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.
Top salespeople have a calming, soothing effect on customers. They have confidence in themselves and in their product or service. As a result, we feel confident in listening to them. We feel convinced about the things they say and about the product or service they offer.
Your goal at all times is to look on the outside as if you were one of the very best people in your field.
Especially if you feel a little tense, repeat to yourself, strongly and emphatically “I like myself! I love my work!”
It is not possible for you to talk positively to yourself, using words like this, without immediately feeling happier and more confident. When you walk in to see the prospect, the prospect will feel the positive energy coming from you.
Always prepare for a sales meeting by breathing, visualizing, and affirming in advance. It will make all the difference in the world.
Sometimes your prospect has had a bad morning. Then you come in. The prospect thinks, Thank heavens, here’s a nice, pleasant, intelligent, positive-looking person who’s got something interesting to tell me.
Many people feel this way. You could be the highlight of the entire morning or afternoon. When you are pleasant and smiling, they will be happy to see you.
When you arrive at your appointment, sometimes a busy prospect will come out to meet you in the reception area and ask you to tell him about your product. But you should refuse to make your presentation standing up. If you do, you run the risk of devaluing your product or service. No one buys a product or service standing up. Refuse to sell it that way.
Remember: everything counts! Unless you sell in a showroom, nobody considers a product or service of any value if you are willing to talk about it and try to sell it standing up. Instead, say, “What I have to show you is really important, and I need about ten minutes of your time.”
If the prospect does not invite to sit down and discuss, say, “If you don’t have the time right now, perhaps we could schedule ten minutes at a later date when it would be more convenient for you.” But refuse to discuss your product or service standing up. The basic rule is this: if the prospect cannot buy your product standing up, don’t try to sell it standing up.
Improve your telephone prospecting.
The first thing is to stand up when you speak to the prospect. When you stand up, you align all the energy centers of your body. The strength and tone of your voice will sound stronger and more confident. You will have more energy. You will sound more believable and authoritative.
The second is to smile into the phone when you speak. Surprisingly, a smile can be felt on the other end of the line. (People also know when you are not smiling, or even worse, when you are frowning.) Many salespeople actually set up mirrors on the desks and smile to them when they are talking on the phone. You project greater energy and sincerity. It is often the extra push that you need.
Create a mental picture of yourself as completely relaxed, calm, positive, smiling and in complete control of the interview.
It is important that you don’t make the mistake of offering the prospect a choice of two specific times, such as “Would 10:30 this morning or 11:20 tomorrow morning be best for you?” This is an old, manipulative method of getting appointments that customers have heard so many times. If you use it, you hurt your credibility. Even if the prospect is interested in your offering, he may lose interest if he feels you are trying to manipulate him. This is the time when you must be pleasant, positive, and persistent. Offer the prospect a choice of general times, like around ten on Wednesday or three in the afternoon on Thursday. If neither of these times will work, ask, “When would be a convenient time for you?”
Before you go off to a pre-arranged appointment, always call to confirm. This is a mark of top professionals.
Never talk about your product or price on the phone unless you can actually make and conclude the sale without seeing the prospect personally. This is an important rule.
The most important rule for selling success is spend more time with better prospects.
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.
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.
The sale takes place with the words, but the buying takes place in the silence.
Allow the customer to reflect on and digest what you are saying. Don’t rush. Be calm and relaxed. Allow the sales process to unfold at its own speed, without pressure or urgency. This creates the very best mental state for the customer to make a buying decision.
Very few people want something completely new. Untried or untested products are too risky. The way to deal with this natural resistance is to describe it more as an “improvement” than as something new or different.
People think about themselves most of the time. All day long, no matter what is going on, people are thinking about their own problems and concerns. What is most important to each person is on the top of his mind. When you ask questions and listen carefully, you trigger these thoughts and concerns. They then come up in the conversation.
In psychoanalysis, this is called a Freudian slip. Psychologists have found that if you allow a person to talk about himself freely, eventually he will slip. He will blurt out what he is really thinking about at the moment. The job of the psychologist is to create the kind of environment where the patient feels comfortable expressing himself openly and honestly.
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.
“That’s a good question. May I ask you something first?”
When a prospect says that he wants to “think about it” for a while before deciding, he is really saying one of two things: First, he could be saying that he has no real desire to own and enjoy what you are selling. For some reason, you have not connected with him at such a level that he is convinced he will be better off with your product than he would be with the money that it would cost.
The second reason is because he is not sufficiently persuaded that he will be actually get what you are promising. He is saying that you have not given him enough emotional reasons for him to make a buying decision. His fear or loss or of error is still greater than the potential benefits from your offering.
One of the greatest needs associated with the 21st century is for additional knowledge and skill. People want to feel competent. They want to learn new skills and be on top of their jobs. They want to get ahead more rapidly. They want to excel and move ahead of their competitors, both within their companies and in other areas of their lives.
Many products appeal to the desire for greater self-understanding and self-actualization. That’s because the need for self-expression and personal fulfillment are profound. People want to feel that they are becoming all that they are capable of becoming.
Perhaps the most abstract need, and the need that people will pay for the most, is the desire for personal transformation. If a prospect feels that your product will take him to a new, higher level in his life or work and make him a different person in some way, there can be no limit to the amount he will spend.
“I would pay $50,000 cash for any gold pro who could show me how to permanently reduce my score by two strokes”
Sometimes people will pay vast amounts of money for plastic surgery, to improve their appearance, or to vacation at spas where they will lose weight and become physically fitter.
All buying decision are emotional. In fact, everything you do is 100 percent emotional. The rule is that people decide emotionally and then justify logically.
When you pay up to $50 for a watch, you are buying a timepiece, something that tells you what time it is throughout the day. But once you pay more than $50 for a watch, you are buying jewelry. You are buying a personal decoration that tells other people in a subtle way that you are successful.
Perhaps the deepest of all needs is the need to feel important, valued, worthwhile, both to ourselves and in the eyes of other people. When you can structure your product offering to enhance the status, respect, and prestige of another person, you can touch this deep human need and can often trigger buying desire.
Desire for gain has motivational power of 1.0. But fear of loss has a negative motivational power of 2.5.
Believability is perhaps the single most crucial requirement in your sales presentation.
If a prospect was absolutely convinced that he would be far better off as a result of purchasing your product, and was absolutely convinced that you would stand behind the product 100%, virtually nothing would stop him from buying. Increasing your credibility to this point is your main mission in the sales process. And this requires that you identify needs accurately.
There are two ways you can use visualization to mentally rehearse your upcoming sales performance. The first is direct, whereby you “see” the customer and the sales situation through your own eyes. You see the customer smiling and responding to you in a positive way. You see him or her agreeing with you and enjoying your company and the sales presentation. This is very effective.
The second way is to stand outside of yourself and see yourself and the customer in the sales situation, as if you were a third party watching from the side. When you use both of these methods, you dramatically improve the quality of your sales presentation and personal performance.
See yourself as the best.
Continually imagine yourself as the very best in your field. See yourself as one of the highest money earners in your business. Model yourself after the highest-paid salespeople in your industry. Walk, talk, and treat others as if you were already a sales superstar. When you see someone else driving a new car or dressed in expensive clothes and wearing an expensive watch, say to yourself, “That’s for me!”
You decide that whatever anyone else has accomplished, you can achieve as well. There are no limits.
When used with goal setting, visualization is perhaps the most powerful skill that you can develop. There is no more powerful way to program your subconscious mind than to create a clear mental picture of the person you want to be and the goals you want to accomplish.
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. When you visualize, see yourself as calm, confident, and powerful. Envision yourself as successful and influential. Picture yourself as capable and competent in every part of selling. See yourself as absolutely excellent in prospecting, presenting, and closing sales.
Before you go into a sales meeting, imagine the prospect responding to you in a positive, enthusiastic way. See him or her smiling and engaged in the sales conversation. Picture especially the prospect signing the sales order or writing out the check.
Your subconscious mind is activated both by pictures and by strong affirmative statements. Each time you say something strongly to yourself, your subconscious mind accepts these words as a command. It then goes to work to bring that command into your reality.
“I like myself”
When you repeat an affirmation as a command to your subconscious mind with confidence and enthusiasm, you activate all your mental powers. You increase your energy levels. You feel more positive and enthusiastic. You take complete control over your mind and emotions.
Interestingly enough, when you make the decision that no matter what happens, you will never give up, your self-esteem increases immediately. You respect yourself more. Your self-confidence skyrockets. Even though you have not yet stepped out of your office, the very act of making the decision that you are going to succeed, that you can do it, that you will never quit, no matter what, improves your “reputation” with yourself. You see yourself in a more positive light. You feel more like a winner. You are more composed and self-assured. You become more capable of dealing with the ups and downs of daily selling life. The very act of resolving to persist until you succeed changes your personality and makes you a stronger and more powerful person.
Customers today are spoiled. They are demanding. They are disloyal. They insist on being treated extremely well before they buy anything. More than anything else, customers will only buy from people they like. We call this the “friendship factor.” The friendship factor in selling simply says that a prospect will not buy from you until he is genuinely convinced that you are his friend and that you are acting in his best interests. Your job as 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.
An excellent definition of a healthy personality is thi: your personality is healthy to the degree to which you can get along with the greatest number of different types of people. People at the highest level of healthy personality have developed the ability to get along with the greatest variety of different people, especially in selling. The point is, the level of your self-esteem corresponds directly with the health of your personality. Again, the more you like yourself, the more you enjoy others and the more they like you. The more you like yourself, the easier it is for you to get along with a great variety of people.
The individual with high self-esteem is the one who has the greatest facility for making friends wherever he goes. Because he likes himself, he is naturally and spontaneously fond of others. When people feel that someone genuinely likes them, they are more open to listening to that person and to buying what he is selling.
Have you ever had an experience where you wanted to buy a product but you didn’t like the salesperson? In most cases you will walk away, even if the product and the price are ideal. Think of your very best customers today. The people you enjoy selling to and the people who enjoy buying from are invariably the people that you like the most and who like you in return.
Prospects don’t think it over. The minute you walk out of his office or home, he forgets that you ever lived. When they say, “let me think it over”, they are announcing that the interview is over and that you have lost your entire investment and of time and energy in this prospect.
There is a direct and inverse relationship between the fears of rejection and failure, and high self-esteem. The more you like yourself, the less you feel rejection and the less you fear failure.
The second major obstacle to selling and closing is the fear of rejection. This is the fear that the potential buyer might say no. The fear of rejection is triggered by the possibility of rudeness, disapproval, or criticism toward the salesperson by the prospect.
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 being sold. People say no because simply they do not need it, do not want it, cannot use it, cannot afford it, or some other reason.
If you are in sales and you fear rejection, you’ve picked the wrong way to make a living. The fact is that you are going to get a lot of rejections. As they say, “It goes with the territory.” Every experience of failure or rejection affects your self-esteem. It hurts your self-image. It makes you feel bad about yourself and triggers your worst fear: “I’m not good enough.”
If it were not for the fear of rejection, we would all be terrific salespeople. We would all make twice as much, and maybe even five or ten times as much.
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.
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. You release endorphins that give you a general feeling of confidence and well-being. The more you say “I like myself” the more confidence you feel and the more competently you perform.
When is the best time to make a sale? Right after making a sale. Why? Right after you make a sale, your self-esteem soars. You feel terrific about yourself as a salesperson. You like yourself more. You feel like a winner. When you walk in to speak to the next prospect, feeling terrific about yourself, you will perform at your very best. There will be something about you that has a powerful effect on the customer. Your positive attitude and confident bearing will trigger a desire, at a subconscious level, to buy from you.
How much you like yourself is the critical determining factor of your personality and of everything that happens to you.
The degree to which you like yourself in any area is the key determinant of your performance and effectiveness in that area. It determines how much money you make, how you dress, how well you get along with other people, how much you sell, and the quality of your life.
A person who really likes himself has high self-esteem and therefore a positive self-concept. When you really like yourself in a particular role, you perform at your best in that role.
The more you like yourself, the more you like other people. The more you like other people, the more they like you in return. The more you like your customers, the more your customers like you, and the more willing they are to buy from you and to recommend you to their friends.
High self-esteem people meet and marry other high self-esteem people. High self-esteem parents raise high self-esteem children. They set higher standards for themselves and practice higher levels of self-discipline. They have better friendships and get along better with the people they meet. They are generally happier and more fulfilled than people who don’t like themselves very much.
Prospecting, building rapport, identifying needs, presenting, answering objections, closing the sale, getting resales and referrals.
Tonality and body language.
Every salesperson already has a self-concept for the amount of money that he or she earns. Psychologists have found that you can never earn 10% more or less than your self-concept level of income. Once you get back into your comfort zone, you will relax and breathe a deep sigh of relief. The only way you can increase your sales is by expanding your comfort zone with regards to the amount you earn. There is usually very little difference in talent between the person who earn $50k and the person who earns $100k per year.
The best-dressed salespeople are always the ones making the most money in their fields. Whenever a well-dressed salesperson talks to me, it is immediately evident from his confident attitude that he is making excellent money in his field.
Countless salespeople have no idea that they are sabotaging themselves and their sales each morning when they leave the house dressed poorly.
Remember, in dress, as well as in all other aspects of selling, everything counts! It is either helping you or hurting you. It either adds or detracts. Your dress either moves you toward the sale, or moves you away. Dress is one of the most powerful of all suggestive influences in selling.
The first unspoken question a customer asks when he meets you for the first time is “Do you care about me?” If you do not answer yes in the first minute or two, the customer will quietly lose interest in doing business with you. He may sit politely through your visit and your presentation, but at the end, he will thank you for coming in and tell you that he will “think about it.”
Work from a clean desk. When you have a neat desk and an orderly office, you look like a successful person. On the other hand, when your desk is cluttered with all sorts of things, you look confused, disorderly, and incompetent. People conclude that it would be unsafe to do business with you.
When you work from a clean desk, you can focus and concentrate on one thing at a time.
Single focus is the key to high productivity, and a clean desk is the key to single focus.
When you look like a total professional, well dressed and well groomed, and your sales presentation is organized, efficient, and effective, the customer gets the unconscious feeling that you are selling a valuable product that is worth every penny you charge. First class companies, represented by first class people, find it much easier to charge higher price than their second-rate competitors.
The way you see is the way you will be.
To succeed, you must see yourself as a complete professional in every respect. Treat yourself, and your customers, as if you were one of the best-educated and most knowledgable people in your business.
You are a world-class professional.
The message you convey in a sales conversation is 55% body language, 38% tone of voice, and only 7% in the words that you use. Because people are highly visual, they are most affected by the predominant message that you convey, and this is usually communicated by the way you hold and use your body.
Walk and move with strength and confidence. Pick up the pace. Don’t shuffle along. Move fast, as if you have places to go and people to see. Your overall physical impression should be one of a busy, active, confident, and effective sales professional.
Shake hands firmly and fully.
When you meet people, give a strong, full, firm handshake. This initial physical contact can often make or break the sale for you. When people feel your hand, they measure your character. When your handshake is strong and firm, they assume that you have good character and, by extension, represented a good product or service.
Sit erect, facing forward.
When you sit in a sales situation, always face the prospect directly. Never lean against the back of the chair. This makes you look relaxed and uncaring about the purpose of your visit. Instead, sit with your back erect. Lean forward slightly. Stay alert, and be fully engaged, both physically and mentally.
Interestingly enough, we are greatly influenced by the body language of the people to whom we speak. When you are sitting up straight, leaning forward, and aware of your surroundings, you cause the prospect to be more interested and aware as well. He or she will pay closer attention to you and be more involved in your sales message. At an unconscious level, the prospect assumes that what you have to convey is important and valuable.
Minimize noise and interruptions.
People can only concentrate on one thing at a time. This is why it is so important to minimize the noise and distractions in the environment while talking to a prospect.
People do not make important business or family decisions in the living room; they make them in the kitchen or at the dining room table. These are the places where they talk about business matters that affect them.
When you get to the kitchen or dining room table, wait for them to show you where to sit. Each person has a favourite chair at the table they sit each day. You must be sure that you do not seat yourself in that chair.
Always treat the receptionist with courtesy and respect. Treat everyone as if he or she is really important and valuable. Behave toward each person as if he or she is a million-dollar customer or has the potential to become one.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of all from treating people well is this: whenever you do anything to raise the self-esteem of another person, your self-esteem goes up to the same degree. When you are polite and respectful, you like and respect yourself more, while causing other people to like and respect themselves more at the same time.
Everything counts! Take complete control of every factor that your prospect sees, hears, feels and does; plan in advance.
Visualize yourself as a “doctor of selling”, as a world-class professional, thoroughly knowledgable, with an excellent product or service.
Dress for success; pattern your dress after the most successful and highest-paid people in your business. Look like the kind of person that a customer can confidently take advice from.
Be courteous with everyone you meet, from the receptionist through to the secretary and customer; always be positive and cheerful.
Practice mental rehearsal before every sales call; imagine yourself as calm, controlled, optimistic, and completely relaxed; the way you see yourself is the way you’ll be.
Do everything possible to avoid noise or distractions of any kind when you are talking to a prospect; have him move if necessary so he can concentrate on you and your product.
Walk erect, chin up; shake hands firmly and confidently; carry yourself as if you are the best in your field.
Any fact is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure.
Everything you do in the sales process, from the first contact through to the close of the sale and the delivery of the product or service, has an effect. Nothing is neutral. Everything either helps or hurts. Nothing can be left to chance. It all counts.
The apathetic buyer. He is the kind of person who is never going to buy anything, no matter how good it is. He is usually pessimistic, cynical, and often depressed or uninterested.
Before you begin to sell, figure out what type of person you are talking to, and then structure your answers and your presentation in such a way that satisfies their needs rather than yours.
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 situations, the more the prospect will be open to giving you information and accepting your recommendations.
Features arouse interest, but benefits arouse buying desire.
Present one feature/benefit at a time.
If the prospect says, “Well, it looks pretty good; let me think it over,” you can immediately reply by saying, “Mr. Prospect, at this moment you already know everything you will ever know about this product. From what you’ve told me, it looks like it’s an excellent choice for you. Why don’t you just take it?”
How much do I pay? How much do I get back? How soon do I get these results? How sure can I be that I will get the results you promise?
The correct answer is that people are 100% emotional. Thinking takes time and effort, but emotions are instantaneous.
First, listen attentively, without interruptions. Listen without any attempt to leap in and share your own ideas. Face the prospect directly. Lean forward. Nod, smile and agree. Be an active listener rather than a passive listener. Focus on the mouth and eyes of the prospect when he is speaking. Listen as though you have all the time in the world.
Listening affects people.
When a prospect is listened to, he experience specific physiological changes. His heart rate goes up. His blood pressure goes up. His galvanic skin response increases. Most importantly, when a person is intensely listened to, his self-esteem goes up. He feels more valued. He likes himself more, and as a result, he likes the person who is listening to him so intently.
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 al of their attention on understanding the thoughts, feelings, and needs of the customer before they make any attempt to sell.
Pause before replying.
Second, pause before replying or continuing. When a 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.
There are three benefits to pausing. First, when you pause, you convey to the prospect that you are carefully considering what he just said. This tells him that you value him and his words. What he has said is too important for you to respond too quickly. As a result, you raise his self-esteem and self-respect. You make him feel better about himself, and by extension, better about you.
The second benefit is that it allows you to hear the prospect at a deeper level of mind. It’s almost as though words soak into your mind as water soaks into the soil. When you allow silence after the prospect’s words, you actually understand what he or she really meant, much more than you would if you replied immediately.
The third benefit is that you avoid the risk of interrupting the prospect if he is just reorganizing his thoughts and preparing to begin speaking again.
Allow silence in the conversation. Salespeople must become comfortable with silence. This is critical to selling success. Most salespeople are a bit impatient, sometimes nervous, and eager to make the sale. As a result, they feel that they have to say something, anything, when a silence develops during the conversation.
Remember the saying, the selling takes place with the words, but the buying takes place in the silence.
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?”
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?
Create emotional mental pictures of how happy your prospect will be while owning and using your product or service.
Become an excellent listener, ask good questions, listen without interrupting, pause before replying, and feed it back in your own words to prove that you fully understand the prospect’s situation.
The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.
A good time management question for you to ask is, what one thing, if done in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my work? A variation of this question is, what can I, and only I, do that, if done well, will make a real difference? Every hour of every day, there is only one answer to this question. There is something that only you can do that will make a real difference. What is the most valuable use of my time, right now?
Character is everything.
Guard your integrity as a sacred thing. Nothing is more important to the quality of your life in our society. In business and sales success, you must have credibility. You can only be successful if people trust you and believe in you. In study after study, the element of trust has been identified as the most important distinguishing factor between one salesperson and another, and one company and another.
If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy.
Think of yourself as a highly intelligent person, even a genius. You have more potential than you could use in 100 lifetimes.
The universal maxim.
Conduct your life as though your every act were to become a universal law for all people. Imagine that everyone in your world was going to behave and treat every other person the way you did. When you set this as your standard for behavior, you will find yourself practicing the Golden Rule and treating each person like a million-dollar client.
What kind of a company would my company be, if everyone in it were just like me?
Imagine that each person who meets you is going to judge your entire company, management, products, services, guarantees and warranties, and follow-up support based on how you treated him or her, one on one.
The mark of superior people is that they set high standards for themselves, and they refuse to compromise their standards. They imagine that everyone is watching them, even when no one is watching. You can tell the character of a person by what he does and how he carries himself when he is alone.
Pay the price of success.
85 percent of self-made millionaires admitted that they were no more intelligent or talented than others, but that they “worked much harder” than anyone else, for a much longer time. Don’t waste time. Get going. Move fast. Develop a sense of urgency, a bias for action.
Make a decision today to become one of the best salespeople in your industry; pay any price, make any sacrifice, and never quit until you make it.
Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning; read, listen to audio programs, and attend seminars; your life only gets better when you get better.
Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.