Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hey Gorgeous. This is episode number 186 with the amazing sales superstar Mitch Axelrod

Mitch Axelrod [0:11]
Hi, this is Mitch Axelrod, you’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:20]
I was really looking forward to finally get to Mitch for this episode and to get this into our calendars. And Mitch is going to share today how he went from 5000 cold calls with no single, yes to basically sales mastery and I’m super excited to talk to him about his journey because he is a number one best selling author, his speaker and mentor, the Golden Mike Award winner and he delivered 3500 seminars and workshops, trained a million people and help them to generate 3 billion in revenue. If that’s not exciting, I don’t know. So let’s tune in. I am so excited to have you on Heart Sells! today, Mitch, welcome.

Mitch Axelrod [1:13]
It’s always good to be with you, Christine.

Christine Schlonski [1:14]
Yeah, and I love, love, love sales stories. And it’s wonderful because your story is quite remarkable, especially for our listeners who are pretty uncomfortable with sales, because you went through making 5000, five with three zeros.

Mitch Axelrod [1:36]
That’s correct.

Christine Schlonski [1:36]
Cold calls and zero sales in your first job. But that has led to something pretty, pretty amazing. So can you fill us in a little bit on your story?

Mitch Axelrod [1:50]
Sure, sure. When I got out of college, I decided I was going to work for the number one fortune 500 company at the time, which was Exxon. Now you might think, “Okay, Exxon well”, but they weren’t selling oil and gas, they developed a division. They were selling something that nobody wanted to buy a facsimile machine. When I tell this story for people who are old enough to remember, I asked how many of you had a fax machine in 1978? And nobody raises their hand. Exxon created an Information Systems Division. I went to work in the garment center of Manhattan, New York, and I climbed the skyscrapers. In the summer of 1978, I made 5000 cold calls and I mean, cold calls, knocking on doors, sweating. 5000 people said no, and a few of them said, hell no. And the reality was, it was kind of humorous in a way because you couldn’t sell one fax machine, which nobody wanted to buy because they didn’t even know what it was. Who are you going to fax to? I learned a very valuable lesson in business. My first shot out of the gate. First of all, cold calling is about an old game as it is. Nobody really likes to have strangers knocking on their door, although back then it was an acceptable way of doing business people. They expected people to be knocking on doors. The other thing I realized was, you know, this was really dumb. There’s no target, I’m just shooting arrows all over the place. And I said to myself, “If I ever discover a way to sell, that actually works, I’m going to use it and I’m going to share it with other people.” And of course, here we are literally 40, almost 41 years to the day later, actually, yesterday was my 41st anniversary.

Christine Schlonski [3:40]
Wow.

Mitch Axelrod [3:41]
In business and, and every day for the past 41 days, I’ve sold something or talked about sales or touch sales. So that first story of rejection really set the foundation for me to be curious enough to say, “Okay, there’s got to be a better way and if I don’t discover it, then I’m going to make it myself.” And so that’s how this whole thing got started.

Christine Schlonski [4:06]
Awesome. I just love it. Because so often, I see people like after 10 calls, saying it’s not working and there’s so much more to it. We have several episodes of overcoming rejection on what to do best. But you have found a new way and you’ve written a best seller on it, The NEW Game of Selling where you actually now teach people. Well, not now, like for a long time. The whole game can work better and how you can enjoy it even more. Because you have helped people over and over with making sales and help them to create, I can’t even say that big numbers, 3 billion of revenue.

Mitch Axelrod [4:55]
Yeah, yeah. Well, here’s how it kind of all fundamentally started. Sales, what I grew up and into the game, got into the game was sort of a thing you do to people. I never, when I first started in the business after those 5000 cold calls, I got into financial planning, I got my insurance license on October 31, 1978. I set out on my own. I went into an industry where I really went into the industry to help people. I was all about helping people. I could actually, I’ll tell you the story before we’re done, how I got my entire life’s mantra at age 16. What I recognized after going through the Dale Carnegie sales course which I happen to win the New Jersey State Championship, I realized that this is all like a one-way conversation. People phase-out of one-way conversations. I was a conversationalist. I like to have interaction. I like to be with people. And so I started to develop my own approach because the approaches that I was being taught or like, your pain or mine, trial closes. I just, it just never felt comfortable. I wanted to be, I wanted to be on the same side of the table as you. I didn’t want to be on the opposite side because that was the way it worked. The salesperson was on the opposite side of the table and there was this big barrier between you and I said, “I want to break down the barriers. I want us to be on the same side of the table because I’m advocating for you.” When I started to use the word advocate, everything changed because people were naturally skeptical as we all are. What’s a shame about it is a long time ago, 30, 35 years ago, I started asking people who like to be sold to and nobody would put their hand up. But yet who likes to buy? Everybody likes to buy, what’s the difference? One is a choice. One is control. The other feels like default like we’re being pushed into something I never feel comfortable with that. So I always look to advocate for my clients from the very beginning. And that shift in context and they talk about content is king today. But context is the kingdom. And if you think about the context of every interaction, you set the context, it’s expected that you are the seller, “you’re the professor”, you said, so what context are you setting? I wanted to set a context of ultimate trust. When you’re early in the game, and this is why so many people fear sales, on top of all the tactical things that they need to learn. There’s this uncomfortable feeling. When you start out, you don’t have high credibility or track record. What do you build up? Well, you have to build trust. So there are two things. As you get longer in business, your credibility, and your track record increases, but when you’re new in business, what do you bank on? We’ve got a bank on trust that you’re going to advocate your customer and do it in your best interest of your customer if you do that, then your credibility rises and everything sort of bubbles up from there. I went for the trust. I went to be an advocate, and the conversation shifted from me presenting, overcoming objection to me having a questioning process that helps people make a good decision in their best interest. That context shift was apparent from the first minute I opened my mouth, to the follow-up conversations, to the point at which I would say, “What’s in your best interest? Is it to move forward with my recommendation? Or is it to go somewhere and see something else?” So that was the most profound thing I learned early on is that the way I wanted to sell was different than the way I was being taught to sell. I said, “I’m going to have to do my own thing.” So I started to develop my own models, my own methodology, my own questions, and then I just started to put them together. I use them for 10 years in my financial planning practice before I actually put them out into the world and started teaching others

Christine Schlonski [9:11]
I just love that because you know our listeners, they are heart-centered, they want to feel amazing that we have a lot of coaches, healers, creatives, solopreneurs that really bring their heart into the conversation. But when we look at movies like Boiler Room, Wolf of Wall Street, like all these sales movies, where it’s just about the money, then people don’t want to be related to that as a person who then needs to sell but they also need to show up as a leader because they support people coming to them for a solution. So they cannot really shy out of that sale. They have to have a conversation. And I loved what you said, they are on the same side of the table.

Mitch Axelrod [10:02]
I think this would be appropriate for me to tell you about my life’s mantra. It actually handles a few of the preliminary questions that we were discussing what we might talk about because there’s so much to talk about. When I was 15 years old, actually, my first sale really happened at 13 when I convinced my dad to get up at five o’clock in the morning, so I could gather newspapers and deliver newspapers in the middle of winter. That was the first sale I made and but I was so ambitious. I wanted to work I wanted to serve people. So when I was 15, I started working in what we call here in the US Luncheonette. It’s sort of a counter where people come and have breakfast and lunch and we serve and I would cook the food and hand it to them. I didn’t just serve it to them. I actually had to cook the food and make the food. Well, I used to get tips of 10 cents, 15 cents, 20 cents. This is a long time ago but those nickels, dimes and quarters put me through college. That was my spending money. One day, I’m 16 years old, the guy waves to me and he calls me into the back and he opens my hand, he puts $1 bill in my hand. And my first reaction, this is so very human, “Oh, you already paid your bill.” I thought he was trying to pay for his bill. He says, “No, that’s for you.” I had never gotten more than a 35 or 40 cent tip. I looked at him and he looks at me and he says, “Mitch, you were smiling from the minute I walked in. You were immaculate. You were clean. I just pointed to you. You know exactly what I get. By the time I sat down. You serve me. You talked to me with me.” He says three words to me, “You’re worth it.” I was 16, nobody in my life had ever said to me, “You’re worth it.” I mean, outside of my parents, you know, occasionally but really think about it. How many people in your life, you’re in business, you’re in sales, you’re with, how many people have actually said to you, “You’re worth it.”? What I’ve realized at that moment, and it really dawned on me that that’s been my life’s mantra. I didn’t expect the tip first. I loved and served him. And he rewarded me with his money. That’s what I got from that interaction. And he rewarded me in terms of what he thought I was worth, not what I thought I was worth.

Christine Schlonski [12:29]
Wow, that’s pretty profound.

Mitch Axelrod [12:32]
Now imagine learning that lesson at 16. And carrying that lesson through for the rest of my life, recognizing that more often than not, if you love and serve people, they will reward you with their money. And whenever I was down and out and I, I’ve been bankrupt, and I’ve been wealthy and I’ve been bankrupt, I’ve been on every edge of the spectrum. All I had to do is stop and after I licked my wounds and ended my pity party, I’d say, “Okay, who can I love and serve? Who will reward me with their money?” Because I’m loving and serving them and how can I love them and serve them in the highest and best way, where I become what I now call the trusted voice of choice. We used to call it the trusted advisor. In fact, I was the first person the insurance industry got landed me on the insurance industry, magazine front cover, to teach insurance agents how to transition from product salespeople to trusted advisors. I wanted to be the most trusted advisor because I thought, if I’m trusted, even if I don’t get the business if I don’t get the sale, I still have a relationship. And I can’t tell you hundreds and I’m not talking about dozens, hundreds of clients opportunities, business deals that came to me over the course of my 40 years, that came from people who did not do business with me and never gave me a dime. Why? Because I do treat everybody like a human being first, not as a sale, I realized that the relationship was more valuable the relationship capital was more valuable than the commission. And you can smell somebody I used to call it commission breath. You could smell somebody coming from a mile away. It’s like, “Whoah, get me out of here.” I never wanted to have commission breath because you know, we’re all on commission really, when you think about it. What’s odd about the word commission is how words are powerful. I’m a wordsmith. I’ve really spent my life being careful and really attentive to my words. The word commission really comes from somebody hiring you to do a job. I commissioned you to create a piece of art. I commissioned you to write a piece of music. I commission you to help me get my product out there. So the commission is a really noble thing. And I think there’s a lot of things that are attached to sales that are looked at as less than noble because of our way of thinking about it well, I wanted to bust all those myths. I wanted to give people a methodology, psychology, and spirituality of business that merge not just their goal, but their role and their soul. Those three words, soul, role and goal, have been and are and will be a big part of my work because the new game of selling is all about, it’s not just the goal of selling. What’s the role of selling? What’s the soul of selling? When you merge those three, and you come to the game, with the soul, role, goal of intention to do the highest and best for other people, you really can’t help but be successful. But you also need to know that the strategy, the tactics, and the language. That’s what I set out to do. I’ve been fortunate to train over a million people and help them improve the quality of their business in their life.

Christine Schlonski [15:58]
Yeah, I love it. I’d love to come back to what you said earlier because I think it’s so, so important. The value, the person that gave you the dollar and said because you are worth it, making you that compliment and backing it up with money was an energy exchange of what he was, he thought he wanted to reward you while you were more or less expecting pennies and I think 35 was the highest amount just had before.

Mitch Axelrod [16:31]
I’ve got a 50 cent tip once.

Christine Schlonski [16:33]
Yeah, and you probably felt amazing, right? So there’s this interesting thing when we look at ourselves. And you know, so for everybody who has a solution or has a gift they are giving to the world. Usually, this comes to them with ease. When I coach about sales or mentor about sales, I don’t need to turn my brain like it’s not hurting. It’s something that just comes naturally because I spent so many hours learning about it, training, training other people. So this is something that’s easy for me. But for somebody else, it means the world. So when we look at ourselves, we usually put a lower value on what we bring to the world than somebody looking from the outside in, because they see this tremendous support and help they’re getting from us. So how can people kind of close that gap, especially when they are afraid to ask for the sale to ask for the price you really want to get? But you know, let’s say they totally under charge over deliver all the time, and they don’t know how to get out of the cycle.

Mitch Axelrod [17:58]
Everything you described was me. I know now why, with this workaround the soul, role, and goal which stems from axiology, the science of human value. It’s a three-dimensional model. About 70% of us undervalue ourselves intrinsically. What we do is we translate that undervaluation to the extrinsic world, and how we price ourselves. If you asked 100 people who were in business who had to price themselves, raise your hand, if you undercharge more often than you overcharge, raise your hand, every hand would probably go up. Very few people feel overcharged and feel good about it. I had this problem resolved. And just about every other problem I’ve ever had or encountered in sales I’ve had resolved by my clients and here’s a tip I have for everybody. Whenever you have a fear of something of anything, declare it. Declare it. So, you know, Christine, I was sort of really cautious and hesitant about reaching out to you because I thought you might misconstrue my reaching out to you as me wanting to sell you something. In fact, I just had this happened to me this week with a colleague, believe it or not. And I sent him sort of a page with some different aspects of how I work and his response was, “Oh, in a buyer and seller relationship you have to, the buyer, the seller has to prove value.” I’m like, “I wasn’t sending you for that just goes to show you how what you communicate what you say is not what’s hurt.” So I become like an incredible at listening not just with my ears, but with my eyes, my heart and my soul, and to hear what’s in the unsaid because very often it’s in the unsaid. That is what you miss because you’re so listening to what’s being said. Here’s what happens. I was doing exclusively corporate training. When I shifted out of tip after 10 years of financial planning, I was getting all my clients from doing seminars, I created a seminar called, Reality of Change Shifting Economic Tides. I would go into it, and I get people in and I work with them. What I realized is I love the training better than money management. I hated the money game. I used to stay up at night worried about it. Well, after I lost a million dollars in one year, I realized, and my wife was eight months pregnant. I had 5,000 left to my name. I said, I better do something I really love to do and what I love to do is training. That’s how I made the transition into being a full-time trainer, worked with Brian Tracy for a few years. I’m sitting with a corporate executive and I was doing exclusively companies, businesses, million-dollar companies because that’s where I kind of got into. Well, this guy is sitting there telling me about his project. As he’s talking, I’m thinking, “This is about $25,000. If you were to ask me, Mitch, how much would you charge us to do this?” I would have said $25,000. Here’s what happened. He says, “Mitch, why don’t we talk about money”, which was always great when somebody else would bring it up rather than I have to bring it, obviously, “Oh, thank God. He brought it up.” I’m like three years into this. So I’m not a neophyte, but I’m, anyway, this is profound. He says, “Mitch, let’s talk about money. We have about $100,000 for this project.” I said, “Great.” A question popped into my head. This is the power of listening and being present. I said, “Out of curiosity, how much of that have you allocated for me?” He said he looked at his associate, he says, “We’ve come up with probably about 70,000. Is that okay?” I said, “Man, it sounds about right to me. That sounds good. Can we shake on it?” Okay, what just happened? What just happened? Yes, yes. I asked him, basically, what was it worth? And what am I worth? And what happened at that moment was a profound transformation that I’ve now had the good privilege to share with a million people, “Never quote a price.” If you’re selling a service, if you’re selling a hard good, I understand there’s the price. If you’re selling a service, never propose a price until you understand number one, what is the project worth to them? Not just in money, and other things too, operational, whatever. There’s a lot of ways you can determine that. What have they allocated for the project, the initiative. How much of that initiative have you put aside, you could use, I like soft words, how much of that have you put aside for me to do the job you would like me to do? Now, here’s what’s beautiful about this. If they give you more than you would have quoted, take it.

Christine Schlonski [23:20]
Yes. Okay.

Mitch Axelrod [23:21]
Just take it because you do not know what you are really worth. Very few of us really know what we’re worth. Then fewer still actually have the courage and backbone to charge what we’re worth because we’re always conscious of, are we charging too much, very few of us are conscious of what we charging too little until we start doing the work and we realize we charge to it. So ask somebody what it’s worth, what’s the project worth? What did they set aside for you? If it’s less than you would have charged say, “That’s great. You wanted to set aside 20,000. I think this project for me is 25. Let’s talk about how we get together on this. We’re close enough.” On the other hand, if they say it’s worth 70, why would you ever come back and say, “No, no, no, no, let me charge you what I think I’m worth.” I’m giving the seminar and I’m doing a breakout session, the woman is sitting in the front row and she is fuming at me and I could tell. I said to her, I said, “You seem like you have an issue here.” She says, “I can’t believe you charge them.” I told the story. She says, “I post my rates on my website.” I said, “Well, I pulled them down if I were you”, she’s in the service business. She was belligerent. She says, “Mitch, how could you charge way more than what you would show?” I said, “First of all if you want to limit yourself to what you think you’re worth, that’s your prerogative. I would encourage you not to. I would encourage you to go back to every client that you’ve worked within the past six months or a year and have a conversation about what you charged versus what they thought it was worth, and what they might have paid if it was up to them to determine the value of the contract, just to find out. And if everybody says you’re worth exactly what you charge, then you’re charging a fair amount. But what if those people start saying to you, “Oh, we would have paid more, we would have paid more we would have paid.” Would you just keep your prices low because you think you’re worth that or would you start to raise your prices because you realize your value to others is greater than the value to yourself? That was a dynamic, profound moment in my career. I’m pleased to be able to say by sharing it with hundreds of thousands of other people now, you know, it’s really helped them as well.

Christine Schlonski [25:47]
Yeah, I just love it that’s so profound, and I’m so happy we have another interview scheduled because we’re already out of time. I will have all the links to you in the show notes. Where can people find you right now? Where do you want to send them to have a look?

Mitch Axelrod [26:04]
Well, my main site is https://mitchaxelrod.com/. And that’s where my blog is, my writing is, some videos and such of my speaking and whatnot. And then https://thenewgameofselling.com which is more than a book. It’s an entire training system. And so you’ll get some good stuff there as well. https://thenewgameofselling.com/gametime

Christine Schlonski [26:27]
Awesome. Yeah, definitely all the links will be in the show notes. And thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. I personally think everybody should listen to that episode at least three times, if not more, really take notes because you had so many golden nuggets that I’m so super excited that we are having a second interview because I have a ton of questions.

Mitch Axelrod [26:52]
I can’t wait.

Christine Schlonski [26:53]
Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Mitch Axelrod [26:55]
You too.

Well, isn’t this just an amazing story that Mitch just shared with us? I think it’s so motivating and inspiring. And it shows you that when you stick to something, and you really are committed to getting it right, you can. 5000 cold calls, zero sales to mastery, the best selling author. Teaching millions of people is just so amazing to me. I hope you really enjoyed the episode, hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/. For the show notes, the transcripts, the resources we talked about, and why you over there, sign up for the empowerment notes. This is empowerment right into your inbox, as well as all the updates to Heart Sells! Podcast, and maybe because you are over there, you might get the one or other episode before everybody else gets to it. Have a wonderful day wherever you are in this beautiful world and I’m saying bye for now.