About Tom Hopkins | Biography
Tom Hopkins started in sales at age 19. As you can imagine, he had a lot of energy, but little finesse to properly channel it. As a result, Tom failed miserably. After several years of hitting walls and obstacles, he figured out that success in sales is learned through training and practice. By making his selling career his hobby, Tom Hopkins was able to dedicate virutally all of his time and energy to becomming the best. Fast forward a few years through the hard work and Tom had become a sales millionaire by the age of 27.
Often times people desire to have the results but fail to apply that same desire to the work required to achieve those results. In his training programs, Tom Hopkins keeps you focused on getting through the necessary hard work and then enjoy the benefits.
Tom has been teaching his proven-effective selling strategies world wide for over 30 years. His style is dynamic and extremely personable. Tom Hopkins is a world-class speaker and currently commands more than $50,000 per keynote speaking address. To learn more about Tom Hopkins, visit his website at www.tomhopkins.com.
An Excerpt from Tom Hopkins
The video training programs from Tom Hopkins are packed with the knowledge that only comes from being a sales champion. Here is an excerpt from the dvd program Professional Selling As a Career by Tom Hopkins:
Before we begin our training session, and even though your joining us via video, I hope that you will participate not only with your workbook, but get involved … if it’s fun laugh, if you feel happy about something … laugh, express it. Don’t look at this as a television program, it’s an educational experience and our goal is to increase your effectiveness, your skill level, and of course your income. Now we’ve gathered a smattering of salespeople from all different industries. We have real estate people, insurance people, automotive sales, network marketing people, even cemetery sales (where everyone is a prospect). We have an awful lot of people in the room that are from different industries and as we begin the program it is important to realize that this is a generic training session were we are going to be teaching fundamentals, that when transferred into your product or service will do one thing; and that is make you a top producer-that is the goal of the training system. So as we get started, I wanted to give you a little idea about professionalism.
We hear that word and I believe that professionalism is critical to the industry of selling and our company, Tom Hopkins International, is dedicated and has been dedicated for 20 years to improve the overall image of the profession of selling. Now as you may know, most people, when you say salesperson-some laymen may say salesmen-a lot of people are turned off by that. In fact there are an awful lot of people that when we’ve asked them ‘what do you think of when you hear the word salesmen’ they right away go ‘someone who is very overbearing, very aggressive, very pushy.’ And I want to start this session by saying you don’t have to change from being who you are. You can use your personality, your temperament, your belief system, you can be you; but you adapt and take these ideas and make them a part of you and you will increase your communication skills, you ability to serve your fellow man with the benefits of your product or service, and again as I have said climb the ladder of success in the field of selling.
I also want to say that more and more people are considering this industry than ever before. The downsizing of major corporations is causing a lot of people to look for a new career, the downsizing of our armed forces is causing a lot of people to look at selling as a profession. A lot of layoffs are happening, a lot of people are ready for entrepreneurship activities and they are choosing sales. So there has never a better time to really learn this profession, to become a specialist in the field of selling. Be proud of it, because once you realize how important this business is to the United States-a free enterprise country-you should be real excited with what you do.
So, let’s start off with some fundamentals of what makes selling a great career and why you should look at it and choose it. Well, it offer’s some wonderful things-it offers freedom of expression-meaning you can be your own person. You don’t have to be in the mold, you can take your own skills, your own personality, and develop it. Secondly, there is a low capitol investment with a high potential return. If you were to look at a major franchise, one that is already successful-not one that had to be proven, you could put in hundreds of thousands of dollars, wait for a location, hope for a very small return the first year, and after the second year, start making a lot of money. In sales, I believe in a 90 day commitment of quality activity, quality productivity, and you can have your income start and your life change.
A third thing I found about selling is that it’s fun. You see most people that get a 9 to 5 job, they wake up in the morning and they know what is going to happen all day. Many of them are bored with the life they live. Get in a little car, they drive to the same place. Some of them have a very mundane job and do the same thing all day. In selling, you never know what is going to happen that day. Right or wrong? You can have your whole day planned and everything and everything is in a tight compartment and all of the sudden something can happen that changes the entire day…in fact it’s one of the few businesses that you can have everything organized and in 20 minutes have everything disorganized. But this keeps it exciting, doesn’t it? And it is exciting.
And also, there’s another thing-there is no income ceiling-now people say to me ‘Tom, I’ve been to your seminars for yours, I’ve used your training and I’ve heard you say there is no income ceiling, but I’m the top producer in my company and no one has ever made more than x amount!’ And I say to them, ‘the selling skills you’ve developed are transferable to any product or service.’ So if you feel if you have leveled off, and you are the top producer, you should say to yourself, ‘if I can do it in this field, I can do it in any field and change sometimes is a way of growth-as we’ll talk about.’ So there is no income ceiling if you have mastered the art of selling and truly are professional. .
Training seminars teach realtors how to become more proficient on the Internet and in E-marketing. Find a speaker for an upcoming event that may help your business grow. Learn how to manage burnout, make a business plan, even how to simply remain goal oriented. Another option is distance-learning classes, which give a chance to learn new skills, develop your tactics, and boost profits by phone. You don’t have to travel to a seminar or college class, make one telephone call from the ease of your home or office instead. There are numerous classes designed for real estate professionals.
Most training using sales training videos, sales training workshops, modified in-home training, sales coaching and sales training seminars are available on the Internet. Real estate agent training can be found that will cover things such as: telephone techniques, customer prospecting, overcoming objections, presentations skills, and closing the sale training.
