Be a Sales Superstar Read online

  Therefore, the starting point of great success in selling is for you to begin to think the way top salespeople think. Each time you think the way a top salesperson thinks, you become more optimistic and creative. You feel happier and more effective. You experience more energy and determination. You make more calls and better presentations. You close more sales and you make more money. When you learn and practice the mental qualities of top salespeople, your whole life opens up for you like a summer sunrise. Let’s begin.

  1

  Commit to Excellence

  Make it a life-rule to give your best

  to whatever passes through your hands.

  Stamp it with your personal character.

  Let superiority be your trademark.

  — ORISON SWETT MARDEN

  Optimists, people with high expectations of eventual success, are ambitious. The more optimistic they are, the more ambitious and determined they become. Ambition is therefore the most important single expression of optimism, and it is the key quality for the achievement of great success in sales or in any other field. Ambition is so important to goal setting, courage, and persistence that having this one quality alone can almost guarantee that you will overcome every obstacle and difficulty that stands in your way.

  Ambitious people have one remarkable characteristic in sales. They dream big dreams. They have high aspirations. They see themselves as capable of being the best in their fields. They know that the top 20 percent of salespeople make 80 percent of the sales, and they are determined to be among that top group.

  Ambitious salespeople are optimistic about their opportunities and possibilities. They are absolutely convinced that they can achieve their goals by selling substantial amounts of their products or services. And they are completely determined to do it. The only question they ask is, How?

  Perhaps the most important step you can take in the field of selling is to commit yourself to personal excellence, to becoming one of the best in your field. Resolve today that you are going to join the top 20 percent in your industry, and then the top 10 percent, in terms of sales and earnings.

  Here is an insight that changed my life when I was twenty-eight years old. After years of hard work and struggle, it suddenly dawned on me: Everyone who is in the top 10 percent today started in the bottom 10 percent!

  Everyone who is doing well today was once doing poorly. Everyone who is at the top of your field was once not even in your field at all. Everybody who is at the front of the buffet line of life started at the back of the line.

  Now, here is the question: How do you get to the front of the buffet line of life, where all the good stuff is waiting for you? The answer is simple. It consists of two key steps: First, get in line! Second, stay in line!

  It is absolutely amazing the number of people who want to get to the front of the buffet line of life— who admire or envy the people who are already up there enjoying the best that life has to offer—but don’t get up and get in line themselves. They don’t realize that life, like a buffet, is self-serve.

  The way that you get in line is by making a decision that you are going to be excellent in your field and then by taking action to learn and apply whatever knowledge and skills you need to get ahead.

  Once you get in line, the way that you then get to the front of the buffet line of life is to stay in line! Once you have made the decision to be among the very best in your field, get in line and stay in line. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep developing new skills and acquiring new knowledge each day, each week, each month. Keep improving at your craft of selling. Keep moving forward.

  The good news is the buffet line of life and success never closes! It stays open and continues to move twenty-four hours a day. If you get in line and stay in line, if you start moving and refuse to quit, nothing and no one can stop you. You must eventually get to the front of the line in your profession. You must eventually become one of the most skilled and highest paid people in your field if you make a total commitment to excellence and then never go back on your commitment.

  Here is the turning point in your life: Make a decision! The dividing line between success and failure is contained in your ability to make a clear, unequivocal decision that you are going to be the best and then to back your decision with persistence and determination until you reach your goal.

  The world is full of people who are wishing, hoping, and praying for their lives to be better, but they never make the kind of do or die decision that leads to great success.

  Just as you become what you think about most of the time, you also become what you say to yourself on a regular basis. You should repeat to yourself, over and over again, the words “I’m the best! I’m the best! I’m the best!” until they come true in your life. And they surely will.

  ACTION EXERCISES

  Make a list of all the things you do each day that contribute to your sales. Describe in detail the sales process from the initial prospecting to the completed sale and the satisfied customer.

  Review this list and give yourself a grade from one to ten in each skill area. Have your boss evaluate you as well.

  Then ask yourself this question: “What one skill, if I developed and did it consistently in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my sales?”

  This is the key question for moving ahead in the line. Ask your boss. Ask your coworkers. Ask your customers. But find out the answer. Then, set the development of this skill as a goal: write it down, set a deadline, make a plan, and work on becoming better at this key skill every day until you master it.

  2

  Act As If It Were Impossible to Fail

  Courage is resistance to fear,

  mastery of fear—not absence of fear.

  — MARK TWAIN

  Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are, and always have been, the greatest enemies of success and happiness. For this reason, top salespeople work continually to confront the fears that hold most salespeople back. The two major fears that stand as the greatest obstacles on your road to success are the fear of failure, or loss, and the fear of criticism,or rejection. These are the major enemies to be overcome.

  As it happens, it is not the actual failure or rejection that hurts you or holds you back. It is the fear of failure or rejection that stops you from acting. It is the anticipation or expectation of failure or rejection that paralyzes you and blocks you from doing what you need to do to achieve your goals.

  The truth is that everyone is afraid of something, and often, many things. Everyone you meet is afraid of failure and rejection in some way. The difference between a hero and a coward is that the hero is brave just a couple of minutes longer. The average person moves away from and avoids the fear-causing situation. A brave person forces himself or herself to confront the fear and do what is feared anyway.

  Glenn Ford, the actor, once said, “If you do not do the thing you fear, then the fear controls your life.”

  Ralph Waldo Emerson said his entire life was changed when he read the words “If you would be a great success, make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear.”

  The fear of failure, the major obstacle that holds you back, is felt in the solar plexus and experienced as the feeling of “I can’t!”

  You can neutralize this feeling by repeating the opposite phrase, “I can! I can!” over and over. Even more effective for neutralizing the fear of failure is to say to yourself “I can do it! I can do it!” over and over, until you actually believe it.

  Whenever you repeat the words “I can do it!” your fears go down and your self-confidence goes up. When you repeat to yourself the words “I like myself! I’m the best! I can do it!” you boost your self-esteem and self-image to the point where eventually you feel unstoppable. You create within yourself the mind-set of a high performance salesperson.

  Then, as Emerson said, “Do the thing and you will have the power.”

  Here is a key point about fear of any kind. Instead o
f waiting until you feel courageous enough, do the thing you fear, and the courage will come afterward. As Aristotle said, “Act as if you already had the quality you desire, and you shall have it.”

  ACTION EXERCISES

  Identify the one great fear that holds you back from throwing your whole heart into becoming a big success in your field. There is always at least one fear lurking in the back of your mind.

  Now imagine that you do not have this fear at all. Imagine that you are totally unafraid in every part of your sales work. Imagine that you are guaranteed complete success in everything you do. How would you act or behave if you had no fears at all?

  Whatever your answer, from now on act as it if were impossible to fail, and it shall be! Fake it until you make it.

  3

  Put Your Whole Heart into Your Selling

  You are never given a wish

  without also being given the

  power to make it come true.

  — RICHARD BACH

  Top salespeople believe in their companies. They believe in their products and services, and they believe in their customers. Above all, they believe in themselves and their ability to succeed.

  Your level of belief in the value of a product or service is directly related to your ability to convince other people that it is good for them. Selling has often been called a transfer of enthusiasm. The more enthusiastic and convinced you are about what you are selling, the more contagious this enthusiasm will be and the more your customers will sense it and act on it.

  Human beings are primarily emotional in everything they do and say. This is why caring is a critical element in successful selling. You’ve heard it said that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. What we also know is that the more you love your work, the more caring you will be. The more committed you are to your company and to your products and services, the more you will naturally and honestly care about your customers. The more you honestly care about your company and your customers, the more concerned you will be about helping customers to make a good buying decision.

  Since you become what you think about most of the time, you should repeat the words “I love my work! I love my work! I love my work!” over and over. The more you say these words to yourself, the more you will like yourself as a salesperson and enjoy your selling activities. The more you enjoy your work, the better you will do it and the more committed you will be to your customers. Selling will become easier and easier and more rewarding in every way.

  My favorite affirmation, which I still use continually, is “I like myself and I love my work!” I use these words to get me up and going in the morning and keep me going throughout the day. The more I repeat them, the better and more confident I feel about myself and everything I am doing. Try them yourself and see.

  All top salespeople like themselves and love their work. And their customers can feel it. As a result, their customers want to buy from them, buy from them again, and recommend them to their friends.

  ACTION EXERCISES

  If you want to feel enthusiastic, act enthusiastic! Imagine that your products and services were the very best quality and the very best priced in the entire world. How would you behave in every customer interaction, all day long?

  Put your whole heart into your sales work. Imagine that you were being videotaped and that this video was going to be shown nationwide as a shining example of an outstanding salesperson in action. How would you treat every customer or prospect? Whatever your answer, practice that behavior every hour of every day.

  4

  Position Yourself as a Real Professional

  The self image is the key

  to human personality and human behavior.

  Change the self image and you change

  the personality and the behavior.

  — MAXWELL MALTZ

  Top salespeople see themselves as consultants rather than as salespeople. They see themselves as advisors, helpers, counselors, and friends to their clients and customers. They see themselves as problem solvers more than anything else.

  Perhaps the most important single determinant of whether or not someone buys from you is how that person thinks and feels about you. In marketing, this is called “positioning.” The position you have in the heart and mind of your customer is determined by the words that your customer uses when he or she thinks about you and describes you to others when you are not there.

  Many tens of thousands of customers have been asked how they think and feel about the top salespeople who sell to them. The most common answer that customers give is that they see the best salespeople more as consultants than as salespeople. They see them as valuable knowledge resources in their personal and business lives.

  They trust these top professionals to give them good advice in their areas of product or service specialization. Once a customer views you as a consultant and as a friend, he or she will never buy from anyone else, no matter what the small differences might be in price or product/service features.

  Early in my career I discovered an amazing psychological principle. I found that people largely accept you, at least initially, at your own evaluation of yourself. In other words, whatever you say about yourself, however you describe yourself, people will usually accept without argument. They will then watch your behavior to make sure that what you say about yourself and the way you behave are consistent with each other.

  For example, if you tell me that you are always punctual, I will believe you. I have no reason not to. I will then observe your actual behavior to see how punctual you are. If your behavior is consistent with your claim, I then will accept this as a true statement about you.

  When I first learned this principle with regard to being a consultant, I decided to practice it immediately. Up to that time, I had been introducing myself as a salesman, with mixed results and reactions from my prospects. At my very next appointment, I said to my prospect, “Thank you for your time. Please relax. I’m not really here to sell you anything. I see myself more as a consultant than as a salesperson, and all I really want to do is ask you a couple of questions and see if my company can help you in a cost-effective way. But I see myself more as a consultant than as a salesperson.”

  From the very first time I described myself as a consultant, my customers treated me differently. They invited me in for coffee and invited me out for lunch. They listened to me far more attentively and were far more open with me when I asked them questions about their needs. They bought from me far more readily and recommended me to their friends. They invited me home to have dinner with their families and placed me in an entirely new category in their minds. And I was only twenty-four years old!

  From now on, think of yourself as a consultant. Walk, talk, and behave like a consultant. Dress, groom, and prepare for every sales meeting as if you were a highly paid and competent consultant and advisor in your field—because you are. When people ask you what you do, tell them proudly “I’m a consultant.”

  I taught this principle not long ago to the manager of a company that sold roofing and shingles. He liked the idea so much, he went back to the office, gathered up all the salespeople’s business cards and replaced them with new cards that had the words “Exterior Cladding Consultant” on them. He told me that within thirty days, the atmosphere in his whole company changed. The salespeople began treating each other differently. They behaved differently toward their customers as well when they saw themselves as consultants. In the first month after this change, their sales increased 32 percent.

  Remember the first rule of self-image psychology: The person you see is the person you will be. Your self-image, the person you see yourself as on the inside, will determine how you behave on the outside.

  The best positioning you can have among your prospects and customers is that of an expert, an authority in your area of expertise. Your customers look to you, as a consultant, to give them valuable advice they can use to improve their work or life in a cost-effect
ive way. When you walk, talk, and act like a consultant, you set yourself apart from people who see themselves as salespeople. You begin moving into the top 10 percent in your field.

  ACTION EXERCISES

  From this moment forward, see yourself as a consultant in your profession and for your company. Instead of trying to sell your products or services, ask good questions about what your prospects are doing today and look for ways to help them achieve their goals with what you sell.

  Position yourself as a consultant, working for and with a prospect to advise him or her on the right course of action. Use words like “we” and “us” and “our.” Make suggestions and recommendations such as “What I would recommend that we do now is the following.” Be a helper and a counselor rather than a salesperson.

  Above all, position yourself as a problem solver. Focus on identifying a problem of the prospect for which your product or service is the ideal solution. Then show the prospect how much better off he or she can be by using what you sell.

  5

  Prepare Thoroughly for Every Call

  If you employed study, thinking and

  planning time daily, you could develop

  and use the power that could change

  the course of your destiny.

  — W. CLEMENT STONE

  Preparation is the mark of the professional—in every field. The highest paid salespeople review every detail of an account before every sales call. They study their notes from previous calls. They read the literature and information they have gathered on the prospect. And their prospects can sense it almost immediately.