book buyer in quantity with wholesale discounts. These transactions
were typically 5 to 20 copies. My next step was to offer the book to
distributors in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom,
Australia, and New Zealand. These companies typically bought
books in three-figure amounts.
Then I sold foreign language rights for Money Is My Friendto
publishers in Europe and Asia. In these instances, I was selling a
higher-priced item, which was actually a business opportunity for
the publisher.
Thus I took the same item and moved it step-by-step to the more
difficult area of the diagram, as my sales ability increased. It is not
just the emotional intensity that changes as you move toward the
upper right-hand corner of the diagram. The sales cycle takes
longer and the whole thing becomes more complex because there
are more steps. Sometimes several people must agree before you
can make the sale.
The $5 to $20 item is business at its simplest. It compresses the
four basic business processes described in Chapter 9 into one sim-
ple operation. Moving to something bigger produces greater emo-
tional intensity and a longer sales cycle.
Learning to Receive
Learning to receive? Yes, that’s right, even though most people
have never heard those words in the same sentence. Typically, re-
ceiving is viewed as a fortuitous, unintentional accident rather than
as a skill. Receiving does have a peculiar characteristic that differen-
tiates it from most skills: It is awkward to get practice in receiving.
We are not suggesting that you contact your friends and say, “I just
read this wonderful book that told me to develop my receiving skill,
so would you give me $5,000?” You can do that if you like, but this is
not the method we suggest for learning.
Selling is the process of offering others what you have in ex-
change for their money. Money follows the commands of your
mind precisely. People who believe that receiving is bad, people
who put themselves last, people who are terrified of being seen as
greedy won’t sell much regardless of how polished and confident
their presentation may be.
The Bible tells us that it is better to give than to receive. Perhaps
so, but that does not make receiving bad. Greek philosophy pre-
sents a more resourceful perspective about receiving: It is better to
Learning to Receive 221