Why Top Business Leaders Start with the Pitch

Kevin, I have a question for you, and I'm sure everyone watching does as well. Who are some of the modern business leaders that owe their success to their ability to sell?

Well, when you think about the Forbes billionaire list, for example, all the people on that list, half of them started in sales.

So Warren Buffett, for example, very successful entrepreneur and finance guru. He raised billions of dollars.

He had to sell people and his ideas to in his Berkshire Hathaway. And of course, I know Mark Cuban from Shark Tank.

You know, he. He had created something called Broadcast.com now, he needed to sell it at one point, and he found Yahoo was willing to pay $5.7 billion for his idea of Broadcast.com.

so there was a master salesman, Mark Cuban. But think about Richard Branson and many of these other very successful people.

And even, like the Housewives of New York. There's Bethany Frankel.

She started something called, I think, Skinny Girl Cocktails or something like that, where you could kind of have a drink but not get so many calories.

She sold that for, I think, $90 million. And again, she sold it because she sold someone on her idea how this could help others do what they enjoy doing, drinking, but not gaining weight and getting too many calories.

So it's amazing the number of people that you think about that are very, very successful. They're really salespeople.

Absolutely. And those are great examples. But what about. I know there's many out there right now that don't really see themselves as salespeople or they're not convinced they're in sales.

You know, like a nonprofit. Right. Okay. So I'm on a couple nonprofit boards. And, you know, the funny thing is about nonprofits, you know, what they're always doing, they're raising money.

Right. And how do they raise money? They have to go to their members, their banks, the, you know, the people that are in the sphere of influence.

Right. So they're raising money and they're selling. They also. I mean, let me talk about a NonProfit.

The PBS TV stations, for example, television network called PBS Public Broadcasting. They do telethons over and over, almost on a monthly basis, I think, because they're funded by the people watching those amazing shows they put on.

So their message as salespeople, the people that run those stations, are that we will give you and enhance your life by giving you great programs, but we need some sponsorship money.

Right.

And even, like, when I think of people that you don't think are salespeople, my mother was one of the greatest sales women in the world.

I think, because she got me to love vegetables or eat them at least. I mean, I don't know how much I love them when I was a child, but, you know, things like that, right?

When you think about it, she was on the PTA and always, you know, had to get her point across. And so at the end of the day, moms and nonprofits and all people of all different, you know what, no matter size, age, male, female, business person, non business person, nonprofit, you still are selling.

We're all in sales. We're all in sales. Everyone is always selling.