It seems to me like people who are considerably older than me almost always fall into one of two categories: being mean or being very funny. No matter what though, the key is that they can get away with anything (like kids). Why is that?

By "mean," I don't mean they're always unpleasant. It's just that they're more often than not grumpy or not too sociable. Why is that?

By "funny," I don't mean they're always comedic. It's just that they have stories that are genuinely humorous and observant of something common and quirky among us all.

In both categories, older people can also be "weird." By that, I mean somehow exotic in their interests or behaviors and maneurisms. Maybe that's from spending a lifetime "finding themselves" and figuring out how they want to be. Or maybe not.

Sometimes, older people are very wise. Wisdom is often some combination of all of the above: seriousness and a sense of humor, backed by years of stories and experiences.

I'm most impressed when I meet someone who is really fully mentally present and just sharp as anyone half their age. That is truly the most remarkable and special, and I wonder why. What's their secret? How can I grow up and still be quick and "with it" (I like seeing older people with iPads and knowing more about the latest bands than I do)? Why aren't more people like that naturally? Seeing people like this always inspires me (even though it also creates quite a cognitive dissonance).

Anke and Carole spoke about entrepreneurship and their own personal stories in my class by Mayor Riordan, and it was neat to hear two different perspectives on the entrepreneurial process.

Here are their quick bios:

Carole Ference is Executive Vice President, Business Development of Nielsen Advertiser Solutions, Founder of IAG Research, and Former Publisher of House Beautiful, Connoisseur, and Town & Country.

Anke Audenaert is a founder and head of product and research of JumpTime, a company that focuses on building traffic optimization software for digital publishers.  The Culver City based company is 4 years old. Earlier, Anke worked at Yahoo!, as head of market research and network optimization. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Marketing at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and teaches web marketing and analytics in the FEMBA program.

Ideation

Anke started her talk by speaking about her "aha moment." She started at Unilever and then moved to Yahoo as Head of Research. Her focus was on finding ways to move homepage visitors to the most profitable parts of the site. She realized there was a need for this across companies and decided to leave but first partnered up with someone. She had the algorithms, and she partnered up with Michelle DiLorenzo for Business Development. Together they built JumpTime, a traffic optimization software company. They put a price tag on all content pieces and then build software to move traffic across them. They have 12 employees and have several large clients already.

Carole originally started in magazine publishing and moved to TicketMaster here in California. She wanted to change her lifestyle, and so she networked and met people who became her partners. The business idea came from someone else: TV advertising effectiveness measurement. Her company's focus was on measuring viewers' recall and liking of ads. They wrote a small business plan and pitch and went out to GM and Kraft and got lots of feedback from them, tweaking the product until it was in a state that could work.

Next Steps

Some of the initial steps mentioned were writing a business plan and marketing plan. Anke also started consulting for clients and developed her model further. She analyzed data with her husband Lustig, a famous asset pricing professor, and got together with her future CTO Andres Rodriguez from Stanford Research Institute. Together they set their mission, including lofty goals for the next 5 years.

She urged us to write business plans for ourselves and our business, not for getting money. Key points to focus on are goals for product, including specific milestones, and goals for sales (top 50 clients, big companies, etc.). She started a huge Excel sheet to track all this, helping her get her Series A funding.

Funding

Carole spoke a bit about friends and family funding for her company, IAG Research. She explained that your plan will change considerably from investor feedback.

Personal Qualities of Entrepreneurs
They must embrace chaos and benign neglect (letting people run with ideas), not being afraid to make mistakes.

They must embrace their competition, like Yahoo switching its search engine backends. They must really articulate their product's benefits when they dealing with competitors. They must not listen to people who say something can't be done and that there are competitors.

Current Landscape
Both ladies said now was a good time for entrepreneurs with "money flowing." In 2010, VC rose to $22 billion, and in 2011, 76% more is expected. The hottest areas they mentioned were the following: Consumer, Mobile, Social, and Health. Various incubator programs they spoke highly of were the Start-Up America Partnership, YC, and IdeaLab.

I just completed my second Jeffrey Gitomer book: his Sales Bible. I can definitely see his style of numbered lists, with an extra "0.5" at the end at all times, and his intense energy and enthusiasm for sales philosophy came through strong in the audiobook. At times, the text seemed to lack structure and direction, and I felt like there was a lot of repetition. However, buried in this tome are a lot of great nuggets and sample scripts, clearly developed after a lot of field testing.

It's interesting how many of the sales techniques presented link closely with the principles of psychology from some of the other books I've recently been reading.

Below are my main notes and lessons from each section.

Think: the sale is in your head

• Walk in with the feeling of certainty, that your product is the best value
  
• Listen to inspirational messages
• Pump yourself up

Believe

• In your company
  
• In your product
• In yourself
• And that the customer is better off buying your product from you

Engage

• Develop rapport
• Ask people where they live, where they grew up, where they travel, how they landed here, how they got to this career

Discover

• Find their reasons first; why they buy is much more important than why you need to sell
  
• Find out why others buy
  
• Learn from customer wisdom (ask past customers why bought from you)
  

Ask

• The right questions
• Get them to reveal value and benefit of ownership

Dare

• Chutzpah
  
• Cold calls
  
• Asking for something
  

Own

• Know whose fault it is when the sale not made
  
• Always your fault
  
• Learn from it
  

Sell for relationship, not commission

• You "earn" a sale, not make it
  

Prove

• Testimonials are huge; use video
  
• Make them specific
  
• Use them on site, in sales visits, with proposals
  

Become

• Daily work towards big goal
  

Values and techniques of the sales professional

• Create difference
  
• Know the difference between satisfied and loyal
  
• Ability to speak and be compelling
  
• Stay a student everyday; apple a day of learning
  
• Friendly relationship
  
• Humor
  
• Creativity
  
• Ask for the sale
  
• Believe in yourself
  
• Be prepared
  
• Don't whine
• Yes attitude
  
• Set and write down goals on post it's on mirror
  
• Positive attitude
  

Customer management

• Add value, ideas to prospect instead of just following up routinely
  
• Show testimonials like crazy
  
• Present just facts, no fluff
  
• Ask personal, deep questions about awards, history of customer's company, goals, family; use these to sell to
  
• Be friends with customers
  
• Call people, add value, do things that are not selling to them at all
  
• Take them to events, outings
  
• Join a business council where you can sell to each other
  
• Your current customers are your best prospects
  
• Use humor
  
• Listen to affirmations
  

Meetings and questions

• Answer people's deeper, underlying questions and concerns that lead to close
  
• Ask, What do you look for? What has been your experience? What did you like about it?
  
• Power statements: Sell value to user, not value of product
  
• Develop an elevator pitch with clear call to action
  
• Study the other person deeply beforehand
  
• Cold calls in person or phone: ignore no soliciting signs, ask for help, ask for some passive info, say want to leave some important information, ask who decides on this sort of stuff
  
• Carry article about you, testimonial video, give referral to customer they can talk to, keep a list of loyal customers big and small
  
• Craft words carefully
  
• Never say "honestly" or "frankly"
  

Presentations

• Involve the prospect in the sale; make their experience tactile, hands on
  
• Ask for help in setting up presentation, projector; accept others' offered drinks
  
• Wrong: "I'm not finished with my presentation," "Don't buy yet" -- others' questions and agenda always take priority
  
• Create presentation from customer's perspective, not product's perspective
  
• Have at least one laugh per 5 slides
  
• Use a white background
  
• Logo in corner
  
• Use Impact type face, 44pt, shadow on font
  
• 1 point per slide
  
• Tell a story instead of relating facts
  

Handling objections

• "No" is a required step to "yes"
  
• The sale starts when the customer says no
  
• Get down to the real objection
  
• Every conversation is sale: your selling them on yes or them selling you on no
  
• Prevent objections before they're voiced
  
• Closing: If I could x, would you buy?
  
• Have good answers to real objections
  
• Present in front of all decision makers, don't let them be your salesperson for internal decision-making
  
• Do prospect's competitor comparison for them ahead of time
  
• Clearly ask for the sale
  
• Buying signals: asking about cost, availability, timing, questions on company (these are Indicators of Interest -- IOIs)
  
• Answer questions with questions (When can you deliver it? -- When do you want it?)
  
• Use the puppy dog close: let them try it out (they can return it anytime but won't)
  
• Use the negative sale (hurt that comes from not buying)
  

Persistence

• As children begging for a candy bar, we learn the art of persistence
• Sales requires persistence and getting through 5 No's before you get to Yes
  
• Get prospect's work schedule and call before or after secretary's hours
• Always leave a voicemail anyways
• The shorter the message, the more likely to be returned
• Just leave your first name and number
• Trick: leave a message and hang up mid-sentence on some important point having to do with them

Customer service

• Guru: Ty Boyd
• Aim: not just satisfaction
• Put in as much work to keep customers as to acquire
  

Exhibitions

• Be the first in the room, last one out
  
• Write down notes on business cards, personal rapport details
  
• Give talks
  
• Be brief and move on when meeting people in a row/networking
  

Networking

• Ask customers what events they plan to attend and be there
  
• Spend most of your time with new people
  
• Chamber of Commerce publishes events
  
• Give first to others
  

Sample sales schedule for a true sales hustler

• 10 prospect calls per day
  
• 10 follow up calls per day
• 10 new appointments booked per week
• 4 client lunches per week
  
• 2 networking events per week
  
• Damn, sales is hard!

Philosophical lesson from his dad

• When facing a problem, ask yourself: "Is it anything $10,000 won't cure?"
• If it's not, it's not a problem.
  

Afterword/When I grow up

• Make decisions as the person you want to be