HOW TO ACHIEVE EXCELLENCE IN SALES AND SALESMANSHIP
Most people are always striving to better themselves.
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 recognise 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 quality
new 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 neighbour, or selling multi million dollar
engineering projects.
Accepting these facts will enable you to understand that there
is no such thing as a born salåsman. 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 salesmanager
or from mail order dealer to president of the largert sales
organisation 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 i.creasing 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 situations vacant 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 'in the act'. Let the prospect
feel it, weight 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 title 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 dramatise 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 something
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 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 sceptical you are relative to your 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 convince them.
5. Remember that in selling, money is time!
Therefore, you must allocate only so much time to each prospect.
The prospect who asks yot to call back next week, or wants to
ramble on about similar products, prices or previous experience,
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 check book.
After the introductory call on your prospect, you should be
selling products and collecting money.
Any callbacks would 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 it some
thought", you should quickly jump in and ask him what it is 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 to be 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 phone (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 material, 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 $4 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 materials in this report.
When you realise your first successes, you will truly know that
"salesman are made - not born".
