The sixth advantage of the selling profession is that it’s satisfying. You feel good when your client owns your product. It’s a thrill to know you’ve helped people when you go home at night and can say, “I got another family happily involved in what my company provides.”
When an executive or official approves your purchase order, it’s exciting and satisfying to know you’ve helped that organization carry out its purposes, save money, make more money, or provide its employees with better benefits. The people you serve benefit in direct proportion to your ability and skills. The better you are at sales, the more you benefit others—your clients, your family, and the nation’s economy.
No one limits your growth but you. If you want to earn more, learn more. That means you’ll work harder for a while; it means you’ll work longer for a while. But you’ll be paid for your extra effort with enhanced earnings down the road.
Most people in this world have jobs and professions—existences—that can’t fulfill their potential. The scope of their labor is confined to narrow limits; their toil hinders rather than fosters their growth; they dislike everything about their employment except the sense of security its familiarity has bred in them. So, instead of venturing into what they don’t know and might love, they allow themselves to be trapped by what they do know and don’t like.
Professional salespeople recognize no limits to their growth except those limits that are self-imposed. They know that they can always reach out for more. They know they will grow in direct proportion to their competence. And they have little fear of the unknown in change because overcoming the unknown is their daily work. That’s the seventh advantage of being a professional salesperson: It stimulates your personal growth.
To earn more, develop more competence. Study this book’s sales skills. Study your product or service. Study your customers and your territory. Keep up with technology—at least those aspects of it that help make you more productive. Practice growing your skills at every opportunity. Do what you know you should do. Follow that program, and you can’t fail to push your earnings to a much higher level.
That’s my purpose in life—to help you make more money. Please don’t let me down—develop more competence, earn more money, get your share of life’s good things. Developing competence is the only way. I know many salespeople making several hundred thousand dollars a year, and some making more than a million dollars a year, and I’m always intrigued by the variety of their backgrounds, the diversity of their personalities, and the range of their interests. Yet they have many things in common, foremost of which is this quality: They are competent. They know exactly what they are doing. This book, like my seminars, is aimed at helping you learn how to become competent.
Please notice that I said learn.
There’s an obstacle to learning how to become competent that we meet with here.
The Myth of the Natural-Born Sales Wonder
So many of us believe in this that we’ve come to look on it as an old friend. It’s a tempting devil. It lets us avoid taking full responsibility for our own performance. This common fallacy is a destructive idea that I’d like to eliminate from your mind right now.
Having trained more than four million salespeople on five continents, I’ve met a lot of strong individuals who are on the fast track. I’ve met with large numbers who haven’t put their foot on the lowest rung of their potential yet. And sadly, many of these people never will climb very high on the ladder of their potential because they are firm believers in the myth of the natural-born sales wonder.
The myth cuts two ways.
A few believe they’re naturals. That’s great for confidence, but it’s often the source of raging overconfidence. When this overconfidence persuades people that they don’t have to bother learning to be competent like ordinary mortals, they trap themselves far below their potential.
Many more people believe they’re not naturals, think it’s hopeless to work at becoming competent—and trap themselves far below their potential.
“I’m just not a salesperson by nature. Wasn’t born with the golden touch like Joe Whizzbeau over there. If I’d been born with his wit, charisma, and bear-hug personality, I could tear ’em up, too. But I wasn’t, so I’m never going to make it big in sales.”
Don’t be too quick to say you’re free of this myth. I hear it far too often from my seminar audiences to take it lightly. In fact, I’m convinced that most salespeople who operate far below their potential suffer from it. Let’s attack this dangerous idea now and get rid of it.
There never has been a great salesperson who was born great. Imagine a woman in the delivery room. Her newly born infant is saying, “Make yourselves comfortable, folks, and if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me.” Pretty silly, isn’t it? The little feller has a long way to go before he can even start learning how to walk, talk, and operate without diapers. He’s got a lot to learn, and if he’s going to be a great salesman, he’s got it all to learn. Psychologists still argue whether it’s instinct or learning that causes us to jump at a sudden loud noise, but they agree that everything about selling is learned.
So stop excusing yourself from the hard work of learning how to be competent in your sales career. It doesn’t matter whether you think you’re a wonder or a non-wonder; you still have to pay the learning price.
And you never stop learning and reviewing. Professionals work on the basics once every year. That’s where we’re going to start.
The Seven Basics That’ll Make You as Great as You Want to Be
What so few of us are willing to accept is this fundamental truth: Great salespeople, like great athletes, simply do the basics very well. Some of us would like to believe that there’s a shortcut around the basics; that, if we could only find it, there’s a secret formula out there somewhere for just sitting back and letting the money roll in. The sooner you get rid of that illusion, the sooner you can get on with reaching the heights you want to reach through effective use of the basics.
1. Prospecting. If you’re like most of the people in my seminar audiences, just hearing the word prospecting makes you a little nervous. Don’t think that way. If you don’t like to prospect, it’s because no one has taught you the professional way to do it. I’m going to.
2. Making original contact the professional way. We all meet new people all the time—in social situations, at events for our children, at church, in non-sales business settings. The key to success in selling is to refine your skills during these initial contacts to become memorable to the other folks and to remember as much about them as possible so you can impress them even more on your second meeting—which, hopefully, will be a selling situation.
3. Qualification. Many salespeople spend most of their time talking to the wrong people. If you do that, it doesn’t matter how eloquently you present your service or product. Your earnings are going to be low. I’ll show you how professionals make sure that they invest their time with the right people who can make yes decisions, instead of expending it on the wrong people who can only make no decisions.
4. Presentation. After you qualify and know that this person has a need for your product or service, it’s now time to move on to the fourth basic which is the presentation or demonstration. You must present your product in such a way that they see that it’s just what they had in mind all along.
5. Handling objections. The fifth basic method of developing your competence is to learn how to handle objections effectively. Maybe you’ve had prospects who want to wait and think it over; prospects who already have one of whatever it is you’re selling; prospects who’ve been doing business