‘Sell me this pen:’ The real answer to The Wolf of Wall Street’s challenge

In all seriousness, while I found the book to be a really hard read, the tactics described are highly effective, not just in sales, but also in thinking about solutions that you're building. In hindsight it seems like common sense stuff, but is truly the wisdom of sages.

Probably the best distillation of customer development I have heard in one sentence.

Every sales pitch is a qualifying session. If you listen well enough your customer might just tell you something you want to hear...

I was expecting the right answer to be for the salesman to take the pen from Belfort, sell it to someone in the audience, have that person sell it to someone else, and then the salesman turns to Belfort and says... I can get you a good deal on this pen right now before it reaches market cap but we have to move quickly.

Though I still think it's a shame because I wanted to see the movie but wasnt willing to sit through it because of how grotesquely inappropriate I heard it was.

*Oh wait, maybe market cap is the wrong term. Lol.