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3 Key Rituals Of A Closer

The definition of closer is a person or thing that closes

"Always Be Closing" is a notorious phrase, probably uttered from the lips of every decent sales manager the world over at some point or another. The concept is clear: at all times, you should be fully aware of the fact that you're selling and constantly looking for a way in. For a way to close the deal.

A fabulous example of a slick and rich executive preaching this philosophy as he absolutely rips into a sales force can be found in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, and I've always found this single performance performed by Alec Baldwin amazing. I've heard people scoff at the character he portrays, balking about how he represents everything wrong with America. It baffles the hell out of me, frankly, because his no-nonsense get'r done mentality is what has driven progress in our beautiful capitalistic society. I've had push-over bosses before and I learned nothing from them. If at any point in my career, I fall into a put of under-performing (I won't) and pick up the nasty habit of excuse making and complacency, it would be a blessing to have someone like Alec's character storm into the office and shake things up. Set things straight.

Now, I don't necessarily advocate treating customers ruthlessly because in this day in age the win goes to the company who is most devoted to servicing their clientele base. What I love about the video is that it champions the idea of becoming a closer on every level. I look at that chalkboard, see "Always Be Closing" and to me that means every waking second. Not just when you finish revving up your morale engines with a third cup of coffee after being at work for an hour, but the second you set your feet on the floor each morning. There may not be outside customers around at five o'clock in the morning to deal with right away but you should be closing yourself; on the goals and day you have ahead, on what you're grateful for in life, on your financial plan, and so forth. If we need to be sold on and believe in a product in order to sell it well, we must be thoroughly sold on the biggest product of all: ourselves.

It can also be said that our rituals define us as human beings. Whether hygienic, personal or spiritual we all have them, so in the spirit of becoming a better all-around closer, here are three key rituals I've observed of a true closer...



3. Early To Rise, First To Conquer

Unless your body clock and work schedule are directly in alignment with the graveyard shift, this likely applies to you. Successful closers understand they are granted only a limited amount of time each day to get things done. Thriving on staying ahead of the curve it's only natural they want to be rockin' and rollin' before the rest of the world turns over in their beds the second time. A great closer also cherishes their body, so if they're going to be working late they've got to incorporate a solid work-out routine and the best time for that is before heading to start doing business with the rest of the world. You're body is a presentation itself so there's a lot to be said about maintaining a solid exercise routine and making it a ritual as well.

Interestingly, if your work schedule is causing you to have the sleeping pattern of a vampire, take into consideration that circadian rhythm is very much so light dependent. Being exposed to light before sleeping will drastically reduce levels of melatonin. Although production of melatonin decreases as we age, it's interesting to note that optimum levels are released between midnight and eight o'clock in the morning. This could also be a factor that affects overall well-being of a truly good closer. Most importantly, research shows that early risers lead happier and healthier lives. The more emotionally and physically stable the bodily environment, the better the closer. 

2. Use Success Incantations

Don't let the word "incantation" fool you, it's got nothing to do with anything occult. Whether we know it or not we utilize incantations as emotional triggers on a daily basis. Think about certain thought patterns you find yourself using in response to situations. When you approach a customer and ask them, "How can I help you?" that itself is an incantation. Anything you say that has emotional pull to it can be considered as much, and the phrase "How can I help you?" definitely has a lot of sway. An entire chapter in a book could be spent discussing why you shouldn't use such scripts because of the negative reaction they will cause, yet I want to talk about an even more critical subject. The scripts you're using on yourself.

If you find yourself saying literally anything that elicits a negative response each time, stop saying it. The same goes with any wordless thought you form. You've got to claim self-awareness, pay attention to what goes on repeatedly inside your head, and realize that negative looping tracks are negative incantations.  They're the reason we keep falling into bad relationships, jobs we hate, and doing things that sabotage our success.

Instead, first go about discovering what thought patterns and incantations you have that build you up. Chances are you have them even if you don't use them much. If it's a previous experience, harness that memory and associate an incantation to it. If you're a nurse, think of an emotionally rewarding time when you helped out a patient. Now, make a statement that declares a purpose you have or belief about yourself. It could be, "I help people each day get over physical, mental and emotional trauma, leading and assisting in the healing process". This incantation could reinforce a goal. If you're striving to become an entry-level nurse or a better nurse, it's safe to say you could utilize this incantation as an emotional trigger to build yourself up? A terrific closer emotionally owns the notion that we are the grand sum total of the inputs going inside of our mind, takes control of the inputs, and uses emotional triggers to create positive ones. This is more relevant to non-salespeople than most realize. If you're going to be a nurse, be sold on every aspect of being a nurse.




1. Setting & Evaluating Goals

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Deceitfully simple. The reality is that you won't become successful by accident, you'll be aware of your progress each step of the way; planning and evaluating goals as you go. No CEO got to where they are by just showing up to work each day. They had detailed goals. Big ones, small ones. Daily goals and monthly goals. The biggest ritual I've seen people have who make outstanding closers is the sheer persistence in goal-setting and evaluation. If a goal starts out too big, you break it down into bite-size chunk. You'll know if it's too big because you'll be evaluating your goals and progress as you go, won't you? I had it drilled into my head in every sales training class I took back when I first immersed myself in professional sales, "What you don't track you can't improve." 

Whatever way you go about recording your goal progress is up to you. I keep logs, myself, in a similar fashion to the logs we kept back in auto sales of every customer that walked on the lot. I write down every detail I perceive affecting the goal, analyze the current situations and what is currently affecting said goal, and tweak my game plan from there. Every day. I began doing this while working at a car dealership while everyone was in their huddle by the coffee table or outside smoking cigarettes together, focused on everything but creating productive rituals to increase their likelihood of success. 

Since that time I've had the opportunity to meet with a wide variety of successful people. Coincidentally,  I always find these kind of new acquaintances share a ritual with myself: we set goals ritualistically and aggressively evaluate them. What about you?











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Rejection: A Psychological Disease


Rejection is a deadly disease. It ruins lives, inhibits potential, and scars people time and time again throughout the remainder of their fleeting life on Earth if left to its own devices. Children who grow up in dysfunctional homes are crippled by it, their vision of humanity tainted. The girl whose father ran out on his family feels rejected as a human being, or the boy who was severely beaten and harassed by his drunken mother understand the concept very clearly, and become defined by the notion. Horrific yet ordinary stories that have become ingrained in our culture to the point of expectancy. We expect our youth to learn and feel rejection, hell 68% of our youth as of 2010 are now growing up in non-traditional families due to one reason or another. It's literally the epitome of modern day living.

The worst part of it all? Rejection is an illusion, perpetuated by our brains due to ancient biological triggers. In a society like what we're dealing with today I feel it's even more important we take an aggressive stance to cure ourselves of this odd disease, and it truly is disease-like in nature, almost a cancer that grows off of normal psychological responses and behavior mechanisms. We've been treating the symptoms and trying to band-aid over it, dealing with it like a tangible thing, when in all reality it's a creation of perceptional confusion.

In a nutshell, people develop the psychological disease between the ages of 0-6 when the brain is still underdeveloped and learns in very primal ways, so it's actually easy to see how the perceptional confusion can occur and how this boogeyman of emotions can become a reality. Susan is 36 months old, is fumbling around the kitchen and knocks over the cookie jar. Her mother has eighty-eight different things on her mind stressing her to her limits as it is, so when little Susie makes this in particular ruckus it just pushes her over the edge: she screams, curses, yells and emotes negativity straight at her rambunctious toddler. Susan doesn't realize that her mother is simply responding to a perception of a stimulus, all she understands is her provider is rejecting her. Needless to say, she responds and cries in a classic attempt to acquire pity and soothe her own emotions. The mother, however, is too furious to give in to the cries and snatches her up and puts her in the corner or even spanks her.

Is any of this out of the ordinary? Nope. It happens quite frequently, and when Susie's gambler father eventually disappears later on that year her mother spirals downward into her own depression, now having the burden of raising a child to herself. Susie grows up with only the most shadowed memories of her father, constant berating and obvious scorn from a mother who has the slightest vendetta against the child she's stuck taking care of by herself, and one big underlying emotional pattern: rejection.



You see, Susan never understood that her father wasn't rejecting her as person and as his daughter. He was rejecting himself as a father and responding to a perception of being unable to handle the responsibilities he was faced with. She never quite logically understood why her mother seemed distant and when she did pay attention it was to scorn her for one thing or another. Emotionally though, she came to conclusion after conclusion that she was not worth it and was just being continually rejected.

During the defining formative years, we contract this disease that feeds off of illusion and is enabled by everyone who acknowledges feeling rejected as a human feeling, when in fact it is quite the opposite. Rejection is a dehumanizing psychological experience. You may feel disappointed, uncomfortable, angry, distraught, confused or feelings of discontentment but you never feel rejection. We create it, we spread it, we let it prevent us from living unbridled by it and it's all a lie.

True success and happiness cannot be obtained in any form while being shackled down by this boogeyman. It's time to break free.


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3 Ways To Become A Master Beginner


According to Malcolm Gladwell's acclaimed novel, Outliers, the formula for expertise is a matter of time invested honing the skill. 10,000 hours to be exact. Allegedly, the only difference between a virtuoso of the violin and a non-violinist can be attributed to a mere 10 year, 3 hour per day investment repeatedly practicing the craft. I believe this to be an improper analysis of a complex issue converted into a wrong unit of measurement - numbers. There are late bloomers, explosively quick learners, early birds and mid-life yet thorough innovators and they all have stories behind them that cannot simply be equated to a matter of time invested. What if there were a way to predict gainful expertise in an area, though, and you could do it by looking at three key things in the developmental stages of the knowledge? Would that be interesting?

I'd be inclined to say so, which I did and began probing through the skills acquired by moderately to extremely wildly successful industry folk. I'm absolutely convinced that no matter what it is you wish to become an expert at, the foundation upon which you build those skills is the most critical component. The foundation I'm talking about is being a masterful beginner, or I should say, becoming an expert at beginning things. Due to the fact that our entire first impressions of a craft are based upon our initial reactions with it, we must actively take a stance that sets us up to become extraordinary or no matter how "genetically prone" or however many hours you invest in practicing it you will fall short of outstanding. Excellent at best.

The great news is you can change today and even rebuild a new foundation for an old attempt of skill architecture. Here are three killer ways to start your path towards becoming a better beginner...



 3. Get Seriously Curious 

 The things we inevitably become "naturals" at are those which either start with an innate, deeply underscored curiosity or a forced sense of curiousness. When you're a child you experience this phenomenon effortlessly, and over time due to our brains picking up on similar patterns of everything we do and experience in life this can start to slightly fade. Unless you purposefully tune in to it and work your curiosity like a muscle on a daily basis. Look around and remember the world is changing on a moment by moment basis while your busy going about your daily routine. A lot of times opportunities arise within our line of sight but we lack the tuned in vision to see that something new has popped up in our reality, so the opportunity goes unnoticed. Remaining curious will keep your keenly aware of these things, and also be the kick start of motivation that propels you to dig deeper into topics and things of interest. It will drive you to constantly adapt while learning the array of new skills you're immersing yourself in to become an expert at your craft, which is an essential part of practice.

Think about it, if you monotonously played the same sequence on a piano over and over again, you'd be rehearsing technically but would you be growing? If you're not growing every time you practice or utilizing a skill, you're not pushing yourself. Imagine a bodybuilder that used the same weights whenever they hit the gym. Their body would undergo some minor strength changes but it would adjust to the current stimulus and nothing would change, so their physique (expertise) would remain the same. In order to progress you need to thrive on challenge within any area of study whether you're learning to play guitar or working on becoming an outstanding salesperson.



2. Physically, Mentally & Emotionally Embody A Master

 Recent studies done from Northwestern University explicitly show that what you wear affects you inside and out. Mood, intellect, attentiveness, the works. Essentially, you are what you wear but moreover you are what you immerse yourself in totally. The more thorough and convincing the immersion the better, so go all out, if you want to become a computer programmer buy or rent out every book, video and mp3 you can get your hands on that has anything to contribute to programming knowledge or industry. Join the forums, maybe attend a college campus class and start associating with others who are interested. Don't settle for general interest, though, you've got to be absolutely intrigued down to a gut level. Study what the current masters do. Eat it, breathe it, live it.

Let's say you've never been a so-called people person but for whatever reason you wake up one morning and decide that with all your heart you want to become a mobile home salesperson. You've never been overly talkative but mainly you've just been expected to be a more reserved person so you've played your role up until now, but deep down you've always felt a burning sensation to take control of social situation and influence people on a deep level. You want to inspire people to take action, and you want to be the best at it. So how do you go about undoing the old programming and contradicting beliefs you've picked up along the way? Simple. Begin eliminating the cues.

What's a cue, you ask? Any emotional, verbal, or physical event that acts as a trigger for that belief system and reinforces it. Sometimes they're people, in which case the simplest yet daunting route to go is to distance yourself from them. If they're in your life on a daily basis, you're going to need to make some cuts. Cut it down gradually if need be, but the fact remains that as long as you have these influences putting contradicting inputs into your mind you'll be fighting an uphill battle about removing your old limiting beliefs. We just have to get rid of them. Identify which people, places and things in the past have reflected that perception of you not being an exceptionally social individual - and cut 'em out, one by one.

After that it's just a matter of immersing yourself in sales and just like any position, you've probably already began acquiring complimentary skill sets up until this point that will aid in the process. Analytic skills, emotional intelligence, body language reading, etc.

We're a race of imitators. It's the basis of our creativity and how we have evolved technologically, too. With that in mind it's important you...



1. Eliminate The Beginner's Perception

When you first pick up a bicycle to learn how to ride it, you don't glare at it and wallow in your amateurism. You don't wonder what will happen if you never learn how to ride it. You just do it. Your deep level of interest drives you to just follow the path towards delving deeper into what you're interested in, which is riding a bike. Our minds learn to second guess, triple guess and re-evaluate every little thought and emotion we encounter as we age and our logical brains develop. We assess the nature of all things around us constantly, sometimes over-analyzing to a fault. The key here is to just immerse yourself in whatever it is you want to do, refuse to look at yourself as a beginner, and constantly be pushing what you can do with your craft. This is entirely different than faking it until you make it, but if you start out with your lack of experience in mind you'll be focused on the lack and less focused on progress. It's literally the difference between someone who fails and someone who refuses to accept logical explanation. "Beginner" is a reasonable explanation and being reasonable about your goals and aspirations just isn't that productive. Michael Jordan was unreasonable when he decided his high school coaches were wrong about him not being cut out for basketball. He did also become one the most iconic athletes in American history and very unreasonably wealthy.

Decide you are the greatest at a thing, do it and refuse to judge yourself along someone else's linear scale of great and you will become an expert through sheer willpower, persistence, and hard work. Will it take 10,000 hours of intense dedication to a thing for you to become an expert? Who knows.

I can assure you of one thing: you sure as hell don't want to spend 9,999 hours as a beginner.

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Influence Or Be Influenced

There are people out there with intentions that don't have your best interest at heart, people who are going to try to influence you in negative ways that will be far from productive for your life. They'll pop up constantly and the longer you let them stick around the harder it will be to get rid of them and their influence. They're not always bad people but for you they're parasites. They'll try convincing you to stray from your path or just plain pushing you out of the way of opportunity, and because during every social encounter someone is either  selling or being sold you must be absolutely sold on yourself and your values. No matter what happens or what mistakes you make, you must always close yourself on you and never allow anyone to close you on anything that contradicts that.

Close yourself on you every day

When I first started in the automobile industry selling new and used vehicles I worked at a decently sized dealership with about six other sales guys. I remember one in particular who began hovering around me when I got done devouring the mandatory sales training and product information. Coincidentally enough he was a person I'd seen briefly when I first came to interview with the sales manager and something about him was just off to me - he was someone I disliked instantly. Could have been the nicest guy in the world deep down, but everything about him just oozed crook. Poor, overly defensive body language. Hunching. The usual. Not my concern however because as a salesperson I wasn't there to make friends, I was there to sell cars.  At least, it didn't matter to me until he started trying to snipe my deals and treat me like a naive green pea. He learned in hurry that I wasn't having it, and short of physical confrontation it took a few instances of me shutting him down for him to realize I wasn't about to be railroaded or taken advantage of. He interfered with one deal and that was the end of that. 

These leeches can be found in any company or industry, though, not just auto sales. It's the guy who's an average to below average worker and focuses most of his attention on finding ways to get out of having to buckle down and do some damn work. They do this by subtly influencing people and things around them and even blatantly influencing other workers, using deception and deceit to get credit where credit is not due. I've seen salespeople lose their job by allowing themselves to be negatively influenced in the workplace. Allowing rumors to affect their behavior, letting people gently push them out of the way of an impending sale, or letting guilt prevent them from truly squeezing out every last ounce of potential from themselves. It's tragic.

The sooner we realize the scope of influence we have as individuals, the quicker we see what constant power struggles go on throughout a given day. Underneath the surface of the average persons life are forces ebbing and flowing, applying pressure to push circumstances one way or another, while allowing outside factors to affect the undercurrent of a vastly complex social dynamic. We live and breathe each other - our networks are vast and very much so alive. As a species we've thrived, not by being the most physically dominant race, but by becoming the most omniscient species. We're very aware of ourselves and the influence we can have on the world around us.

You're level of influence on your own life and those around you is always rising or falling. When you choose to remain quiet about an issue of importance to you because you fear rejection, you're being influenced. When you compromise a core value to accommodate another person. When you refuse to look into a situation going on at work and just assume it's "normal", you're being influenced. Negatively.

Positive influences do exist in the world and you've got to seek those out but the harsh reality is that we're living in a world overflowing with negativity; in the media, at the water cooler, from your parents, etc. The more keenly aware you are of what's going inside of your mind the better, whether you're picking up a book at Barnes & Noble or choosing to follow someone on Twitter, ask yourself, "What kind of input would this be for me?" You have a choice over a whole lot of the inputs that go inside of your mind, so choose wisely. That 4 hours of television you watch every weekend probably isn't the best of inputs, nor the conversations you have with your co-worker on coffee break about how horrible the stock market is and how fast our economy is tanking. This is all useless drivel you don't need and you ultimately don't want affecting you on a deeper level, which it surely will. Make it a daily goal to cut out as many negative inputs as you possibly can and to seek out as many positives ones as you're able to and you'll be one step closer to regaining the majority vote for influence in your life.


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5 Subtle Ways To Make An Outstanding Impression

There's a statistic buzzing around out there that states employers have made their decision on whether or not to hire you within the first 120 seconds of the interview. Now, I'm not one to call bullshit too quickly but I'll go ahead and say it, as someone who's been on the interviewing side of the equation: you probably have a 180 - 360 second time frame to get a solid impression in before your interviewer's decided to offer you that lucrative position or not. Those had better be some golden seconds.


The initial and consistent impressions you make upon people are the first bricks of the foundation to a potentially beautiful or disastrous relationship. In business and sales, the end game is the same: to always be building solid relationships that will benefit both parties involved. No one walks away richer when you fail to establish a good relationship with a given prospect - they just run to the next (inferior) business or applicant, missing out entirely on what you truly had to offer. It's crucial that you take every detail of your social encounters ridiculously serious, in the same fashion professional golf players give insane focus and criticism to the minutiae of their stroke, stance and follow-through. With that in mind...

If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf. -  Bob Hope

Here are five subtle ways to make a killer first impression.

5. Make 'Em Smile, Keep 'Em Laughing

The sooner you get them laughing during the initial stages of introduction the better. Laughter releases endorphins which people are accustomed to experiencing with friends, so it's the best step towards getting your foot in their subconscious door. On the premise that no matter what type of prospect it is, be it a prospective employer or client, you want them to like you in great capacity due to the age-old philosophy that people ultimately buy from and hire who they like, it's vital that you get them to vibe with you in this way. 
It's also an easy way to break the ice, get people to relax and open up so you can begin building investigating buying needs and motivations. The best part is you don't have to be a comedian to make this work; simply utilizing your own personality and making observations about people and circumstances is a good way to open up a conversation. People want to laugh, so be the man or woman to efficiently put them in a situation that enables them to do so. 

This man is clearly buying a Kia.


4. Stand/Sit Up Straight & Say No to Hunching

Body language experts theorize that the physical act of hunching over sends a signal to the brains of observers that triggers an impression of someone either in a defensive state or a state preparing to attack. Essentially, signals you don't want your prospects getting. We've been told for years to sit up straight in class, that a confident man stands up straight and tall and that a sloucher is a drained loser, however, it may be easier than you think to slip into a slouch. When you're hunched over at your desk all day and have a surprise visit from an important client it can be tough to snap out of your current body language patterns and enable go-getter mode. The solution? Stay in the zone all day, baby.

Inspiring confidence in the hearts and minds of millions, eh, George?

3. Keep Your Paws Outta Your Face

Ever notice someone talking to you with a hand covering their nose and mouth, or just generally obscuring their face? They're making visual facial and verbal cues harder to pick up on and it pisses people off. The subconscious mind picks up on all these little details, and it won't hesitate to make certain decisions that someone trying to cover their mouth is also trying to cover up the filthy stream of lies coming out of it. No unnecessary eye-rubbing either, it will subtly distract your listener and when you're communicating a multi-million dollar deal with the president of Taco-Hut the last thing you want is to confuse the man or have your message misunderstood.

On a completely different note, this study says keeping your hands away from your face will reduce the spread of germs. It's just an all-around self-destructive habit apparently.


2. Utilize Gestures Appropriately

Now, I'm not saying to flail your arms about like a coked-out Robin Williams imitating an overly expressive used car salesman, but gesturing in the right manner can be the difference between winning body language and drab body language.

In general, keep your hands above your groin region. Gesticulate around your waist and stomach area, calmly and confidently drawing attention to your stomach region. Think about news reporters:



The stomach region is always visible and their hands rest levelly on the desk. Automatic gesticulation creating a sense of trust within observing minds that perceive the person to be having nothing to hide, since it highlights the weakest region on the body thereby drawing attention to the most vulnerable organs. Prehistorically speaking this wouldn't be something you did if you were an aggressor or someone to not be trusted, and to this day the message conveyed is the same: trust.

On a similar note, if you want to influence the minds of your listeners to feel passion or excitement...


Presenting using gestures in the chest/heart region is the route to go. Lots of theoretical and biological science behind this but try it in the mirror and feel the effects yourself. Give yourself a lecture, a speech on whatever your heart desires, and gesture in the heart region. I dare you to not feel just a little excited about whatever the hell you're talking about. Inspired, even. 

Use these gestures with moderation of course, as anything done in extreme fashion will lose effect. Weave them into your sales pitch, your interview, your first date, etc. 


1. The Two Secret Handshakes

It's no secret: the handshake is tremendously powerful in social interactions. We all know how influential oxytocin is in unconsciously assessing whether or not a person is trustworthy, and that's the exact chemical released during a handshake lasting 4-7 seconds or more. 


This is Daily Closer though, so we look deep into these matters. Years ago I wanted to discover just what constituted a great handshake, why poor ones were so bad, and how information was transported through such a simple act. Surely there was more to it than just ensuring your grip was firm and giving the good ol' 1, 2, 3 solid pumps. Turns out I was right.

The first handshake is what I call the "DominateShake". This is a maneuver you've probably had performed on you countless times and were left with an impression of a domineering presence. It's when you go to firmly and completely (thumb-to-forefinger webs meeting fully) shake someone's hand, immediately turn your wrist over to where your palm is down and theirs is up, shake and even push towards them a little. Try it out with someone and you'll immediately feel the effects. Have someone usually more submissive than you use it on you and you'll be put off. It's rarely the best handshake of choice to use in a business setting, but it can be used properly with certain men or women who need to be "put in their place" so to speak. Also, gently pushing towards them and their vital organs in their abdominal region shows power over them. Use it accordingly.

Otherwise, the best option that I consciously use the majority of the time is the "LikeShake". You want to instantaneously cause a spark of genuine attraction within someone? Shake their hand, reverse their hand to put your palm slightly more face up with their palm facing down on yours instead. Go all the way and subtly pull the handshake closer to you and your abdomen for the trust trigger. 

Use these handshakes effectively and you'll begin to see why shaking someone's hand when being introduced to them, in and outside the world of business, can have a huge impact on the impressions you make. It may just be a small change made in your approach but in the spirit of what Bob Hope would say about golf, I'll say:

If you show up, it's work. If you do your job, it's business. If you work at your job, it's your business.







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