“CHANGE THE CONDITIONS and you will cross that line. The line that you said you wouldn’t cross” -Joe Hunt, Billionaire Boys Club (1987)
Christopher Gardner, Joseph Henry Gamsky, Bill Porter – Real to life closers who know no hindrance to close a sale. May it be sleeping overnight in the subway toilet with a 5 year old son, selling door to door in a 7-mile neighborhood daily with a stiff-knee gait or even killing not just once. Watch and you will never know how to listen to your excuses. Not anymore.
3. Pursuit of HappYness (2006), played by Will Smith
The only theatrical film on this list, you might have watched this and you will agree with me that replaying it would still be a tear jerker. From losing the trust of your wife to queuing for a shelter room every after your sales shift with your 5 year old child, your luggage and that bulky bone scanner. Really inspiring sob.
2. Billionaire Boys Club (1987), played by Judd Nelson
Made as a television movie in 1987, you will find yourself checking your sanity every time Joe speaks a word. Scenes perfectly manifest his tenacity to be second to no one. From a nerd debater in high school to a splendid brain washer founding the BBC. This definitely is a movie that triggers Morality Check of a closer’s sales persistence. When does persistence decoy a sinful greediness? Lot of closing skills to learn. I had a long list while watching. Did he really kill for an immense wealth? As to my verdict? Well, there are no absolutes. There are no black and no white. Just shades.Watch it Now.
“You won power over a person through the knowledge of two things, Joe explained: One was what they wanted, the other was what they feared.”
1. Door to Door (2002), played by William H. Macy
That line from Bill’s acceptance speech being Watkin’s Salesman of the Year in 1989 may be too simple, but when you reach that scene while watching, you find your tears like dewdrop per second. Both this TV movie and the array of documentaries featuring Bill really make me extremely inspired. Bill Porter indeed is the only of his sales persistence caliber. He has Cerebral Palsy. He is a top Salesman. Legendary.
These are compressed version of the circumstances these closers encountered. A reel from the real struggles for the sake of the art of motion picture. You might have been once like Chris, Bill or Joe. You may be like any of them in the future, or yet your kind of persistence is even stronger than theirs which the world have not known yet.
Would you do the same choices they did? Same dose of optimism? Same dosage of resilience? How challenging you are facing now compared to theirs?
Crossing the line is all in the mind.
COMING SOON: Billionaire Boys Club would have a theatrical film version this 2016 which will be starred by Ansel Elgort as Joe Hunt. Judd Nelson, who was Hunt in the 1987 TV movie will be the father of Joe. Kevin Spacey will be Ron Levin while Emma Roberts as Sydney, Hunt’s love interest. “As we were writing this, I thought, ‘What if ‘Wall Street (1987)’ became ‘Alpha Dog (2006)’ halfway through?” James Cox, director said.
I hope the 2016 version would not neglect the sales skills every salesman could learn from Hunt’s real-life closing prowess. I will be watching this. You too, right?
JOHNDAPPERCLOSER 