Transform Your Sales

Selling.  What an honourable profession.  Some people say it’s a difficult job. Thank God for that otherwise everyone would be doing it. 

Sales is the greatest job in the world, if you can do it.

If you can’t do it; it’s the greatest job in the world you can’t do!

If you look around the room, everything you see has been sold to someone else in some way or another.  All of that stuff is a result of someone talking to someone else.  Someone plants a seed of desire in someone else’s mind.  The main thing to remember in selling is to sell to a customers needs and not you’re own agenda.  If you do that you won’t go wrong.  Once you realise that everything around you in the world, on this planet, apart from nature, is man made, you’ll realise what you can achieve.

There is so much talk in sales about closing that there has to come a time when you say, what else is there other than closing?  Close, close, close.  In some boiler rooms and cold calling environments that’s all there is, close!

ABC.  A always, B be, C closing.  Always be closing.  There is a saying in martial arts, which is, to receive you must first open your hand.  In other words, you must do something before someone else will.  In this case though, think about what you have to do to close your hand.  It has to be open first!

If you went to the shop to buy something and it was closed you’d be disappointed and you wouldn’t get what you wanted.  If you sell to someone who is already closed you ain’t going to get a result there either.  The only way you can close something is if it is open first.  You can only close a presentation if it has been opened well.

Over 70% of the people you will speak to will have to be asked for the sale.  Can you get your head around that?  These people will nod in agreement to everything you say, they will ask all the right questions and give you the answers you want, they will impart all the information you need and yet, you have to ask for their business.  They will never say, “Can I buy this then?”.  They NEED you to ask them!

The people who say, “I never buy from salespeople” and “I never sign anything and I don’t buy at the door!”  Do you think they are talking to you?  NO!  They are talking to themselves!  They are telling themselves that they shouldn’t buy because they have in the past and it all went horribly wrong but if you hit all the right buttons, and you get them interested and excited about your product, then their subconscious mind will take them over and, BINGO!  They make the decision they should do.

People have said to me in the past, “I never ask salespeople in and I never, EVER, sign anything.  I just won’t entertain the idea!”  At the time they were saying this I was standing in their kitchen watching them sign a contract for me.

It never ceases to amaze me how some people have the emphasis switch.  The emphasis switch is where all their hopes, dreams and even their energy and time, are focused on the wrong area.  Like people spend a lot of time and effort in getting a job but not in what to do when they have it.  These people put more planning and investigation into a two week holiday than they do into the other 50 weeks of the year.  They plan a wedding rather than a marriage.  These people also look at how to get through the day rather than what they can get from the day.  They are the same people who go out and sell with no plan, idea, preparation, or focus.

Do you play the lottery?  Most of us do.  It really depends on what you play the lottery for though.  I play it in case I accidentally win.  Some people play it because their future is based on it.  There is a 10 MILLION to one chance of you winning.  I have heard people on TV say, when asked what they would do if they won, “I’d pay off all my debts”.  I’ve sat there and thought, ‘What the hell kind of debts can this guy have?”

“If I won the lottery I’d pay off my mortgage”.  What mortgage?  The one on Buckingham Palace?  The best one was, “I’d go on holiday”.  What holiday is that, all-inclusive on Jupiter?  There are hundreds of thousands of people who base their future, their life’s success, and their standard of living, on being that one in 10 million.  That is crazy.

Luck!  That’s all it is. 

This job has better odds of success.  On average, every three pound coins I got I got one NO for.  Every three sales gave me a no.  Equate that to out on the street in the real world and you reversed it to three no’s to one yes and you have still got a better return than any lottery hoper there has ever been or ever will be. 

Do me a favour.  When you go out try to get as many no’s as possible.  I can guarantee that someone will ruin your day and buy from you.

You are a team.  That’s T.E.A.M.  Together Everyone Achieves More.  Occasionally, someone will score an own goal, or pass the ball to the other side.  That’s life.  Just remember that together you are only as strong as your weakest link.  You have focus and energy.  Drive and determination.  Motivation and the will to succeed.  You have skills far outreaching and outperforming many others. 

We don’t take advantage of people.  Your job is to sell as much as you can.  The customer’s job is to get what you have as cheaply as possible.  Why should you feel guilty about being better at your job than someone else is at theirs.  If someone feels that they have been screwed by the salesman than they are an idiot because the buyer has control.  He can bail at any time.  He doesn’t own anything until he takes delivery.

I hear the strangest things sometimes.  I remember after I had been in sales for a few months I was told: “You can’t sell on Fridays because people go out on Friday nights.  Saturday is out as people go shopping.  Sunday you can never find anyone in, especially in the summer.  Monday is no good because they are either taking a long weekend or they are too stressed from going back to work that morning after the weekend.  Tuesday and Thursday are pension and giro days so forget those.  In the summer people go on holiday and in the winter they are paying off the holiday and saving for Christmas”.  I thought about it for a while and then it hit me.  There was just this one Wednesday afternoon in May that was a good day to sell.

I didn’t realise all that.  I didn’t realise there were only certain times of the day, week, month, year that you could sell.  I didn’t realise that there were certain people you couldn’t sell to.  People who come home late in the evening are not interested in buying.  People who live in big houses with driveways don’t want to save money.  They don’t care how much things cost and they don’t want to talk to you.  I didn’t know any of that.  I was stupid, because I kept doing business with these people.  I kept selling.  I know now.  And I know that it is wrong!

Someone telling you that, and they do, is going to instil fear.  F.E.A.R.  False Evidence Appearing Real.  The evidence is their figures.  Their results.  Their performance.  The evidence is false but it appears real.  These are the people who go to work tomorrow because that was what they did yesterday.  If you go to work today because that’s what you did yesterday then you are no closer to the goal you do not have.  Have you got a goal?  Howard Hill was the greatest archer that ever lived.  He killed game with a bow and arrow.  He could hit the bull and then fire another arrow and split the first arrow on more successive tries than anyone else.  But I can take anyone here and get you hitting the bull more consistently than Howard Hill.  How?  Well, I’d have to blindfold Howard Hill.  You would ask, “How can he hit a target he can’t see?”  A better question would be, “How can you hit a target you don’t have?”

Some people have a negative attitude.  The ones that hang around in the office by the water cooler or coffee machine.  The cup is permanently in their hand and I think you could take the cup away and the hand would still be there.  They have no direction.  All they do is talk about how difficult the job is and they get to the point where they believe it.  Don’t hang around listening.  They are not going to buy from you.  You make your money out there in the real world.  Your time is very precious.  How do you think Michael Eisner, the Chairman of Disney, got his job.  If you asked him do you think he’d say, “Well, I just showed up for work one day and they started promoting me…” Edmund Hilary, the first man to conquer Everest.  “How did you climb that great big mountain?”  “Well, I was out walking around…”

Bottom line is, people buy.  They always have done, they always will.  Your skills are going to make people line up with their money and chequebooks in one hand and a pen in the other waiting to give you their business.  Be proud of what you do.  Be the best.  And NEVER apologise for being salespeople.