Gary Vaynerchuk Gets It Fucking Right

Last week, I criticized (harshly) Gary Vaynerchuk for comments he made about Howard Stern’s disparaging remarks on social media.

In my opinion, Vaynerchuk’s criticism of Stern was misplaced and Vaynerchuk was being naive about the opportunities that social media provides those who wish to become bonafide celebrities.

To his credit, Vaynerchuk sent me a nice email, left a friendly comment on this blog and invited me to chat over a beer. Even though I still believe he’s wrong on the matter, I think Vaynerchuk’s willingness to overlook the harshness of my criticism and to give the substance some thought is worth complimenting.

I pride myself on calling it as I see it and try to give credit where credit is due so I’ve decided to call attention to Vaynerchuk’s latest video blog, which I think is right on.

In it, Vaynerchuk answers the question: “how do I find advertisers for my blog?”

His answer is quite simple: you have to “go and GET IT.”

To prove this, Vaynerchuk picked up the phone and called a business that he found advertising through Google AdWords. He pitched the owner of the business on a hypothetical video blog about beer that he said he was planning to develop and even though the business owner was a bit skeptical, Vaynerchuk was able to get enough interest to warrant a follow-up.

What Vaynerchuk demonstrated is the power inherent in proactively selling your product.

Far too many “entrepreneurs” sit around waiting for business to come to them. That’s a recipe for failure because business is rarely developed by chance.

If you have a software product, the chances that your first 10 customers are going to find you are slim. If you run a blog, the chance that your first direct advertiser is going to find you is equally slim.

The bottom line is that most products are initially sold, not bought. If you have taken the time to create a product but aren’t actively selling it, you’ve only gone half way.

I learned this at a fairly young age. Less than 10 years ago when I was 19, I started a business that required me to do something that I hadn’t previously been required to do: cold call.

As charming and articulate as Drama 2.0 is, selling over the phone was not something that I was naturally comfortable doing. I like to joke that picking up a woman at a nightclub is easy but selling something over the phone is magnitudes of order more difficult because you have a far more limited toolset.

My first few calls were unsuccessful. When confronted with the cold calling equivalent of “cockblocking,” I didn’t initially know how to react despite the fact that if I was trying to pick up your sister, I’d have you eating out of my hand in minutes. But I learned quickly and I saved my best prospects for last.

Finally I struck pay dirt: a $2 billion publicly-traded company. Within two weeks, $50,000 was being released from my attorney’s escrow account. For all you text messagers, that’s the power of the telephone.

In the world of blogs, new media and websites, far too many entrepreneurs sit back and hope that pay dirt strikes them. Most hope that a major advertiser, sponsor or business partner is going to one day send an email out of the blue that changes life forever. Wishful thinking. To be sure, for some, it does come. But for most, it doesn’t.

If you want to develop your business, you’re going to have to develop it. That means picking up the phone, sending emails, sending letters. Sell, sell, sell.

Unfortunately, selling doesn’t come naturally to most of us. We come up with all sorts of reasons that we can’t and shouldn’t do it.

Your excuses might sound something like “I’m too small,” “I’m not a good salesman,” “I know there’s no way they’d have interest.”

Note the similarity to the guy who sits on the wall at the nightclub saying “I’m too short,” “I don’t know what to say,” “a woman like her could never have an interest in me.”

The reality, however is that the guys sitting on the wall are going home alone not because they’re too short, not because they don’t know what to say and not because an attractive woman wouldn’t have an interest in them. They’re going home alone because they refuse to sell their “product.”

Ironically, this creates a ton of low-hanging fruit for the guys who are willing to sell, especially when it comes to the most attractive women. They are often the easiest to woo since they have fewer suitors.

The business parallel: that $50,000 sale I mentioned was made because I had the audacity to call a C-level executive. As I made more cold calls, I found that getting in touch with top management is often far less difficult than one might expect and I attribute this (partially) to the fact that, like attractive women in social venues, most are too afraid to approach.

Watching Vaynerchuk call up a company that he located on Google highlights that the mere act of trying to sell can be highly effective. Let’s be honest: Vaynerchuk has an annoying voice (sorry Gary), his sales pitch wasn’t exactly smooth and he didn’t effectively employ any tried and true sales techniques. Yet he walked away with an expression of some interest and that’s one expression of interest more than he would have obtained had he not picked up the phone.

The lesson: if you don’t have the balls to push your products and services, nobody else will. If you’re serious about growing your business and creating opportunity for growth, push. And keep pushing.