Sundance Brennan is currently the Founder and Chief Sales Nerd for The Sales Nerds consulting and training company. He is the Amazon best-selling author of The Art of SalesFu and a professional sales coach with more than 20 years of experience in consumer direct sales, specializing in call center strategy and training. He’s been featured on Audible and has been profiled in numerous publications. Mr. Brennan is married and a parent to 4 beautiful children. He has successfully balanced personal and work goals to create a rich and dynamic life. He’s even received a producer credit on a short film (2013’s Lemonade: Detroit).
What do you hope your readers take away from this book?
Everything is sales. Selling isn’t just a job or something that has to be done, it’s something that we do everyday and it’s crucial to our everyday communication. I sell my kids on looking both ways before crossing the street and I sell my wife on where to go out to eat at night. We sell our Friday night dates on the fact that we are fun to be around and will be great life partners, and we sell our future employers at interviews on the fact that we will be good contributors on the job.
Your personal sphere of influence can make a huge impact early on. Give your personal contacts some very specific tasks, like sharing a specific post on a specific date. Your friends and family will want to help, and if you make it as easy as possible to do so, it can be a big push. Some of these friends and family will become advocates for you because it’s hard to promote something and not be vested in the product. You can use these advocates to second voice your work.
What were the top mistakes you made writing and publishing your first book?
I wrote my first book and kept it a secret, I didn’t let friends or family read it because I was embarrassed and was worried that it would be a failure and then I’d look foolish. In the end I realize that I could have involved many of my circle become part of the process and they could have shared in my success. Once the book hit the market I had lots of valuable feedback that I could have gotten for free before the book was published and put out a better product initially.
When will you consider your book a success?
I consider a book a success as soon as it helps 1 person, even if that person is me. My books have helped create a community and my team has followed up the books with trainings and videos that have grown in consistency and quality over the last 5 years.
You love your topic and clearly want to express yourself to the public, that’s the easiest part of the whole self-publishing journey. Invest some time researching tools to edit and make sure that your book is in the correct format for your audience. There are great software and freeware tools in the market today.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before publishing your book?
I wish I knew what it was going to feel like when I was done with the first book. I would have written it a lot faster! The sense of accomplishment from that first book was immense, on the grand scheme it’s somewhere between graduating from university and watching my first born come into the world. It’s epic.
Offer to help others, then ask for help often. I didn’t spend a lot of money or market with ads. I went looking to see how many people I could help and was rewarded with help in return. I searched out colleagues that were starting businesses and offered to help them with website blogs or offered to train their staff. I offered to fill in for any podcast guests that couldn’t make it and supported local publications by offering to write for them. I offered my expert services to any media that needed quotes or opinions. I created a standard Media Bio with backlinks to my website and eventually had enough people on my email list to market to consistently. I very often offered to help for free or bartered for advertising, referrals, or endorsements in return.
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
I would let others share in my success early on. Everyone wants to be apart of something worthwhile and I am shocked at how many people want to help me become successful. I was under the false impression that I needed to do this myself, so I was greedy with my time and efforts. I should have shared my vision early and often, instead I waited years before I was comfortable telling people what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it.
If you are going to write a book or start a business, read The 4-hour Workweek by Tim Ferris and then join James Wedmore’s Business by Design training course and listen to both of their podcasts.
If you only had $1000 dollars to promote a new business or new book, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
Spend a couple of hundred dollars on Fiverr or Anytask.com and hire several freelancers to set up everything you’ll need such as banners, email swipes, and articles, then put together an affiliate resource pack so that you can make it as easy as possible for affiliate groups to push your product for you.
Spend a day setting up the affiliates and push out a Press Release (use a freelancer if writing isn’t your thing). Run ads into a clickfunnel site for a free e-book and upsell on the business service, book, or course. Spend everything have leftover, probably $300-350 on digital adverts to send traffic to your funnel, and don’t forget to get testimonials from folks along the way.
What is your favorite quote?
You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
– Zig Ziglar
Who should we interview next and why?
Daniel Nicart runs a great sales training business for Loan Officers.
How can we get in touch with you?
The Sales Nerds website is a good place to start, but with my unique name, I’m easy to find on LinkedIn and open to all connections. You can also follow on Instagram and Twitter via @thesalesnerds.
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