How to Succeed in Sales

Step 1:

If YOU want to be more persuasive, there is only one starting point.

If you want to increase your sales, there is only one place to start.

If you want to get your way more often...

If you want to be liked by more people...

You have to truly like other people. You have to be more concerned with them than you are with yourself. You have to conjure up actual feelings of love for someone you may have just met only moments before.

Ha ha, I know.

But I'm dead serious.

And it has to be said, because I see it in almost everyone.

Me, me, me, me, me...

I want, I want, I want, I want.

Hey, that's what we're told, man, about goal setting, right? What's in it for me?

That's wrong?

Well, partly.

Sure, you need a burning desire to be, do and have more if you are to ever achieve it, but...

When you are trying to convince someone of something, to sell a product or service, to get someone to give you a ride somewhere, to get somebody to go somewhere with you, I'll bet you $1,000.00 that the only thing you have on your mind is what you want.

When I had 'worked' myself into living in my van, I was 'working' at a 100% commission sales job. I hadn't made a sale in nearly 2 full years...

Because when I picked up the phone, I wasn't thinking about my prospective customer at all.

I was thinking about how I needed to make a sale, about how they were going to tell me they weren't interested, about the questions that I couldn't answer, about how stupid I felt as I was introducing myself to them, about how scared I was as I was making calls.

I did this even though I read and re-read popular sales books, the most popular motivational books and listened to instructional tapes all the time.

They taught what to say and do...

But I couldn't do it.

I couldn't focus my mind on what I should do IN THE MOMENT.

I was only thinking about me... worrying constantly.

'Do they like me? Will this sound stupid? He thinks I'm an idiot. What do I say now? That was a dumb thing to say.'

I never thought about them and their desires to solve their problems.

So I failed every time and had no clue why.

But in June of 1987, when I went about making my first crude behavior modification audio, I took the suggestions in those training books and tapes and turned them into affirming self-instructions. Yes boys and girls, affirmations.

In there was stuff about time management, goal setting, motivation, presenting, closing, objections, attitude, human relations, you name it.

But the most important statements were the ones about where my focus was before and during each call...

What my prospective customer wanted most.

How much I cared about helping them get what they wanted.

What I could truly admire about them.

What I could love about each person.

What they would lose if they didn't own my product/service.

And just like in any other area of life, when you ask yourself questions, you must get answers.

Every time YOU want one or more people to take some action...

...Anything from buying your product to playing a game with you to watching your channel instead of theirs to digging a hole, you've got to be laser focused on their needs, wants and desires. And you must truly care.

Because they sure as heck aren't interested in what YOU want.

So if you go about asking someone to do something for reasons that are important to you, you are often going to be SOL..

But to be in the very top echelon of the selling world, you need to be light years beyond parroting some lines you memorized from a book.

You have to be sincere down to the level of your soul...

To the core of your being.

When you really, truly, deeply have someone's best interests at heart, it will show.

You will feel it and so will they.

So they will like you, trust you and go with you.

When I was at my peak in face to face sales back in the mid 90's, I would imagine my prospective customer would die if they didn't buy from me. That image and the feelings it created in me made it a must. I didn't want them to 'die'

so I would get into a state of complete and total conviction about the benefits they would get from my products and services.

And I hardly ever missed.

But the key, again, was that I had their best interests at heart and they could feel it.

And so selling became as easy and natural as breathing.