I see dead people.
Seriously, I really do.
Not in a “Sixth Sense” kinda way (sorry to disappoint).
But whenever I want to bone up on my sales and marketing skills, I usually skip the latest goo-roo launch, and dust off one of my old school marketing books (written by people long dead), instead.
In fact, you want to know something weird?
Something that may even sound (to some) like marketing “blasphemy”?
I once heard a wise man say you can get a better education spending $1k on amazon and studying for 6 months, than you can by spending $100k on all the mega expensive marketing courses and studying for 6 years.
Could that really be true?
I honestly don’t know.
But one thing is for sure:
These old time fellas knew their stuff.
They often sold things under FAR more unpleasant conditions (imagine no merchant accounts or websites) to customers who truly were hurting for cash (with no easy access to credit cards) during times when there wasn’t much marketing education out there (it was all “school of hard knocks”).
Anyway, below is a list of some of these old masters.
Every single one of them is deceased.
Yet, almost everything they taught is 100% applicable today.
And you know what?
Next time you’re looking for a new sales, marketing or copywriting resource, you could do worse than checking one of these authors’ books or teachings out instead…
- Bruce Barton
- Ed Mayer (discovered the classic “40-40-20” rule
- Frank Bettger
- John Caples
- Eugene Schwartz
- Dale Carnegie
- Robert Collier
- Victor Schwab
- Gary Halbert
- Claude Hopkins
- David Ogilvy
- Maxwell Sackheim
There are LOTS more than this, of course.
(I can already hear my fellow marketing geeks pounding their desks for not mentioning their favorite sales genius.)
But this small list alone should keep you busy for a while 😉
Giddy-up.
Ben Settle
P.S. For more “tried and true” sales & marketing tips, check out:
