Jordan Belfort, 2017
Way of the Wolf
The straight line system, which is the method every closer in my business is trained on.
Lorenzo Ayres / 1 min
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You have to get past who wrote it and I understand if somebody cannot. He went to prison for exactly what you think he went to prison for, and some of the self-mythologizing in here is embarrassing to read.
The system is still the clearest one I have found.
A call runs from the open to the close along one line and your job is to keep it there while you build three certainties: certainty about the product, certainty about you, certainty about the company. Almost every objection is one of those three being low, and if you know which one it is you know what to say next.
The part people skip is the front. He spends a lot of time on the first four seconds, on tonality, on how you sound rather than what you say. He is right about that and it is the least fun part to train, because you cannot fix it with a script. Our closers lose deals in the opening far more than in the objection handling.
We run the whole method at AOAP. The itinerary call is a closing call, not a discovery call, and the structure a closer uses to get to the $500 credit comes straight out of this book.
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Build the engine
- Eugene Schwartz, 1966Breakthrough AdvertisingThe best book on persuasion ever written, and the one that taught me you cannot create demand.
- Claude Hopkins, 1923Scientific AdvertisingA hundred years old, free online, and still more useful than most of what got published last year.
- Gary Halbert, 1984The Boron LettersLetters from a copywriter to his son, written from federal prison, and better than that sounds.
Deals and structure
- Ogilvy on AdvertisingDavid Ogilvy, 1983
- Secrets of Professional Turf BettingRobert L. Bacon, 1956
- You Bet: The Betfair StoryColin Cameron, 2009
- Margin of SafetySeth Klarman, 1991
- The special situations booksMaurece Schiller, 1955 to 1966
- Mosaic: Perspectives on InvestingMohnish Pabrai, 2004
- globalization: n. the irrational fear that someone in China will take your jobBruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn, 2008
- Competition DemystifiedBruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn, 2005
- Distress InvestingMartin Whitman and Fernando Diz, 2009
- Merger MastersKate Welling and Mario Gabelli, 2018
- King IcahnMark Stevens, 1993
- Dear ChairmanJeff Gramm, 2016
- Barbarians at the GateBryan Burrough and John Helyar, 1989
- Buy Then BuildWalker Deibel, 2018
- The Art of M&AAlexandra Reed Lajoux and Stanley Foster Reed, 1989
- The Strategy and Tactics of PricingThomas Nagle and Georg Müller, 1987
- Setting the TableDanny Meyer, 2006
- 100 BaggersChristopher Mayer, 2015
- World Commodities and World CurrencyBenjamin Graham, 1944
- Storage and StabilityBenjamin Graham, 1937
- Walker's Manual of Unlisted StocksHarry Eisenberg, editor, the 2000 edition
- The Takeover GameJohn Brooks, 1987
- Bankruptcy Investing: How to Profit from Distressed CompaniesBen Branch and Hugh Ray
- The Crash and Its Aftermath: Securities Markets 1929 to 1933Barrie Wigmore, 1985
- Selling America ShortRichard C. Sauer, 2010
- Outsmarting the Smart MoneyLawrence A. Cunningham, 2002
- The Inefficient Stock Market and The New FinanceRobert A. Haugen
- Distant ForceGeorge A. Roberts, 2007
- Rising To Power: Paul Desmarais and Power CorporationDave Greber, 1987
- The Joy of Achievement: Conversations with J.R.D. TataR.M. Lala
- Pleased But Not SatisfiedDavid L. Sokol
- The Story of Bank of America: Biography of a BankMarquis James and Bessie Rowland James, 1954
- Citibank: A Century in AsiaPeter Starr, 2002
- See's Famous Old Time Candies: A Sweet StoryMargaret Moos Pick, 2005
- The Farmer From MernaKarl Schriftgiesser, 1955
- Shaw Industries: A HistoryRandall L. Patton, 2002
- Iron Will: Cleveland-Cliffs and the Mining of Iron OreTerry S. Reynolds and Virginia P. Dawson, 2011
- The Little Book That Beats the MarketJoel Greenblatt, 2005