In Sell or Be Sold, sales consultant and trainer Grant Cardone shares his 25 years’ worth of experience working as a salesman and his life’s worth of experience selling in a personal context.
Whether or not you’re officially employed as a salesperson, your happiness and even survival depend on your selling ability. Anything you do to get your own way—influencing, persuading, negotiating, or even just communicating—is selling. For example, you have friends because you successfully convinced people to spend time with you.
Since sales is so important to success, it pays to get good at it. There are five steps to becoming a master salesperson:
Step #1: Commit. Put all of your time, resources, and energy toward sales and success. To do this:
Step #2: Train. A good training program must be both theoretical and applied. To train effectively:
Step #3: Adopt a positive attitude. People are motivated by the need to feel good, and they prioritize positive interactions over product features, which means that if your attitude is good, you can sell products that are more expensive and less cutting-edge than your competitors’. To adopt your positive attitude:
Step #4: Manage your time with discipline. You should treat time like money and use it wisely. To do this:
Step #5: Sell to yourself first. Before you can sell someone on something, you first have to sell yourself on it, because if you don’t believe in the product, buyers will sense your lack of conviction and won’t make a purchase. To sell yourself:
There are some products you won’t be able to sell yourself on; therefore, you won’t be able to sell them. For example, if you think smoking is unhealthy, you won’t be able to sell cigarettes. This is fine. You don’t need to be able to sell every product to be a good salesperson.
Now that you’ve worked on yourself, it’s time to work on your customers. There are five steps:
Step #1: Find customers. There are two ways to do this, and the first is the easiest:
Step #2: Prioritize people. No matter what you’re selling, your priority should be people. Don’t think of your job as selling products—think of it as helping people make good decisions and solve their problems. To prioritize a customer:
Step #3: Agree with the customer. Always agree with the customer, no matter what she says. You don’t have to think she’s right, but you have to at least agree that she thinks she’s right. People like people and ideas they agree with, and they’re more likely to buy from you if they think you’re on the same page. Once you’ve agreed, to make the sale, you can either:
Step #4: Establish trust. Lack of trust is a major reason a customer won’t buy something, and she can lack trust in the salesperson (a few unscrupulous people have run scams) or her own ability to make the right choice. If you can demonstrate that you’re trustworthy, you’ll soothe both of her worries—she won’t worry that she’s being scammed, and she’ll have someone to guide her to the right decision. To create trust:
Step #5: Follow up and/or keep in touch. Regardless of whether a customer makes a purchase or not, keep in touch with her. Here are some tips:
Now that we’ve worked on ourselves and our customers, we’ll learn about sales processes—step-by-plans to lead the customer to make a purchase.
Good sales processes should be:
Cardone shares a five-step sales process that works in any industry:
1. Greet the customer. This is a short step that involves exchanging names, making a quick, good first impression, and making the customer feel comfortable. Approach the customer, smile, thank them for seeing you, and shake their hand (making physical contact breaks the ice). Then, ask them what information they’d like.
2. Figure out what the customer wants and needs. Do this by asking questions about previous things she’s bought, her motivations, what problems she’s trying to solve, and so on. This step isn’t about selling—it’s about information-gathering. The goal is to find out which product to show the customer and which features to highlight.
3. Present a product. Instead of letting a potential customer choose her product, pick something for her that will meet the wants and needs you determined in step #2. Don’t present all the benefits of a product—highlight the specific features that she’ll be most interested in to save her time.
4. Make an offer. First, ask everyone to sit down. (When you’re standing up, it’s too easy to rely on talking and pitching). Then, show your customer documentation and figures even if she’s not ready to see them. (She needs this information before she can think about making a purchase.) Finally, don’t ask her if she wants to buy—this would give her the opportunity to say no. Instead, ask her to sign the offer or to follow you to the next step.
5. Close. Closing involves handling stalls and objections and Cardone offers a few tips, but for more detailed instructions on closing, he recommends reading his book The Closer’s Survival Guide.
Here are his tips for handling the close:
Tip #1: Recall your own conviction about the product. This will keep you from backing down.
Tip #2: Don’t believe the reasons customers give you for not buying. They’re likely excuses, not actual objections. Particularly don’t believe price objections—price is never anyone’s number-one concern. The real reason people don’t buy is that they aren’t confident that the product is what they need or want. To handle a price objection, you might:
Tip #3: Ask forward questions. If you need information, ask, even if the topic is sensitive (such as why someone can’t put up the money).
Tip #4: Ask for the sale multiple times. Almost no one will buy something without being asked, and most people need to be asked multiple times.
Tip #5: Don’t let yelling or emotional outbursts drive you away. These reactions mean that the customer is close to buying. Don’t take anything personally, stay calm, and stay with the customer.
Tip #6: Visualize the desired outcome. In your mind’s eye, see the customer handing over their money or owning the product.
Tip #7: After you’ve closed, consider offering the customer a second product. It’s easier to get people to spend more money once they’ve already made a purchase because the subsequent purchase confirms that the first purchase was a good decision.
Tip #8: After each close, write down the objections and details about the interaction so you can use what you learned the next time you close.
When most people hear the word “salesperson,” they think of professionals in stores who encourage them to buy things. In fact, everyone is a salesperson—whenever you need to influence, persuade, negotiate, or even just communicate with someone, you are selling. The best salespeople sometimes don’t even use that job title—instead, they’re negotiators, politicians, coaches, and so on.
Whether or not you’re officially employed as a salesperson, your happiness and even survival depend on your selling ability. If you can’t convince someone that you’re worth spending time with, you won’t have any close relationships. If you can’t convince yourself to eat vegetables and exercise, your health will suffer. If you can’t convince someone to give you a job or buy something from you, you won’t have the money to meet your basic needs. Therefore, you won’t be successful if you don’t know how to sell, no matter who or where you are or what profession you’re in. There are no exceptions.
In this summary:
Note: Sell or Be Sold is a revised and updated edition of Sell to Survive, which Cardone self-published in 2008.
(Shortform note: Sell or Be Sold was originally written in 22 chapters. We’ve reorganized the material for concision and clarity.)
The first thing you have to do to become a master at sales is to commit to the craft and develop your work ethic and skills, which we’ll cover in Part 1. Then in Part 2, we’ll cover the application of this mastery when confronted with a customer.
There are many salespeople in the world, but only a few of them are good, and only a handful are masters. Masters can predict customers so well they appear to have mind-reading skills, are unaffected by recessions, and have complete control over their lives—they work for whomever they want, sell whatever they want, and make as much money as they want. In this chapter, we’ll look at the steps to becoming a master.
The first step to mastering sales is to commit to the art by putting all of your time, resources, and energy toward it. As soon as you commit, you’ll see results. (When you’re not committed, on the other hand, the results are delayed or don’t come through at all.)
There are seven ways to develop your commitment to sales:
1. Convince yourself that sales skills are critical to living a successful life. Your life (the life you want) depends on your ability to learn to sell.
2. Mythbust your negative perception of sales (if necessary). There’s a lot of inaccurate information about selling floating around in the world because people tend to pass on myths or “common knowledge” that they don’t actually have any experience with (and money is a subject that’s particularly susceptible to this).
Myth #1: Sales is unpleasant. People will tell you that selling is unstable (income, commissions, and the economy fluctuate), requires long hours, isn’t a “real” job, and is harder today than it's ever been. None of this is true. In fact:
Myth #2: Salespeople are con artists. Very few salespeople are swindlers, and if they are, their tactics (dishonesty, aggression, and manipulation) are amateur and ineffective. The most successful salespeople are honest, admired, and calming; they provide good service, have a strong desire to help people, and are leaders.
Myth #3: Selling isn’t important. In fact, selling is critical to society and the economy. If people didn’t sell things, no one would produce, store, ship, or advertise them.
3. Get over your dislike of selling (if necessary). The only reason people don’t like doing things is that they’re bad at them—feeling incompetent and powerless makes them uncomfortable. If you don’t like the idea of selling, it’s only because you don’t know how to do it yet. Once you learn the techniques, you’ll feel perfectly comfortable.
4. Be proud of being a salesperson. Believe that selling is noble, important, and inherently good. Additionally, believe that there’s nothing wrong with getting your way. This will set off a self-perpetuating cycle—your pride will make you more successful because it makes you more confident and committed, and as you become more successful, you’ll become even more proud.
To strengthen your pride and belief in sales, think of someone in your life who’s positively influenced you and write down five of their traits. Then, consider how all these traits apply to sales.
5. Stop looking for and eliminate other career options. This will force you to commit.
6. Don’t wish for what other people have. They have it because they committed to getting it. If you commit, you can get it too.
7. Regularly remind yourself of your commitment.
Once you’ve committed to sales, you need to commit to success with the same fervor. Think of success as a duty, obsession, and ethical requirement—if you ever see success as something optional or that will “just happen,” you’ll never reach it. (A lack of commitment to success is why few people get the life they dream of and even fewer of them get the life they have the potential to have.)
To determine if you’re committed enough to success, ask yourself the following questions (this applies to any field, not just sales). If you answer no to any of them, you need to strengthen your commitment.
To commit to success when selling:
1. Take responsibility. Decide that whether or not someone buys is completely dependent on you, not them. Cardone doesn’t ever allow his staff to blame lack of sales on the customer’s indecisiveness, cheapness, and so on.
2. Don’t make excuses. Never try to justify your failure. You will inevitably fail sometimes, but instead of abdicating responsibility or telling yourself you didn’t want whatever you failed to get anyway, be honest with yourself and analyze the situation. Don’t let anyone else console you by placing blame elsewhere (for example, your coworker might blame lack of business on the economy). If you’re not honest about why you failed, you won’t be able to troubleshoot accurately and you’ll keep making the same mistakes, which will ultimately sabotage your success.
You’ll be more likely to make excuses after you’ve had some success but then stalled, so be particularly vigilant in these moments.
3. Think of making the sale as your duty. Decide that succeeding in sales is critically important.
4. Take “massive action.” When you want something, put in at least 10 times more effort than you think you need, and be unreasonable and insane. For example, when Cardone was working on a client, he called him 15 times in 72 hours even though the client never returned his previous calls.
Take so much action that you create new problems for yourself. For instance, if you’re trying to get appointments, book so many that your schedule is overwhelming.
Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, take a lot of action. This will make up for your inexpertise.
You’ll know you’re taking enough action when people start advising you to live in the moment, slow down, relax, and so on. Ignore them—people who give this kind of advice aren’t doing enough massive action themselves and have given up on their dreams. Getting things done—producing—is what makes people happy.
(Shortform note: Read our summary of Cardone’s The 10X Rule for more on taking massive action.)
5. Acknowledge that success has nothing to do with luck. Luck is a byproduct of hard work and preparation. People who have multiple successes might seem lucky, but this is just because success is a self-fulfilling prophecy—once you have it once, you’ve put yourself in a better position to get it again.
You’ll inevitably experience low moments in your life and career that can shake your commitment. Here’s how to handle some common, emotionally painful scenarios:
Scenario #1: Your product is rejected. It’s normal to dislike rejection, but it’s impossible to avoid, both in sales and in life. Handle it like this:
Scenario #2: You’ve lost your motivation. The best way to stay motivated, in any industry, is to keep busy. This will keep your mind occupied and unable to dwell on negatives or the past.
Additionally, avoid negative people because they’re demotivating.
Scenario #3: You experience call reluctance. Call reluctance is a lack of enthusiasm to aggressively get in touch with clients and often includes procrastinating with busywork. If you have call reluctance, it doesn’t mean you’re inherently unqualified for sales—in fact, reluctance stems from a lack of motivation and competence.
To get over call reluctance, prepare a script in advance. You won’t be reluctant once you’re confident you can be well-spoken and field questions.
The second step to becoming a master salesperson is training. Even if you have natural talent, if you don’t cultivate it, you’ll never succeed. Talent alone won’t stand up against recessions, competitions, and changes in the industry.
Sales isn’t part of the school curriculum, so you’ll have to take the initiative to learn it on your own. This will give you an enormous advantage because you’ll be one of the few with this rare skill. (Most salespeople don’t read books about sales.)
Many people object to training because it's expensive to attend seminars and buy books, but as you improve your game, you’ll sell so much more that you’ll quickly recoup your investment. (Additionally, if you do the math on how much money you lose by missing sales, the numbers will prove the value of training.) Put as many hours and dollars into your sales training as you put into your attire.
A good training program must be both theoretical and applied—you need to practice so you know what to do when you encounter particular circumstances. Engaging in this kind of committed, serious study will help you learn and memorize behavior patterns to the point where you can predict people’s actions, which is the mark of an expert in any field. You might:
Even if you’ve been in sales for a long time, you need to engage in constant professional development. Mastery doesn’t automatically come with time—you have to work for it.
Here is Cardone’s recommended training regimen for individual salespeople. Ideally, do each step every day:
Additionally, you should do some product-specific training so you can credibly answer customers’ questions about the product and tell them about its features and value proposition.
Here are Cardone’s recommendations for organizational training. The program must:
The third step to mastering sales is adopting a positive attitude. Sales environments are often negative because it’s easy for negative people to get a job in sales—there’s no screening out of negative people, and many companies have low training standards.
However, your environment needs to be positive, both physically and mentally, for you to sell successfully. This is because attitudes are contagious and people are motivated by the need to feel good. Especially today, with a lot of bad news in the papers and online, customers prioritize interaction with someone positive who can solve problems over product features or price.
If you’re not getting what you want or making as much as you want, your attitude is at least partly responsible. To improve it:
The fourth step to mastering sales is managing your time with discipline. Discipline is critical to success in any field, but especially in sales because sales is so changeable—there are surprises every day, and a lot of the work is commission-based. (It’s easier to manage change in sales when other parts of your life, such as your morning training routine, are stable.)
You should treat time like money and use it wisely.
In particular, use your hour-long lunch break wisely—it amounts to 312 hours a year if you work six days a week. Don’t bring your lunch from home or go out with your coworkers or boss—they’re never going to buy anything from you.
Instead, do one of the following:
If you feel like you don’t have enough time, it’s probably because you’re wasting it. Everyone has the same amount of time in a day, but some people watch three hours of television and other people use those 180 minutes to pursue sales.
Anytime you do something unproductive, such as calling your family, daydreaming, or taking coffee breaks, write it down. This will help you be aware of how you’re spending your time so you can stop doing things that waste it. You’ll have time to relax and spend time with your loved ones after you’ve become successful.
Here is a schedule you can use to make $250,000 a year:
Two hours before work starts:
One hour before work:
15 minutes before work:
Throughout the morning:
Lunch
Throughout the afternoon (1-5 p.m. for Cardone):
In the early evening (5-8 p.m. for Cardone):
In the late evening (8-10 p.m. for Cardone):
Check off each item as you do it. This will help you maintain discipline and make the schedule a habit.
Many people try to save time by avoiding social media. However, having a social media presence is critical to sales and can actually save you time if you use it properly. (Shortform example: If you provide information about your products and prices online, people might approach you instead of you having to track them down.)
You need a social media presence because it helps people find you and regularly reminds them of your existence. Today, most people’s first step to making a purchase is to research products, companies, and potentially even individual salespeople online. You need to be online so people can find you, and you need to be active online so people regularly encounter you. You want to become so prevalent in people’s minds that whenever they think about buying something, they think about you first.
As far as what to actually post, think of social media like going to a party—your job might come up in conversation, but most of the conversation will be about social things. Cardone suggests looking at his Twitter and Facebook accounts to get a sense of the balance.
Another major topic when it comes to social media is reputation. Before social media, if people had a bad experience with you or your company, they’d tell the people they knew. Today, a bad online review can reach thousands of people, and if you get more than a few bad reviews, you’ll start losing customers.
You’re inevitably going to get some online negative publicity at some point for three reasons:
Here’s how to deal with negativity online:
In the previous chapter, we looked at four steps to becoming a master salesperson. Now, it’s time to start selling—to yourself. Before you can sell something to someone, you first have to sell yourself on it, because if you don’t believe in the product, buyers will sense your lack of conviction and won’t make a purchase.
To sell yourself:
1. Be unreasonable in your conviction that what you’re selling is superior. Never even let it cross your mind that there might be something out there that can compete with your product. Your belief should be unshakeable in the face of customer objections, and if you’re truly convinced, no one will even challenge you.
2. Ignore any negatives associated with your product and concentrate only on the positives. Every week, make a list of why you (and others) should own the product.
3. Be willing to buy the product yourself at the price you’re asking because you think the product is worth every penny. Expense is no excuse. If you believe that the product is guaranteed to work out (as you will need to, to be sold on it), then you should have no trouble using all your savings or going into debt to buy it. Every week, make a list of why the product is worth the money.
4. Believe that not buying your product from you is the worst decision of someone’s life. You must think that failing to convince her to buy is an unethical disservice that you lose sleep over.
If you’re having trouble feeling sold on your product, buy it yourself. This will automatically make you more sold on it. Additionally, owning what you’re selling is one of the strongest ways to demonstrate conviction to others.
There are some products you won’t be able to sell yourself on—therefore, you won’t be able to sell them. For example, if you think smoking is unhealthy, you won’t be able to sell cigarettes. This is fine. You don’t need to be able to sell every product to be a good salesperson.
There’s a common phenomenon in sales in which a salesperson sells a product successfully for 90 days and then chokes. If you find your sales slumping, there’s a good chance you’ve become unsold (perhaps you’ve gotten some feedback from consumers that the product isn’t as good as you thought it was, and now you’re sold on the idea that you shouldn’t sell the product). To escape the slump:
You need to sell yourself on your product before you can sell it to anyone else.
Consider a product you sell or would like to sell. What are some of its benefits?
What problems does it solve?
Do you already own it yourself? Why or why not?
If you don’t own it and don’t want to own it, you’re not sold enough. How could you strengthen your conviction?
In Part 1, we worked on ourselves. Now, we’ll work on our customers, and in this chapter, we’ll first learn how to find customers and then three steps to connecting with them.
Most salespeople focus the majority of their efforts on trying to sell to people they don’t know, and companies advertise to strangers and people who will never buy their product.
In fact, it’s far easier to sell to people you know, such as family, friends, and past customers, for two reasons:
1. They already know you. Your family and friends like you, know what you sell because they’re interested in your life, and want you to be successful. Your past customers like familiarity and trust you, so always keep in touch with them.
2. You already know them. You know their expectations and what they like.
Approaching people you know isn’t an imposition because setting them up with a useful product helps them, and buying it from you lets them help you. (If they don’t buy the product from you, they’ll buy it from someone else anyway.)
To assess and build your network:
1. Make a list of everyone you know including family, friends, past customers, coworkers, and so on. Even include people you don’t get along with.
2. Figure out where these people are and how you can get in touch with them.
3. Make contact. Ideally, set up an in-person meeting, but phone calls, email, and more creative solutions (such as the birthday card suggestion in the example schedule) work too.
4. Rekindle the relationship. The goal of the conversation is to reconnect, not to make a sale—that will come later. If selling comes up naturally as you catch up on each others’ careers, it’s fine to chat about it in detail if the other person is interested.
Each time you add one person to your network, the people in her network are added to your network too. You now have a connection to them through her, and if they need your product, she can put them in touch with you.
If you do find yourself needing to connect with customers you don’t know, follow these steps:
Your sales “pipeline” is a list of potential customers, and it empties in two ways:
You need to keep your pipeline full (the list of potential customers long) in order to keep selling. As soon as a customer exits the pipeline, replace her. (Too many companies and salespeople make the mistake of celebrating the sale instead of immediately trying to find a replacement.)
Now that you have potential customers, how do you get them to buy things from you? There are four steps to building a good relationship with customers. Most of the steps involve behaving in the way you’d like customers to behave, which will encourage them to behave the same way toward you.
No matter what you’re selling, your priority should be people. Don’t think of your job as selling products—think of it as helping people make good decisions and solve their problems. Giving good service has a karmic effect—you’ll receive something (such as a sale) in return and you’ll have tremendous freedom and confidence to sell whatever you like to whomever at whatever price.
To prioritize the customer and give her good service:
1. Focus on her from the moment she arrives until the moment she leaves, even if you don’t think she’s likely to buy anything. Don’t take calls, answer emails, or let anything else interrupt your time together. Most people don’t get as much attention as they’d like in life, so if you provide this, you’ll meet a need.
2. Think like the customer to anticipate her wants. This will show the customer that you want to help her. Exceed her expectations.
3. Take an interest in her. Become more interested in her than you are in anything else, including your commission and yourself. Exchange ideas and ask questions—for example, you might ask what she likes or doesn’t like about what she already owns. This will help you get information about what she values that you can use to help her find the perfect product. Asking questions isn’t sleazy—you’re not amassing information to manipulate the customer later; you’re trying to help. (The sales-y trick of responding to questions with new questions is manipulation and will never work.)
4. Maintain your interest in the customer even after you’ve made (or not made) a sale.
5. Resolve post-sale problems personally. Any time a customer has a problem, it’s an opportunity to provide service. Seek out problems (for example, call to check in on a product) and handle them. This will also create opportunities for sales in the future.
6. Use organizational aids, such as customer relationship management (CRM) tools, to help you remember details about specific customers such as contact information, pet peeves, likes and dislikes, loved ones, colleagues, and anything else you find out. Once you build up your network, you’ll have many past and potential customers to keep track of, as well as multiple sales cycles open at the same time. Never throw out data, even if you leave a job—you might want to talk to some of your past customers in the future.
You can check your service skills by asking yourself the following questions. If you answer yes to any of them, you need to work on prioritizing customers.
Don’t ever prioritize the following over customers:
1. Product knowledge. You do need to know the benefits of the product and how it matches up against competitors’ products, but only 20% of selling is product-related (the other 80% is people-related).
2. Sales processes. Sales processes are step-by-step plans for approaching a customer and getting a sale. They’re often developed by management even though management is almost never buying or selling the product. If a process inconveniences a customer, don’t use it. (See Part 3 for more on good sales processes.)
3. Company policy. Some company policies, like sales processes, don’t prioritize the customer. If you follow the policies, you’ll miss sales.
The first step to connecting with the customer was to prioritize them and give them good service. We’ll continue treating customers well in this step by agreeing with them.
Always agree with the customer, no matter what she says. You don’t have to think she’s right, but you have to at least agree that she thinks she’s right. (This isn’t manipulation because you’re just trying to have a positive interaction and you’re not actually agreeing with anything you oppose, you’re just agreeing with the existence of different viewpoints.) People like people and ideas they agree with and they’re more likely to buy from you if they think you’re on the same page.
Once you’ve agreed and gotten the customer to feel more positive about you, you can handle her in two ways:
1. Convince her of your position or even that hers is wrong.
2. Give her a chance to handle the objection herself. This will tell you how seriously she objects—if she comes up with a solution on her own, you’ll know that it wasn’t a very serious objection.
If you disagree, you’ll only make a customer more certain of her own position and unlikely to want to work with you.
Even though disagreeing is obviously the wrong course of action, by nature, everyone wants to be right, so you’ll have to train yourself out of this reflex. Practice agreeing with people regularly, starting with people you know such as your family, friends, or colleagues. Cardone suggests the following drill: Spend an entire day agreeing with everyone you encounter. It will be a challenge—Cardone knows people who haven’t been able to agree with others for even half an hour.
Agreeing is also a great way to end conflict (it takes two to disagree, so if you swap sides, the disagreement automatically ends) and handle customer service complaints. When a customer accuses you or your company of making a mistake, agree and offer to fix the problem.
In this third step, we’ll earn the customer’s trust. Lack of trust is a major reason customers don’t buy things, and there are one of two things they don’t trust.
1. You (the salesperson). This likely isn’t personal—some customers distrust salespeople on the whole because a few unscrupulous people have run scams or cons. When customers are skeptical of you, they might not believe you, they might challenge you, or they might seek other sources of information. Even if you do successfully sell something to someone who doesn’t trust you, you’ll probably have problems when it comes to following up, such as during delivery.
2. Themselves (specifically, their ability to make the right choice). If customers don’t trust themselves, this probably stems from an experience with one or more of the following:
Therefore, to sell anything, you need to demonstrate that you’re credible. This will make the customer trust you as a person, and, if she’s insecure, trust that you will help guide her to the right decision.
To create trust:
1. Assume the customer doesn’t trust you (even if she knows you) and doesn’t believe anything you say. Assume she will only believe what she can see. People believe things that they can observe for themselves far more readily than things people tell them. Additionally, people tend to assume that anything that’s written down is true.
2. Facilitate the customer’s research. The more information you give her, the more likely she is to buy something. Additionally, informed buyers can be easier to sell to because you can use logic—uninformed buyers can get emotional and unreasonable. (For instance, the auto industry disobeys this step—it’s notoriously stingy with information—and as a result, it suffers from turnover and low profits.)
Help customers with their research by providing:
3. Show her proof that you’re telling the truth by supporting everything you say with documentation or something tangible that she can see for herself.
4. Put negotiations and promises on paper as part of a buyer’s order. (You aren’t going to scare the customer off by asking her to sign something).
Customers expect you to have all the answers, even though with the rise of the Internet, they might know as much or more about the products you sell as you do. If someone asks a question and you don’t know the answer, tell her that it’s a great question and that you’ll find out for her. This demonstrates that you’re helpful and service-oriented.
Once you’ve found out the answer, write it down and memorize it so that the next time someone asks, you’re prepared.
Regardless of whether a customer makes a purchase or not, keep in touch with her. Here are some tips for following up:
If someone doesn’t return your calls, don’t assume it’s because they don’t want your product—perhaps they didn’t call you back because they were busy or didn’t get your message. Instead of taking an unreturned call personally or speculating about whys:
It’s easier to sell to people you already know.
Who are three people you know but aren’t close to? Consider colleagues, past customers, old roommates, members of groups you belong to, people who went to the same school as you, and so on.
How could you get in touch with each of these three people? (For example, you might contact the organizer of your high school reunion and ask them to put you in touch with past classmates.)
Customers need to trust you before they buy from you, and they trust what they can see rather than what they hear.
Think of a product you sell or would like to sell. How could you facilitate on-the-spot customer research about the product? (For example, you might offer to look up a competitor’s price for a customer on your phone.)
What kind of documentation could you provide the customer? (For example, you might print out a specs sheet.)
Once you’ve built a relationship with the customer and have her interested in a product, you’ll undoubtedly have to address money. In this chapter, we’ll look at some myths about money, price objections, and the phenomenon of “second money” (it’s easier to get people to spend more once they’ve already bought something).
There are two myths associated with money that you need to be aware of when selling:
Myth #1: There’s a shortage. This is untrue—if we averaged all the money on the planet, everyone would have a net worth of $1 billion. If you don’t have your billion, it’s because you have the wrong attitude. Additionally, if there ever was a shortage of money, the government could print more.
Myth #2: People don’t like to spend. In fact, people do like to spend money because it lets them show off. U.S. culture is about consumerism and competition, and Americans like to buy things with an audience. The more people spend, the more fun they have, and the more they’ll like what they bought.
Now that we’ve cleared up two myths about money, let’s tackle one that’s more specific to sales: the myth that the major reason customers won’t buy things is price. In reality, price is never anyone’s number-one concern—in fact, it’s never even among their top reasons. The real reason people don’t buy something is that they aren’t confident that the product is what they need or want.
In fact, sometimes lowering prices hurts sales—when the price is low, people think the product is worthless.
Therefore, when you encounter a price objection, you need to find out what your customer needs or wants and then show them how the product (or another part of your value proposition) will satisfy them. When people are confident and love or need something, they’ll find the money.
Here’s how to handle a price objection and discover the real concern:
1. Don’t show a customer a less expensive product. If she didn’t like the first one, she probably won’t like the second either, and she’ll feel that you can’t actually help her and that the interaction is a waste of time.
2. Test whether she actually doesn’t have the money or just didn’t like the first product. Do this by offering her a different and more expensive product, which will go one of two ways:
3. Demonstrate that the product is worth twice as much as you’re charging for it.
Interestingly, around half of the people who complain about the price of a product end up buying something more expensive. Most people would rather buy the right product, even if that involves spending more, because they don’t want something that isn’t going to work. Everyone has bought the wrong thing before, and no one wants to repeat that mistake.
Once you’ve handled a price objection and made a sale, consider offering the customer another product—it’s easier to get people to spend more money once they’ve already made a purchase. Cardone believes that this is because the subsequent purchases confirm that the first purchase was a good decision. (This desire for confirmation is also responsible for referrals—people want other people to buy the same things they did to confirm that they made a good decision.)
Some sales advice says to not go after the second money because pushing for a second or more expensive deal could reduce your chances of securing the original deal. Only amateurs follow this advice.
In Parts 1 and 2, we learned how to work on ourselves and our customers to improve our sales game. In this part, we’ll learn how to improve existing sales practices and learn a universal five-step sales process that works for almost any industry.
To assess your current sales processes, ask yourself:
If you answered yes to any of these questions, use the following steps to improve your processes:
1. Shorten them. Many organizations have 10-12-step processes that take a long time to execute. Customers want to get in and out fast and don’t want to be forced to spend time with someone they don’t like (such as a salesperson), so the process should only take as long as a customer needs to become comfortable making a purchase.
2. Modernize them. Most sales advice is ineffective or 50 years out of date. Sales processes need to take into account the fact that today it’s easier to access information, people are busier, and marriages are more equal and both parties have incomes and make decisions.
3. Take the transparency test. If you can’t advertise your sales process because it would horrify people (for example, step two is to flat-out lie to the customer), then there’s something wrong with it.
4. Prioritize the right players. Sales processes should prioritize the customer, then the salesperson, and only then management. This is because a customer won’t buy if she’s inconvenienced by the process or isn’t given a proper pitch because the salesperson is hampered by the process.
If you find that your existing sales process is too convoluted to improve, or you just want to try something new, you can experiment with Cardone’s universal five-step process. You’ll have to customize or tweak this process for your product, but the basic structure will work in any industry.
1. Greet the customer. This is a short step that involves exchanging names, making a quick, good first impression (rapport comes later), and making the customer feel comfortable. Approach the customer, smile, thank them for seeing you, and shake her hand (making physical contract breaks the ice). Then, ask her what information she’d like.
2. Figure out what the customer wants and needs. Do this by asking questions about previous things she’s bought, her motivations, what problems she’s trying to solve, and so on. This step isn’t about selling—it’s about information-gathering. The goal is to find out which product to show the customer and which features to highlight.
3. Present a product. Instead of letting a potential customer choose her product, pick something for her that will meet the wants and needs you determined in step 2. Don’t present all the benefits of a product—highlight the specific features that she’ll be most interested in to save both of you time. This step is about making the customer want the product, heightening its value, and creating urgency.
4. Make an offer. First, ask everyone to sit down. (When you’re standing up, it’s too easy to rely on talking and pitching, which, as we learned, isn’t as credible as showing). Then, show your customer documentation and figures even if she’s not ready to see them. (She needs this information before she can think about making a purchase.) Finally, don’t ask her if she wants to buy—this would give her the opportunity to say no. Instead, ask her to sign the offer or to follow you to the next step.
5. Close. Closing is getting the customer to hand over her money, sign a contract, or otherwise commit to the sale. It involves handling stalls and objections, and it’s the hardest part of the sales process. (For more detailed instructions on closing, Cardone recommends reading his book The Closer’s Survival Guide.)
Cardone defines the “hard sell” as the moment the salesperson’s job becomes hard (not as the moment a salesperson starts putting pressure on a customer). There’s often a point in the close where you’ll become uncomfortable—perhaps the customer starts screaming—and you must be able to endure this discomfort to make the sale. When you come to a difficult objection or feel yourself faltering, use the following strategies:
1. Recall your own conviction about the product. This will give you the drive to hold your position and insist. Additionally, don’t let customers sell you on their conflicting ideas and objections.
2. Don’t believe the reasons customers give you for not buying. They’re likely excuses, not actual objections. Remember that the major reason people don’t buy is that they don’t think a product will meet their needs or wants. Prepare responses for common reasons.
3. Ask forward questions. Ask for the information you need to help someone (such as why someone can’t put up the money), even if some people might consider it prying. Listen attentively to the answers and don’t answer the question yourself.
4. Ask for the sale multiple times. Even if you think the customer will say no and reject you, ask her to buy. If she says no, keep asking. Almost no one will buy something without being asked, and most people need to be asked multiple times. (Many salespeople don’t even ask in the first place and this is the top reason why they fail.)
5. Don’t let yelling or emotional outbursts drive you away. These reactions mean that the customer is close to buying. To handle them:
For example, when saleswoman and fundraiser Charmaigne was fundraising for charity, she asked Cardone for a donation even though he’d already said no. He yelled at her. She responded by smiling and saying that the only reason he was being emotional was that he felt he hadn’t done enough. He donated more.
6. Visualize the desired outcome. In your mind’s eye, see the customer handing over their money or owning the product.
7. After each hard sell, write down the objections and details about the interaction so you can use what you learned the next time you close.
Cardone provides a five-step sales process.
The first step of the sale process is to greet the customer. Write down what you would say and do when a customer first walks into your place of business.
The second step is to determine what the customer wants. Write down two questions you could ask her that would help you figure out her motivations.
The third step is to present a product that will meet her needs. What are the benefits of one of the products you sell?
The fourth step is to make an offer. How would you do this? What would you do, say, and/or write?
The fifth step is to close. Imagine the customer objects to the price at the last minute. How will you handle this objection?