Ben Gay III has been called a living legend in the sales world. In his 40+ years of professional selling and sales training, he has been the #1 salesperson in every organization in which he has ever worked . . . and he’s a powerful speaker/sales trainer/author to boot!
Having started his first business at 14, by age 25 he was the president/CEO of what was then the world’s largest Direct Sales/MLM/Network Marketing company. And he was personally trained by fellow sales legends J. Douglas Edwards, Dr. Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, William Penn Patrick, Zig Ziglar, Merle Fraser, Fred Herman, James H. Rucker Jr. and many many other sales giants.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Ben Gay III about teaching people to close the deal with his book.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How the speed at which we do things is the only thing that has changed in sales.
– How you must learn the kicks, blocks, and punches of selling first.
– How the same sales techniques are used in different industries.
– Why salespeople should write their own books.
– How success doesn’t usually come from one big event, but an accumulation of small steps.
Connect with Ben:
Links Mentioned:
bfg3.com
stores.ebay.com/ronzonebooks
Rob Kosberg:
Hey, welcome everybody it’s Rob Kosberg with another episode of our Publish Promote Profit podcast, I have a legend in the sales business, Mr. Ben Gay the third is the best-selling author of The Closers a book you can find on Amazon and there’s of course, several follow up books to that. He’s been called living legend in the sales world 40 plus years of professional selling and sales trainings been the number one salesperson in every organization in which he’s ever worked that’s saying something. And of course, a powerful speaker and sales trainer, as well as author to boot, we were just having a pleasant conversation about deals he was closing this morning on the telephone. He is still active in the business, and I want to jump right in and talk about your book first. Ben, thanks so much for being on the podcast with me today and look forward to learning from you.
Ben Gay:
Super and vice versa. I always learned from you too.
Rob Kosberg:
You know, our listeners tend to be those that are either authors or they want to be authors and they really want to learn how they can use a book to grow their influence, grow their impact, make more money like real effective strategies. Maybe first talk about the book itself The Closers, when you wrote it how many copies approximately it’s sold. Give us a little background there first, before we dive into how you use it.
Ben Gay:
This is the book Rob’s talking about The Closers we now call it part one, because there are other parts and beneath my name in, I get I think you can read it from there. It says editor I didn’t write the first draft of The Closers part one. What we now call part one I created the call center industry back in 1976, the 800 call center industry and so I had everyone on our staff had a pen knife and they cut out ads that did not have an 800 number in them, which was almost all ads. The day I started the company 86% of all Americans did not know a toll free number was toll free to them and because it was so they talked fast when they called, and because it was long distance they assumed with that 800 number, they talked loud like my generation used to do when you called your grandmother on Thanksgiving because they could, “Hello.”
So, I happened to my assignment was the Wall Street Journal every day. And I normally did bigger ads, but I’m scanning through the one ads one day and I read this little ad about a one inch ad. We were talking about a different one before we got on, and it said something about closing I wasn’t sure and it was so poorly written I wasn’t even sure it was about a book. I didn’t know, but I did know it didn’t have an 800 number, so I took my pen knife cut it out clipped it to a typing request and down it went to start the six letter series. I always saw your ad it’s a lovely ad, da, da, da. But why don’t they have an 800 number? And if you’d like to jump the results 40%, give us a call and we’ll show you how to do it.
As I was throwing it in the out basket, I noticed it asked for 14.95 if you wanted to buy a… By then I’d figured It was a book so I clipped my personal check for 14.95 to it and send it down. Rob I never gave it another thought if they hadn’t sent the book, I wouldn’t have known I didn’t care I was just curious. And two, three, four weeks later this package showed up that today I would have a bomb squad technician open. It looked like it out of an insane asylum my name and address was in crayon, and so I open it up and then you know how, when you get a new book, you tend to flip through it. I flip through it and pages shot all over my office, it was bound so poorly and then of the pages left in the book, some of them were upside down.
So, I realized we were not dealing with real pros here so I gathered it up, went to throw it in the trash can end of story. But I sort of glanced through a little bit and I saw a couple of sentences that caught my attention. So I put a rubber band around it and threw it in my briefcase, my plot for The Closers was to take it on my next airplane ride before cell phones and 24 hour movies and so on. And I already read all the inflight magazines in any given month. And so I was going to read it and then put it in the back of the seat pocket and let their trash pickers up worry about it.
Had a whole plot for getting rid of the book and a couple weeks later, I’m on a plane going to New York and get out the book undo the rubber band, straighten it up. And I had found Rob, the dead sea scrolls of selling poorly written, misspelling, horrible grammar, printed upside down, et cetera. But it was sales genius so I didn’t finish the whole book, but I read enough of it to know by the time we landed New York, I went to a payphone your younger listeners probably don’t know what that is, but a phone on a wall, you put money in we didn’t have cell phones, so I called their office in Arizona and I said to somebody who answered the phone, I said, “Hi, I just finished reading The Closers.” And this guy said to me, “Well, Mr. Gay, how are you?” I’m looking around we don’t have caller ID I’m in LaGuardia I figured I was a stunt on candid cameras or something and I just said, “I didn’t give you my name.” He says, “Well, Mr. Gay, we printed 500 copies we ran one ad one day in the Wall Street Journal we sold one copy, so if you’ve read The Closers your name is Ben Gay, you’re from Placerville, California.”
So long story, somewhat shorter I said, “How many do you have left?” And he said, “I don’t have to go count we printed 500 we sold one 499.” I said, “I’ll take them.” He said, “In the condition they’re in?” I said, “I’ll take them it’ll make a great story.” So I took them gave them to my marketing reps who gave them to their top marketing reps out in the field and I thought that was pretty much the end of it. Rather quickly, the 500 books were gone and then people started coming up my people saying Jack in the Chicago wants 50. So and so wants a 100 and so on, can we get more? So, I called back the number in Arizona negotiated the rights to The Closers and the right to rewrite it and added it and so on.
Rob Kosberg:
And make it into a book where the page is stuck.
Ben Gay:
Yeah, to a real printer and so they agreed having only sold one book, I looked like… and then 499 more to me that looked like what did they got to lose? And then we went on and we started spreading it and we made it part, we sold the answering service itself to clients, a line of vitamins and then cosmetics and so we just added The Closers to the things that our distributors sold. And then we started running ads and all the success magazines, sales and opportunity, quarter page ads on the Wall Street Journal and so on.
And we sold ten and a half million copies of the book when we quit counting 25 years ago and it still sells briskly, but I don’t have the big distributor organization anymore and so anyway, ten and a half million copies, I could prove if I had to, but that was 25 years. So it’s some number substantially higher than that and that’s how I got in the business. It was totally accidental, literally trying to get somebody to buy a message taking service at a call center.
Rob Kosberg:
You were telling me a story even before we came on. Because I asked you are you closing any deals today? And you said, “Yeah, I closed a couple.” And that I remember I was in real estate, I started in real estate at 18 years old I’m 57 now so that’s not quite 40 years ago. And I remember when Tom Hopkins and Zig Ziglar and these guys were coming flew Floyd Wickman you may remember that name and they taught about using the toll free recorded line, right? You want to sell real estate here’s the best way to do it. You leave a recorded number that they call they listen in and they can leave their name and number for information. And you told me you’re still doing that you’re still selling real estate that way, which is wonderful I mean, it’s like when, when you learn a great process, all you need to do is add technology to it and market it in whatever ways technology allows and continue with the process, which is exactly what you’re doing.
Ben Gay:
People ask me what is changed in selling since you got in it? And I said, “Nothing.” The sheep dogs are faster they can go out in the pasture and round up the people faster through social networking and technology and so on, but when you get the sheep up to the barn the game is the same. You have to tell them what’s in it for them, the features, the cost, the benefits et cetera. Nothing’s changed it’s the same way the soap traders were selling thousands of years ago and the Yankee pedal was selling hundreds of years ago and the way my first business partner and best friend Jimmy Reckoner and I were selling 50 years ago.
We’d got in our car and drove around, talked to prospects now I’ve given over 5,000 paid appearance probably that many more to prisons and service organizations and so on for free not counting the ones I went to and total in this business, you really don’t know how many people you talk to or how many, whatever, but based on the average audience and the number of speeches I gave, I figured out I’ve been in the room talking to about two and a half million people that took 55 years from 1965 when I started till today.
I can talk to two and a half million people this afternoon if I want to, so that’s the difference. But when I’m talking to them, I’m using the same sales processes I guess that’s how use that I was using 55 years ago and my father was using 50 years before that and so on.
You mentioned Doug Edwards this is Sales Closing Power I wrote this book for him after he died but from his seminars and so on I didn’t. It wasn’t one of those here’s what I think he was thinking it was from my notes and his recordings.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, I mean, from what you just described your book, the book that you were the editor of, and you compiled and sold ten and a half million copies of took your career on a completely different trajectory. You went from doing one thing to becoming super well known for something completely different. Talk to me over that period of time and maybe especially now, in what ways are you using the book, have you used the book to get more of what it is you want? Obviously the book is making an impact on people and now you have closing, you have a part one, part two, part three you have other books that you’ve written et cetera. So obviously the books make a difference in people’s lives, but they’re also bringing people back to you. So talk to me about how you use the books and what that looks like.
Ben Gay:
Well, the way I’ve described it to people Robert is all of them, but most famous for The Closers part one just between you and me, The Closers part two is a better book but you must learn the kicks, the blocks and the punches of selling and then in part two, I show you what sophisticated people really do with that red raw inform. But to answer your basic question the books I’ve written 24, about half of them ghost written and the other half under my name the books are my calling card. And here’s the word if viewers want to write something down a published book especially a good one gives you credibility. People are… I was 25 years old when Dr. Napoleon Hill was given to me as a mentor my boss paid for him the first year $50,000 in 1967 and William Penn Patrick he owned Holiday Magic Cosmetics, which was the parent company of four or five other companies.
Rob Kosberg:
I thought maybe it was W. Clement Stone or something like that, that would’ve made a cool story too.
Ben Gay:
Through Dr. Hill, Clem Stone became a friend. In fact, I talked to Clem the day he died. I heard he was not in good health I called, and a gentleman answered it was a male nurse and I said, “I’m just an old friend of Clem’s and I was wondering how he’s doing?” He says, “He’s not doing well.” And he sort of said, “We’re at the end.” And I said, “Well, put the phone up by his ear and let me tell him goodbye.” And I didn’t know if he’d do it, he did so among the last voices Clem Stone heard was mine saying, “Clem, you may not remember me, but this is Ben Gay I met you through Dr. Hill and you did so much good for me, thank you.” And that was my last call with him, so I grew up I won a sales contest, became president of this big company it was the mystery prize.
And therefore, since it was the largest direct sales multilevel marketing company in the world at the time everybody was trying to get there. So people said, “Well, how’d you meet Og Mandino?” I said, “I was going to the men’s room, and he was in the hallway.” “How’d you meet Dr. Napoleon Hill?” “Neill Patrick gave him to me.” “How’d you meet Zig Ziglar?” “We joined Holiday Magic in the same meeting on the same day September 15th, 1965 in Atlanta, Georgia Wednesday at noon.”
It had quite an impact on me that changed my life and we went head to head in the National Sales Contest and I won, he won a Rolls Royce I won the mystery prize and he and I laughed till the day he died about who really won because I’d said, “Bring me the keys to the Rolls I’ll give you the keys to the front door and we’ll call it even.” He said, “Oh no, no you won fair and square.” So anyway all these people, Dr. Hill led me to Clem Stone and so on all these people were there because I was lucky enough to be a kid 25 years old sitting in the catbird seat.
And so, it wasn’t anything marvelous I did I won a contest, won a job that I wasn’t really qualified to do, but bluff my way through it and all these people sort of came in the mix J. Douglas Edwards. I won a little contest in Atlanta Georgia years ago, won a trip to an American Sales Master’s Convention in Miami and the right to sit on the front row and have dinner with J. Douglas Edwards. Three years later he was working for me.
Zig I used to love we were in the same room, and he was within ear shop he would say, “You know Zig Ziglar.” I say, “Yeah, he used to work for me, or he still works for me or whatever.” So, it’s sort of unfair because I was a kid, and they were… Zig was 18 years older than I was Earl Nightingale another friend into was on the Arizona at Pearl Harbor when it was blown out from under him. That was the day I was conceived, so friends and mentors is a relative term most of them are old enough to be my father. Dr. Hill was old enough biologically to be my great-grandfather.
Rob Kosberg:
Lucky kid how about that? And still going strong closing deals now.
Talk to me getting back to the idea of the book as you know, this credibility piece, as you mentioned just a few minutes ago, you gave an incredible stat, you’ve spoken to over two and a half million people in the room, live events. Is this a product as well of the book? Talk to me about how you got these speaking engagements was that also from the book and I want to connect the dots for people as much as possible on how someone like yourself is using a popular book to get more of what you want.
Ben Gay:
Well, yes and no the book came after I was deep into speaking, but the important part is credibility my credibility back then was boy wonder, president of the largest MLM in the world. And so anywhere I wanted to go, I was welcome no one checked my qualifications, I’m a high school graduate barely I got thrown out of public high school, my father had some money so he sent me to a private prep school. I got thrown out of there and then the original school had to take me back because you had to be in schools when you were 17 or something so I went back and finished up in Atlanta again.
So, I had no education, no qualifications, nothing one of the joys about selling is in high tech things, if you’re selling heart monitoring equipment, you probably must know something. But most of selling, it’s a learnable skill in most of writing doing a book, it’s a learnable skill. If you can read and write reasonable English, if you can’t we have proof readers in this business.
Yeah, who can help you, so the trick is to have something to talk about and start writing Steve Wilford, Steven Douglas Wilder my co-writer on several books back in the early days I hired him and paid him $20,000 to ghost write a book for me.
Rob Kosberg:
What year was that?
Ben Gay:
I’m guessing somewhere in the early ’70s ’73, ’74 I’m guessing.
Rob Kosberg:
20 grand in the seventies, that’s a more like 60 grand, 75 grand 100 grand.
Ben Gay:
Yeah, or more it was a lot of money which makes the story even funnier, because he sent me a chapter, I read it and I said, “That’s pretty good.” I made some changes because I do speak and write reasonable English and then I wonder what I call it the way I would really write it. So I sent it back to him match up a little bit and I said, “All right, let’s go.” And he said, “No, no, you go, now I write a chapter, you write a chapter, I write a chapter.” I said, “No, I didn’t pay you for me to write half the book.” He said, “Well, you and I are friends and I won’t tell you something, you write as well or better than I do.” And I said, “Yeah, when I’m inspired and when into that thing and when I’m not busy.” He said, “Well, we’re all busy.”
And he said, I’m a professional writer and I’m frequently not inspired, what you do is you here’s from now on. I want you to write a page a day of could go to the publisher, type set a page a day, every day, seven days a week for the rest of your life and then you’ll write a book and a half or two books a year by accident. And it’s only a page, goes back to a phrase I coined years ago, “You can eat an elephant one bite at a time.” And so he got me on the one bite at a time before the day is over-
Rob Kosberg:
Are you still doing that? You said for the rest of the life. So do you do that today?
Ben Gay:
Yep. That’s how I wrote 24 books and what I’m working on now is ghost writing, I’m doing it for somebody else, but I’ll write a page before I leave the office. Success is generally not an event it’s a total of little bitty things that you did all the time so, but it gives you… I was 25 when I met Dr. Hill he’s the first person I ever met who wrote a book that I knew about. I mean maybe somebody wrote one, had a stack up in their garage, but now with today’s publishing techniques and experts like you to help people along. I don’t know many people in the business world who haven’t written a book I mean, anybody can do it if you have the discipline.
But it’s credibility and I call my books business cards, of course you’ve heard of The Closers, ten and a half million copies sold in the first few years when they quit counting 25 years ago. Years ago Earl Nightingale hired me, he worked for me but then he hired me to develop his distributor organization because he wanted to have something like we had at Holiday Magic. So I wrote some scripts when I would start calling on people Earl with the strangest secret.
Rob Kosberg:
Sure, yeah.
Ben Gay:
First one I was ever given.
Rob Kosberg:
Classic yeah, I remember listening to that 30, 40 years ago.
Ben Gay:
This was given to me September 15th, 1965, and two years later he was working for me, the voice of Holiday Magic Cosmetics and so on. But when I started selling Earl stuff and I was selling it to test my scripts, I wasn’t going to be a distributor, but I wanted to send distributors out with an unproven private and I was talking to somebody, I think it was a dentist in San Rafael, California where I lived at the time. And I went on was Marvel all this Ben Gay presentation about why he should buy the Nightingale material and he said, “Ben, I don’t understand how plain bad calls to my staff is going to help.” I said, “bad calls?” He said, “When you keep talking about Nightingale.” And I said, “Oh, do you know who Earl Nightingale is?” He said, “Never heard of him.”
Well, I discovered that I was a little cult you go out into a restaurant and start talking about Dr. Napoleon Hill, 90% of the people don’t know who you’re talking about or Zig Ziglar or me or anybody else. So, I developed a line for the Nightingale distributors, of course you’ve heard of Earl Nightingale the most listened to radio voice in the world, her daily on over 750 radio stations in the United States and Canada to which people go, oh yes. Because nobody wants to be the idiot who’s never heard of Earl Nightingale, so my people who sell The Closers use a very similar term of course, you’ve heard of Ben Gay and The Closers, the best-selling book on sales and closing ever written. And he of course has given thousands of presentations to which they always go, “Yeah.” Or they think they’ve heard of me because of a magic product.
Rob Kosberg:
Everyone knows the smell of that Ben Gay right there.
Ben Gay:
Yeah, and all the Ben Gay jokes that go with it, you’re supposed to say at that point, “Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to rub it in.”
Rob Kosberg:
That’s a little corny, but okay.
Ben Gay:
Your book will be your calling card, your certificate of credibility and if sold properly, they will believe that they should have heard of it. That maybe they’re the only person on the planet who hasn’t heard of it.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s probably good place for us to give some further information. Somebody wants to work with you, somebody wants to have you come out and speak or just learn more about your courses and whatnot, where can we best direct them? Where can we send them that will get them on the Ben Gay train.
Ben Gay:
I’m groping there it is, I’m groping around for my handy dandy high tech sign that I made myself first, just send me an email if you’d like to work or talk or whatever. And that is bfg3@directcon.net If you’d like to get your hands on The Closers, the bottom line here goes to stores.ebay.com/ronzonebooks. They offer The Closer series with special pricing login you’ll get it at my website and free shipping, which we don’t do so that’s where I would suggest they go to get it.
Rob Kosberg:
And your website, bfg3.com.
Ben Gay:
Yeah, but if you go there and order it will cost you more.
Rob Kosberg:
Ben great to have you on, thank you for your wisdom love your stories, love the people that you’ve connected with. Obviously we’ve stayed connected let’s make sure that we still do, I want to hear the things that you’re doing maybe we even find some cool things to do together.
Ben Gay:
I’d love to do that and to your viewers and listeners, Rob knows what he’s talking about I’ve heard nothing but good things about him for and he and I. I Think the first time you and I did a show together was June 7th, 2021 but the reason I did that show with you was I’d already heard so many good things about you. So if you’re even remotely thinking about writing a book, getting it published and save yourself all the soul sucking things you have to do to an effectively, I wouldn’t do it.
Rob if I didn’t already have contacts that I’ve used for years, I’d come to you I know what’s involved and no thank you. I don’t want to do it I don’t want to have to get an ISBN number I don’t want to have to reestablish contacts in the new publishing world. I’m really not interested.
Rob Kosberg:
Thank you.
Ben Gay:
I’ve gotten old fat, lazy and cranky, so if I were you watching this and you were remotely considering writing a book, get in touch with Rob and do what he says, that’s another little secret of success. Find the person who’s already doing successfully, what you want to do. And don’t reinvent the wheel, do exactly what they tell you to do they don’t need your brilliant ideas.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it Ben, love it. Thank you. Thank you for the kind words and love the good advice as well.
Ben Gay:
You’re welcome, sir.
