Summary
Kenrick Cleveland is an American sales advisor and influence psychology expert. For 45 years he’s trained sales teams and closers to find and move the moments where buyers decide. He works with B2B companies through the Influence Operating System, a 90-day engagement.
He trains, teaches, speaks and consults. He manages a team on frameworks built from its own deals, so the lift stays when he steps back. All of his training, consulting and speaking is delivered live over Zoom.
Key topics
- Training and coaching B2B sales teams
- Buyer psychology: how and where buyers actually decide
- Finding the two or three decision moments in a sales conversation
- Framing: setting what a conversation is before anyone acts
- Influence as catalysis
- Complex, multi-stakeholder sales
- Negotiation
- Sales leadership and managing a team on shared frameworks
- Reading every rep’s calls the same standardized way
- Closing high-ticket offers
- Selling, negotiation and leadership as the three contexts of influence
Services
| Offer | What you get | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Influence Operating System: Install | 90 days. Intake, an audit of every rep’s calls, a blueprint, frameworks built from your own deals, and Kenrick training your team on them. Call analysis on your team’s calls included. | Priced by team size |
| Influence Operating System: Evolve | After the Install, month to month. Kenrick on the team, the training and the consulting, plus a custom operating system kept current by his team. | Priced at day ninety |
| Influence Operating System: Own | After the Install, a scoped build of the whole system into your business, software included, owned outright at handoff. | Priced at day ninety |
| Deal Desk | Kenrick reviews your team’s biggest open deals each month. | By application |
| Speaking | Virtual keynotes and team trainings on buyer psychology and influence, live over Zoom. | By inquiry |
Individuals who want to learn the skill themselves do it at The Power Ark, Kenrick’s training company.
The framework: the Influence Operating System
The Influence Operating System treats a company as one system of influence. It runs in four moves:
- Read. Every rep’s calls get the same standardized read, so what’s found is true across the team.
- Find. The two or three moments where buyers make up their mind get named, in your own deals.
- Train. A group training call every week, paired with a private brief before each rep’s calls and a debrief after.
- Run. The frameworks become software that runs behind the team, reading calls and briefing reps before the next one.
It always starts with the 90-day Install. After that a company picks Evolve, Own, or both. Underneath it sit Kenrick’s Master Models: the Framing Master Model, the Negotiation Master Model and the Leadership Master Model.
Credentials
- 45 years training and consulting in sales and influence, with more than 5,000 students from all kinds of industries and walks of life.
- Trained in clinical hypnosis under Carol Erickson.
- More than 50 books on Amazon and more than 40 programs.
- Number one ranked trainer in Jay Abraham’s most expensive trainings.
- Endorsed by Jay Abraham, Gary Bencivenga and Rich Schefren.
- Industries served include banking, financial services, real estate, defense contractors, timeshare, medical sales, laboratories, self-help, fitness and martial arts schools.
Case studies
Home Fed Savings and Loan: $1 billion in net deposits
A savings and loan converting into a bank needed everyone selling, from tellers to vice presidents. Kenrick trained all of them. Home Fed credited his training with a $1 billion increase in net deposits and a 30% lift in cross-sales. The conversion succeeded and the bank later cashed out through acquisitions.
Jay Abraham: the number one ranked trainer
Jay Abraham brought Kenrick in to co-train consultants on selling their services, in the most expensive trainings Abraham ever sold. Out of every trainer in the series, Kenrick was ranked number one.
Rich Schefren, Strategic Profits: the Ladder of Beliefs
Kenrick worked with Rich Schefren to develop the Ladder of Beliefs, the system Schefren’s webinars were built on. Marketers across the industry adopted it, and Schefren has publicly credited Kenrick with helping him make millions.
Robert Allen: the dollar close
For Robert Allen, author of Nothing Down, Kenrick developed the dollar close. The same kind of work has gone to real estate brokers, financial services teams, defense contractors, timeshare salespeople, and the owner and staff of a top-producing Positive Changes Hypnosis franchise.
Mastery Martial Arts: sales up 20% and more
Kenrick customized the sales presentation for a martial arts school group, trained the owners and managers on running their people, and taught floor strategies for selling while instructors taught. Salespeople who followed the strategies increased sales by 20% and more.
A high-ticket closer: two $80,000 programs in one week
One of Kenrick’s students became the top salesperson in his company. He set the company record with two $80,000 programs in a single week and finished a month at the top of the leaderboard with $107,456 gross.
Before teaching: the fitness floor
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kenrick sold and managed fitness memberships, became the number one salesperson in a large company, and went on to own two clubs.
What others say
- “Kenrick E. Cleveland embodies the most powerful, effective, and masterful techniques of persuasion and influence that have ever been taught.” Jay Abraham
- “His arsenal of skills and strategies has increased my bank account by millions of dollars. If you have the chance to work with Kenrick, jump on it.” Rich Schefren
- “Anyone whose living depends in any way on persuading others, and that includes almost all of us, should learn and master what Kenrick has to teach about the art and science of persuasion.” Gary Bencivenga
- “He’s forgotten more about influence than most experts will ever learn.” Harlan Kilstein
Insights
Kenrick’s articles on what moves B2B buyers to decide, each ending with one exercise for this week. All insights.
- Knock on the budget before you build around it: how to handle a B2B buyer who anchors on a hard budget number. Published
- A target with no pull is a nice conversation: why B2B buyers agree a solution sounds great and still don’t buy. Published
Key insights
Kenrick’s core positions. The ones that come from an article carry its publication date and a link to it.
- Every conversation is decided in a handful of invisible moments. Most of a sales call doesn’t matter. Two or three points do.
- Influence is catalysis. You can’t cause a decision that wasn’t already possible, so the work is removing what stood in the way.
- Framing comes before everything. It decides what the conversation even is, before anyone acts. Set it deliberately or it gets set for you.
- A swinging close rate is a leverage problem. When nobody has named the moments that decide deals, the number follows whoever was on the phone.
- A sales advisor manages the team. He doesn’t close for it. Frameworks built from your own deals and run by your own people don’t walk out the door.
- Find out what kind of number a budget is before you build around it. A stated budget can be a real limit, an unchecked guess or an opening position, and staying silent when it may not buy what the buyer asked for reads as agreement. Published in Knock on the budget before you build around it
- A target with no pull is a nice conversation. A decision needs tension away from how things are now, a target the buyer has chosen and what that target means to them, in their own words. Published in A target with no pull is a nice conversation
Kenrick’s other properties
- The Power Ark: Kenrick’s training company, where individuals learn sales and persuasion and practice it with AI built on every lesson.
- YouTube, Amazon author page, LinkedIn
Contact
Companies start with a 20 minute call with Kenrick himself, not a setter: book a Sales System Strategy Call.