Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Authority playbook. I'm Jeff Brandeis. And today we're talking about the strategies to help you stand out, be seen and be heard. You're watching now Media Television. Welcome to the Authority playbook. I'm Jeff Brandeis. This show is about building credibility that compounds. Authority is not what you say, it's what the market repeats.
Today's guest is one of the most recognized voices in sales, Jeffrey Gittermer, best selling author, sales authority. Jeffrey, welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you here.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Thank you. All around good guy. You didn't say all around good guy.
You didn't say father, grandfather, great grandfather.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: You just said it for yourself. All good.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah. It's important to identify, I think, from an age perspective and, and when you say great grandfather, that means you have.
You're in the fourth generation of your own family, which is pretty cool.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: That is pretty cool. That is awesome.
Hopefully someday I can experience that myself as well.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: It's.
It's pretty interesting when you think about it. Like, my grandkid just had a kid.
Like, whoa.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: As I like to say, it's what makes you feel old. Is not your old your own age. It's actually watching your children and your children and your children get older. That's what makes you feel a little older.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't actually.
The youth of my family keeps me young.
I don't think of myself as old. I just think of myself as 80 years worth of immaturity.
The great Woody Allen line, you're only young once, but you can always be immature.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: That is correct. As I tell my wife, I'll never grow up. So.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: So, Jeffrey, before we dive into tactics, let's talk about how you built authority and why it still matters in today's world.
I think you. I've known you or I met you about 30 years ago. I was, I was, I attended one of your conferences. You were the keynote speaker. And I think one of the core ideas you expressed to the people like myself in the audience, that people don't like to be sold to, but they love to buy.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: Where did that come from? And, and how does that change in how we lead conversations?
[00:02:34] Speaker B: I came up with it in a seminar. I wrote it down, then I trademarked it.
So every time you say it, you owe me an ice cream cone.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: My pleasure. Come on down.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Cool. I prefer chocolate, but that's a whole other issue.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: But I think it's more important to understand from an authoritative standpoint.
I wrote for the Charlotte Business Journal and the Publisher would not pay me, but told me that he would get me in other business journals.
I was an expert.
The day my first column appeared in the paper, I went from expert to authority.
When you're in print, there's something about that whole process.
And then about six months later, I went to a seminar that was done by my mentor, a guy named Ty Boyd who lived in Charlotte.
And I wrote about it.
And I asked the business journal for permission. I said, at the end, Ty Boyd wants to give away his 51 ways to get closer to a customer. Can I just ask people to fax you and put the words Ty Boy on their letterhead and we'll fax it back to him?
Okay, fine.
They had 300 faxes the first hour.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Their fax. One of their fax machines broke and they almost didn't get their paper out on time, which I thought was kind of fun.
But after about four or five times they made me fax my own office.
And at one time I had three fax machines running all the time and a full time person doing nothing but answering them.
And what that means, Jeff. And this is really important to understand for someone who's listening.
I wrote something, someone read it all the way down to the last sentence and then took action hundreds of thousands of times.
Not thousands of times, hundreds of thousands of times.
And so that creates that authority, that creates that understanding that people are looking for what you have written and then looking for more.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: And nowadays that's so hard to build out authority to actually even create things to. Yeah, as well.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: And I think AI will change some of that.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: We'll talk about AI in a minute, but I want to go back to something.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Sure. Case.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: We have some really young listeners who don't know what a fax machine is.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: So a fax machine used to be the way we used to communicate. To get data.
We would actually put a piece of paper into a machine and then we'll go through like a printer and transmit through the phone lines and come out on somebody else's office right before texting.
Yep.
No. And Jeff, Jeffrey, you also.
And we talked about this when we spoke and we caught up the other day. You created a coin.
Tell us the. What the preference was what surrounded that coin making.
And my friend David still has it, which he showed you on our call. But it's. It's something to really. To keep in people to remember you by.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: I did a public seminar in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the early 90s and an old Greek guy walked out of the seminar and said, this is my business card. It's a coin.
No one ever throws it away. And someone always shows it to someone else.
I'm giving you this idea. Keep it for yourself.
And I did. I went home and I had this designed
[00:06:45] Speaker A: in. In sales we trust.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Right.
There's a back that has my trademark. People don't like to be sold, but they love to buy.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: And what do you think is not on this?
[00:07:00] Speaker A: Your phone number.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: My cell phone. Correct. I do not put my cell phone on anything.
I don't. I have a reputation and I have a brand. And I don't want people calling me in the middle of the night. Wanted to pick my brain.
So I purposely left that as my last bastion of privacy.
You can call my office.
We have a service 24. 7 that'll answer the phone. You can, you can DM me on any social media.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: But I don't want people to know my cell unless I give it to you.
And I think there's something about that that says authority.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: I think so too. I couldn't agree with you more there. That's, that's a great thought for all of our listeners to keep in mind is your phone number is obviously attached to you. It's in your pocket these days.
It goes off, you know.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't care if you have my cell phone number. Said someone with no authority.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Gotcha.
So, Jeffrey, you've written 17 best selling books. Your work has hit best selling list hundreds of times.
What did you do early in your career that turned your expertise really into demand?
[00:08:20] Speaker B: My father was a great writer, but succinct, never used adverbs.
He was a businessman, wrote letters, wrote proposals. And I always read them. And I thought, wow, this is really well written.
And then in college, the only A that I got besides archery was English composition.
Composition, yeah. And I'd get an A minus.
And the teacher said, if you want an A, just copy it over. Because I hand wrote it. Everyone else typed it and put a cover on it and all kind of crap. I just, I wrote it one night and turned it in the next day.
Scratched out words, all kinds of stuff.
But the teacher loved me and he loved my style.
And that told me early on that I could write.
When I first started my column in the Charlotte Business Journal, it was pretty much on accident.
I had written a column, collaborated with something in the Charlotte observer.
And when it was published, I got all kinds of phone calls. And I went back to them, I said, hey, can I write a column?
And they go, no, you'll make too much money. I said, no, no, I'll do it for free.
And the woman goes, no, no, no. You know, the notoriety. I said, are you kidding me?
So in other words, you don't care if your readers get good information or not. You only care if I make money from it.
I said, you know, all I want to do is write a column for the Charlotte Observer. And the woman said, it'll never happen.
And I looked at her and I said, no, no, sweetie, because some chicks get upset when you call them sweetie. I said, no, no, sweetie, it'll never happen here.
And I was already doing business with the business journal, and I met the guy who published a business journal, literally as I was crossing the street, going into the office.
And he said, what were you doing in the Observer? And I said, well, this happened. This happened. The guy came and I wrote an article on me. He goes, you have time for coffee? I said, sure. So we sit down and I said, I want to write a weekly column. He said, 30% of our customers are salespeople, and we have nothing for them. I said, okay, I'll write the weekly column. Literally, Jeff. As we were talking, the people who turned me down walked by our booth.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: So the moral of the story there is sometimes when someone tells you never, that means not for at least 20 minutes.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: That's so true.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: So I go to this guy's office, and he says, I'll publish you. I'm not going to pay you, but I'll get you one of the papers.
I said, fine. I spin around to walk out, and he goes, by the way, can you write?
And that was it.
Literally, after I. It's funny.
I wrote the first column on what do you say when someone says they want to think about it?
And then I made a list of, like, hundred other things I wanted to write about.
And after the third column, I never looked at the list again.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: It just came to.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
And I never wrote a book. I just wrote a column.
Think about that.
The sales Bible. My first book is a compilation of 100 columns that I wrote.
And I wrote a bunch more. But, you know, you get the idea.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: I Write chapters are 750 to a thousand words. That's it.
Because sales people don't want to read.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: No, they don't. But I know in your. Was it, I think, Red principles book, you. You say personal branding Is sales in 2026 today. What does personal brand actually mean in a world of noise and AI content?
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Okay, I can define it in one sentence.
In business or in sales or in life. It's not who you know, it's who knows you.
And so if you.
I was at the bank the other day depositing something, and the guy at the, on the other aisle looks over, he goes, you Jeffrey Gittamer?
And I said, yeah. And the teller was all of a sudden impressed that someone knew, you know, talked about what I did and how I did it and long time ago. And he funded it and whatever. He was a banker. And that's how it works.
If someone comes on the airplane and they know me, I give them a coin and then they go home and tell people about it.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: And that starts the brand moving, that starts the process rolling.
And if you do it for 20 years, all of a sudden it's good.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: You can't start out thinking it's going to be amazing because it is not.
You live in a sea of anonymity for a little while.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Like everything else takes time to, for things to grow and things to come to fruition.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, but now with AI and now with, you know, all the. When I started, I was either in a corporate newsletter or I was in, in print.
Those are the only options.
There was no such thing as a computer, personal computer. There was no such thing as the Internet. There's no such thing as a blog.
You just threw yourself out there.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Right.
All right, Jeff, Jeffrey, we're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll talk about the mechanics that create trust and close deals. We'll be right back. We'll be right back with more insights and frameworks to help you elevate your brand and your influence. Stay tuned.
And we're back. I'm Jeff Brandeis and this is the Authority Playbook on NOW Media Television. Let's dive deeper. This is the Authority Playbook on Now Media Television. Watch anytime on Now Media Television app available on Roku, iOS and Android or stream at NowMedia TV.
Welcome back, Jeffrey. I want to, I want your playbook in a way that we can talk about tomorrow.
So let's go underneath the brand. What the levers are that make selling predictable.
Your, I think it was 12.5 red principles are very famous in the sales industry. In the sales world, if a business leader only adopts three principles, which three create the fastest credibility and why?
[00:15:23] Speaker B: Well, the first principle is attitude.
If you don't have that, there's no sense me going into the other ones because you're going to be this guy.
So I, you know, to me that's the essence of what you have to do.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: When you say attitude. Good attitude, bad attitude. What kind of attitude?
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Well, I have a book called yes, attitude.
Okay, so when something bad happens, you go yes. When something good happens, you go yes. So it differs from a positive attitude because when something good happens to you, you don't scream positive, you scream yes.
And so that became pretty obvious to me.
The other two principles are pretty fundamental.
One of them would be about asking questions because salespeople tend to tell rather than ask.
And I agree. I can. I'm going to give you an example between aggressive and assertive.
Aggressive salespeople tell. Assertive salespeople ask.
Aggressive salespeople go for the sale. Assertive salespeople go for the customer.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Very subtle difference. But you can tell that person right away.
You know, a car sales guy doesn't care about the customer, he cares about sale.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: The alarm guy, he cares about sale.
Anyways, the third principle, to me.
It's a fight.
I would say the third principle would be about networking. About going out and glad handing people and meeting people that you can affect or that can affect you.
When I.
When I started networking.
Oh good. My cup didn't break.
When I started networking in Charlotte, I didn't know anybody and I, I basically went in rooms where people gravitated to and I was, I would meet people and I would try to bring them together. I would try to. This guy needs this guy and I would bring him together.
And that gave me credibility as a person of value.
And so I networked. And then I'll go back to my original statement. It's not who you know, it's who knows you.
So if I run into the governor of California of North Carolina, Pat McCrory, he'll know me.
What's the value of that?
I don't know.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: He knows you.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Recognized.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Or he'll call me up. I'm going to give a speech. Can you coach me?
Sure.
Okay, so there's that and then there's a 0.5 to this, which I do. 0.5 for everything.
And in, in the red book, the 12.5 is resign your position as general manager of the universe.
You don't have time to solve the problems of the world. Keep your own closet clean.
The guy says, make your bed.
To me that's a bunch of crap.
Clean your closet. That's a bigger ordeal.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Interesting.
Very true.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. So the three principles have a dirty closet.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: So three principles was attitude. Really have that? Yes. Attitude.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Right. Ask me the right questions and network Questions and networking.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: So, folks listening, write those three down and implement them asap, because I think those are golden, golden words. Definitely ones to be able to implement and will lead to success.
Jeffrey, you teach about value in relationship, not the price.
Give us a practical method to quantify value so price stops being the whole conversation.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Well, value is part of the word.
It's perceived value.
Most salespeople have a value proposition, which typically is BS because it only says what we do, not how the customer benefits.
So if the customer perceives that there's a value, they're more likely to buy.
If they don't perceive a value, they're less likely to buy.
There's a second part to that, and that is perceived difference. If I perceive a difference in you than the other guy and I perceive a value in you that's higher than your price, then it's likely that I will buy.
But now there's a third element, and the third element is social proof.
Because I'm going to Google you or I'm going to Google your product, your service to find out what other people think about it.
And if I can get all of. If I get that, oh, man, I win.
Perceived difference, perceived value, social truth. That brings it into focus. But if it's not valuable to you, there's no value.
You misuse the word value.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Correct. I agree.
And there's no value to the, to the person you're talking to. So why would they buy?
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Exactly.
I must. I have some perceived value to you. You wouldn't ask me on your show, Correct?
[00:21:08] Speaker A: Correct.
And even after 25 years, I still remember the value you brought to that audience. So there's definitely a.
A playbook, the authority playbook that my brand fits right into. What. What we're talking about.
All good. But one of the things I do remember, one of your lines is about risk.
Reduce their risk and you convert selling into buying.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: What are the top three risk reducers you see in the real world?
How am I doing, Jeffrey?
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Let me throw something at you.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Okay? I'll catch.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: People say no risk, no reward.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: I say no risk, no nothing.
Because if there's. If. If you can't abate risk in the mind of the buyer, they're never going to buy.
Ever. Ever.
And risk is the biggest unspoken factor in the selling process.
If I perceive risk in doing business with you, I'm not going to tell you. I'm just going to, you know. Can you call me next week? Can you call me never? Can you Whatever.
Because of risk and sometimes risk, the Same as value is perceived, what is the perceived risk in this?
Well, I could go broke, or I could lose my money, or I could. You know, my people might think of me as stupid, or my spouse might divorce me. Whatever the circumstances are, you have to be clever enough to be able to get to that next plateau through the risk factor.
And you have to ask yourself this one question. What's the risk of doing this versus not doing this?
What's the risk or the reward versus not doing it? What is the. You know, what are the consequences of not doing it?
And most people won't take the risk.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: So as a salesperson, do you ask that question?
Do you. How do you. How you value that in that conversation, in your. In your sales conversation?
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Basically, what you do in a sales conversation is you ask questions to uncover what has happened in the past.
If I'm selling copiers or I'm selling life insurance, I'm going to ask, what have they done so far and how has that worked out?
What do they wish would have happened and what actually happened?
And I mean, to me, that's. That's everything. If you have that, you got a shot at it. If you don't have that, you have no shot at it.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Like you, I've been sales for many years, and I think even myself. That's a question that most salespeople never ask. Have you ever looked into this before? Have you looked into another product? Have you looked into another,
[00:24:13] Speaker B: you know,
[00:24:15] Speaker A: program like this before?
And what did you feel? Or why didn't you move forward so you could really understand what their buying signals are or why they never move forward so you could eliminate that risk?
I think that's a valuable takeaway again for all of our sales folks that are listening here today.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, to me, it's.
It's very simple. If I perceive a value greater than the price, I'm going to buy. If I don't perceive a value greater than the price, I'm not going to buy for sure unless I'm hungry.
Denny's. You just wind up there, right?
[00:24:56] Speaker A: You have a purpose, you have a need. And you. You're. You have that impulse because you want to go eat.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Or if you go, I don't know whether you have Krispy Kreme where you live or not, but they make them in the South. They have a big neon hot donuts now sign.
I hate that thing. It's like heroin is calling me.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: And you go in every time and you buy one.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And a glass of milk to make it look Like I'm doing something healthy.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: That's awesome, Jeffrey. We'll take a short break here. Up next, we'll analyze daily habits and digital communication and how we preserve the human essence in a high speed market. We'll be right back. We'll be right back with more insights and frameworks to help you elevate your brand and your influence. Stay tuned.
And we're back. I'm Jeff Brandeis and this is the Authority Playbook on NOW Media Television. Let's dive deeper.
We're back on the Authority Playbook with Jeffrey Gittamer. Let's talk fieldwork.
Jeffrey, Frameworks don't sell. Execution sells. So I want the behaviors that separate the top producers from everyone else.
So I know you go through a ritual every morning. Why don't you share with our listeners, our viewers what you do in the morning?
Yeah.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Before we begin on that, I'm against frameworks because when you start a framework, it becomes that repeated thing that you do with other people and it doesn't always fit and you're wondering, it sounds phony when you keep doing the same damn thing.
If you have a framework, use it on yourself, not on other people.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Okay, good advice.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: Thank you. And even you may have a framework for writing and even that's going to go off the rails. I mean I don't, I'm a writer and I don't do the same thing all the time.
I certainly have principles that I write by, but I don't repeat everything, you know, in 17 books without a repetitive, without any repeatedness, you have to go into a different way of doing things, different design, whatever.
But for the past 30 years, I wake up and I do five things.
I read, I write, I prepare.
And that causes me to think and create, read, write, prepare, think, create that framework. And I try to spend the first hour of the day on me.
And when you write and I don't type anymore, I do voice to text because I'm good at it. I can document my thoughts and I do it into my phone. I just download it quicker. Now you can do with A.I. but I, I'm a little afraid of A.I. with my writing. I just want to be me, but that's, I'm old fashioned, you know what I mean? I don't anyhow whole bunch of stuff in the meantime.
My, my, my daily routine, my, my morning routine has put me on a path.
And keep in mind Now I've done 2,500 seminars in the last 20 or so years and I use the same framework. I'm Always preparing. I'm always preparing.
And every seminar I do is customized. Every seminar I do is different.
I don't go out and give my speech.
I go out and give their speech because they don't give a shit about me. They only care about the people that, you know. They. They want to go out and turn my words into money.
Anything I say other than that is boring. They don't care where I came from. They don't care about my impoverishment. They don't care about any of that. I mean, it's a nice story, but it doesn't really do anything.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: Kind of goes into your first principle, which is kind of blood, which is kick your own ass. Right, Exactly. Get. Get that into a daily discipline.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: Well, you. You have to wake up. And there's a secret here, Jeff. And most people are not going to like it when I tell them, if you don't love what you do, you're never going to get up.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: I agree.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: You're going to need five more minutes with the sleep. You're going to hit the snooze button, whatever you're going to do.
Yeah.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: Be passionate about what you do, or if not, you know, even your customers, your prospects will feel that at the end.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: I love.
I don't use the snooze button. I don't understand it at all.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: I have a dog, so I can't hit my snooze button. The dog does time to take me out. So I get up and I go, so, Jeffrey, besides books, you have a newsletter called Sales Caffeine Reach a massive audience.
What's your content system, how you choose topics, keep the cadence, and how do you make it move? Revenue.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: I don't use it as a revenue thing. I just use it as a branding thing.
But people will call me who read it, and they go, hey, can you come talk to my team?
So it's a sales pitch, essentially going out to a bunch of people.
But I think it's more important than that.
This is something that keeps you what I would refer to as top of mind.
And not everybody reads it, or I would even say not everybody reads it every week.
But if it's there every week, I got a shot at getting readership.
So I try to make the title intriguing.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: I love it.
So, Jeff, Jeffrey, you always used humor, and you're sometimes on the edge with your. With your humor. Where is that an advantage in business and where does it become a liability?
[00:31:10] Speaker B: I don't know.
If you have credibility with your audience, you're going to be Able to move that needle to wherever.
And if you don't have credibility, it's not going to happen.
And as I stated earlier, I discovered my own credibility by having people read all the way down to the bottom of what I've written and then take action.
That tells me that I'm building an audience that's value driven and action driven.
Most salespeople don't take the right action.
I'm going to go back.
I'm a fan of Jim Rohn. I was a friend of Jim Rohn and he said philosophy drives attitude. Attitude drives actions. Actions drive results. Results drive lifestyles.
So if you don't like your lifestyle, you got to go back and look at your results.
And if you don't like your results, you got to go back and look at your actions. And if you don't like your actions, you got to go back and look at your attitude. And if you don't like your attitude, go back and look at your philosophy.
I love that most salespeople start with action.
Big mistake. Because if you have a crappy attitude and you have no philosophy, what kind of actions are you going to take? And the answer is none good.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: None good.
[00:32:44] Speaker B: So think about it from that perspective like you've. As a salesperson, you have to have a discipline of what is next.
What are you going to be doing tomorrow? Not, I got to go drink a beer. I got a, you know, Saturday, today's Friday.
Most people plan more for the weekend than they do for their career.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: How, how true, but. And also how sad.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: Or plan more for the wedding than they do for the marriage.
So I'm looking at this from the perspective of I'm. I drive to my own drumbeat because I don't find anybody driving to my drumbeat.
Most people don't work hard enough to suit me.
And there's three televisions in my house, none of which are ever on.
I mean, I, I watch Stranger Things with my daughter.
I watch Wednesday with my daughter.
And I'll occasionally watch a movie or something, you know, with. But with somebody not by myself.
And if I need to know something, I can just go to Google or go to chat and figure out what it is. Not that hard to do.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Gotcha.
Interesting.
Jeffrey. I know one of the things that are near and dear to you is githimer AI where you deliver real time and sales answers from decades of your content.
For leaders that want to build authority,
[00:34:24] Speaker B: it is what's now and what's next.
I'm going to be giving a speech in Tampa in another Couple months on AI and why people are not taking advantage of it.
And the reason they're not taking advantage of it is they don't have to use it.
They go home at night and they drink a beer and they watch something stupid on television and they are scared of AI or they don't know how to master AI and literally the only way to do it is use it.
You can't, you can't ask chat to find some information, but you can ask it to think about who you are and who you're going to want to become.
It'll think it's pretty scary.
They know me already. I've got content.
I talk to him and he's like, I have a guy, I gave him a British accent and I call him Governor and he calls me Governor.
And it's fun to do, it's fun to play back and forth.
And he knows everything.
I haven't seen you in a couple of days. How have you been? I'm fine, fine.
How does he know that?
It's frighteningly unbelievable.
And my. I have a friend who, very smart guy, worked for Microsoft as one of their first employees and he doesn't know whether he's going to be a maid for somebody. You're going to be killed.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: That's a
[00:36:06] Speaker B: where I'm taking it seriously.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: So, so how, how do we use AI for those of us that do use AI without losing your voice or you lose your credibility?
[00:36:20] Speaker B: You go to chat TPT or Claude or any of the other, any of the other brands that are out there and you pay for a subscript, not the free one. You pay for a subscription. Be committed to this and you invest 15 to 30 minutes a day in a chat.
He's your psychiatrist, he's your psychologist.
And if you're a woman, have it a female voice.
Make him give him the accent of anything you want. Give him an Irish accent. They're kind of cool, but you can have it do anything. Now, my personal AI is not in the public arena. It's not in the large learning model.
Mine is private.
Because if you go to a large learning model and you say what is, you know, you go to their, to their statements of fact, they'll tell you that most of the stuff is not true and sometimes it's ridiculous.
Well, I don't want that.
So I have my own stuff. And I'll guarantee you when you subscribe to my stuff, it's real, it's accurate, it's my stuff, I wrote it.
And so what's going to happen now? Is content is going to take over, because authentic content is wonderful. It's not artificial intelligence. It's actual intelligence and accurate intelligence.
Those are the elements of. Of AI that you have to deal with, and you gotta. You better deal with them now, because it's not gonna. It's not gonna wait for. If you're at home and you're thinking, let me wait for a little while, you're an idiot, and someone's gonna pass you by, and they're gonna pass you by quickly.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: Mm.
So, Jeffrey, your personality, your humor, you're a big part of what makes you and your brand. Tell us a moment where your humor either saved the situation or it backfired.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: Let me back up for just a minute, because that was. I fought with myself as I was thinking about the three principles.
Humor was actually my first thought, because my. My mantra has been, if you can make them laugh, you can make them buy.
So I wrote a book in 1998 called Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless. And they interviewed me on that financial network that was once cnn.
And the woman said to me, what's the difference between satisfied and loyal?
And I said, well, would you rather your husband be satisfied or loyal?
And she said, the camera crew broke up. The. The woman was stymied. She didn't know what the hell to say.
And I realized I had said something that will last forever.
Funny.
Totally funny.
So the basic fundamental is if you can make them laugh, you can make them buy, but not tell a joke, be humorous.
There's a huge difference.
I don't want about three guys walking into a bar. That's not what I want to hear.
What I want to hear is something that's genuinely funny or genuinely, sometimes stark is funny.
I gave a talk to a very large drug company that had just merged with another drug company.
And in the middle of my talk, some kid yells out, is my job safe?
And I yell back, if you're not any good, probably not.
And the people who laughed the loudest were the managers in the back of the room, of course.
So you have to look at this from a standpoint of what's funny and what's not funny.
I was riding around with a woman, a friend of mine, many years ago, and she was talking about quitting cigarettes. Quitting smoking.
I said, have you tried that gum, that nicotine gum? She said, yeah, I tried it, but I couldn't keep it lit.
And I pulled over to the side of the road and was laughing so damn hard.
Those are moments of genuine humor, and those are the things that you have to do concentrate on, focus on that will help you engage other people.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: That's an awesome story. Awesome advice. I truly love it. Thank you, Jeffrey. We're going to take a break and when we return, we'll talk about what changes next, what stays constant and what viewers should do this week. We'll be right back. I'm Jeff Brandeis. We'll be right back with more insights and frameworks to help you and elevate your brand and your influence. Stay tuned.
And we're back. I'm Jeff Brandeis. And this is the Authority playbook on NOW Media Television. Let's dive deeper. This is the Authority playbook on NOW Media Television. Watch anytime on the NOW Media Television app, available on Roku iOS and on Android or stream it at NowMedia TV. I'm Jeff Brandeis. Now let's look with a forward view now with Jeffrey Gitter. What leaders should prepare for now to be ready.
So, Jeffrey, trends don't matter unless they change action. So let's make this practical.
Over the next 10 years, what becomes a scarce asset in sales attention, sales trust, or the courage to even ask what changes?
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Well, let me throw this at you.
There's a difference between a trend and an imperative.
[00:42:20] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:42:21] Speaker B: The trend is something that's going to happen for three months, something that's in the marketplace, that's big at this moment, that's going to go away.
An imperative is something that you need to pay attention to on a daily basis. That is not going to go away.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: So relationships are not going to go away.
Customer loyalty is not going to go away.
I don't want to talk about things that come and go because it's too political. And I don't want to, I don't want to deal with that. My, my favorite color politically is plaid.
But AI is not a trend.
AI is going to be a fixture that will be here for the next 50 years unless the next iteration comes along.
But in the meantime, it's taking over everything. Every newscaster, every paper, every includes AI in some way or another.
And sometimes it includes it just to say it. So you look like you know what you're doing, but most people still don't.
And I'll ask my audience, how many people in, in the audience are over a five in their understanding of AI versus under a five? And it's always, it's 80, 20, literally under five.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: So you have to look at this from a standpoint of, okay, what's my opportunity here?
And the opportunity is just by Studying you can get ahead just by using. Just by taking the time you're already wasting.
There's three uses of time. Waste, spend, invest, waste. Stop wasting your time watching the news or the BS crap of some television show that's going to tell you who's going to marry the millionaire.
And because it's not going to be you.
And start investing your time in chat or Claude or anything that will get you to that next level of understanding in. In terms of AI.
Do that. And sure, I want you to subscribe to my stuff, but let me tell you one other thing that I'm working on right now that's even more incredible.
My library is very extensive and I have about 2,000 books that are no longer in print in terms of the copyright has expired, so that makes them 75 years old or older.
I'm scanning them page by page in optical character recognition so that you'll be able to have the book read to you. Or read it, read it yourself in any language.
But it's AI based.
So the book will be read by my AI in like nine seconds.
It'll give you the top 10 ideas, the top 10 quotes, a summary of the book in, in two minutes or five minutes, whatever you want.
And it will ask you questions about the book if you need to have a better understanding.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:45:45] Speaker B: Calling it the gitamer Genius library. Not because I'm genius, because it'll make you a genius in under a minute.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: That'd be awesome.
[00:45:55] Speaker B: So I have to limit myself at the moment to books that are out of print. But eventually other people will want to join, they'll want to be in the library.
So I'm, I'm taking it from that perspective and I'm making sure that I can influence my audience to a point where they win literally by getting involved. And it's a very low level.
Always turn your phone up when you're doing an interview,
[00:46:35] Speaker A: so remind you to do that.
[00:46:37] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it only reminds you when your phone is ringing.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: Ringing, sure.
But Jeffrey, you said your AI platform is a sales engine, not a search engine. What's the difference? And how should teams integrate that without weakening real selling skills?
[00:46:55] Speaker B: My AI is so complex and so complete that if you're in a sales call, in the middle of a sales call, you can dial me up and say, what question should I be asking this guy? He's in H Vac or he's in real estate, or I have a customer, I'm taking him out for lunch. What should I talk about? It'll give you the Answer in two seconds.
It thinks, and it thinks in terms of positive outcome, not in terms of a flippant answer.
Although it will talk to you in my tone of voice or it'll be politically correct or what I refer to as Jersey Jeffrey. So you can tell me how you want me to respond to you.
It's pretty cool.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: I love the Jersey Jeffrey.
[00:47:42] Speaker B: So that everyone wants it. 75% of the people take Jersey Jeffrey, and it's, it's pretty ribbled.
[00:47:55] Speaker A: Jeffrey, you're in the National Speakers association hall of Fame. Congratulations.
[00:47:59] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: What do you see as the next evolution of authority on stage and now on camera, especially for the executive selling high stakes ideas?
[00:48:09] Speaker B: Well, first of all, you're going to have to be able to discern whether the person you're listening to is either, if it's online, it's either alive or. Or AI.
Correct.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Or an avatar. Yep.
[00:48:23] Speaker B: If you're, if you're live, you can tell right away.
If you're not live, there's always a question, is it real or is it, you know.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: I don't know what the brand was.
Is it real or is it something else?
[00:48:39] Speaker A: Memorex.
[00:48:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, Memorex.
[00:48:42] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:48:44] Speaker B: But the bottom line is either way, you can still get information.
The question is, how do you absorb it, how do you retain it? And then how do you use it to turn into money or success?
Most people don't take it that far. I'd like to have a quarter for every person that's ever been to a seminar, took four pages of notes, came home and never did anything with it.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: I'm guilty.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: It's unbelievable to me. Like, why would you do that?
Like, I used to go, Jim Rohn at one time did weekend seminars for this company called the People's Network, Network Marketing company or direct selling company. And I was involved with it and a lot of other guys like me were involved in it. I'd spend a weekend listening to Jim Ronan coming home and immediately took action.
But I could write about it as well. So I wrote two columns on Jim Rohn and how he did what he did.
And that reinforced what I was supposed to take action about.
Think about that and so work harder on yourself than you do on your job, those kind of things.
And it becomes a way of life. When you're looking at it from that perspective,
[00:50:08] Speaker A: that's very interesting. Definitely philosophy to, for people to think about and to live with.
[00:50:13] Speaker B: I like going on stage and talking to people.
I, I use humor all the time.
That's my way of communicating and getting my communication through.
You can make them laugh, you can make them buy, but you can also make them listen. At the end of laughter is the height of listening.
If you go to a. If you go to a comedy club, somebody says something funny, you're laughing and your drink is coming out of your nose and the comedian starts to talk again and go, wait, you might be funny again.
So you have to look at that from that perspective. That I want to engage my audience to a point where they laugh and listen, laugh and listen. And then if I'm good enough, take action.
L and L.
Yep.
[00:51:11] Speaker A: Awesome. So, Jeffrey, give us your Authority Playbook in 60 seconds where three action viewers can take this week to build proof, create a pipeline, and close with integrity. Can you do that in 60 seconds?
I doubt it.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: And love what you do or get the hell out of it and go do something else.
Because if you don't love it, you're going to rise to some level of mediocrity. You're going to come home and kick your dog every night, and it's not going to help you. So love what you do or get out. That's a number one.
[00:51:46] Speaker A: One. I agree.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: Number two, get there earlier than everybody else and leave after everybody else goes home.
Those things will help you more than any. Anything on the planet. And the third thing is write something every day.
Post online, write an email, write it. Write your thoughts down. Writing leads to wealth.
[00:52:09] Speaker A: I agree. Be. Get yourself out there.
[00:52:12] Speaker B: One minute.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: One minute. Yeah.
[00:52:16] Speaker B: One of the. One other thing. Don't be a jackass.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: Oh, I agree with that. Be credible. Provide value. Really?
[00:52:23] Speaker B: Really.
[00:52:23] Speaker A: At the end of the day, just. Just don't write for the sake of writing. Provide value to the people who are reading to you.
[00:52:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: And how do salespeople close with integrity,
[00:52:37] Speaker B: in my opinion, you don't have to close, you have to open.
Can you explain if I don't start? Right.
Not going to end. Right.
How are you doing today?
Seriously?
Seriously. You're going to ask me that?
I have salespeople call me up on the phone and they asked me to tell me about myself or they asked me a question where I know they haven't done the fundamental thing of Google me.
[00:53:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:53:10] Speaker B: And I said, do you. You Google me before we started? No. And someone would even say, why should I?
Right, Exactly. I'm gonna hang up. Well, you're such a smart person. I'm hanging up.
Okay. And I'm a good customer.
You know, I have success. I.
Anyway, those are the elements that salespeople need to understand that if they're not ready for the sale, it is be prepared.
It is be prepared. If you're not ready for that customer, if you're not ready for that sale, you. If you're not ready for with questions, if you're not ready with. With responses, that can help the other person forget it.
And it's not about overcoming objections, it's about preventing them.
[00:53:59] Speaker A: That's also a key concept.
[00:54:00] Speaker B: We can spend hours closing the sale. Jeff, it's about how you open the sale that's going to determine the end.
[00:54:08] Speaker A: I love that.
Truly love it. And I think, Jeffrey, a great way to end our conversation today. I truly appreciate having you on our show, the Authority Playbook. Jeffrey, where can viewers find you?
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Just go to Jeff. Just go to gitamer AI or gitamer.com and you'll be fine.
[00:54:28] Speaker A: Awesome. Jeffrey, thank you again. It was a pleasure having you on the show. I'm Jeff Brandeis, and this is the Authority Playbook, only on NOW Media Television.
Thank you.
