Vincent Willem van Gogh and what he can teach you about business..
Who was he?
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist who emerged as one of the most famous figures in the history of Western art after his death. In only a decade, Van Gogh created a prolific body of more than 2,000 works of art.
Vincent van Gogh is remembered for both the striking color, emphatic brushwork, and contoured forms of his art and for the turmoil of his personal life. In part because of his extensive published letters, van Gogh has been mythologized in the popular imagination as the quintessential tortured artist.
A Genius?
Today, Vincent van Gogh is considered the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt. He completed more than 2,100 works, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, and sketches.
Shocking Fact!
During his life, he only managed to sell one painting! That painting is The Red Vineyards at Arles, and he sold it for a mere 400 francs (about $2,000 today) at a Brussels exhibition in March 1890, four months before his suicide.
The Value of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings
The portrait of Dr. Paul Gachet sold in 1990 for a whopping $83 million. It is the most expensive Van Gogh painting. This Van Gogh painting’s price generally spans the millions; hence the current estimated value sits at $152 million. According to art publishers, the worth of his entire collection is approximately $7 billion for the top tier.
The Lesson!
The quality of your product or service doesn’t matter. If you can not SELL it the value is zero!
To quote the maxim:
“Nothing happens until somebody sells something!”
The Good News
Most people detest the concept of selling. But thanks to the internet you don’t need to sell your product or service face to face (or even over the phone).
Good Old Fashioned Selling
Let’s say that you have a product you sell in person. Each time you sell the product you earn $197.
Now let’s say that you can make 8 presentations in one day.
If you worked a standard 5-day week you would only be able to make 40 presentations.
If you close 1 out of 10 presentations you would make 4 sales each week (on average).
That would mean you made $788 that week.
The Power of Leverage
Continuing the example, let’s say you have decided to sell online. You have a tested and proven website that does presentations around the clock!
Your closing ratio is lower with the web because you attract folks who are in the market but not ready to pull the trigger yet. In this case, it’s 1 sale out of 50 presentations (or 2%).
But…
Your website does 50 presentations a day!
Plus it does them 7 days a week 365 days a year.
(Your old face-to-face income)
$788 x 4 = $3,152 x 12 = $37,824/year
(Your new internet income)
50 x 20 = 1000 x 4 = 4,000 x 12 = 48,000 x .02 = 960 = $189,120.00 a year.
You can now see that using the internet is tremendous power!
Now the trick is learning which words will best leverage the power of the technology to make you a fortune.