Most people are always striving to better themselves. It's the "American Way". For proof, check the sales figures on the number of self-improvement books sold each year. This is not a pitch for you to jump in and start selling these kinds of books, but it is a indication of people's awareness that in order to better themselves, they have to continue improving their personal selling ab abilities.
To excel in any selling
situation, you must have confidence, and confidence comes, first and foremost,
from knowledge. You have to know and understand yourself and your
goals. You have torecognize and accept your weaknesses as well as your
special talents. This requires a kind of personal honesty that not
everyone is capable of exercising.
In addition to knowing
yourself, you must continue learning about people. Just as with yourself,
you must be caring, forgiving and laudatory with others. In any sales
effort, you must accept other people as they are, not as you would like for
them to be. One of the most common faults of sales people is impatience when the
prospective customer is slow to understand or make a decision. The
successful salesperson handles these situations the same as he would if he were
asking a girl for a date, or even applying for a new job.
Learning your product,
making a clear presentation to qualified prospects, and closing more sales will
take a lot less time once you know your own capabilities and failings, and
understand and care about the prospects you are calling upon.
Our society is
predicated upon selling, and all of us are selling something all the
time. We move up or stand still in direct relation to our sales
efforts. Everyone is included, whether we're attempting to be a friend to
a co-worker, a neighbor, or selling multi-million dollar real estate projects.
Accepting these facts
will enable you to understand that there is no such thing as a born
salesman. Indeed, in selling, we all begin at the same starting line, and
we all have the same finish line as the goal - a successful sale.
Most assuredly, anyone
can sell anything to anybody. As a qualification to this statement, let
us say that some things are easier to sell than others, and some people work
harder at selling than others. But regardless of what you're selling, or
even how you're attempting to sell it, the odds are in your favor. If you
make your presentation to enough people, you'll find a buyer. The problem
with most people seems to be in making contact - getting their sales
presentation seen by, read by, or heard by enough people. But this really
shouldn't be a problem, as we'll explain later. There is a problem of impatience,
but this too can be harnessed to work in the salesperson's favor.
We have established that
we're all sales people in one way or another. So whether we're attempting
to move up from forklift driver to warehouse manager, waitress to hostess,
salesman to sales manager or from mail order dealer to president of the largest
sales organization in the world, it's vitally important that we continue
learning.
Getting up out of bed in
the morning; doing what has to be done in order to sell more units of
your product; keeping records, updating your materials; planning the
direction of further sales efforts; and all the
while increasing your own knowledge---all this very definitely requires a great
deal of personal motivation, discipline, and energy. But then the rewards can
be beyond your wildest dreams, for make no mistake about it, the selling
profession is the highest paid occupation in the world!
Selling is
challenging. It demands the utmost of your creativity and innovative
thinking. The more success you want, and the more dedicated you are to
achieving your goals, the more you'll sell. Hundreds of people the world
over become millionaires each month through selling. Many of them were
flat broke and unable to find a "regular" job when they began their
selling careers. Yet they've done it, and you can do it too!
Remember, it's the
surest way to all the wealth you could ever want. You get paid according
to your own efforts, skill, and knowledge of people. If you're ready to
become rich, then think seriously about selling a product or service
(preferably something exclusively yours) - something that you "pull out of
your brain"; something that you write, manufacture or produce for the
benefit of other people. But failing this, the want ads are full of
opportunities for ambitious sales people. You can start there, study,
learn from experience, and watch for the chance that will allow you to move
ahead by leaps and bounds.
Here are some guidelines
that will definitely improve your gross sales, and quite naturally, your gross
income. I like to call them the Strategic Salesmanship
Commandments. Look them over; give some thought to each of them;
and adapt those that you can to your own selling efforts.
1. If the product
you're selling is something your prospect can hold in his hands, get it into
his hands as quickly as possible. In other words, get the prospect
"into the act". Let him feel it, weigh it, admire it.
2. Don't stand or
sit alongside your prospect. Instead, face him while you're pointing out
the important advantages of your product. This will enable you to watch
his facial expressions and determine whether and when you should go for the
close. In handling sales literature, hold it by the top of the page, at
the proper angle, so that your prospect can read it as you're highlighting the
important points.
Regarding your sales
literature, don't release your hold on it, because you want to control the
specific parts you want the prospect to read. In other words, you want
the prospect to read or see only the parts of the sales material you're telling
him about at a given time.
3. With prospects
who won't talk with you: When you can get no feedback to yours sales
presentation, you must dramatize your presentation to get him involved.
Stop and ask questions such as, "Now, don't you
agree that this product can help you or would be of benefit to you?"
After you've asked a question such as this, stop talking and wait for the
prospect to answer. It's a proven fact that following such a question,
the one who talks first will lose, so don't say anything until after the
prospect has given you some kind of answer. Wait him out!
4. Prospects who
are themselves sales people, and prospects who imagine they know a lot about
selling sometimes present difficult selling obstacles, especially for the
novice. But believe me, these prospects can be the easiest of all to
sell. Simply give your sales presentation, and instead of trying for a close,
toss out a challenge such as, "I don't know, Mr. Prospect - after watching
your reactions to what I've been showing and telling you about my product, I'm
very doubtful as to how this product can truthfully be of benefit to you".
Then wait a few seconds,
just looking at him and waiting for him to say something. Then, start
packing up your sales materials as if you are about to leave. In almost
every instance, your "tough nut"
will quickly ask you, Why? These people are generally so filled with
their own importance, that they just have to prove you wrong. When they
start on this tangent, they will sell themselves. The more skeptical you
are relative to their ability to make your product work to their benefit, the
more they'll demand that you sell it to them.
If you find that this
prospect will not rise to your challenge, then go ahead with the packing of
your sales materials and leave quickly. Some people are so convinced of
their own importance that it is a poor use of
your valuable time to attempt to convince them.
5. Remember that
in selling, time is money! Therefore, you must allocate only so much time
to each prospect. The prospect who asks you to call back next week, or
wants to ramble on about similar products, prices or previous experiences, is
costing you money. Learn to quickly get your prospect interested in, and
wanting your product, and then systematically present your sales pitch through
to the close, when he signs on the dotted line,and reaches for his checkbook.
After the introductory
call on your prospect, you should be selling products and collecting
money. Any callbacks should be only for reorders, or to sell him related
products from your line. In other words, you can waste an introductory
call on a prospect to qualify him, but you're going to be wasting money if you
continue calling on him to sell him the first unit of your product. When
faced with a reply such as, "Your product looks pretty good, but I'll have
to give some thought", you should quickly jump in and ask
him what specifically about your product does he feel he needs to give more
thought. Let him explain, and that's when you go back into your sales
presentation and make everything crystal clear for him. If he still
balks, then you can either tell him that you think he product will really
benefit him, or it's purchase be to his benefit.
You must spend as much
time as possible calling on new prospects. Therefore, your first call
should be a selling call with follow-up calls by mail or telephone (once every
month or so in person) to sign him for re-orders and other items from your
product line.
6. Review your
sales presentation, your sales materials, and your prospecting efforts.
Make sure you have a "door-opener" that arouses interest and
"forces" a purchase the first time around. This can be a $2
interest stimulator so that you can show him your full line, or a special marked-down
price on an item that everybody
wants; but the important thing is to get the prospect on your
"buying customer" list, and then follow up via mail or telephone with
related, but more profitable products you have to offer.
If you accept our
statement that there are no born salesmen, you can readily absorb these
"commandments". Study them, as well as all the material in this
report. When you realize your first
successes, you will
truly know that "salesmen are MADE - not born".
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