Almost everyone knows what the Golden Rule is, but not many are aware of its counterpart, the Platinum Rule. In business, both are valid when it comes down to selling your product or service, but at times, the Platinum Rule proves to rake in more profit. In this episode, Alex Mandossian explains why, in sales, following the Platinum Rule generates more profit than following the Golden Rule. Also, learn about the approaches you can take when it comes to the different decision-making styles and discover the personas associated with the Platinum Rule and which one you can identify yourself with.

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Platinum Rule Of Selling

You’ll learn in this episode, number one, how the Platinum Rule differs from the Golden Rule, and why the two are relevant to your business. Number two, you’ll learn what the four decision-making styles are and the ideal sequence to approach them. The sequence is the solution.

Number three, you’ll discover why Platinum Rule sales will profit more than Golden Rule sales. If you approach your sales prospects through the Platinum Rule, you will profit more than if you approach them through the Golden Rule.

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The Beginning

The year was 2000. It was on December 16th. I remember being with my newborn son of about three months and my former wife, Amy. We were in a plane, and we were about to leave John F Kennedy Airport. In about 6.5 hours, we were going to land at San Francisco International Airport, also known as SFO. The reason we were coming back to the West Coast is that we had no family on the East Coast.

I left a business there that was generating over $300,000 a year on Madison Avenue and I was living better than I’ve ever lived before. I had to quit the job if I wanted to maintain my family. At that moment, I decided. I know what I’m good at. I know what my unique ability is and we moved in with my then, in-laws, for about 6 to 7 months in Orinda, California, which is in Northern California in the East Bay.

Finally, we settled down and we found an apartment to live in until we were looking for a home to buy. During this time, I thought, “I have an infant Gabriel, and I don’t want to travel. I’m a professional speaker. I know how speaking to sell works. I’m pretty good at it. I’ve been doing it for quite some time. I’m also an interviewer. Why don’t I do teleseminars?” There’s no YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn at this time.

Google is a thumb-sucking baby. I think I was using the search engine Northern Light. I don’t even know if they’re around anymore. Yahoo at this time was a big deal, but Google was an infant. They didn’t have their initial public offering until 2004. I have audio and if you don’t know what a teleseminar is, there’s a bridge line where people call into a certain number. I have a certain passcode. They can hear me. I can unmute them if I want, which I do at the very beginning.

I set up a whole system on how to do teleseminars and I became the Larry King of teleseminars, which I got a testimonial from Larry about that. Later, I became the Larry King of web television testimonial that I got while visiting his home in Beverly Hills in 2011. That testimonial still stands at MarketingOnline.com if you scroll down the page and take a look.

[bctt tweet=”In sales, the question mark is more powerful than the exclamation point.” username=”AlexMandossian”]

What I learned about teleseminars is, first of all, it was never about me. I never did unto others as I wanted to be done unto. It was always about them because there were so many personalities that I was interviewing. Now Nightingale-Conant is a company that used to be in the cassette business. It was developed by two gentlemen Earl Nightingale and Vic Conant’s dad. I know Vic, I never knew his dad. Eventually, it was built into a CD set of thought leaders who promote and teach their how-to courses.

Eventually, now, you have all this stuff online on Audible and other areas that are digitized, because over the years technology changes. If you were to know the people who make movements and who are the movers and shakers, then you will go to a Nightingale-Conant directory or catalog and take a look. It was my dream to get to meet all of those people.

I hadn’t met all of them. I wasn’t born into an Ivy League family of any kind. I got two respectable degrees from the University of California at Irvine. One in psychology and the other in economics, but I wasn’t part of any circle where I could meet some of these folks. Many of them were thought leaders, some of them were on park benches like I was at one time. Moving forward, something terrible happened, but it did have a huge impact on my business.

On September 11th, 2001, two buildings went crashing down and I remember watching it from the living room of my in-laws home because I was working from home at the time. I had no idea what that atrocity would end up doing for my business. Fast forward about three months, and now it’s 2002 in January, I’m getting all these phone calls from thought leaders from the Nightingale-Conant directory, and they’re wanting to do interviews with me.

No one is traveling, everyone is afraid to travel. All of the events that have been scheduled have been canceled. It had a huge negative impact on other people’s businesses, but my business started to boom. I didn’t realize it was because of the 9/11 atrocity until many years later, but then I figured it out because why would people be calling me? It’s because their speaking engagements were canceled.

I became the interviewer to many of these people. I interviewed them about their books, their topics, their areas of expertise, their unique abilities and I could go on and on with all the people I’ve interviewed and whom I know. You can go to MarketingOnline.com and take a look at those.

You can go to VirtualBookTourSecrets.com and see some of the authors I’ve interviewed. Over 120 authors because most of the speakers are authors. I even had a course called Virtual Book Tour Secrets which have since retired. I’m thinking about bringing up the 2.0 version for much less money.

 

Why am I telling you this? It’s because I did unto them as they wanted to be done unto. They didn’t want to lose their businesses. They were professional speakers in physical locations and I took the teleseminar format and I utilized the Platinum Rule.

One of the people who I later met and who I interviewed was Tony Alessandra. He and a writing partner wrote the book, The Platinum Rule. He even wrote a book on Platinum Rule selling. Fast forward to 2007, and I have a course that everybody whom I know in digital marketing is taking.

All the movers and shakers, they were once my students, now they’re my teachers. It is totally annoying, but it’s a blessing and I say that on stage a lot. In 2007 I’m introducing the Platinum Rule and I’m talking about how it’s superior to the Golden Rule, which is biblical. It’s in one of the modules of Teleseminar Secrets.

A gentleman who had over twelve children. His kids handled one of my events one year and they were the karma crew. They were the total support staff. I didn’t need anybody else. Just one family. His name is Mark Harris. He’s a dear friend of mine. His wife is a dear friend of mine and his children are dear friends of mine. In fact, two children were born listening to separate years of Teleseminar Secrets if you can believe that.

They’re in the delivery room and they’re listening on a speakerphone. Remember, this is before YouTube. Google was around, but it was before Facebook and Twitter. Mark got a little upset because Mark is very spiritual and religiously based. His whole family happens to be. They pray together constantly and they’re very familiar with the Bible.

He took exception to the fact that I said that the Golden Rule was obsolete. I didn’t mean that because Tony Alessandra, who first coined The Platinum Rule said, “It doesn’t make the Golden Rule obsolete.” Do unto others as you want to be done unto, is not obsolete, but the Platinum Rule is an improvement in the area of marketing.

I was living in the Platinum Rule with all these speakers who couldn’t speak at physical locations, but I was doing unto them as they wanted to be done unto and getting their message out, and they were very grateful to me. I got to build strong relationships with them.

[bctt tweet=”The Platinum rule in sales is more profitable because you are actually getting into the mind and the heart of the other person.” username=”AlexMandossian”]

The Platinum Rule

Let’s take a look at what the Platinum Rule is and how it differs from the Golden Rule. If you are in sales, if you are enrolling someone and Mark Harris certainly is a great enrollment professional. He’s good at what he does. He started in real estate, used teleseminars there and has moved on to other types of topics such as thought leadership.

The Golden Rule is the principle and it goes back thousands of years, treating others as you wish to be treated. It can even go back to the time of Buddha. Jesus came 500 years after. It could go back to the time of Moses as well. You want to be treated as you want to be treated and you treat others as you want to be treated. That’s the Golden Rule.

The Platinum Rule is to treat others as they want to be treated. Do unto them as they want to be done unto. The reason Platinum Rule works well in sales is that not everyone is like you. If you hate to sell, typically you’re getting rejected. You may be living into the Golden Rule, but you’ve got to expand that horizon and broaden it and to advance from prospect to client or customer, patient, member or student, whatever you call them.

You want to have this curiosity. You want to foster a curiosity versus the false certainty that everyone is like you. If you are moving toward a person, you want to move towards things, some people may be moving away from people. They’re constantly focusing on moving away from pain. Maybe that’s not your disposition.

If you’re moving away from a person, you’re a little bit of both, but you find out that someone is more moving toward, then you speak to them that way. You’re not a hypocrite, you’re not a chameleon. You don’t speak to a grandparent the same way you speak to a sibling or a child of yours if you have one. Even to a dog or to a spouse, you speak to them differently doesn’t make you a chameleon.

You are doing unto them as they want to be done unto. You want to ask yourself, in a Socratic method, “How is this person making decisions?” You want to have high intention, low attachment, which I’ve talked about in previous episodes.

What is that about? First of all, Platinum Rule, do unto them as they want to be done unto. Focus on them and the only way you can focus on them is by asking questions. The question mark is more powerful than the exclamation point. Dale Carnegie said that. The Golden Rule, do unto others as you want to be done unto. You’re going to do that anyway. Common courtesy. Curiosity, not being abrasive towards them and not selling too hard.

 

The Platinum Rule goes more into their psychographic. What are their interests? What are their behaviors, what causes movement for them? This comes into the category of personas. I haven’t talked much about Tony Alessandra, but a tip of the hat goes to him, he and his writing partner for The Platinum Rule. I recommend that you get it for Kindle on Amazon. He has Platinum Rules Selling, the sales version of The Platinum Rule.

When you’re looking at doing unto others as they want to be done unto you, come into the category of personas. In The Platinum Rule, one persona is called the director. The persona style I’ve learned is through the light version of Myers-Briggs, which ultimately came from Carl Jung, which came from Hippocrates going back to the Hippocratic Oath.

The Sequence

The director or competitive is direct. They’re guarded and they make decisions logically and quickly. In sequence, this is a system. Michael Gerber talks about this in The E Myth, but the system is not the solution. I debate with him all the time. When I see him, I say, “Michael, the system is not the only part of the solution. The sequence to the system to the solution. That’s the total solution.” You need a sequence.

In building marketing intimacy and gaining rapport with someone, there’s a sequence to it. You can’t leapfrog from a handshake to a hug if they’re not familiar, or even comfortable with that. The directors are the first people I get rid of in the sequence meaning they’re the what people. They want to know, “What is this about?” They make decisions quickly and logically.

I have mentors who are directors and competitive. They’re direct, yet they’re guarded. They’re not very open. The second group is what, in The Platinum Rule, Tony Alessandra calls the socializer. In the Myers-Briggs tradition, what I teach, is spontaneous. They are direct as well but they’re open. They’re not guarded. They make decisions emotionally and quickly.

These are the people who run to the side table when I’m at a physical event. If I have a great emotional or a logical argument, then the competitive or director runs, but the socializer or spontaneous, those people are very easy to convince and they ask, “Why should I do this?” “Why is this so important?” For example, Mozart was spontaneous, Einstein was competitive.

Now the humanistic. There’s a third group I go after. I do this in sequence. They’re indirect. They’re not direct, like the competitive or spontaneous, which is also called the director or socializer. The humanistic or relator as Tony Alessandra talks about in The Platinum Rule, they are indirect, but they’re open.

[bctt tweet=”Wildly successful entrepreneurs don’t wait for their ship to come in. Instead, they swim out to it.” username=”AlexMandossian”]

They’re emotional based decision-making, but they’re slow. They asked the question, “Who?” The socializer spontaneous doesn’t ask, “Who?” They ask, “Why?” The humanistic who asks, “Who else is this going to benefit? Who else has done this well?” Those are all the testimonial people.

If you’re a humanistic or relator and you start with testimonials, you’re going to learn the director/competitive and the socializer/spontaneous. The final group and many people just write these people off, but I love them because they are the most loyal of the four and that’s the thinker according to Alessandra, or I call it the methodical from what I’ve learned in the Myers-Briggs lite version.

These are personas that are indirect, and they’re guarded. They don’t like direct. They hate that salesperson who comes right after him. They like logic, and they like to make decisions slowly. They like step by step. The perfect presentation is not just systematic like Michael Gerber talks about and he’s a genius. He’s much smarter than I am, believe me. He did a lot of his work not far from where I’m sitting right now in the San Francisco area, but I believe the sequence to the system is also the solution.

I go after the people who make logical decisions fast, I go after them first, then emotional decisions fast, I go after them second. If I go after emotional fast decision-makers, I lose the logical, fast decision-makers. That doesn’t have to make sense to you. It’s just true whether you want to believe it or not.

If I told you how much money I make from the stage without getting any flak from people, saying I’m trying to manipulate them, it’s because I go in this sequence. I don’t go in the sequence of who I am first and then everyone else. I do the Platinum Rule. The emotional slow, I go after them third and logic and slow, I go after them fourth. You won’t get the logical, slow people first.

If you’re at a CPA or a bookkeeping convention, or there are a bunch of enrolled agents at that convention, usually they’re logic and slow because they’re dealing with numbers. It’s a stereotype but it’s true. That persona will take time to say yes. You’ll get the yeses from your logic fast and emotion fast decision-makers, then the emotional slow and then the logic slow. Those are the personas. That’s the Platinum Rule.

Those are the four decision-making styles and that’s the ideal sequence. Why is the Platinum Rule more profitable when you’re selling than the Golden Rule? The Platinum Rule is more profitable because you are getting into the mind and the heart of the other person.

It could take a few years to become good friends and you do unto them as you want to be done unto, and they’d have to discard some of the things they don’t care for. What if you did unto them as they want to be done unto like a Platinum Rule process would advise you?

Alexism: Swim Out

The Alexism for this episode is the following, “Wildly successful entrepreneurs don’t wait for their ship to come in. Instead, they swim out to it.” Isn’t that very Platinum Rule-like? Do unto them as they want to be done unto.

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A review of the insights you and I both discovered in this episode and I want you to apply these. Will you do that for me? Number one, the Platinum Rule differs from the Golden Rule because the Platinum Rule is, do unto others as they want to be done unto, and the Golden Rule is, do unto others as you want to be done unto. Both are valid so I won’t upset my good friend Mark Harris or his dozen-plus children.

Number two, the four decision-making styles. Either you make decisions logically and quickly, emotionally and quickly, emotionally slowly, logically and slowly. The ideal sequence is number one, logic fast. Number two, emotion fast. Number three, emotion slow and number four, logic slow. That alone is the price of admission, which it’s free when you read this episode.

Why the Platinum Rule sales process will profit more than the Golden Rule is because it’s faster. It’s more elegant to get to the heart of influencing someone, ethically. These insights will only work for you if you work them. Make sure you execute what you’ve learned in this All Selling Aside episode, as well as the others. If you do, I believe your future will be bigger, it will be looking a lot brighter, and more importantly, you’ll be creating it on your terms.

Speaking of reviews, if you’ve already given me a review, write down your biggest takeaway or a-ha moment that you got from this episode on an index card and keep it. If you haven’t given me a review on iTunes, then go to AllSellingAside.com/iTunes and write your biggest a-ha moment or takeaway for this episode.

Don’t give my podcast a review like other podcasters request. There is nothing wrong with that but that’s a Golden Rule thing. The Platinum Rule is I want to know your a-ha moment for this episode so others can benefit from it. It will mean so much to me. It will mean much to others. When you review it, then iTunes will ask you to rate it and I hope I’ve earned five stars from you. I’m working hard to get a five-star review from you for this episode and I want you to rate it five stars now.

Let’s say this particular episode didn’t earn five stars from you, then read another episode. You only get one review so please find one that will get me five stars. That will mean the world to me. If we need to joint venture together, if you think that I’d be a good joint venture partner, please reach out. If it’s equal between the two of us then I’m happy to look at that and evaluate it.

Your review takes three minutes out of your day but what you declare could provide you as well as others reading it, valuable lessons so that we get higher in the ranks and other people get access to this. It’s 25 years of sales and marketing know-how that’s mine and all the mistakes that go along with it in just 25 minutes a week.

One final gift in honor of this episode is complimentary access to my video eCourse. I will teach you how to identify your target market and create an irresistible message and capitalize on your most lucrative media sources available to you right now. Go to MarketingOnlineMentor.com.

I hope our paths cross again next time. This is the show dedicated to making you an ethical influencer and bringing more certainty into your personal and professional life. Ethical influence does apply in both personal and professional life.

Do whatever it takes to join me next episode. Our topic is How to Create A Movement. I don’t care how big or small you think you are in the marketplace. I don’t care how much of an ethical influence you think you are. You by yourself can create a movement if you do three things. I’m so excited to teach you this.

I encourage you to invite a friend even or a colleague, maybe a study buddy to this episode and the rest of them. Let them subscribe. Next episode, the topic is How to Create A Movement. I can’t wait to connect with you then. It will be a super fun episode, I promise you. There are three ways to create a movement. If you don’t do all three, you won’t create one. I want you to join us with your study buddy. I can’t wait for our paths to cross then.

Important Links:

•  MarketingOnline.com
• VirtualBookTourSecrets.com
• The Platinum Rule
• Teleseminar Secrets
• Platinum Rules Selling
• The E Myth
• AllSellingAside.com/itunes
• MarketingOnlineMentor.com