 1-1 conversation, you’re vulnerable.

#2 Being tied down by the idealistic vision of how you made your money in
the past. The world is changing! And the way you were successful yesterday
definitely won’t be the way you are successful today. You need to look
forward and become utterly unromantic about what you did in the past that
got you “here.”

The one thing I’m most passionate about, and I think many of you guys and
gals reading this can agree with, is that in the landscape of sales, all of the
communication in our society has had a fundamental shift over the last
decade.
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Technology has changed the way we sell, and most of your actions as
salespeople aren’t rooted in that reality.

For example, if you’re cold calling people, you can really improve your close
rate by taking a couple of hours to gather context on the people you’re
calling. Use LinkedIn to see where they went to school, or use Facebook to
check out what sports team they’re interested in.

The options are all out there, you just have to go out and take it!

SALES IS ABOUT ATTENTION

You’ve heard this one before but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Your
religion in sales has to be attention. Before you even think about how to sell
your SaaS product or your wine, or your agency, or your open house or
your book, or whatever it is, you have to understand where the consumer
actually is.
Where do people spend their time? IsTOitMYLinkedIn?
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Twitter?
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Is it at an event? On YouTube? A sports game? Their office in midtown? Tell
me where they actually are and more importantly, where do their eyes and
ears go? The unbelievable arbitrage of the internet now allows you to truly
“know” more than ever about the end consumer and then react to that
information to reach anyone at anytime. It doesn’t matter if they are the
CMO of BMW or Rick the carpenter in Hunterdon New Jersey. 99% of the
time your customer is going to be searchable and accessible online. And for
those of you that don’t know, consumers now spend 10 hours a day in front
of their screen with roughly half of that time spent on a mobile device.
Clearly the internet, and our glowing black boxes have our attention

HOW TO MANAGE CUSTOMER

RELATIONSHIPS. AUTOMATION IS NOT THE
FULL ANSWER
A stunning amount of people reading this article are not going to be as
successful in sales, because they’re not willing to work hard enough. They
love the automation. They love all these tools, and bots, and auto-replies
and apps and services and startups and CRM’s that they think are going to
solve the problem. But the truth is, sales is about people. You have to build
relationships first. You have to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and
empathize with their position. No app is going to teach you that.

Real relationships take real time. You’re going to have to spend hours trying
to interact, engage, and provide value in order to win. 

Think about it like winning friendships in real life. You can’t talk to
someone once or twice and expect them to be your best friend or ask them
to marry you. Relationships in real life take time. And if you want to achieve
that kind of depth in business, you’re going to have to provide value and
engage.

Luckily, through social media and the internet, you can do just that. You can
create and distribute content, you can search employees by title or name,
you can identify customers bySUBSCRIBE
geo-location, or individuals who like products
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that fit your niche. All the information is there, you just have to go online
MENU GARY
and figure VAYNERCHUK
it out. I’m as bullish as anybody on AI and CRM’s and message 
bots but those things are only going to put you on third base. It’s your
emotional intelligence and tact and unscalable human effort is what takes
you home.  

B2B SALES WORK THE EXACT SAME WAY

The problem I think people encounter when they consume my content, is
that they don’t think what I talk about maps to B2B sales. I’m operating
150M dollar revenue business, so 90% of my time is spent selling B2B. It’s
my bread and butter as an entrepreneur, and the engine that powers my
800 person marketing agency/holding company VaynerX.
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The one thing a lot of people don’t realize is that the same tactics for B2C
apply to the B2B environment. In fact, I think it’s actually a lot easier to sell
B2B than B2C. With platforms like LinkedIn, you can literally filter by
industry, job title, location or company to find exactly who you are looking
for.

If you’re agency in New York, you can go to LinkedIn, type in New York City,
and filter by profiles who have the title “Marketer, or Marketing” in their
headline.
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You send 1 free message via InMail, and now you’ve got the ball rolling.
(keep in mind people spam on LinkedIn and email every day of the week. The
key is for your opening message to bring value instead of extracting value.) i.e
Starting the conversation with a free tidbit that might help their business by
saying “Have you thought about?” is you giving value vs. you saying “Can I
see you to sell you something?” which is trying to set something up that
brings me value instead. 

And the greatest thing about B2B is there is almost always a

disproportionate return. You can sell scopes for hundreds of thousands of
dollars or even millions by convincing 1 key decision maker within a single
company. You don’t need 20,000 people to say “yes” like you would if you
were selling t-shirts or a book. You need 1 CMO to agree that you’re agency
is going to be their new AoR and you are off to the races.
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SALES IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS AND

RESEARCH
Like anything else in life, I think it comes down to putting in the work,
providing value, building relationships and doing the research. Nowadays,
you can apply the same tactics of building your brand or personal profile to
selling someone in the B2B space. Once you have found their LinkedIn page,
take a second to see if they have an Instagram or Twitter. Do the research
and understand what they care about and what they consume.

The secret to social media, is that everyone is posting content about what
they love, what they care about, what their interests are, or what they are
trying to accomplish for FREE. Find someone’s Twitter page and look at
what they share. Are they posting about sports, food, the movies or music?
Are they re-tweeting content from a personal friend or another client of
yours? Are they tweeting pictures of TO
SUBSCRIBE their honeymoon or maybe their dog?
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Try to get a sense of what they are into so that you can interact and engage.
MENU GARY VAYNERCHUK 
Start liking their content, replying, retweeting and trying to provide value.

They love the New York Jets and so do you? Comment about Quincy
Enunwa’s touchdown last week. This builds awareness and the beginning of
a relationship. Without asking for anything in return, begin to provide
value.

Answer tweets when they have a question, heart a photo when you have
time. All of this really matters.

One day they just might click on your profile and see that you are sales rep,
or a VP or biz/dev person at a company. They might just need your services
which is when either you or they reach out.

Go in soft, provide value, provide value, and build relationships. I can’t tell
you enough how many times I’ve won big business through Twitter.

I have tracked CMO’s, followed their content, engaged, liked, commented

and replied, built a relationship over a 3-5-9 month period which has
opened the door for me to either discuss or win their business at some point
down the line. It’s also an opportunity
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give them insights on new platforms, because the ultimate game of sales
MENU GARY VAYNERCHUK
plays forever. The reason I have done so well in sales, is because I don’t do 
things with the expectation of a return. I do things to provide value, no
matter what.

It’s the same thesis that was described in my second business book, The
Thank You Economy. It’s the notion of  providing so much upfront value to
an individual, you can actually guilt them into buying shit, especially if
all your actions are predicated on not expecting anything in return. When
the energy of your tactics is to convert, you will most likely lose. When your
energy is to disproportionately bring value and let the chips fall where they
may, you will win. It will change your behavior, it will change the energy of
the execution and it will change you game.

YOU CAN’T SELL THE UNSELLABLE

One of the most fascinating aspects ofTOsales,
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understand, is that in truth, you can’t sell the unsellable. When I try to
MENU GARYthe
understand VAYNERCHUK
ecosystem and analyze why people aren’t winning, it’s 
because they have built an enormous mental barrier for themselves around
partnering with the right brand, or selling to a specific CEO. The truth is, the
real world doesn’t work like that, and you can’t be romantic about who
gives you the opportunity. There are a million and one reasons why a
certain company or executive won’t work with you. Even if your product is
10X better than the competition. Perhaps their brother-in-law is married to
the CMO of their in house agency, or the investors in their company have a
long a storied relationship with companies in the midwest. Or maybe they
have multi-year commitments and can’t break their contract. You have to be
practical when it comes to sales, and you have to be willing to take the
opportunities right in front of you.

Of course I want to work with every Fortune 100 brand, but because of the
market dynamics, and complicated politics that are in play, it’s easier said
than done.

I come into every business meeting feeling massively optimistic that the
person on the other end is going to buy from me. And when they don’t, I
immediately “check out.” I’m not romantic about it.
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There’s just no point in wasting time on trying to sell someone who is

opposed. It’s the same reason that CEO’s of publicly traded companies don’t
make investments that hurt their stock price, in the year that they are
operating. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just the truth, and if you
want to succeed in business you need to let that go.

Stop debating or “convincing”, and let history and merit be the judge.
BRANDING IS THE BEST WAY TO SELL
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A lot of salespeople don’t think about brand building. They think a lot about
GARY VAYNERCHUK
MENU 
how to convert people on a phone call or in an in-person meeting. But they
don’t think about the long term relationship that can be formed via brand.

For example, I’m able to command high rates as a speaker because I don’t
sell my audience courses. I don’t sell people on mastermind groups. That’s
why I have so many who are willing to come and pay for a conference ticket
to hear me speak, and why events are willing to pay me so much. I built a
personal brand.

The biggest companies in the world don’t actually sell. They brand. Think
about Apple, Tommy Hilfiger, or Mercedes Benz. There’s a certain image
that comes to mind when you think of their products, and that’s what
ultimately drives you to purchase. Not a sales funnel.

ADAPT DON’T COMPLAIN

GUYS! THE MARKET IS THE MARKET IS THE MARKET

And the fact of the matter is, you don’t get to dictate where the consumer
spends their time, money or attention.

It goes back to the same idea of marketing in the moment we live.

You have to use the right tool for the job.

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You don’t get to decide whatever 13 to 25 year olds want to do with their
hair, their clothes, their bodies, their cell phones, their friends, their time,
or their money. You just have to observe and react.

If you want to win in sales, you need to be utterly unromantic about

consumer behavior. You need observe, analyze and adjust to where the
consumer actually is. No one can deny that social media takes up our time.

If every 14 year old in America spends 8 hours a day on Instagram, then so

be it. You are not going to beat the market. You just have to accept the truth,
and adapt to it. 

And if you are intelligent, and you understand that you have no control
over THE MARKET, then you begin thinking about where the potential
upside is. There’s nothing I can do about the fact that people like taking
selfies. It doesn’t matter what I think social media and its positive or
negative effects on youth. It doesn’t
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it.
MENU GARY VAYNERCHUK 
Now, as I contemplate that, what would be a good business idea to arbitrage
those opportunities? That is exactly how Snapchat was born. It’s the truth
and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

If you want to win, you have to be practical with your understanding and
execution. You have to go where the consumer actually is, and use the right
tools to reach them. If you know that 2.1 Billion people spend their time on
Facebook .. It’s time to consider running a Facebook Ad. If you’re a fashion
company that plays off of it’s aesthetic, maybe it’s time to make an
Instagram account and get serious about it. If you’re a B2B CMO of an
agency, LinkedIn is the place to go.

If you’re targeting people above 30, email is still works!

You have to figure out where people actually are and deploy all of your
energy into arbitraging that opportunity.
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And when the tides change… Move on. You have to learn to be unromantic
about whether it’s Facebook today or Snap tomorrow. Whether it was was
Vine or Tumblr or Vidler in the beginning and now it’s Instagram, HQ,
Anchor or Musical.ly.

That’s my advice, That’s what you need to do!

(P.S) One of the more detailed executions in sales (a.k.a business

development) that I have put out in recent months is the $1.80 strategy for
Instagram. Here is a link.

Thanks for reading!  

This article was powered by TeamGaryVee

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55 Comments Sort by Top

Add a comment...

Frederico Freitas
Gary, thanks for the advice, I'm still digesting it.
But one thing, would you like another illustrator ?
I've worked before translating your videos, and did one illustration of you, I want to do some
illustrations for you, you can use better quality ones.
@fredbisonart on instagram,
cheers, apreeciate it.
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 7 · 2y

Maestro Benir
You're being kind. Art and Design are GaryV's weakest areas! (sorry kids) - I appreciate
his style of advisory (I prefer Tony Robbins tact, actually) - but, I wish he'd UP his DESIGN
IQ - add some value (back) to the world of art, design in commerce. We've lost
considerably in this window of 'lowering-the-bar' tactics in Advertising and Tech _
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 5 · 2y

Wesley Scoville
Maestro Benir As Gary Said, the market is the market. I wouldn't say it's a lowering of the
bar technique, it's just that the ROI today is much lower for "fancy design." Glory days are
over.
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 8 · 2y

Frederico Freitas
Wesley Scoville is not about being fancy, is having some quality, I understand the text
here is the part that brings value, but if you need images to illustrate the ideas, do in a
good way.
The person that made the images has poor knowledge about drawing, composition and
design, and it looks like doesn't matter if it is a crappy image or not.
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 4 · 2y

Show 5 more replies in this thread

 Chris Peabody SUBSCRIBE TO MY PODCAST

Thanks for the constant content. I know a lot goes into this and we all come from different walks
of life, but it's all relevant. Much love - Chris
MENU GARY VAYNERCHUK 
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Misty Ford
Thanks so much Gary. It's motivation and inspiration from people like you that make all the
difference.hugs
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 2y

Iulian Barbulescu
Awesome stuff! Very actual!
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 2y

Vicki Jeavons
People are still not getting jab jab jab right hook, they think punch me in the mouth with a
business card is networking!
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 1 · 2y

Martin Iyooh
The TRUTH most salesmen hates.... Most people always want it their own way #badash Thanks
GARY
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 2y

William Alvarado Quinzán

You way you like the 51/49 strategy but you do the 1000/49 strategy love what you do and how
you realy help the people and personaly help me every single day with your content!!
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 2y

Fitz Hardy
Great article Gary. The amount I have learned from you in the last 6 months has been literally
insane. Why is it insane? Because it is free gold dust! Every time I take your advice and apply it I
get results. For now it is at the micro level in terms of results, but I know over time it will convert
to the macro level. I truly thank you.
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 2y

Gracious Store
You are right, marketing is changing, the winners are those who are fluid and flow with the market
by adapting their tactics and strategies to meet the demand of the time
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 2y

Megha Jain
What an amazing read Gary. Sets a framework for all the salespeople to work upon. Thank you !
Like · Reply · Mark as spam · 1 · 2y

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