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How to achieve excellence in sales
HOW TO ACHIEVE EXCELLENCE IN SALES
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 an
indication of people's awareness that in order to better themselves,
they have to continue improving their personal selling 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 to recognize
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 salespeople 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 some thing 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 your 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 impor
tance, that they just have to prove you wrong. When they
start on this tangent, they will sell themselves. The more
skeptical y ity to make your product work to their benefit,
the more they'll de mand 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, orwants 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 call
backs 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 p in and ask him what it is that he doesn't
understand, or 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's
procrastinating, or that overall, you don't think the
product will really benefit him, or it's purchase be to his
advantage. 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 reorders 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 "salesman are made - not born."
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