The Psychology of Selling

But this time, instead of talking, I asked questions. Rather than trying to overwhelm the prospect with the features and benefits of my product, I focused on learning about the prospect’s situation and how I could best help him or her.

“Law of Cause and Effect.”

Success is not an accident. Failure is not an accident either. In fact, success is predictable. It leaves tracks. Success is not an accident. Failure is not an accident either. In fact, success is predictable. It leaves tracks.

“If you do what other successful people do, over and over again, nothing in the world can stop you from eventually getting the same results that they do. And if you don’t, nothing can help you.”

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

—NAPOLEON HILL

Seventy-four percent of self-made millionaires in America are entrepreneurs, people who start and build their own businesses.

And among entrepreneurs, the single most important skill for success is the ability to sell.

When I started selling, someone told me about the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. He said, “The top 20 percent of salespeople make 80 percent of the money, and the bottom 80 percent only make 20 percent of the money.”

“Small differences in ability can lead to enormous differences in results.”

The difference between the top performers and the average or mediocre performers is not a huge difference in talent or ability. Often, it is just a few small things done consistently and well, over and over again.

In selling, you only have to be a little bit better and different in each of the key result areas of selling for it to accumulate into an extraordinary difference in income.

Success Is Mental It is what goes on inside the mind of the salesperson that makes all the difference. Some years ago, Harvard University did a study of sixteen thousand salespeople and found that the basic qualities that determine success or failure in selling were all mental.

If your goal is to be in the top 10 percent of salespeople in your field, the first thing you do is find out who is already in the top 10 percent. Instead of following the followers, the average performers in your business, follow the leaders. Compare yourself to the top people. Remember, no one is better than you, and no one is smarter than you. If someone is doing better than you, it just means that he or she has discovered the cause-and-effect relationships in selling success before you have.

If someone is doing better than you, find out how he got from the bottom to where he is today. Sometimes the very best way to find this out is to go and ask him.

Your Self-Concept in Selling For example, in selling you have a self-concept with regard to yourself and prospecting. If you have a high, positive self-concept, then prospecting is no problem for you. You get up in the morning eager to call on new people. You are competent and confident in the area of prospecting, so your sales pipeline is always full. If you have a poor self-concept with regard to prospecting, you will approach prospecting with fear and anxiety. You will avoid it wherever possible. The very idea of prospecting will make you tense and uneasy. You will do as little of it as possible and continually look for ways to avoid the activity. This is true in every other area of selling as well.

Here is the cosmic joke: there is usually very little difference in talent between the person who earns $50,000 per year and the one who earns $100,000 per year. The only difference is that one has settled at a lower level while the other has refused to settle for less than $100,000.

You can never earn more on the outside than you can on the inside.

To increase your income, you must achieve your financial goals in your mind before you can ever achieve them in your reality. Your aim should be to increase your self-concept level of income bit by bit until you think, see, and feel yourself as a higher-income earner.

You’ve read stories of senior executives with large corporations who are earning more than a million dollars a year. For some reason, they lose their jobs. Then, a couple of months later, you read or hear about them and learn that they are working for another company and still earning more than a million dollars a year. The fact is, once a person is a million-dollar-a-year person, no one would think of offering him or her less. It is all a matter of self-concept.

These seven key result areas are prospecting, building rapport, identifying needs, presenting, answering objections, closing the sale, and getting resales and referrals. Your self-concept in each of these seven areas determines your performance in these areas, as well as your overall income level.

Your self-concept is largely subjective. It is not based on reality. It is based solely on the ideas or thoughts that you have about yourself, especially the self-limiting opinions that hold most people back.

William James of Harvard said, “Belief creates the actual fact.” If you believe that you are limited in some way, you will feel and act as if you are limited, and it will become true for you.

The good news is that your self-limiting beliefs are usually based on erroneous information. They are not based on fact or reality. They are very often illusions in your own mind. Because they are unreal, you can get rid of them by replacing them with new, positive beliefs of confidence and competence in any area.

Because of the power of your mind in determining your life and destiny, one of the greatest discoveries in history is that you become what you think about most of the time.

Happy people think happy thoughts. Successful people think successful thoughts. Loving people think loving thoughts. Wealthy people think wealthy thoughts. They become what they think about most of the time.

In addition, you become what you say to yourself most of the time. Successful people control their inner dialogues. They talk to themselves positively and confidently as they go through their days. Perhaps the most powerful words you can say to yourself to build your self-esteem are “I like myself!”

Successful people control their inner dialogues.

Each time you say, “I like myself !” your self-esteem goes up. When you repeat the words “I like myself !” over and over throughout the day, you actually cause a chemical change in your brain.

When I learned this affirmation many years ago, I used to repeat it to myself ten, twenty, and even fifty times per day.

The key to reaching this state of mind is to prepare yourself psychologically before every sales call. Stop and take a couple of seconds; then say to yourself, “I like myself ! I like myself ! I like myself !”

“I like myself, and I love my work! I like myself, and I love my work!”

Before going in to see a prospect, say to yourself, “I am a great salesperson, and this is going to be a great call!” Repeat that several times. Get

There are two major obstacles to making and closing any sale. They are both mental. They are the fear of failure and the fear of rejection.

The rule is that 80 percent of sales calls will end in a no, for a thousand different reasons. This does not necessarily mean that there is anything wrong with the salesperson or the product or service being sold. People say no because they simply do not need it, do not want it, cannot use it, cannot afford it, or some other reason.

There is a sales motto: “Some will; some won’t; so what? Next!” This should be your motto as well.

Perhaps the two most fundamental qualities for success in sales are boldness and persistence.

A full 80 percent of sales are never closed before the

fifth meeting or closing attempt.

One of the important secrets of success in sales is for you to understand and accept that people don’t “think it over.” The minute you walk out of the prospect’s office or home, he or she forgets that you ever lived.

When a person says no to you, he is not saying no to you as a person. He is simply saying no to your offering or your presentation or your prices. The rejection is not personal.

You wouldn’t want to interrupt prospects when they are going for lunch. Therefore, you don’t make any calls after 11:30 AM. You go and have lunch with your friends, go shopping, get your car washed, or kill time. Time passes. You certainly don’t want to call on people immediately after they get back from lunch. It might disturb their digestion. So you make up a few more excuses and rationalizations, and you don’t make your next call until 2:00 or 3:00 PM. Soon it’s 3:30, then 4:00,

Everything you do to raise your own self-esteem, including positive self-talk, affirmative visualization, personal motivation, enthusiasm, and individual training improves your personality and increases your effectiveness in selling.

Your job as a sales professional is to win people over to your side by making it clear that you care about them and want the best for them.

When people feel that someone genuinely likes them, they are more open to listening to that person and to buying what he is selling.

The primary emotion in sales success is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm accounts for 50 percent or more of all sales ability. One of the very best definitions of a sale is “a transfer of enthusiasm.”

Emotions Are Contagious

In the inner game of selling, it is essential that you understand that emotions are contagious. Each person is affected by the emotions of other people.

Decide now that you will not give up.

Talk to yourself positively. Say things like “I can do it! I can do it! I can do it!” whenever you feel fears of failure or rejection.

Interestingly enough, when you make the decision that no matter what happens, you will never give up, your self-esteem increases immediately. You

ACTION EXERCISES 1. Decide today to become a totally confident, high-self-esteem salesperson; say over and over to yourself, “I like myself!” 2. Visualize yourself continually as the very best in your business; the person you “see” is the person you will “be.” 3. Resolve in advance that, no matter what happens, you will never give up; failure is not an option. 4. Refuse to take rejection personally; accept it as a normal and natural part of selling, very much like the weather.

Top salespeople are intensely goal oriented. In every study,

The highest-paid salespeople know in advance how much they are going to earn each week, each month, each quarter, and each year. They know how many calls they will have to make to achieve a particular level of sales, and they have clear plans about what they are going to do with the money they earn.

Begin with your annual income goal. How much do you intend to make in the next twelve months? What is the exact number? Write this number down.

Top salespeople in every field know exactly what they are going to earn each year and each part of each year. If you ask them, they can tell you within a dollar what they are aiming at every single day. Low-performing salespeople have no idea how much they are going to earn. They have to wait until the end of the year and get their tax forms to find out what happened. For them, every day, month, and year is a new financial adventure. They have no idea where they are going to end up.

The very act of writing your goals down increases your likelihood of achieving them by 1,000 percent—ten times—and usually far faster then you expected.

The second part of goal setting is for you to ask yourself, “How much am I going to have to sell this year to achieve my personal income goal?”

Once you have decided your annual income and sales goals, break them down by month. How much will you have to earn and sell each month to achieve your annual goals?

Once you have your annual sales and income goals and your monthly sales and income goals, break them down to weekly sales and income goals. How much will you have to sell each week in order to achieve your long-term goals?

Finally, determine how much you have to sell each day to earn the amount you want to earn each day.

The final step in setting sales goals is for you to determine the specific activities in which you must engage to achieve your desired sales level. How many calls will you have to make to get how many appointments with prospects? How many presentations and callbacks will you have to generate to achieve a specific level of sales?

When you keep accurate records day by day and month by month, you will soon be able to predict with considerable accuracy exactly what you will have to do each day and each week to achieve your monthly and annual income goals.

Let us assume that you will have to make ten prospecting calls a day to get sufficient appointments to make enough sales to achieve your goals. Make it a game with yourself to make your ten prospecting calls before noon each day. Set this as your daily activity target, and then discipline yourself to follow through on your plan. Get on the phone by eight or eight thirty in the morning, or get out and cold-call, if you have to. Whatever you do, force yourself to make your ten calls before noon, every single day, until it becomes a habit.

The most important part of planning your activities is knowing that sales activities are controllable. You cannot decide or determine where a particular sale will come from. But you can control the inputs, the activities that you must engage in to achieve the sales in the first place. And by controlling your activities, you indirectly control your sales results.

You also need personal and family goals. These are the reasons why you do what you do. These are the reasons that you get up in the morning and work all day, in the face of disappointments and difficulties.

Imagine that you could double your income in the next two or three years. If you did, what are some of the things you would change in your life? Make a list of all the things that you would be, have, or do if you were earning vastly more money than you are earning today. The longer this list, the greater your level of motivation and determination.

If you have only one or two reasons for achieving your financial goals, you will be easily discouraged by setbacks and difficulties. If you have ten or fifteen reasons for being successful, you will be more motivated and determined. But if

you have fifty or one hundred reasons for increasing your sales and your income, you will become virtually unstoppable. When it comes to aggressively selling your product or service, who do you think will be more motivated? Will it be the person with one or two reasons to succeed, or the person with fifty-plus reasons? The fact is that the more reasons you have, the greater will be the intensity of your desire, like a roaring furnace. The more you want it, the more guaranteed it is that you will do whatever it takes to achieve it. The more reasons you give yourself, the more of your subconscious powers will be available to you in each selling situation.

Set 100 Goals

He told me privately that writing and reviewing his goals was the primary reason for the motivation and enthusiasm that led to his success.

He eventually came to feel that he was unstoppable.

I have found that the commitment to goal setting has been the number one reason for the success of the top people. All the highest-paid sales professionals in every field are committed goal setters. They write and rewrite their goals every day. They continually add to their lists.

When used with goal setting, visualization is perhaps the most powerful skill that you can develop.

The power of visualization is the most awesome power possessed by human beings. It is said that all improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures.

The very best all-purpose affirmation is “I like myself ! I like myself ! I like myself !” As I have already shown, each time you say “I like myself !” you raise your self-esteem, improve your overall self-concept, and perform more effectively in whatever you are doing, especially in sales.

Say to yourself, “I feel happy. I feel healthy. I feel terrific!”

At a seminar recently a sales manager told me a story. She said her company had hired a young salesman with limited experience. They were not sure whether he would be successful, but they decided to give him a chance. Within six months however, he was the top salesman in the entire country for that company. They sat him down and asked him why he felt he was doing so well, considering that he had never worked in this industry before. How was he outperforming and outselling

His secret? He was using affirmations and visualization every day. He said, “Every morning when I get into my car, I repeat to myself, ‘I’m the best! I’m the best! I’m the best.’ “I then say, ‘I’m the best salesman in this company. I’m the best salesman in this industry. I’m the best salesman in the business.’ “Before every sales call, I sit in my car and pump myself up by repeating these affirmations, ‘I’m the best in this company. I’m the best in this industry. I’m the best in this country.’”

This inspiring salesman went on to explain that while he was talking to himself positively, he would create a clear mental picture of himself selling and interacting with the customer exactly as if he was the top salesman in the nation. He imagined the prospect responding to him positively and confidently. He would relax, smile, and enjoy the feeling that he anticipates having when he gets face-to-face with a customer.

Here is an interesting discovery. Everyone visualizes and talks to themselves continually as they go about their daily business. The difference between top salespeople and average salespeople is the content of their inner dialogue and their mental pictures. Top salespeople think and talk about their best selling experiences in the past. They then imagine that they are going to repeat those excellent experiences in the upcoming sales call.

Mediocre salespeople visualize and affirm as well. Unfortunately, they think about their most recent negative experiences. They think about wasted time and energy on people who didn’t

buy, customers who were rude or indifferent, and how disappointed they felt.

Top salespeople are different. They think through their sales calls in advance. They go over what they are going to say mentally before they get face-to-face with the prospect. They

practice “mental rehearsal,” a peak-performance technique used by all top athletes, including sales athletes. They prepare mentally for the upcoming meeting.

Continually imagine yourself as the very best in your field. See yourself as one of the highest money earners in your business.

Walk, talk, and treat others as if you were already a sales superstar.

1. Think big! Set an income goal for yourself for the next year that is 25 to 50 percent more than you have ever earned before.

2. Determine how much of your product or service you will have to sell over the next year to achieve your ideal income.

3. Break your income and sales goals down by month, week, and day; determine the activities you will have to engage in each day to earn the money you have decided that you desire.

4. Plan every day in advance; determine exactly the number of prospects you will have to call, the number of people you will have to see, and the number of sales you will have to make.

5. Set big, exciting goals for your family and your personal life; make a list of fifty to one

hundred things that you want to buy and do with the extra money you are going to earn.

6. Make a written plan to achieve each of your goals, and work on your plans every day. 7. Determine the price you will have to pay, in terms of additional work and sacrifice, to achieve your most desired goals, and then begin paying that price.

There are many different reasons why someone may buy your product or service. What you must appreciate is that people buy for their reasons, not for yours. One of the biggest mistakes amateur salespeople make is asking people to buy for their own personal reasons, not for the reasons that actually motivate the customer to take

action.

One of the most significant parts of selling, the indispensable step upon which the whole sales process depends, is your ability to identify the needs of your prospect accurately. You must take whatever time is necessary and ask as many questions as possible to find out exactly why this particular prospect needs to buy your product or service at this time.

As a fundamental principle, every human action is aimed at an improvement of some kind. People buy products and services because they feel they will be better off as a result. They not only feel that they will be better off as a result of buying your product or service, but they also feel they will be better off than if they bought some other product or service, or if they bought nothing at all.

People value freedom above almost all other benefits of our society. When they have money available, they have a certain degree of freedom. They have choices and options.

Each person has different buying motivations.

But frequently the prospect is more concerned about the name or reputation of the company selling the product. He would rather buy something that is better known, even if it costs more money.

If this is what is most important to the prospect, when the salesperson emphasizes the lower cost of an unknown product or service, he is actually hurting his chances of making the sale.

Professional selling begins with needs analysis. You are not really in a position to sell until you have asked enough questions and listened closely enough to the answers. This enables you to understand the most intense need of the prospect that your product or service can satisfy.

Once you have identified the customer’s key needs and wants, you can then structure your presentation in such a way that you demonstrate overwhelmingly to the customer that he will have that need satisfied if he buys from you.

But the prospect does not care what your product is. He only cares about what your product or service will do for him. Every customer’s favorite radio station is WII-FM, “What’s In It For Me?”

The prospect does not care what your product is. He only cares about what your product or service will do for him.

Here is a simple way to determine what your product does for your customer. Imagine a pipeline. Into one end of the pipeline goes your prod uct or service from sale to delivery to actual use by the customer. Out of the other end of the pipeline, dropping

into a bucket, is what your product does to improve the life or work of the customer. Your job is to clearly identify what arrives in the customer’s bucket as the result of his or her buying what you are selling.

For example, some people sell life insurance by stressing its affordability relative to competitive policies, the size and reputation of the company, the ease of monthly payments, and the role that life insurance pays in financial planning. These are all important, but they are not the reason that a customer buys life insurance. He buys it chiefly for “peace of mind.”

One of the top life insurance agents in the country told me that he has a very simple question that he uses when calling on new prospects. He asks, “Do you feel responsible for providing for your family if something were to happen to you?”

If the prospect does not say yes to this question immediately, he spends no further time trying to convince him of the importance of life insurance. He has found that if a person does not feel highly responsible for his family, he will be reluctant to take out insurance to provide for them in case of an accident.

Your choice of questions is often the key to identifying needs correctly.

The two major reasons that people buy or don’t buy, respectively, are desire for gain and fear of loss.

Your first task

is to help your prospect understand how much better his life or work would be with your product compared to the way it is now.

The second motivation is fear of loss.

People are much more motivated to buy if they feel they are going to lose something by not buying, than they are in anticipation of the benefits they will enjoy if they do buy.

the best sales presentation shows the prospect how much better off he will be if he buys and, simultaneously, how much worse off he will be if he neglects to buy.

For example, in selling a car, you could show what a wonderful automobile it is, how beautiful it is, and how well it drives. If the prospect likes the car but is still hesitant, you could point out that this is the last one available for at least two months, or the last time this car will be sold

at this low, low price. Often a prospect who was indecisive about buying will make an immediate purchase decision when confronted with the possibility that he won’t be able to get it at its current price—or get it at all.

Are You Believable?

Believability is perhaps the single most crucial requirement in your sales presentation.

You must identify the most important needs that your product or service can satisfy for each particular customer to whom you speak.

According to a University of Chicago study, people buy because of the way they anticipate feeling as a result of owning and using your product or service. It is this sense of emotional anticipation that you must trigger if you want to make a sale. It is not the features or benefits of your product as much as it is the feeling of pleasure or fulfillment that the customer imagines he or she will enjoy by buying from you.

Emotions distort evaluations.

As Abraham Lincoln said, “Everybody likes a compliment.” One of the definitions of self-esteem is “the degree to which one feels praiseworthy.” As a result, whenever someone receives praise and recognition for an accomplishment, large or small, that individual feels better and happier about him- or herself.

Buying Decisions Are Emotional

All buying decisions are emotional. In fact, everything you do is 100 percent emotional. The rule is that people decide emotionally and then justify logically. You use logic to justify and rationalize your decision once you have made it.

People decide emotionally and then justify logically.

you must focus your time, attention, and energy on finding out exactly what will cause this customer to buy.

words: ‘Hello, my name is Betty Dean,

and I’m with ABC Company. We’ve developed a process that can save you 20 to 30 percent of your office administration costs. It would take me about ten minutes to show you how it works, and you could decide for yourself if it is the sort of thing you are looking for.’”

Talk About What They Want

Businesspeople are interested in making or saving money or time.

If you are talking to someone who is in charge of administration, he is interested in cutting costs. If you are talking to someone in marketing or sales, she is interested in increasing sales and the resulting income. If you speak to the person who owns the company, he wants to improve the bottom line. You must always talk about your product or service in terms of what the customer wants, not in terms of what you are selling.

Here is a key to selling products or services to people in business: ask questions about what the person does and what results he is responsible for. What are the key performance indicators of his job? What does she get paid for? What results is he expected to achieve for the company? How is she appraised or evaluated by her superiors? These are key questions to ask and find out the answers for.

The key to conducting a basic needs analysis is to question skillfully and listen carefully. The very best salespeople dominate the listening and

let the customer dominate the talking. The more you ask questions and listen patiently and attentively to the answers, the more the customer will open up and talk to you.

The best questions to ask to open up a conversation and get more information from a prospect are called open-ended questions. These are questions that begin with a pronoun or adverb, words such as what, where, when, how, who, why, and which. These questions cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. They require a more expanded answer, which gives you a greater opportunity to understand the true needs of the prospect that can be satisfied by your product or service.

questioning is selling. It

The Person Who Asks Questions Has Control

As a rule, the person who asks questions has control. The individual who is answering the questions is controlled by the person who is asking them.

The very best salespeople today see themselves more as consultants and advisors to their customers than as salespeople.

Position yourself as a friend rather than as a salesperson, as an advisor rather than as someone who just wants to make a sale. See yourself more as a helper than anything else.

Position yourself as a teacher. When you ask questions, you learn the customer’s needs. When you talk, you teach the customer how he can most benefit from what you are selling. When you approach every sales situation as a friend, an advisor, and a teacher, you will dramatically lower the stress involved in competitive selling.

When you approach every sales situation as a friend, an advisor, and a teacher, you will dramatically lower the stress involved in competitive selling.

Quality Is Not Enough Many salespeople get stuck on the subject of quality. Their main argument for buying is that they are selling a quality product. But quality is never the primary reason for buying anything. Quality is a logical argument.

People buy things emotionally, but quality is always based on logic.

What is more important than quality is utility. When a person says, “My product is the highest-quality machine in the business,” it doesn’t

matter. The only thing that the prospect is interested in is, will it do the job for me? Will it do what I need done? Is it adequate for my purposes?

The only time you can use quality as an argument is when you are comparing your product at a higher price to another product at a lower price. You have to show the prospect that there are definite reasons why he should opt for higher quality rather than lower price. You have to prove that the customer will be much better off with your product, because it is of higher quality, than he might be with another product of lower quality, even if it is cheaper.

Explain Why Your Quality Is Important

If additional quality is not necessary to get the job done for the customer, then it is not an important benefit. In explaining quality features in your product or service, you must always explain how they directly benefit the customer. The customer must see the direct relationship between paying more for higher quality and getting more

back as a result. All customers ask the same question in their minds: So what? Whatever you say to a prospect about your product or service, imagine that he is looking at you and saying, “So what?” What the customer really wants to know is, what’s in it for me? What is the benefit to me of the feature that you are explaining? Why is this particular quality important to me?

Whatever you say to a prospect about your product or service, imagine that he is looking at you and saying, “So what?”

Everything you do helps or hurts.

In this respect, your personal appearance and grooming extend to the quality of your product itself. Most of the contact that your company will have with the customer will be you personally. For this reason, the way you appear and behave is a critical factor in the buying decision. It satisfies the prospect’s need for assurance.

A whopping 95 percent of the first impression that you make on a customer is determined by your clothes.

The very best companies have the best-trained and best-looking salespeople. Companies like IBM and Hewlett Packard interview prospective salespeople several times to be sure, in advance, that these are the right people to represent them in a competitive marketplace. They take prospective salespeople out to dinner to see how they use their utensils and how they handle themselves in a social situation.

But the customer does not care. He wants to know if the product will pay for itself, and how long it will take before it pays for itself. The customer wants to know how certain he can be that the product will pay for itself. He needs to know if this is an intelligent business decision or not.

Whenever you start to feel tense in a sales situation, immediately ask the customer a question about himself or his business, and listen to the answer.

People don’t buy products; they buy benefits. They buy solutions to their problems. They buy ways to satisfy their needs.

“If you could wave a magic wand and have the perfect situation in this area, how would it be different from what you are currently doing?” “What would you have to be convinced of to go ahead with our product, or any product?”

How do you uncover the hot button? Simply ask, especially when the prospect is hesitating or holding back, “Mr. Prospect, if ever you were to buy this product, at any time in the future, what would cause you to do it

at that time?” Then remain completely silent. When you make it a theoretical question, the prospect will often say, “Well, if ever I was to buy this product, I would have to be convinced of [the hot button!].” Like a Freudian slip, it will often fall out of the prospect’s mouth. You are then charged with convincing him that he will get that benefit immediately if he goes ahead with your offer.

Make a list of your last ten customers. Phone each of them and say these words: “Mr. Customer, I just wanted to call you and tell you how much I appreciate your buying this product from us. How is everything going? Is there any way that we can help you?” The customer may or may not ask you a question or have a problem with the product or service. If he does, though, promise to take care of it immediately after you get off the phone. Then ask, “Mr. Customer, may I ask you a question? You could have purchased this product or service…

This is a powerful market research question. Remain perfectly silent. Let the customer think about it for a few seconds before he replies. Don’t interrupt. The Great Discovery Here is the remarkable discovery that you will make. If you call ten previous customers, probably 80 percent of them will give you the same reason that they bought from you. Very…

Whatever the answer, write it down. From that day forward, whenever you meet with a new prospect, be sure to tell him, “Most of our best customers say that the reason they decided to buy from…

There is a story about a real estate agent who takes a couple to show them a house. The house is not in particularly great shape, but as they pull up in front of the house, the woman looks past the house, and in the backyard, there is a beautiful, flowering cherry tree. She immediately says, “Oh, Harry, look at that beautiful flowering cherry tree! There was a flowering cherry tree in my backyard when I was a little girl. I’ve always wanted to live in a house with a flowering cherry tree.” They all get out of the car and go in to look at the house. But the salesperson has taken note of what the woman said. Harry looks at the house critically. The first thing he says is, “It looks like we’re going to have to recarpet this house.” The salesman says, “Yes, that’s true. But from here, just look; you can see out through the dining room, and you are looking right at that beautiful, flowering cherry tree.” The woman immediately looks out the back window at the flowering cherry tree and smiles. The salesman knows that the woman is the primary decision maker when it comes to buying a house. So he focuses on her. They go into the kitchen and Harry says, “This kitchen’s a bit small, and the plumbing looks old.” The salesman says, “Yes, that’s true. But when you look through this window while you’re preparing dinner, you can see that beautiful flowering cherry tree in the backyard.” Next they go upstairs to see the rest of the house. Harry says, “These bedrooms are too small, and besides, the wallpaper is old-fashioned, and the rooms all have to be…

1. Make a list of the needs that customers have that can be met by your product; organize this list in order of importance to the customer. Build your prospecting and selling around these needs. 2. Conduct regular market research among your satisfied customers; find out what benefit your product offered that caused them to buy from you rather than someone else.

3. Determine the most important benefit your business customers are seeking, and then develop a way to explain that benefit in every sales conversation. 4. Identify the most significant gains or losses that your prospects could experience from using or not using what you are selling; emphasize them repeatedly. 5. Dress for success; buy and read a book on proper business dress, and then follow it so that you look like a complete professional when you visit a customer. 6. Develop a series of open-ended questions that you can use to control

the sales conversation and uncover the true needs of the prospect; keep the light on him by asking and listening. 7. Position yourself as a friend, an advisor, and a teacher in every customer contact; focus on helping and teaching rather than selling.

—CHARLES SCHWAB Creativity is a natural characteristic of all top salespeople.

Creativity is something that you demonstrate and use all the time. When you are trying to avoid a traffic jam on your way to an appointment by taking alternate roads, side streets, and alleys, you are engaging in highly creative acts.

Because of the central role of your self-concept, the more you believe yourself to be creative, the more you will generate creative ideas. In selling, you are essentially creating business where no business existed before. By the process of prospecting, building rapport, identifying needs, presenting solutions, answering objections, closing the sale, and getting resales and referrals, you are engaging in extraordinary complex creative acts that are the wellsprings of our free enterprise society.

Three Ways to Stimulate Creativity Creativity is stimulated by three key factors: (1) clear goals, (2) pressing problems, and (3) focused questions. You must use all three as often as possible.

The more focused and specific the questions that you ask yourself, or that others ask you, the more innovative you will be in developing answers. You should use all three of these continually to keep your mind functioning at its highest level.

Practice Thinking Creatively

The first area where creativity is important is in prospecting. Your success in prospecting largely determines your income. And your ability to find more and better prospects is only limited by your imagination. The second area where creativity is essential is in uncovering buying motives. You must be creative in questioning to find out exactly what the customer needs and what will cause this customer to buy. This is a real test of your intelligence and brainpower. Prospects have automatic buying resistance to any sales approach. They don’t want to tell you why they might buy your product. They know from experience that if you find out what they really want, you will probably be able to convince them that they will get it, and they will be too weak to resist your offering.

Read, study, and memorize your product information. Find out what your competitors are selling, what they emphasize, and how much they charge. Become an expert in your market.

“Spend more time with better prospects.” This six-word formula is the recipe for high income in every market.

Creative prospecting is essential to your success.

What is your “unique selling proposition?” What is your company’s or product’s area of excellence? In what ways is your company, product, or service superior to anything else available in your market?

Many salespeople have built their entire careers by specializing in a particular industry, a specific type of customer, or a distinct geographic area. How could this apply to you?

In differentiation, you determine what it is that makes your product superior to your competitor’s. What special benefits does your product

offer to your customers that are not available anywhere else? In what areas are your products better than 90 percent of similar goods or services on the market? In many cases, if the product you are selling is available elsewhere, such as with real estate or life insurance, the special differentiator that you bring to the sales situation is your own unique personality. There is only one person like you in the whole world. Most sales are made on the basis of the feeling that the customer has about the salesperson, more than any other factor.

Who exactly is your customer?

Make a list of all the qualities and characteristics that your ideal customer would have. What would be his/her age, education, occupation, income level, experiences, attitude, or need? The greater clarity you have in identifying your ideal customer, the easier it will be for you to find more of these customers to talk to.

“What would have to happen before you went ahead with this offer?”

One of the most powerful of all sales tools is the testimonial letter. When you say that your product is excellent and a good choice for the prospect, he immediately discounts your words because, after all, you are a salesperson. But when someone else who has purchased your product says that it is “good,” the customer believes and accepts this assessment.

I followed up continuously until I had a three-ring binder full of testimonial letters in plastic page protectors. This changed my sales career.

“Before we begin, let me show you some letters that I am particularly proud of, from some of my customers.” I would then hand my binder to the prospect and let him read through the letters. I found that people love to read testimonial letters. It is sort of like reading other people’s mail. Later, I took a yellow high-lighter and highlighted the very best sentences in each of the letters so that they jumped out when the prospect read the pages. It was amazing! Very often the prospect would look up from reading through the testimonial letters and say, “I’m sold. How soon can we get started?” My sales doubled, tripled, and quadrupled. In the first two months after I started using testimonial letters, I made more sales than I had in the previous year.

Many people will write you a testimonial letter if you ask for it. But sometimes they are so busy that they don’t get around to it. In this case, offer to write the letter yourself and ask them to type it onto their own letterhead and sign it. It is amazing how many customers will do this if you ask.

If you get the same objection over and over, especially with regard to your high price or the fact that your company or product is new in the market, ask your satisfied customers to answer that objection in the text of their letter. Often you can write the letter for them with the answer to this objection.

For example, let us say that your product is more expensive than that of your competitors, and your customers continually bring this up. You would ask for or write a testimonial letter that says something like this: Dear Brian, I just wanted to write and tell you how happy we are with your product. When you first approached me, I was concerned about the high price. But since I have started using your product, the benefits and results I have achieved are far greater than the small difference in price I paid. Thank you for everything. Sincerely, A Happy Customer

Call or visit a satisfied customer, someone you like and who likes you, and tell him that your company is conducting some market research. “We are talking to some of our most valued customers to find out how we can serve them better in the future. Would you answer a few questions for me?” You then ask him questions such as the following:

“Why did you decide to buy from us rather than from someone else?” “What specific value or benefit do you feel that you get from our product?” “How could we improve it in the future for you?” “What kind of customer do you feel could most benefit from our product?” “Is there anything special that our product [or service] does that you did not expect when you bought it?” Never be afraid to ask.

Practice “Mindstorming” Regularly This is one of the most powerful ways to stimulate your creativity, alert you to new opportunities, and accelerate your success in your sales career. It is called the “20 Idea Method.” When you begin using this method regularly and applying some of the ideas that you generate, you will increase twofold or more your income in the months ahead. Here’s how it works. Take a sheet of paper and write your biggest goal or your most pressing problem at the top of the page in the form of a question. For example, you could write, “How can I double my income in the next twelve months?” You can even be more specific: “How can I increase my income from $50,000 to $100,000 per year over the next twelve months?” Be Clear and Concrete The more clear and specific the question, the easier it is for your mind to generate multiple answers to it. You use this mindstorming method primarily on questions for which you are seeking concrete, tangible answers. For example, you would not write, “How can I be happier?” This question is so soft and vague that your mind cannot focus on it and generate specific, workable answers. Once you have written out your question, you then discipline yourself to write out twenty answers to that question. You write them in the personal, positive, present tense. For example, instead of writing, “Make more calls,” you would write, “I make five extra calls each day.” The more specific your answers, the more ideas they will stimulate. Write Twenty Answers—Minimum Write a minimum of twenty answers to the question. You can write more than twenty answers if you like, but you must discipline yourself to keep writing until you have at least twenty answers. For some reason, the number 20 has a magical effect. Very often, the twentieth answer is the breakthrough idea that changes your career.

Once you have put down twenty answers, go back over your list of answers and select at least one idea that you will implement immediately. Do it now, this very minute. Don’t delay. This is very important.

Earl Nightingale, in writing about this idea, said that more people have become wealthy using this 20 Idea Method than any other method of creative thinking ever discovered.

Once you develop the regular habit of thinking creatively and applying your creative ideas, there will be no product that you cannot sell successfully and no goal that you cannot achieve.

1. You are a genius; resolve today that you will use your inborn creativity to solve any problem, overcome any obstacle, and achieve any goal you can set for yourself. 2. Write your most important goal at the top of a page in the form of a question; write out twenty (20) answers to that question and then take action on at least one of them; do this every day. 3. Identify your areas of excellence and superiority in your product or service; what makes what you sell better than any competitive alternative? 4. Determine why your customers buy from you rather than from someone else. Which prospects can most benefit from what you do best? 5. Where are your very best concentrations of prospective customers? Decide how you are going to spend more time with them. 6. Differentiate your products or services in a meaningful way; find out why people buy your product, and then show them why your product is the best choice, all things considered. 7. Get written testimonial letters from your satisfied customers, highlight the best sentences, and then place them in plastic pages in a three-ring binder. Show these letters to every prospect. Far and away, the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. —THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The most important rule for selling success is spend more time with better prospects. This rule contains just six words, but it summarizes your complete strategy to selling. The more time you spend with better prospects, by the Law of Probabilities, the more sales you will make and the more successful you will be.

You Can Learn Any Skill Fortunately, prospecting is a skill that you can learn. If anyone else is good at prospecting, that is proof that you can be good as well. You simply need to learn the strategies and techniques used by other top people and then adapt them to your own work until you feel comfortable with them. After that, your sales success is guaranteed.

Develop an

opening statement or question that gets his complete attention. This sentence should always be aimed at the result or benefit that the prospect will receive from your product or service, but does not mention the product or service itself.

Many years ago, there was a salesman who worked for Corning Glass. This was the year that the company introduced safety glass for the first time. This product contained a transparent plastic sheet between two pieces of glass, and as a result, it did not shatter the way most windshield glass did at that time. This young salesman went out with his new product, and within one year he became the top-performing salesman of safety glass in North America. At the national sales conference, he received the first prize for sales performance and was invited to share his secret with the other salespeople present. They wanted to know, “How did you sell so much more safety glass than anyone else?”

Demonstrate the Benefit He explained, “First of all, I got the factory to cut some safety glass into six-inch squares as samples. Then I got a ball-peen hammer, which I took with me on sales calls. When I walked in on the prospect, I would ask, ‘Would you like to see a piece of glass that doesn’t shatter?’ “Almost invariably, the prospect would say, ‘That’s not possible, I don’t believe it.’ I would then put the glass sample on his desk, take out the ball-peen hammer, and whack it. He would instinctively jump and throw up his hands to protect his eyes. When he looked down and saw that the glass had not shattered, he would be

amazed. “After that, it was simple. I would just ask, ‘How much would you like?’ take out my order pad, and begin writing.” Teach It to Everyone Corning Glass was so impressed with this technique that the following year they bought ball-peen hammers for all their salespeople, provided them with samples of safety glass, and sent them out nationwide. The method really worked; they sold glass by the carload. At the end of the year, at the next national sales convention, the young salesman, for some reason, was still

head and shoulders above every other salesperson in the country. Once again, they invited him up on the stage to receive his award as the top salesperson in the country. And again they asked him, “What is it that you did this year to outsell everybody else?” Get the Customer into the Act “Well,” he said. “I knew that you were all going to use my method, so I had to come up with a new technique. Now when I go in to see the customer, I’ve got a ball-peen hammer in one hand and the sample of safety glass in the other. I ask him, ‘Would you like to see a piece of glass that doesn’t shatter?’

My note: interesting. he knew he had to switch it up to stand out. does my phone call sound like everyone else? how can i stand out and be refreshing?

“He usually says, ‘I don’t believe it.’ “Then, I put the piece of glass on his desk and I give him the hammer and have him hit it. When he tries and fails to smash the glass himself, he is totally convinced. Then I write up the order.”

Marketing guru Dan Kennedy has a powerful technique for testing your opening sentence when you visit a prospect for the first time. He says that your opening words should trigger the response “Really? How do you do that?”

Experts generally agree that the first fifteen to twenty-five words out of your mouth set the tone for the rest of the conversation. You should select these words carefully and rehearse them regularly. They should not be left to chance.

You have to rework your opening question or statement until it gets the kind of reaction you want:

When I found that I wasn’t getting anywhere with my approach, I sat down and studied it. I spent several hours working and reworking my opening comments,

trying to determine how I could cold-call on prospects in sales organizations more effectively.

My second question was, what is the basic need or concern of my ideal prospect?

results. I realized that I had to ask a question that focused on that specific need,

“Mr. Brown, my name is Brian Tracy. I’m with the Institute for Executive Development. I was wondering if you would be interested in a proven method that could increase your sales by 20 to 30 percent over the next twelve months?”

I would then repeat the key benefit, or “hot button.” “Mr. Brown, we’ve developed a method to increase your sales by 20 percent, 30 percent, and even 50 percent over the next few months.”

The prospect would often say, “Really? How do you do that?” My response would be, “That is exactly why I am calling you. I just need ten minutes of your time to show you this system, and you can decide for yourself if it applies to your company and your salespeople.”

Your opening question should trigger the response “What is it?” or “Really? How do you do that?”

Whenever you phone a prospect for the first time, you are interrupting him from something he is doing that he considers to be more important than anything you have to say.

His reaction is a knee-jerk, automatic response to any sales offer.

“That’s all right. Most people in your industry felt the same way when I first called on them. But now they’ve become our best customers, and they recommend us to their friends.”

say, “That’s OK. Most people in the financial services industry felt the same way when I first called on them. But now they’ve become our best clients, and they recommend us to their friends.”

In Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, he explains the impact of “social proof ” in building credibility and arousing desire. Social proof comes from other people, like the customers who have already bought the product or service. Whenever we hear of someone else like us, in our business or with our same interests or beliefs, who has bought a product, we are immediately interested in knowing what it is. If lots of people like us have bought a particular product, we almost automatically conclude that it is a good choice for us as well.

Instead say, “Mr. Prospect, I’ve got my calendar here in front of me. Do you have your schedule handy?” The prospect will always agree that he has his schedule near at hand. You then say, “Let’s set up a specific time right now. If something comes up and this time doesn’t work for you, you can give me a call and we can reschedule. Would Tuesday afternoon at around three o’clock be convenient for you?”

Remember, you do not sell a product or a service. You sell a solution to a problem or the satisfaction of a genuine need.

Fourth, the prospect wants to be sure that she will be placed under no obligation if she meets with you. This is why you say, “I have something to show you, and you can judge for yourself.”

Fifth, the prospect wants to be sure that you will not use high pressure. The two most common fears of prospects, with regard to salespeople, are the fear of being pressured and the fear of being taken advantage of. By approaching the prospect with a positive, polite, and friendly attitude, you take these fears away. You cause her to relax and listen to you more closely.

Questions are powerful, because each person is conditioned from childhood to answer questions when they are asked.

This is why we say in selling that “the person who asks questions has control.” The person who is asking the questions controls the person who is answering. The very fastest way to take control over any conversation is to pause and ask a question.

When you ask the prospect, “May I ask you a question?” he will almost always say yes. You will then be in complete control.

Continue Asking Questions; Good Questions Trigger Good Responses

When you ask the prospect, “Would you like to see a proven method to increase your sales by 20 to 30 percent per year?” the prospect cannot say anything else until he has answered the question. The questioner is in control.

The second step in this method of getting face-to-face appointments is to be courteous and say, “I would just need about ten minutes of your time to show you what I’ve got, and you can judge for yourself.” The essential point to convey is “you be the judge.”

If you are calling on a printing company and you have already sold one of your products to another printing company, tell them, “Another company in your industry, ABC Printing Services, is already using this product and is getting great results.”

When I was selling sales training, I would say, “Hundreds of companies are already using this process and are reaping great results. It is proven, practical, and completely guaranteed. And I just need ten minutes of your time to show it to you, and you can decide for yourself.”

The first is to call through to the prospect and tell him that you will be there at the scheduled time and are looking forward to seeing him.

Another way to confirm an appointment is to simply call the receptionist and ask, “Is Mr. Brown there?” When the receptionist says, “Yes,” you then say, “Good, this is Brian Tracy. I am just calling to confirm my appointment with him at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Please tell him that I will be there on schedule. Thank you very much.”

Remember, rejection is not personal.

Don’t forget to use the technique we covered earlier: the use of positive affirmations. Especially if you feel a little tense, repeat to yourself, strongly and emphatically, the words “I like myself ! I like myself ! I like myself !” Say, “I love my work! I love my work! I love my work!”

Help yourself warm up and prepare mentally by repeating, “I feel happy! I feel healthy! I feel terrific!”

Always prepare for a sales meeting by breathing,

visualizing, and affirming in advance. It will make all the difference in the world.

ACTION EXERCISES

1. Determine exactly the number of prospects you must call each day and each week to achieve your sales and income goals. 2. Spend 80 percent of your time prospecting until you have so many people to see that you do not have time to call anyone else. 3. Write out your script for telephone prospecting, memorize it, and practice it continually until it sounds natural and relaxed.

and refer to other happy customers who already use it. 5. Keep the initiative; nail down the exact date and time of your first appointment with the prospect. 6. Refuse to talk about your product or service, or the price, on the phone; focus single-mindedly on getting a face-to-face meeting, nothing more. 7. Prepare thoroughly for every sales meeting; do your homework, on the Internet if possible, so you look and sound like an absolute professional when you meet the prospect for the first time.

Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality. —EARL NIGHTINGALE

Human beings are greatly influenced by the suggestive elements in their environments, especially the human elements. The suggestive influence of a calm, confident, relaxed salesperson is very powerful. This is why the most successful salespeople are usually those who are the most tranquil and easygoing. They are usually well dressed, well groomed, and professional looking in every respect.

There are several suggestive influences that you can control. The essentials are your appearance, your voice, and your attitude.

If you look good, your voice is clear and confident, and your attitude is calm and optimistic, the initial impact of your presence will make a positive impression on the prospect.

Later I bought a series of books on the subject and studied dress extensively.

Over the years, in more than a thousand seminars with more than a million salespeople, I have noticed that the best-dressed salespeople are always the ones making the most money in their fields.

Every salesperson should read at least two books on proper business attire and then follow their advice religiously.

Another point in Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, is the importance of “liking” in sales success. If a prospect likes you, the details will not get in the way of the sale. But if the prospect is

neutral or negative toward you, the details will trip you up every step of the way and often make a sale impossible.

People who work from a clean desk are two or three times as productive as those who work from a cluttered desk.

By visualizing your goals, you can get your subconscious mind to work toward making those subconscious pictures come true.

As a professional, learn to expect this generalized sales resistance in your first meeting and to deal with it effectively.

The very best way to build trust in a sales relationship is to ask the prospect questions and listen carefully to the answers. The more you show that you are genuinely interested in the prospect and his situation, the more the prospect will be open to giving you information and accepting your recommendations.

“If I could show you exactly the car you are looking for at perhaps the best price in the city, would you be interested in taking it for a drive?”

Your opening question is to discover whether or not a person is a prospect for what you are selling. The purpose of subsequent questioning is to further qualify the prospect and to discover the key reasons why he might buy.

Many sales are delayed far longer than they need to be because salespeople are reluctant to ask for the order and bring the transaction to a close.

The planned presentation is twenty times more powerful than the spontaneous presentation.

The planned presentation is a step-by-step process of learning and teaching. It begins with your opening question. From your opening question, you move through the process of learning the situation and needs of the prospect to teaching the prospect what your product does and what it can do for him.

what’s in it for him.

When you speak to businesspeople, they are only concerned with the end result, the

“Mr. Prospect, what we’ve found

“Mr. Prospect, if your sales went up steadily from the first month, throughout the entire year, they would easily increase 20 to 30 percent on average. How much would that mean in terms of total dollars to your bottom line if you increased your sales 20 to 30 percent over the next twelve months?”

if the prospect asks you how much it is going to cost before you have finished showing him what he will get and what your product or service will do for him, refuse to give the price. Put off the question. Say, “That is a good question; I’m going to get to that in

a moment.” Here’s a wise proverb from the world of sales: “Price out of place kills the sale.” If you give the price too

early, before the customer knows what the price is for, he will often become preoccupied with the amount you are going to charge rather than the benefits he is going to receive. Always delay discussion of pricing until the end of the presentation, when the prospect clearly wants to enjoy the benefits that your product or service offers.

the very best way to elicit these needs is by asking planned, open-ended questions that elicit specific information.

Listening is the key to building trust, to learning the true needs of the prospect. It is also the key to establishing a high-quality relationship. In fact, listening is the key to sales success. One of the greatest needs that each person has is to feel important, to be appreciated and esteemed by other people. Listening has been called

“white magic” because of its enormous impact on influencing the emotions and personality of the other person.

1. Listen Attentively

Listening is the most powerful of all techniques in selling. All of the highest-paid sales professionals are described as “very good listeners.” They “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” They concentrate all of their attention on understanding the thoughts, feelings, and needs of the customer before they make any attempt to sell.

2. Pause Before Replying Second, pause before replying or continuing. When the prospect finishes speaking, pause and wait for three to five seconds before you answer. Even if the prospect has asked you a question to which you know the answer, you must still discipline yourself to pause for a few moments.

3. Question for Clarification Third, question for clarification. Never assume that you know what the prospect really meant by what he just said. Instead, pause and then ask the question, “How do you mean?” This is one of the great, all-purpose questions for sales success. No matter what the prospect says or no matter what his objection, you can always follow it up with “How do you mean?”

“It costs too much.” How do you mean?

“We can’t afford it.” How do you mean?

“We are happy with our existing supplier.” How do you mean? “We don’t have it in the budget.” How do you mean? Each time you ask the question, “How do you mean?” the prospect will expand on what he just said. He will give you more detail. And each elaboration increases the likelihood that he will tell you what you need to know to help him make a buying decision. Questions Equal Control.

the person who asks questions has control.

But when you ask a question, 100 percent of the prospect’s attention will be focused on answering you.

4. Paraphrase It in Your Own Words Feed back what the prospect just said in your own words.

Only after you have listened attentively, paused before replying, questioned for clarification, and fed it back in your own words are you in a position to comment intelligently or to make a sales presentation. Listening builds trust, and the very best way to get an opportunity to listen is to control the conversation with questions.

5. Use Open-Ended Questions

Use closed-ended questions to bring a conversation to a conclusion.

The difference between experienced salespeople and inexperienced salespeople in this area is that experienced salespeople present one feature or benefit and then ask for feedback. They make sure that they understand what the customer is thinking at each state of the sales presentation.

Create Word Pictures

For example, imagine that you are selling a car. You can say, “You are really going to love the way this car handles in the mountains.”

If you are selling homes, you could say, “You are really going to enjoy living on such a quiet street. It is just beautiful here. There is not a sound in the evenings. It’s so relaxing.”

Your job is to create as many exciting pictures as possible of the customer benefiting from what you sell.

One of my graduates is a top salesperson for a recreational vehicle dealership. She sells RVs that cost as much as $500,000 each. She outsells her competitors, both at her own dealership and throughout the state, by three to five times. She is a superstar in her field. And she has a simple technique to achieve this goal. When a couple comes in to look at a recreational vehicle, she first qualifies them to determine that they are serious buyers. She then shows them several vehicles to determine what size and price range they are interested in. Finally, she arranges to take them out

for a combination lunch and test drive in the vehicle that they seem to like the most. A couple of days later, as prearranged, she arrives at their home driving the vehicle. She has them make themselves comfortable inside, and then she drives them to an idyllic spot in a park, overlooking the lake, with the mountains in the distance. She swings the vehicle around so that this beautiful scene is facing the couple as they sit at the kitchen table. She then takes out a picnic basket, lays out a beautiful luncheon, and serves it to them as they sit looking at the mountains. After lunch and after answering all their questions,

she says, “Isn’t this a beautiful way to live? Wouldn’t you just love to be able to get away in this vehicle anytime you wanted?” The couple looks at her, looks at each other, looks out over the mountains and the lake, and the decision is made. She sells more recreational vehicles than anyone else in her industry, and for good reason.

One of the turning points in my life was when I learned about the law of cause and effect. This law says that for every effect, such as high income, there is a specific cause, or causes. If you do what other successful people do, you will eventually get the same results that they do.

1. Do What You Love to Do All truly successful, highly paid people, including salespeople, love what they do. You must learn to love your work and then commit yourself to becoming excellent in your field. These two go together, like a hand in a glove.

Excellence Is a Decision.

The journalist said to him, “You were lucky to be born with such tremendous athletic ability.” Jordan replied, “Everybody has ability; but talent takes hard work.”

Many people make the mistake of thinking that if they have the ability to excel in a field, it will come naturally. But the fact is that excellence is the result of

years of hard, dedicated effort in a single direction. There is no substitute for hard work.

Sixth, take action on your goal, whatever it is. The primary reason that people succeed greatly is because they are action oriented. The primary reason that people fail is because they do not take action. Failures

4. Commit to Lifelong Learning

Not long ago, a college student sent out a thirty-nine-point questionnaire to all the presidents of Fortune 500 companies. Eighty-three of those presidents completed the questionnaire and sent it back. This is an extraordinary number of responses from such a busy group of people. The student went through the questionnaires to find out what these business leaders considered to be the reasons for their success. Perhaps the most common piece of advice from these top people, repeated over

In success, the law of cause and effect is summarized by “learn and do.”

practice

practicing

Never Stop Learning.

Because of the 80/20 rule, some things you do are worth vastly more than other things, even though they take the same number of minutes and hours. Your goal is to focus on those activities that contribute the very most value to your life and your work.

If you want to know how to be a successful salesperson, go to the top people in your business and ask them for advice. Ask them what books you should read and what audio programs you should listen to. Ask

them what courses you should take. Inquire about their attitudes, philosophies, and approaches to their work and their customers.

You must do the things every day that lead to the goals you have set for yourself.

The key to success in selling is for you to start a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later. Do the little things that average people always try to avoid doing.

The key to success in selling is for you to start a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later.