How To Become Millionaires At Make It Happen University With Spencer Lodge
Posted by John Livesay in podcast0 comments
Episode Summary:
It’s not rocket science. The real reason people don’t buy from you has nothing to do with price or time; it’s because they don’t trust you. If you want some real insights on how to build up your confidence up to your first million, Spencer Lodge has some great tips on how to do that. He shares his expertise in selling at Make It Happen University. He’s also a leader in the international financial services and sales industry with over 24 years of experience although if you look at him, you would never know it. Spencer has personally trained thousands of people to build some of the largest and most successful financial consultancies. His university, “Make It Happen”, was born to give entrepreneurs and employees the tools they need to succeed, literally training people on how to become millionaires. Feeling skeptical? It’s your call. But just so you know, Spencer’s journey started with a working class kid from a working class environment. If that kid with limited resources made it, then with your current assets in business, so can you!
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Our guest on The Successful Pitch is Spencer Lodge, who’s an expert in selling. He has got a whole university called Make It Happen for a reason. He said, “When you write a book,” which he’s written a new one called, It’s Not Rocket Science, “you’re creating content that’s valuable to read versus creating something valuable that you want to share.” It’s all about not taking criticism personally. He has some real great tips on how to do that. He said, “The real reason people don’t buy from you has nothing to do with price or time. It’s because they don’t trust you.” He gives us insights into how to build up our confidence and more importantly, being aware of how people receive what you say when you say it.
Listen To The Episode Here
How To Become Millionaires At Make It Happen University With Spencer Lodge
I’m honored to have my guest, Spencer Lodge, who is a leader in the international financial services and sales industry with over 24 years of experience, although if you look at him, you would never know it. He looks like he’s just out of school. He’s personally trained thousands of people and help them build some of the largest and most successful financial consultancies. He delivers expert advice for clients and investors around the world. He’s dedicated his career to building and training people to achieve their full potential. In 2015, he decided it was time to spread his wealth with people who want to learn about the recipe to success. Make It Happen, his university, was born that give entrepreneurs and employees the tools they need to succeed. He’s done so many amazing things. He was the top regional director for seven years running, he’s a top wealth manager globally for multiple years, and he’s literally trained people on how to become millionaires. Spencer, welcome to the podcast.
John, thank you for that lovely introduction.
I had the pleasure of being on your Facebook Live show. I’ve had guests from Australia and Israel but never anybody from Dubai, so you’re the first. Would you take us back, Spencer, to your own story of origin? It can go back as far as you want in school. Did you always know you wanted to “make it happen?”
The journey starts with a working-class kid from a very average working-class environment. To be honest with you, I was bullied quite severely at school and suffered trauma but was very grateful in the end because the bullying taught me resilience and taught me that, “I’ll show you. I’ll prove it to you,” type of mindset. I wasn’t very good at school. I never missed a day. I wasn’t one of those kids that played or anything but I wasn’t very good at school. I left school. I wanted to become a ski instructor. I did that.
One August when there wasn’t any snow, my mother kicked me out of bed and said to me, “It’s time to get a proper job or proper career.” I was like, “I have one, mother. How dare you?” She said, “No, seriously, it’s time.” She ran a recruitment consultancy back in London and so I didn’t have much choice but to go for some interviews and find out what I wanted to do. I fell into selling and then going for a job interview with these two guys. I had no idea what to do or what to say. It was the first suit I ever bought and worn. Remembering back, it was something like dark green, a horrific color. God only knows what people must have thought of me. The guy took one from his pocket and said to me, “Sell me this pencil.” I was like, “Are you serious?” He was like, “Yes, sell me the pencil.” I don’t remember what happened but on the back of that, I was very lucky to get offered the job. I was the trainee photocopier, an office equipment salesperson.
Make It Happen University: Financial service is interesting because everybody wants to make money, so you could appeal to people’s sense of greed.
I worked in London. It was a competitive environment, but I didn’t know what competition was. I didn’t know what tough was. My life was knocking on the doors of 100 companies every morning and my patch said, “Easy 31 Postcard in London.” Every afternoon, I had to make 100 cold calls and 99 people would say no or they would swear at me. One person would say yes, and that one person was enough. I was taught to understand the 99 noes led always to a yes. That’s what happened. I then became okay. I wasn’t a massive success. I was young, in my early 20s. I was earning decent money, better than most of my friends were earning, so I was quite pleased with myself. Then the opportunity came to go and work in financial services in the Far East. Because I had some experience overseas as a kid, my dad worked in the oil industry overseas, so I’ve been to where he was living and spent time with him, it excited me to go and see a different country and work in a different country.
I then went to the Far East to Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, across the Africa, Europe, South America and now the Middle East, so ten countries all through those years. What I found along the way is that first of all, financial service is interesting because everybody wants to make money, so you could appeal to people’s sense of greed. When you’re prospecting, when you get 99 noes and one yes in the photocopier industry, you would often get 50 noes and 50 yeses, because people were interested to learn more. Getting your foot through the door back in the early ‘90s wasn’t as difficult. Then I learned my craft. My boss said to me, “None is going to trust a 23-year-old kid looking like you. They are not going to trust their money with you, so you have to make sure that you’re a hotshot.” I went and studied and studied. He used to give me a book every couple of days and he said, “Unless you’ve the read and you can tell me about it, I don’t want to talk to you.” I was busy learning.
About six months into the role, I knew more about financial services than most people who have been doing it for ten years because I’ve taken time as part of my learning experience to study. I wasn’t given an option, so whether it’s was the equity market, the commodities market, it didn’t matter what it is, I knew about it. I was this youngster with limited life experience but a lot of essentially theoretical and academic experience and knowledge in financial services. Then I went on to be pretty successful at that. I then became successful at that and was one of the best in the industry that I was noted to be. I built various sales teams. What happened after all of that massive success, something else kicked in, which was the cause of the biggest change in my life, and that was my ego. My ego grew out of control. I became arrogant. I thought I was above others. That was an ugly thing. I remember I sat down with my boss one day and he said to me, “After sixteen years of working together, you’ve become too big for the company. You have to go.”
It was truly devastating when that experience happened to me. However, it was the first time in my life that I’ve got time to sit and reflect. Whilst I was recovering from my ego being bashed, I looked back at all of the things I’ve done and I worked out the things that I enjoyed and the things that I probably didn’t enjoy as much. I’ve been teaching people for years how to sell, “Is there a way that I can put it into some form of format and structure so that people can learn themselves?” Then I came up with this ridiculous idea of producing an online sales training university. That ridiculous idea was in a studio recording 400 videos about selling, literally everything from what you wear, how you wear it, all the way through to how you present yourself to how you prospect, how you market, how you use social media, how you close the prospect, how you look after your clients, everything in there, A to Z of selling. I launched it in December 2016.
What I find so interesting is you talk about learning through reading a book from your old boss and it’s one of the sales behaviors that is now in Make it Happen University where you were talking about where you’re talking about reading a book a week. You have a new book coming out. You went from reading a book to now writing a book, so that’s always an interesting journey.
Writing a book always sounds like a great idea until you start. There is a lot to it. You have to find out and think it through. It is not just a case of downloading your memoir. You have to put stuff together that’s valuable for people to read rather than valuable for you to share.
[Tweet “Create content people want to read versus what you want to share.”]
That’s true whether you’re writing a book or creating content for an online course or going out in a sales pitch or pitching to get your startup funded. Whatever it is, what you’re saying here, Spencer, is make it about who’s reading your book or what the audience is and not about what you think is important. Would that be accurate?
Spot on, absolutely. You’ve got to create something that people want to get engrossed with. When you pick up a book and you read a really good book, you are one chapter in and you cannot put the thing down. That’s a good book. It doesn’t matter what the subject matter. That, to me, is a good book. That, for me, is what I’m trying to create with the book that I’ve got coming out because I wanted it to be something that people would be drawn into as they start to read it. They could learn a bit about my story but how I accomplished what I accomplished and the basic principles that I’ve used along the way and essentially the skills that I’ve learned and how I apply them.
What’s the title?
Because I’m well -known for saying this and have been known for saying this for 25 years, the title is It’s Not Rocket Science.
I love it but there is a science to it. You don’t have to be a genius to understand is the takeaway I get.
Everything I know is literally skills-based. I’ve learned skills; there are soft skills, technical skills, the process-driven skills, the stuff that everybody can learn, which I did. I hear a lot of times, and you would have heard this, John, people say, “I can’t be a sales person. I’d never make a sale person. I don’t have the gift of the gab. I’m not an extrovert character like you.” When I look at successful salespeople that I’ve been inspired by over the years, some of them have been incredible introverts. A lot of salespeople are like standup comedians. A standup comedian is an entertainer on stage when he is performing and then when they come off stage, they become somewhat withdrawn and into themselves. They are not so gregarious when they are not digging with their clients. When I look at brilliant salespeople, it is not about what they say, it’s about what they learn. Invariably, if you are going to see people for the first time, your job is to try and find a solution for people’s problems. Your job is not to come in with your briefcase full of products and try to sell you product. That’s what the stereotype is, isn’t it?
Like the Fuller Brush man here in America back in the day, or the knives or whatever it is, people selling jewelry on the street with their coat. It’s that mindset that turns so many people off. You’re changing the perception of what it’s like to think of yourself as a professional salesperson.
At the end of the day, it’s a profession when you think about it. If all of us salespeople resigned at every company across the world, the economy would collapse overnight. The stock market would collapse. Wars would end because nobody would be selling guns. The automotive industry would stop. The oil industry would come to a stop. When you think about it, people would not be able to travel because flights wouldn’t be sold, and so it’s such an important skill to learn, yet where does people go to learn it? That is the reason for putting the university together. It came from that. We need to learn how to do this. In this modern age where we don’t want to go and sit in a classroom or we don’t want to go to a seminar, people want to be on their mobile phone and they want to do it in their own time, on the subway or in the car or wherever it is they’re going and want to be able to learn on the go, and so the university was put together to enable people to learn on the go through their phones or whatever device they want to use.
Make It Happen University: Some things that people say to you aren’t meant in the way that you are defensively receiving it.
You also mentioned that after a certain point, you’ve got a little arrogant and one of the things that you have on your course is the ability to accept criticism and they’re tied together. Can you explain a little bit about what’s in the course under that topic, accepting criticism?
The problem with people in many respects, whether that’s constructive, destructive or conflictional criticism, people don’t break it down. They look at it as an attack on them before anything else, so regardless of how it is positioned, a lot of the times, they take it personally. What I try to teach people to understand is that criticism is good, that someone who is taking the time to say, “You are not as good as you should be or maybe you could improve this area,” when actually they don’t need to, they can let you be. They can let you wallow in whatever environment you’re in but they are taking time to say, “You could be better by doing this or by doing that.” To me, that is a positive thing, “I don’t like the way you X or I don’t like the way you Y.” Think about what they are actually saying. They’ve taken 30 seconds, one minute or five minutes out of their time to try and add some value to you. It may be their own way. We all have to remember is it is not what we say to people, it is how people receive what we say. If you remember that, sometimes you will then remember that some things that people say to you aren’t meant in the way that you are defensively receiving it. It may have been meant in a more positive manner.
That’s everything, especially when you’re getting objections from the client. It’s one thing if you’re getting feedback from a co-worker or your boss of some criticism on how you can improve, but when you start getting feedback where the client is criticizing you or your product. Any tips on how to not take that personally?
At the end of the day, if someone is criticizing your product or you’re selling an external product, then you didn’t make it. It’s not your product, if you’ve invented something. It’s just that a lot of people would have taken it personally. Why would you take something personally if someone is taking the time? If people are saying nothing to you and you know nothing about your product that is negative or could be improved, and then you don’t make any sales because there is an obvious flaw in your product or your presentation or your ability to communicate, then you’re going to run out of steam pretty quick. It’s almost like a little bit of indirect tough love.
What causes a lot of burnout is taking all that rejection personally. You learned how to not do that back in the day, cold calling.
When you’re nineteen years old and you’re told by your boss, “You’re going to get 99 noes, but in there somewhere is going to be a yes, so look out for it,” You are conditioned as a nineteen-year-old kid. That’s it, you’re such a sponge, you go, “Fair enough.” Every time somebody who says no or swears at you, which many times happen, you’d be like, “That’s one of my 99 noes, I will move on.”
[Tweet “Selling is not rocket science.”]
One of the things you have in Make It Happen University that I find fascinating is this concept of, “Dominate, don’t compete.” Can you explain what that is?
A lot of the time, you hear people talking about their competition. What’s that all about? If you’re in a market, if you’re in an industry, surely the best way to be in that industry is to be the dominating business within that industry. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling. If you think about it, who dominates the space for us to watch movies online?
Netflix.
That’s right. Who are they competing with? No one. They don’t have any because they’ve nailed it. They’ve dominated their market. If you and I want to park down and get some fried chicken, where will we go to get fried chicken from?
Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Right, so that dominates that market, that industry. There are examples everywhere of people dominating their marketplace. We don’t even call something by the name of the service. Sometimes we call it by the brand.
Kleenex is a great example of that.
We Google something. We clean it, we get some Kleenex. We Xerox it. That’s what’s being said over the years. There are a million different examples of that. You have to be careful to say dominating. Blackberry is a great example. When Blackberry first came out with emails on mobile phones, they completely wiped the floor with everybody else. Nokia was the go-to mobile phone before then, but again Nokia didn’t keep up with their research and somebody came in and knocked them off. Dominating isn’t something that once you get there, you just sit there and say, “Fine, we are here now. We are the champions.” Netflix will have somebody to challenge them. What’s my point about this? If you’re going to be in business, you should want to dominate the market that you’re in. You should want to be the market leader and dominate, and not looking at what anybody else is up to. Just focus on being the best you can possibly be at what you do. If you do that, then you’ll find that you don’t get sucked in to using energy, negatively and positively, worried about what’s going on over your shoulder.
I’m all about focusing on your own progress and you win. I have a whole story around that in my keynote from swimming, instead of turning my head to the side and staying focused on the wall and the competitor looked to see if he was ahead or not, that little extra half a second of looking, taking the eye off the prize caused me to beat him, so it’s a fascinating.
I want to ask about your insights into why people don’t buy. The most common ones are no time or no money, and you go into how to handle all of those. Do you want to give us a few tips that will intrigue us enough to say, “I’ve got to sign up for Make It Happen University now because that’s my biggest challenge?”
Why don’t people buy? The reason they don’t buy is they don’t trust you. It’s not that they don’t have a need. I will give you an example, you walk into a car showroom, a car dealership in the States or UK. Tell me what percentage of interest do you have in buying a car? You either have 0% or you have between 1% and 100% interest? If you have 0% interest in cars or buying a car, why would you go to a car showroom? There must be 1% of you that says, “I’m interested.” It may not be a big interest but it’s interest. That’s the first thing to consider. Why do people take the time to meet somebody who is selling something if they have no interest?
A simple fact is they do have interest. Do they have an interest in buying the product or service from you? Maybe not. That’s down to your skills. The reason invariably that people don’t buy is that they do not have a good level of rapport with you. They haven’t built up a sufficient level of trust that you know your subject and they don’t believe that you care enough to look after whether it’s a financial investment or an emotional investment in them. It’s as simple as that. It’s about mastering your craft. Let’s say you and I are in business together and we say, “We need to shop for an accountant,” so we go and find an accountant and we go and meet three accountants. How do we choose the best one?
Make It Happen University: The reason invariably that people don’t buy is that they do not have a good level of rapport with you.
Usually by reference or who we like the best.
I may sound a little bit naïve, but I don’t know much about accountancy, but we will go and sit down with three accountants. Let’s say we’ve never met any of them and we haven’t been referred to them and each one of them charges exactly the same amount of money. How do we decipher? We will go with the one that you and I connect with the best. That invariably is the person probably who asked the most questions, probably the person that found a way of creating some common ground with us, and probably the one that has taken time to make us a decent cup of coffee. We come out of that meeting and we walk back to our car together and we go, “I like him. Do you like him?” “He is good, isn’t he?” There you go, we’ve made the decision. That’s because that person has been trained well enough to understand us or to try and understand us.
A lot of it has to do with asking good questions about what’s our criteria but a lot of people don’t even start with that. They just start talking. This concept of trying to figure out whether someone’s going to buy from you or not and you get those objections, “I need to think about it. I trust you, but there’re other people who have to decide,” all the delay tactics that we hear, whether it’s selling a car or signing up for anything, do you find there’s any tactic that people should avoid because you’ve written a whole blog on that?
What we’ve got to understand is that selling is exactly the same as being a lawyer, an accountant, an engineer, a pilot, whatever it may be. It is a skill, an industry, and it is something that you’re supposed to learn properly. The reason that most people get it wrong is because they haven’t studied selling. They haven’t taken the time to learn. They got into selling by mistake or they got into it because they heard instant cash. They’ve had some random innocuous training, they’ve had someone leaning over their shoulder giving them a few tips and tricks. Lawyers have to pass the bar exam to go and defend someone in court. Accountants have to become CPAs. They have to be qualified to do it. Most salespeople are unqualified to sell because they have not taken a professional course in learning to sell, and so that’s a lot of the time the problem.
You can sell anything to anyone, but everything has to be aligned. When everything is aligned by you knowing everything you need to know, that is when the decision-making process becomes very easy for the person that you’re dealing with. You’re not just selling a product or service, you are the best product that you can sell. How on earth do you get a job when you go for a job interview if you can’t sell yourself?
Many people get so uncomfortable and talk about the lack of preparation. You know you’re going to be asked about yourself and you don’t have something ready to go. That’s crazy, isn’t it?
Even when you and I were younger and we would go to the bank to get a mortgage, we sit down with bank manager at his big desk, and he would sit there looking down at you on chairs that are lower than his, and he says, “How can I help you?” You are like, “I would like to borrow some money to get a mortgage,” and he would be like, “Let me think about it,” and he would ask you questions. You’re selling yourself to do business with the bank where they make money from you, which is nuts, but that’s how it used to be. How do you present yourself when you walk into the bank covered in paint and in a pair of ripped jeans? Would you have a better chance or worse chance than if you were dressed in a suit and became more appealing to that person? For me, you’ve got to understand that selling is a prerequisite for everything you do. Dominate your market is important. Understand that sales is a skill that you need to learn and if you learn it and you use it well, then it can be applied in all aspects of your life. I promise you, every single person in the audience, if you think you’re good at sales, great at sales or rubbish at sales, like everything, always start by learning. Nobody has monopoly on good ideas.
[Tweet “Don’t take criticism personally.”]
Compare it to someone like Tiger Woods or Meryl Streep. They’re still rehearsing, they’re still practicing, they’re still being coached. You have something in your eBook, How To Win, that talks about how to improve your confidence. I know from everything you’ve said that preparation is definitely one of the techniques to improve your confidence. Do you have anything else you want to leave us with around confidence?
Where does confidence come from when you think about it? We get confidence from people feeding us information that is positive and from having little successes. A lot of people lose confidence because they give themselves something that is too big to achieve, so they lose their will and they lose their way. Winning is all about little wins, small wins, because if you have small wins, it will enable you to build small amounts of confidence and you can have small wins consistently. The winning is giving yourself three things to do tomorrow. You go out and you do all three of them. They don’t have to be massive things, but if you get all three, there’s a win. A little win, back in the car, go and do something else. The next day, “I will do four things today. What are they going to be?” Small things, “I’m going to make sure I see this prospect and I get this referral from this prospect. I’m going to make sure that I book two appointments. I’m going to make sure that I spend an hour learning my presentation.” Whatever it may be, give yourself the opportunity to feel good about what you’re doing. Give yourself an opportunity to take small wins, enjoy and relish it just for a few minutes because it will do so much for your psychology, you wouldn’t believe.
That’s all about having integrity with yourself. The more we do what we tell ourselves we’re going to do, the more confident we have. That’s my big takeaway from what you said. I love it. The book is called, It’s Not Rocket Science. The university is MakeItHappen.University. I highly recommend both. Spencer, any other tips on how people can follow you on social media or buy your book?
On YouTube, there are over 100 videos you can go to see me doing various interviews, doing sales training, and different stuffs. If you go to Make It Happen Spencer Lodge, you will be able to find me on YouTube. It’s training stuff that you will make it happen. Spending a lot. If you go to my Facebook page, which is @MakeItHappenSpencerLodge, you will be able to find a bunch of videos and stuff there for you to get an idea of what I do and how I do it. If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can, which is @MakeItHappenSL. By all means go to the website, have a look, go on YouTube, comment, engage with me, ask me questions, go and find me on LinkedIn, go and ask me questions and I promise you I will answer questions for you. I will give you as much value as I possibly can to demonstrate to you what I’m all about and hopefully show you the kind of willing that I’m prepared to make for you as you should make for the people that you live with.
Spencer, you’re walking your talk. I love it. Thanks so much for being a guest.
My pleasure.
Links Mentioned:
- Spencer Lodge
- Make It Happen
- Facebook Live show – John Livesay interview with Spencer Lodge on Facebook Live
- MakeItHappen.University
- Make It Happen Spencer Lodge – YouTube
- @MakeItHappenSpencerLodge – Facebook
- @MakeItHappenSL – Instagram
- Make It Happen on LinkedIn
- https://www.makeithappen.university/
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