Grant Cardone University Review
Grant Cardone University is a comprehensive sales training and business development platform that has over 800 unique video courses. These courses focus on some of Grant Cardone’s own principles such as the 10X rule, which promises to help you grow your company’s sales tenfold through the program.
For example, if you are comfortable that sales of $100,000 per year are realistic, then you should set a goal of $1,000,000 in sales per year. Next, you should base your decisions and efforts to achieve that $1,000,000 annual sales target rather than the “safe” goal of $100,000.
The basic concept certainly makes sense. Pushing yourself beyond what you think is currently possible may cause you to achieve success that you never dreamed of before. But, will Cardone University really help you achieve that level of prosperity and success? Is this platform worth your time, effort and money? Our review and the pros and cons described below endeavors to answer those questions.
Who is Grant Cardone?
First and foremost, who is Grant Cardone and why should you consider enrolling in his sales training university? Grant Cardone came from humble beginnings in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Cardone was broke, working as a salesman at a car dealership and struggling with drug addiction in his early 20s.
“The best business advice I’ve ever been given was from my mother, who was never actually in business. She said, “The best investment you will ever make is in yourself.It’s a-no lose deal. It will always give you a return. Nobody can take it from you. It’s yours’.” – Grant Cardone
From that point on, he dedicated himself to his work and began to develop many of the sales and negotiation techniques that became the foundation of Cardone University. He spent countless hours learning as much as he could about sales, negotiation and the art of closing the deal in the automotive industry.
He also did what he could to outwork his colleagues. Mr. Cardone was frequently the first one to arrive at the dealership each day and stayed well past everyone else. This dedication paid off. And his monthly commission more than doubled.
Cardone Capital
This taste of success gave him the confidence to pursue many of his other endeavors. One of his other key principles is that you should have more than one source of income. This belief led him to invest his newfound extra income in real estate.
These initial deals were the foundation of what would later become his real estate company, Cardone Capital. As of 2020, Cardone Capital has $1.7 billion in assets under management, primarily invested in income-generating properties.
Cardone Capital now offers equity funds that help the average person invest in apartment complexes and other real estate-based income opportunities. These properties are primarily based in Florida, Texas, Maryland and other states.
Grant Cardone The Author
After more than 35 years in the sales and real estate businesses, Mr. Cardone has written more than eight books and hundreds of articles about the ins and outs of selling, negotiation and business leadership. Some of his key works include:
- Sell to Survive
- If You’re Not First, You’re Last
- The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure
- Sell or be Sold: How to Get Your Way in Business and in Life
- Closer’s Survival Guide
- Be Obsessed or Be Average
- Millionaire Booklet: How to Get Super Rich
- How To Create Wealth Investing In Real Estate: How to Build Wealth with Multi-Family Real Estate
These books are all designed to provide you with critical approaches and concepts that you can leverage to improve your sales skills and increase your income.
10X Growth Conference
Each year, Mr. Cardone and his team host the 10X Growth Conference. This three-day event is designed to help you network with other salespeople, to enable you to make business connections and to encourage you to grow as a professional.
The conference’s content specifically focuses on Mr. Cardone’s signature 10X philosophy including how to change your mindset, developing your own personal brand, wealth-building ideas and how to implement business growth strategies.
Keynote speakers at the 2020 conference included celebrities Magic Johnson, Kevin Hart in addition to Mr. Cardone himself. Record executives, business coaches, financial strategists and digital marketing leaders also presented at the conference.
Cardone University
Before the books, the 10X growth conference and many of his other ventures. Grant Cardone founded Cardone University. Cardone University is an online platform whose goal is to spread Mr. Cardone’s hard-earned sales wisdom to thousands of salespeople, entrepreneurs and business people around the world.
The sheer volume of content that Cardone University offers is perhaps its biggest asset. The university offers over 20 unique certification programs that are focused in several key areas including sales training, digital marketing and leadership development.
Overall, the platform has over 1,500 video lectures covering these topics. Furthermore, Grant and his team are constantly adding new and timely content. Newly uploaded lectures focus on tips to working remotely and managing a virtual team.
Grant and his team have also developed videos specifically related to the unique challenges and opportunities that the global pandemic represents. For instance, there are videos on how to get small business loans and federal stimulus payments to make ends meet.
Foundational Sales Training Certifications
The majority of these videos understandably relate to sales strategies and sales development tips.
Cardone University’s key areas of focus include:
- Sales Basics: If you have never worked in a sales job before, then Cardone has videos that will show you basic sales principles and provide you with step by step instructions on how to meet your targets and close the deal. In fact, there are 28 courses available with a certificate available upon completion.
- Understanding the Buyer: Once you master the basics of selling, the platform has similar certifications to help you better relate to buyers, including how to establish your trustworthiness with potential purchasers.
- The Sales Process: Another lecture series include the sales process, which includes over 70 unique courses. These lectures focus on methods to increase your proposals to clients, best practices for negotiating deals.
- Closing Strategies: These courses act actually cover two separate certification programs with over 140 lectures between them. The main focus areas of these videos are how to avoid errors or mistakes that will impact your ability to close.
The more advanced closing strategies certifications builds upon the closing theories learned in the first course. This program focuses on systematic breakdowns of potential sales and negotiations situations.
Grant and his team provide you with numerous responses that you can provide to potential customer objections or concerns that will help you close the deal. These recommendations include 17 approaches to help you overcome stalled negotiations.
- Responding to Internet Leads: Dealing with customers virtually over the internet is a unique situation. With internet leads, you cannot rely on the customer’s body language to give you clues into his or her thought process.
Throughout 23 videos, the Cardone University team provides you with tips on how to avoid common mistakes that many salespeople and companies make when following up on potential internet sales.
Furthermore, because more leads increases the likelihood of making a sale, this program focuses on ways to grow your number of active leads by nine-fold. Additional lectures focus on strategies that you can use to close more of these new prospects.
- Incoming Calls: This certification program features 22 courses that cover strategies on how to best handle customer calls. The course focuses on methods that allow you to control the content and flow of the call while still being responsive to the customer’s needs.
More importantly, these courses provide approaches to help you close a potential lead on that first phone call. These tips include suggestions on how to create a script for the call that will maximize your likelihood for success.
Some customers want to make appointments and meet with you face to face. This situation is particularly common in the auto sales industry. This program walks you through ways to heighten the odds that your targets will actually attend the meeting,
- Cold Calling Tips: Cold calling can be one of the most challenging and intimidating tasks for a new salesperson. Thankfully, Cardone’s comprehensive learning platform includes over 50 lectures and a certification dedicated to this topic.
The cold call program begins with a step-by-step guide to craft the ideal cold call message for your customers. It also features suggestions on how to respond to customer protests or stall tactics.
Another critical challenge with cold calling is actually getting to a decision maker, Many times the first person you will speak to when making a cold call is an executive assistant or other gatekeeper. Fortunately, this course provides example approaches that you can use to quickly get to a decision maker.
- Handling Objections: Potential customers have literally thousands of potential objections or reasons why they do not feel comfortable closing the deal. This course, with over 320 lectures as of 2020, is one of Cardone University’s most comprehensive.
This certification program provides real-life examples and solutions that you can apply to your negotiations with customers. These extensive videos will provide you with strategies to overcome the most common excuses that you will hear in your day-to-day sales meetings.
- Follow-Up Strategies: No matter how great of a salesperson you are, you will have to follow-up with many customers to ultimately close the deal. Cardone’s follow-up certification program includes over 130 video lectures on methods that you can use to be remembered.
Specifically, it demonstrates methods that you can use to stand out to your potential customers and differentiate yourself from your competitors. This approach includes creating unique approaches that you can use to stand out from your competitors and to consistently follow-up without being off-putting.
- Prospecting: Lastly, the sales certification programs also include 30 lectures designed to help you identify people who are interested in your products or services. These courses also help you identify potential lead sources that may not currently be on your radar.
This course also prepares you for success by assisting you with scripts for making sales calls. It also teaches you how to target some easing reeds that will lead to increased sales.
Sales Mastery Academy
Grant Cardone also offers a Sales Mastery Academy that will help take your game to the next level after completing the introductory sales lectures. This mastery program includes advanced selling topics such as:
- Value-add selling
- Tips to create memorable sales pitches and presentations
- Methods to encourage change on your team and with customers
- Sales conversation scenarios
- Improving your trustworthiness and credibility with customers,
- Increasing not only are sales volume but also your rate, or speed, of sales
- Suggestions on how to maximize referrals and capitalize on their potential to boost sales.
Victor Antonio, a sales trainer and motivational speaker with more than 20 years of experience in sales leads this academy with Grant Cardone. Victor is often a frequent speaker at the Cardone 10X growth conference.
He has also written three books related to advanced topics in selling. These topics include leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning in sales and how these technologies are impacting the sales environment.
Victor has also published an overview of 50 unique sales models and approaches that you can use to elevate your conversion rate and increase your sales volume.
Prior attendees at his lectures generally praise him as a dynamic, creative and entertaining speaker. They particularly praise his ability to analyze any industry and provide listeners with tips and approaches that they can use to increase their net profits, or their bottom line.
Digital Marketer Program
Ryan Deiss teaches a lecture series on the secrets of digital marketing. His lectures focus on his proprietary customer sales optimization methodology. His goal is to show you how to create a successful marketing process that will allow your business to grow and thrive,
What initially began as an online pass-time in his dorm room quickly progressed to a viable business. By 2003, Ryan’s single online website had increased to more than 500 digital properties.
What is DigitalMarketer.com?
One of Ryan’s most significant ventures is digitalmarketer.com. This website provides tools, training and certifications related to digital marketing strategies. The Digital Marketer Lab includes checklists and other aids that you can use to improve your marketing effectiveness.
If you already have an established marketing team, then Ryan’s strategies can help your team become better at identifying new leads. Better than that, he can teach you how to convert those new opportunities into actual sales and increased revenue.
Scalable Equity, LLC Venture
Based upon his own success, Ryan also helped found the Scalable Equity, LLC. This partnership seeks to build and/or to acquire valuable business to business media or software brands.
Published Books
Ryan is also an accomplished author. His works include Digital Marketing for Dummies and Invisible Selling Machine. He also has published a collection of Facebook-based digital marketing tips known as 13 Ways to Hack Facebook Ads: A Digital Marketer Hack Guide.
Leadership Academy
Grant Cardone University also offers a leadership academy. These programs are designed to help you and your teams develop your leadership skills. Grant Cardone expert Dave Anderson also covers key topics that will help you develop your organization, such as:
- Recruiting top candidates
- Interview strategies that will identify applicants with the right skills and experience for your team
- Establishing guidelines and getting your team to buy into expectations
- Developing a healthy culture based upon responsibility, trust and accountability
- Establishing the core vision, mission statement and values that will energize your organization and your employees.
Dave Andersen – Mr. Accountability
Dave Anderson is the president of LearnToLead. His goal is to inspire his clients to be the best leaders that they can be. He emphasizes the importance of accountability and has developed specific tools and strategies to assist his clients to maximize their personal and corporate leadership skills.
One of Dave’s favorite quotes is “The results you’re getting are the results you should be getting. If you want different results, you must change what you are doing! There is no prize without the price.”
Dave utilizes a straightforward, blunt style that is aimed at providing frank recommendations to his students. Specifically, he will focus on developing your mental toughness throughout his leadership certification programs.
Unlike many teachers, Dave strives to be less academic. He favors presenting content in ways that will connect with you no matter what your industry is. He has developed leadership workshops and conferences for numerous industries, including:
- Automotive
- Banking
- Manufacturing
- Retail
- Law enforcement
- Professional athletes
- Health and life insurance companies
- Not-for-profit organizations and
- Universities
The Game Changer Life
In addition to hosting Grant Cardone University’s leadership academy, Dave also produces the Game Changer Life podcast. Dave created this podcast to help his listeners stay motivated, energized and passionate about driving positive change in their personal and professional lives.
For example, one of Dave’s recent podcasts discusses ways to stand out from the pack or crowd and make people say “Wow!” Dave emphasizes that how you present yourself frequently leaves a bigger impression than your technical content.
Every Friday, Dave also provides a short two-minute soundbite with a crucial thought or idea that you can implement in your daily life. For instance, one recent 2 minute message stresses the importance of responsibility and accountability in your daily life.
Dave Anderson Books
Dave Anderson, much like his other colleagues at Grant Cardone Sales Training University, has also written a number of books. In fact, he has written 14 books focused on the topics of leadership, execution, hiring and other related topics.
A few examples of Dave’s books are:
- It’s Not Rocket Science: 4 Simple Strategies for Mastering the Art of Execution
- TKO Hiring!: Ten Knockout Strategies for Recruiting, Interviewing, and Hiring Great People
- Unstoppable: Transforming Your Mindset to Create Change, Accelerate Results, and Be the Best at What You Do
- How to Lead by The Book: Proverbs, Parables, and Principles to Tackle Your Toughest Business Challenges
Dave has also collaborated with John C. Maxwell, another giant in the leadership thought space. Their collaborations on leadership include Up Your Business!: 7 Steps to Fix, Build, or Stretch Your Organization and How to Run Your Business by The Book: A Biblical Blueprint to Bless Your Business.
Dave Andersen Charity Work
Dave also dedicates his time, effort and money to help feed, clothe and provide housing for underserved people around the world. He co-founded the non-profit Matthew 25:35 foundation in 2008. (Source: https://www.learntolead.com/matthew-25-35-foundation).
Social Selling Mastery®
Customers are increasingly turning to online digital sources to buy their products. Furthermore, social media likes, dislikes and recommendations are increasingly a major factor when customers make purchasing decisions.
Expert Jamie Shanks offers a training program that is designed to help you reach these customers, develop a viable pipeline of business and generating more revenue. He specifically focuses on ways to move away from traditional sales process to a more digital approach.
Jamie asserts that this change will result in a 20% or more increase in your potential business and pipeline in just 6 months after completing this course. Best of all, this certification program can be completed in just six weeks.
Social Selling Mastery® is the largest social selling course on the market today. Over 300 companies and more than 75,000 sales, marketing and business people have completed this program to date.
More About Jamie Shanks
Jamie has more than 20 years of experience in the sales industry. He has worked in such fields as investment sales, commercial real estate sales, digital communication and networked point of sale solutions for the grocery industry.
In 2012, he became CEO of Sales for Life. This company’s goal is to providing consulting and training to global corporations in the row areas of social selling and digital transformations of the sales process. Some of the company’s customers include IBM, Microsoft, Sprint and many others.
Key Facts About Digital Sales
Per the Sales for Life website, a digital sales approach can enable you to achieve your sales goals at a 66% higher rate than your peers. Similarly, the average value of a completed digital sale is 27% higher than a sale completed with traditional means.
Furthermore, you can generate 45% more potential sales using digital avenues like Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms when compared to traditional brick and mortar stores.
These metrics give you a sense of the incredible potential that adding digital sales strategies can have on your career and your organization,
Monster Producer Academy
Grant Cardone and Coach Micheal Burt define a monster producer as, “….a legendary creature that combines multiple skill sets to dominate the market.” This certification program focuses on unique methods to demonstrate and explain your products and services to customers.
Coach Burt promises to teach you a detailed methodology that will help increase your leads, strengthen your business and customer networks and ultimately enhance your profitability. In fact, following the Monster Producer system can result in your business expanding by up to 43% in one year.
The system also covers the importance of follow ups. Coach Burt provides seven approaches that can help you create a highly effective and lucrative follow-up strategy. For each completed sales, he also shows you ways to get over five referrals from each existing customer.
Ultimately, the goal of the program is to ensure that you have the tools, skills and methodology that you need to generate at least $250,000 in income per year. The Monster Producer Academy focuses on the following key areas to make that goal a reality:
- Expand Your Team: Coach Burt covers strategies that will help you identify top talent and grow your team so that you can focus your time on expanding your business and other ‘big picture’ initiatives.
- Create a Million Dollar Machine: Develop a sustainable business model that will result in maintainable growth through market differentiation. Coach Burt shows you ways that you can stand out from the pack and crowd to become a trusted provider to your clients.
- Attraction Marketing: The goal of attraction marketing is to make your brand or your company more appealing to potential buyers than your competitors. Storytelling, or helping customers understand how your company helped solve a problem, is one aspect of attraction marketing,
Storybranding is another key component of attraction marketing. Unlike storytelling, storybranding does not focus on providing examples of how you and your company resolved other customers’ issues. Rather, it focuses on connecting your existing and potential customers with your brand’s values and beliefs.
Championship Basketball Coach to Life Coach
Micheal Burt was the head women’s basketball coach and athletic director at Riverdale High School (“RHS”) in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Over his 9 years as head coach, Coach Burt achieved an incredible 74.16% winning percentage (221-77). His RHS basketball coaching career resulted in four conference titles and one state championship in 2007.
After 2007, Coach Burt left basketball coaching to pursue his passion for leadership and business. He founded Micheal Burt Enterprises to help bring his monster producer vision to life.
His intense nature and positivity have helped thousands of people reach their goals to date. Coach Burt believes that everyone can benefit from a strong coach. In fact, people who have such a mentor in their lives often perform and earn at levels that are three to four times more than their peers.
Over more than 25 years, Coach Burt has written over 14 books and e-books that describe his philosophy about winning and success. A few of his key books include:
- Everybody Needs a Coach in Life: Isn’t It Time You Found Yours?
- Swag: 6 Battle Tested Strategies to Build and Protect Your Confidence
- Zebras and Cheetahs: Look Different and Stay Agile to Survive the Business Jungle
- The Anatomy of Winning: How to Rewire People to Win
Motivation and Personal Finance Certifications
While the vast majority of Grant Cardone University’s programs, lectures and other content focus primarily on selling, the platform does include other certifications that you may find useful. These courses center on motivation, personal finances and success.
100 Ways to Stay Motivated
Grant Cardone provides over 100 lectures related to creating, maintaining and enhancing motivation. These courses cover such topics as suggestions on how to best motivate your team, methods to maintain your motivation level, how to switch on your motivation and the best approaches to setting attainable goals.
Personal Finance
These 21 courses related to personal finance highlight ways to fan the flame of your entrepreneurial spirit. For example, this certification program demonstrates ways to escape your comfort zone and become truly free.
In addition, it includes content about how to develop reliable and consistent income streams. It also helps you identify and eliminate ways that you waste your effort and your money to better pursue your goals.
Just What Does this Platform Cost? (Source: https://store.grantcardone.com/collections/allproducts/)
You may be wondering what Cardone University costs, given the exhaustive number and breadth of topics covered. Fortunately, the university offers a number of different fee structures depending upon your specific needs.
Cardone allows you to purchase:
- individual courses,
- complete expert programs / sales training academies,
- Topic-specific boot camps / deep dive programs and
- Unlimited life-time access to Cardone University
- 10X 360 Platform Review and other individualized programs.
Individual Courses
If you are particularly interested in one specific topic, then you do have the option to purchase individual courses from Cardone University. For example, a video seminar detailing secrets to closing the sale starts at as little as $49.00 as of August, 2020.
However, most course programs will start at $297. This price tier includes such topics as advanced follow-up strategies, advanced closing and negotiating strategies, and internet lead response strategies. Other key topics include the 100 Ways to Stay Motivated and personal finance certification courses described above.
Expert Programs and Sales Training Academies
Grant Cardone University’s expert programs generally have a price tag of $997. These programs include Dave Anderson’s Leadership Academy. Coach Burt’s Monster Producer Academy and the Social Selling Mastery courses.
For $12,995, you can access Selling Basics, Selling 101, the Sales Process, Understanding the Buyer, Theory of Closing and many of the other foundational programs.
You will also receive access to industry expert programs including a hiring academy, the monster producer academy with Coach Burt, Dave Anderson’s Leadership Academy and more.
Topic-Specific Boot Camps and Deep Dive Programs
If you are looking for an intense learning program or a deep dive into a specific topic, then you may also want to consider Cardone University. For instance, Grant Cardone offers an 8 week master class on real estate or an introduction to getting started in real estate for $1,997 each.
He also has courses specifically dedicated to purchasing apartments for $4,997. Along those same lines, you can also purchase a deep dive lecture series on apartment investing for $4,997.
Unlimited Life-Time Access to Cardone University
As noted above, Grant Cardone and his team are constantly adding content to the Cardone University platform. If you want to go all-in and ensure that you have access to all of the latest content that the university has to offer, then the unlimited life-time access plan may be for you.
For $24,997 you can have access to all of the Cardone University platform’s content in perpetuity.
10X 360 Platform Review
Would you prefer a more personal touch with tailored recommendations for your specific industry or your business? For $129.995, the 10X 360 Platform Review gives you detailed assistance with building up your company. This comprehensive analysis involves:
- A 10-year analysis of just how large your company can become
- Detailed financial modeling and market analyses
- Industry evaluation including a review of your competition
- Assistance with establishing personal, career-focused and financial targets for you and your employees.
- Extensive analysis of your incoming phone calls to identify processes or habits that are costing you sales and limiting your growth
Other Individualized Programs
If you do not have your own business, you can still get coaching directly from Grant Cardone himself. For $100,000 you can get four individualized face-to-face coaching sessions with Grant.
During these sessions, you can ask him anything and he will provide honest answers and feedback to help you get to the next level. Based upon your discussions, Grant and his team will then create an action plan with advice for your personal finances, your life, your business or a combination of all three.
Pros and Cons of Grant Cardone University
Pros
We have covered a significant amount of content related to Grant Cardone University and its comprehensive sales training programs. At a high level, the benefits of the university are as follows:
- Extensive Content: Cardone has over 1,500 unique lectures or videos that cover not only Sales 101 but also negotiation, cold calling, social selling and other advanced topics.
- Suitable for Every Level: If you have never sold before, then Grant Cardone has the courses and certifications that can help you get up to speed quickly. If you are an experienced salesperson, then Cardone has courses that will help take your skills to the next level and allow you to outshine your peers.
- Dedicated Team with Proven Success: In addition to Mr. Cardone, the university also features Coach Burt, Ryan Deiss, Jamie Shanks and other highly successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople that can teach you about leadership, digital marketing, social selling and other specialized subjects.
Cons
- Foundational Materials: Unless you are brand new to selling, you may find Selling 101 and many of the foundational courses to be too basic. In those instances, you may be better served by targeting specific advanced topics.
Alternatively, you may get more value out of one or more of the sales mastery and/or academy programs than the other certification programs.
Conclusion
Cardone University provides significant value for the price. With more than 1,500 lectures and new content being added often, its sales training programs are some of the most comprehensive on the market. The instructors provide concrete, real-world examples that you can apply to your personal and professional life as well as to your organization as a whole.
Check out https://cardoneuniversity.com/ for more details about the specific programs offered and to enroll for a free trial of the platform. You can find the fees for specific lectures or training programs that may be of interest to you.