973. The 90/10 Rule & Golden Hammers (Sales Life Episode)

In this episode, I break down one of the most important concepts you’ll ever learn in sales and in life: the 90–10 Rule and the power of the Golden Hammers.

Yeah, I’m talking to my salespeople today — but don’t tap out if you’re not “in sales.”

 Selling is a life skill.

 Every day you’re selling your ideas, your value, your point of view, your leadership… and at the very least, you’re selling you.

In this episode, I walk you through why the first 90% of any interaction is where trust, leverage, and connection are built — and why the last 10% (the “close”) becomes effortless when you do the work upfront. 

You’ll learn how to ask better questions, listen for real clues (curiosity), collect multiple leverage points (creativity), and guide people toward confident decisions without pressure or manipulation (communication). 

Whether you sell cars, homes, ideas, or a vision for your life, this episode will sharpen how you communicate, connect, and create momentum.

Tune in & take notes. Let's get it!

Transcript

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All right. 3, 2, 1. Let's get it. Welcome to another episode of What's Your Problem, the podcast. I'm your host, marsh Bi, and if this is your first time here, what your problem tackles the three problems we all face, adversity, uncertainty, and complacency using five core skills, communication, curiosity, creativity, continuous learning and action, and productive confrontation. So this episode. It's about the 90 10 rule and the golden hammer. What's the golden hammer? You want golden hammers in your, in your life. So this centers. Mostly around my salespeople out there, but I do say that selling is a life skill. Sales is a profession, but selling's a life skill. So don't automatically bounce outta here just because I'm talking to my salespeople, because there are pieces of this that you can actually use in your everyday life. Because remember, selling is getting someone to accept your product, service, or idea. And at the very least, you're the product. Okay? You're selling a service or no idea. All right? So no matter where you are, that's what you're doing from the time that you've been a baby to getting your job, to getting the promotion to the relationships that you have today, it's all because you sold your way there. So let's talk quickly about Josh Altman, he's the celebrity. Um, real, I was about to say apprentice. He's the celebrity real estate broker that you may have seen on Bravo tv and I read out of his book The Altman closed this morning and he's talking about the golden hammer. And the golden hammer ties li nicely into the 90 10 rule that I have. So let me start off with the 90 10 rule that it is. So 90% of your time. With a customer should be on relationship building, and these are asking the questions and finding these golden hammers. The last 10% is the easy part. It really is. So many times people want to be a good closer. You don't have to be so worried about being a good closer if you're a good opener, if you're finding and collecting golden hammers. And so the 10% is the close. That's the easy part. It's easy if you've done the first 90%, right? I mean, you have to think of it like an athlete, and you are a life athlete. You are a sales athlete, and you have to think about it like this. Athletes spend way more time practicing than they do playing the games they do. And so all the gazillions that they make, it's because of everything that led up. To the game time. So it's how they train, how they take care of their bodies, how they dial in their nutrition, how they sharpen their mindset, and how they develop their skills. Game day is just a small slice of where the work shows up, and the same is true for you. Sales is the same way. The game. Asking for the sale and closing the sale, bro, that's the smallest piece of the process. The real work is in the practice work. It's building the trust, it's uncovering your customer's needs. It's stacking the leverage points and truly connecting with your customers. This is why I say, man, details matter. Details matter. You've gotta ask. You've gotta shut up, and then you gotta pay attention. Josh Altman says, the first thing to watch is your mouth. That's so true. Well, I have, I have sold a product and bought it right back because I kept on talking your mouth can be your best or your worst tool, especially depending on what kind of streak you got going on. If you're just like losing. It is. Like if you offered to buy it for'em, they wouldn't even, they don't even wanna buy sometimes, man. We just have that kind of stank on us, and it happens like that. And many times in those instances, our mouth becomes the worst thing you should be saying less because sometimes we're padding the rejection, making things confusing. So it's an automatic no.'cause they don't even understand what the hell you're asking because you're beating around the bush because you're trying to pad the rejection. And then sometimes, man, we voice objections in our minds. We voice 'em and we, we give light to it and the customer's like, wow, you bring up a good point. I never thought about that. Well now that gives me something else to think about. That's what happens. So your mouth can be your worst tool or it can be your greatest tool. Don't let your mouth cost you money. Don't sell something and buy it right back because you want to just one up because you want to control the conversation because you wanna let your customers know how smart you are. It all starts with asking questions and then shutting up to listen. Sounds so cliche to say, but it is true, man. And it is, it's like so blatantly obvious in our careers. Yet we mow right past this. Every single time. We just get away from it and we drift and drift and drift. And before you know it, we, everything's wrong with everything. You have to understand people's attention spans are like that of a goldfish. Today, altman says Microsoft did a study. And the average attention span focus went from 12 seconds to eight. This is why reels and shorts are so popular. You got about eight seconds to make an impact. And so when you're working with your customers. You gotta think of yourself of like a reel, of like a short, because your customers, their minds are wondering, and so boom, you gotta make an impact. You gotta point the focus and show 'em the direction that they need to go. You gotta think of yourself as a tour guide and so you gotta, you have to hit with maximum impact in a short amount of time. This is why you gotta listen for details. You gotta ask the questions and then hang on to their words. I love the analogy because literally hanging onto their words, meaning you don't really know where this is going to go, so you're flexible in the thought. You're not so rigid in thinking, okay, what's the next thing I'm gonna say? How am I gonna slam it shut? No, you're not even thinking about that. I tell my salespeople, sell the step, not the result. The result is just gonna be based on the steps that you sell. So sell each step. Stop worrying about the end result right now, and worry about selling the next step. That's what makes you play present. This is what's going to make you ask questions and shut up and give space. Don't rush to cut them off because every pause, every hesitation, every subject change is a clue. Here's the mindset I believe in. If you sell cars, you should have the mindset, in some cases of a real estate agent, you don't close a house in a, a mere hour or two like you do with car sales. So the transactions for cars is super, super fast. Right. But a lot of times salespeople, they match that transaction speed and they mow right through the opportunities. So you should actually think opposite in a different sales field. So as a salesperson that's selling cars, think like a real estate agent. Not that I want it to go on for months, but that I give it space and slow it down as needed to unpack and find my leverage points. That's what a golden hammer is. And then on the flip side, if you're in real estate or selling solar. Then you should actually think like a car salesman. Have the mindset of a car salesman. Again, it's not that you're rushing through everything, but you have, there's some, there's some good degrees on both sides, and so you have that sense of urgency. So to be able to keep that thing moving along at a good pace because your main point is keeping your customer focused and pointed in the right direction. So let's bring in the golden hammer aspect, and I love this, this whole thought process. The Golden Hammer, Altman says is the piece of information that you can use as leverage in your negotiations. It is, these are all leverage points. I just did an episode on Windows and Leverage, go back, I don't know, three or four episodes before this, and it's about windows and leverage. Even if you're not in sales, everything life is windows and leverages. You gotta find those things. So it's all about. Building up your leverages and you need more than one golden hammer. You may start off with one leverage point, but you don't stop there. You don't end up at one leverage point you continuously build your hammers, collect hammers, I should say, because you don't know when it comes down to the 10% to the close. You don't know which hammer. You're gonna need. So right now you're collecting hammers. By asking questions. Why are you in the market? What do you know about us? What do you know about me? Sometimes you're gonna have prejudices. Uh, you know, I'm just gonna give you guys one last shot because, you know, I never can buy from you guys. Alright? So you now know that you need to build some trust and credibility. or my friend, all my family has bought from you. A friend of mine told me about you, and so I drove a thousand miles to get to you. I mean, these are all leverages. Why are they in the market? How'd they hear about us? What do they know about your product? So don't just run with, Hey, I'm interested in, in the RS 1 0 1. Okay? Don't just run, okay, let me tell you all about it. We just diarrhea all over 'em. What do you know about that? What attracts you to that? What do you need your next product to do? What do you need your service to do? What are you looking for? What do you currently own? What do you like about it? What do you dislike about it? If you could change one thing about it, what would it be? See, these are all, uh, these are, these are questions that I'm asking and I'm hanging on and listening to every word because I'm trying to collect another golden hammer. You gotta think like an attorney. Attorneys don't just have like three questions they ask. They put you on the stand, they're gonna ask a battery of questions because they have an idea of where it's going to go, but they leave the flexibility and the space to follow the flow. And so they're asking these questions and sometimes man, through discovery, things pop up. Something gets said that would officially not in the file, and you're like, oh, game changer. Same thing for you. Your job in sales is to collect leverage one hammer after another, so when it's time to close, you got options. The reason why you can't make more sales is because you have no options if you can't name more than one or two hammers that you've collected After a conversation, you didn't dig deep enough. Golden hammers are not just in the answers. It's in how people answer. It's in their tones. It's in their pauses, their redirect. Sometimes you ask 'em a question, they go totally to something D different. They change the whole subject. It's their body language. It's their eyes going up. It's their jaws clenching, it's them looking off, it's them wincing. See all these kind of different things. So while you're giving them the space, you're collecting the, the golden hammers. Now you know, okay, this is where I need to take it. You have to think of a tour guide. That's what you are. You're guiding them in the right direction. In the end, I'm showing the customer where to look. You are. All you're doing is you're, you're, you're, you're, you're taking different perspectives, different options, collecting golden hammers, and then showing them the area to look that way. You make it easy for them to connect the dots and empower them to make the decision on their own. That way they feel good about the decision that they make. They don't have this buyer's remorse. Buyer's remorse comes because they, they feel kind of tricked. They feel kind of hooked. They felt boxed in. Leave space, leave things open so that way you can guide 'em. Altman ends with this. Details are your weapon. The golden hammer is your cannon. So after every interaction. It doesn't matter what the result is after every interaction, and you're gonna find more results if you ask yourself, how many golden hammers did I collect today? Ask, shut up. And if you only have just a couple of'em, you haven't done your job, you did your customer a disservice, okay? Ask. Shut up. Pay attention, collect your hammers. All right. Thanks for sharing this episode. Remember, keep it simple, keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough. Peace.