While many people enter the sales profession, a few will end up far more successful than the rest. In The Psychology of Selling, bestselling author and management consultant Brian Tracy explains how you can become a top salesperson by understanding how your customers think. He walks you through basic and advanced selling techniques, demonstrating how you can dramatically increase your sales success by improving your skills just a little bit on a consistent basis.
There’s a wide discrepancy between the success of top salespeople and that of mediocre ones. In fact, the top 20 percent of salespeople make 80 percent of the money being earned in the profession as a whole—we call this the 80/20 rule. Further, the top 20 percent of that top 20 percent (equaling 4 percent of the total) makes 80 percent of those earnings. In other words, out of every 100 salespeople, there are four people who are earning as much as all the rest combined.
So how do you get into that top 20 percent of 20 percent? The answer begins with understanding the psychology of success.
To find success in sales, you need to develop a winning edge. A winning edge is a small advantage in capability or skill that adds up to a significant difference in results—like when a horse wins a race by just a nose but takes home 10 times the prize money as the horse in second place. The important thing to note here is that you only need an edge: a few things that you consistently do better than anyone else.
Developing a winning edge starts by developing a positive self-concept—how you think about yourself, your skills, and other people. Your self-concept determines your attitude and how you approach the world in general and sales in particular.
Having a positive self-concept and a positive attitude will lead you to sales success in three ways:
The most successful salespeople are the ones who set goals for themselves. Specific goals are far more helpful than vague goals. To set your goals and the subgoals you’ll need to accomplish them:
In the same way that the qualities that drive success are mental, the fears that drive failure are also mental. The primary fear that holds a salesperson back from success is the fear of rejection. The fear of rejection is triggered by the possibility of disapproval, judgment, or rudeness from a customer.
There are three truths you can internalize to help you get over your fear of rejection:
Now that we’ve discussed some of the basic psychology that drives a salesperson’s success or failure, let’s look at some of the basic psychology that drives a customer’s decision to buy. Understanding customers starts by understanding that all buying decisions are emotional, not rational. Customers are driven by emotions of desire and fear.
Some of the basic desires that drive people to make a purchase include:
The two main fears that prevent a person from making a purchase are:
Now that we’ve looked at the psychology behind sales, let’s move on to the techniques of sales. The first step in the selling process is getting an appointment. To do so, you’ll usually have to cold call: call up strangers and get them to agree to meet with you so that you can show them your product or service. This can be the hardest part of sales. To make it easier:
You can expect some common responses and objections when you call a prospect, including:
Once you’ve gotten an appointment, the next step is the actual sales meeting. Below, we’ll discuss some techniques you can use in your meetings to make your presentation as effective as possible.
To really nail a presentation, tailor it to each particular prospect you speak with. There are six common types of customers:
No matter which type of customer you’re dealing with, you need to have a strong opening to your presentation. With either of the following openings, you get your customer to agree to give you an answer at the end of the presentation. This prevents her from putting you off at the end of your presentation with a vague, “I’ll get back to you later.”
Another great technique to keep your prospect engaged is to use the show-tell-ask structure. This is a simple but effective format for a presentation. Essentially, you show the prospect a feature, tell her how she would benefit, and ask follow-up questions.
To override your customer’s fears with desires that are strong enough to convince her to buy from you, engage in a conversation that allows her to open up and tell you what she’s looking for. To do so, you’ll need to:
By the time you arrive at the close of your presentation, you should have prepared your prospect to be receptive to your request for the sale by setting up her expectations with a strong opening and by increasing her desire with a focus on benefits. A few guidelines that can help you seal the deal are:
During your meeting, you can increase the likelihood of a sale if you appeal to your customer’s subconscious mind with cues that lead her to think you’re professional, in control, and an expert in your field. You can do this by harnessing the power of suggestion, which plants ideas and beliefs in a person’s subconscious mind with subtle social hints. Some techniques to do this are:
(Shortform note: To further explore ways you can stay in control of your meeting, read our summary of Pitch Anything.)
Now that we’ve covered some of the basics of the psychology underpinning sales as well as some basic and advanced selling techniques, we’ll look at how you can increase your creativity when you approach sales, enabling you to find more customers and opportunities. When you increase your creativity, you can:
Before you can tap into the full potential of your creativity, you need as much information as possible about your product, your market, and your competition. Get specific and do a full analysis:
Improve your creativity by thinking strategically. There are four strategic selling techniques you can use to greatly improve your sales success. Use these techniques as a framework within which you can get creative:
To improve your sales success rate so that you end up in the top 20 percent of salespeople—or even the top 5 or 10 percent—you must consciously approach your job with a desire to improve. Here are 10 guidelines that can help you achieve success:
We've reorganized the book’s chapter order for coherency. As a reference, here's how the summary chapters correspond to those of the book:
Salespeople serve a vital function in our economy. Sales fuel businesses, which in turn produce the products and services that keep our society running as well as the salaries that allow people to purchase these products and services. Businesses fund the taxes that provide all of our governmental services, from schools to hospitals to social security. Without sales making all of this happen, society would collapse.
People who succeed in sales have high incomes and job security. However, while lots of people enter the profession, only a few find such success, and there’s a wide discrepancy between the results of top salespeople and mediocre ones. In The Psychology of Selling, bestselling author and management consultant Brian Tracy explains how you can become a top salesperson by understanding how your customers think. He walks you through basic and advanced selling techniques, demonstrating how you can dramatically increase your sales success by improving your skills just a little bit on a consistent basis.
In this first section, we’ll look at the psychology behind successful salespeople and the psychology behind customers.
Some salespeople are far more successful than others. In fact, the top 20 percent of salespeople make 80 percent of the money being earned in the profession as a whole—we call this the 80/20 rule. Further, 20 percent of that top 20 percent (equaling 4 percent of the total) make 80 percent of those earnings. In other words, out of every 100 salespeople, there are four people who are earning as much as all the rest combined.
How can you get into that select top 20 percent of 20 percent? To get there, you must first understand two key principles underpinning the profession:
We’ll explore these principles in the following sections.
A winning edge is a small advantage in capability or skill that adds up to a significant difference in results—like when a horse wins a race by just a nose but takes home 10 times the prize money as the horse in second place. The important thing to note here is that you only need an edge: a few things that you consistently do better than anyone else. Like the winning horse, a salesperson might win a sale because of a small reason—maybe her product has one slight advantage in one feature, or maybe her presentation was just a little more professional—but the sale she secures can make a significant difference in her earnings.
A winning edge compounds over time. In the beginning of your career, if you’re doing a few things better than your peers, you’ll pull ahead of them a little. If you continue to press your advantage, the distance between you and the rest of the crowd will increase until, eventually, you’re earning five or 10 times what other salespeople are earning.
Developing a winning edge starts by developing a positive self-concept: how you think about yourself, your skills, and other people. Your self-concept determines your attitude and how you approach the world in general and sales in particular.
A positive self-concept is built on positive self-esteem, which is how much you like yourself. To increase your self-esteem, start by simply telling yourself that you like yourself. Make it a mantra that you repeat throughout the day: in the car, in the shower, and before bed. Repeating the phrase will lock it into your subconscious.
Repeat this mantra especially before making a sales call. Talking to yourself positively—“I like myself and I like my work”—will pump you up, get your energy flowing, and prepare you to perform at your best. Conversely, if you tell yourself negative things like, “I hate cold calling,” or “I’m terrible at presenting,” you will create a negative mood, which will sap your energy and make your job harder.
There’s a direct link between high self-esteem and success. This works in three ways:
When you have a positive self-concept, you approach potential clients with excitement and confidence, which translates into sales. Your positive attitude makes people feel positive about you and makes them more receptive to your sales pitch. This becomes a positive feedback loop: When you feel good, you more easily make a sale, which makes you feel good, which leads you to another sale. For this reason, a person who’s just made a sale will often quickly follow it up with a second sale, and then a third.
Conversely, if you have negative beliefs about your sales abilities, you approach potential clients with anxiety. Customers will feel this anxiety and will be less likely to buy from you. You will get caught in a negative loop.
When you have a positive self-concept, you tend to like your job, and you will consequently spend more time doing it—people devote time to things they enjoy. When you devote more time to something, you inevitably get better at it. Thus, if you enjoy doing the things that lead to sales (for example, prospecting or engaging with customers), you’ll do them more readily and consequently become better at them. This will again lead to a positive loop in which improved skills cause an improved self-concept, which in turn causes improved skills.
Conversely, when you have a negative attitude toward something—say, for example, calling prospective clients—you’ll avoid doing it, which will, in turn, limit the practice you get doing it, and will therefore limit how much you can improve that skill.
Your self-concept determines your income by defining your earnings comfort zone, or the income level at which you will be satisfied. A person with a higher self-concept will generally feel more entitled to a higher earnings zone than a person with a low self-concept, and this will greatly affect her ultimate income.
Researchers have found that a person generally earns within 10 percent of what she determines her worth to be. If you see yourself as a $50,000-a-year person, you’ll behave in ways that will earn you approximately $50,000 a year. If you see yourself as a $100,000-a-year person, you’ll act, and earn, accordingly.
Conversely, if a person earns 10 percent more than what she thinks she deserves, she tends to spend the “extra” money until she, too, has settled into her comfort zone. In addition, her self-defined comfort zone can become a psychological block that prevents her from achieving more. For example, imagine someone who intends to earn $60,000 one year suddenly having a great few months that earn her $50,000 by August. She may find herself unmotivated to work for a few months. Then, when the end of the year approaches, she’ll suddenly hit the road and start selling again, earning that last $10,000 toward her goal.
The most successful people in sales are the ones who set goals for themselves. Consciously thinking about and setting goals enters these intentions into your subconscious mind. When your subconscious mind works toward your goals in conjunction with your conscious mind, you have a much higher likelihood of achieving those goals. Your subconscious mind can, for example, open your eyes to opportunities where you might have missed them and can help you find the right words to say in a presentation.
This is one of the reasons there is such a high correlation between success and goal-setting, and it’s why the highest-paid salespeople in any field are the ones who write and rewrite their goals every day, continually adding to them and revising them.
You can activate your subconscious mind through the act of writing, by pictures, and by affirmative statements. Use all three techniques to fully engage it:
Interestingly, everyone uses the techniques of visualization and self-talk on a daily basis. Everyone thinks about their last sales meeting and their next one. The difference between a mediocre salesperson and a successful one is the content of that visualization and self-talk: While a mid-level salesperson will think about what went wrong or how they felt when a customer was rude, a top salesperson will focus on what went right—a great line they came up with or how they responded to a customer’s rudeness. In either case, the salespeople are each mentally preparing to repeat the experience they’re thinking about. Negative thoughts bring about future negative experiences, and positive thoughts presage positive experiences.
Specific goals are far more helpful than vague goals. To give yourself the best shot at success, figure out your exact sales target and from there, figure out the focused sales activities you need to do to hit that target. Do this in steps:
Your sales goals ultimately serve your personal goals; the reason you sell is to earn money to fund your life outside of work—your family, your hobbies, your vacations. Having greater clarity on what you want to do with your earnings helps motivate you. It also helps you decide on what annual income goal you’ll need to reach to achieve your personal goals.
When examining your personal goals, be inclusive. Think of everything you’d like to purchase in the next few years. The longer your list, the more motivated you’re likely to be. Keep a running list; as you’re watching TV or reading a paper, if you think of something you’d like to own or do, add it to your list. Setting goals should be an ongoing process.
In the same way that the qualities that drive success are mental, the fears that drive failure are also mental. The primary fear that holds a salesperson back from success is the fear of rejection.
The fear of rejection is triggered by the possibility of disapproval, judgment, or rudeness from a customer. It’s human nature for us to want to avoid these feelings, but our attempts to avoid them can act as a brake on our progress. For example, one study found that on average, salespeople work for a total of only about 90 minutes every day, in increments split up between about 11 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. For the rest of the day, they engage in procrastinating activities to avoid possible rejection.
In other words, a fear of rejection can stop you from working—from making phone calls, from following up on leads, from setting up appointments—which can prevent you from reaching your sales goals.
There are three truths you can internalize to help you get over your fear of rejection:
Now that we’ve discussed some of the basic psychology that drives a salesperson’s success or failure, let’s move on to some of the basic psychology that drives a customer’s decision to buy.
When a customer is faced with the option of buying a product or service, she can do one of three things: She can buy it, she can buy a competitor’s product, or she can buy nothing. In any case, this decision will be driven by her emotions: Buying decisions are emotional, not rational.
People use rational thinking to justify a buying decision only after they have emotionally committed to it. For example, a person might fall in love with a shirt and decide to buy it. As she stands in the checkout line, she might rationalize that she needs this shirt because she has several events coming up she can wear it to. But those rational decisions are not why she settled on this particular shirt, or why she decided to buy it today: She decided to buy it because she responded to it emotionally.
In order to make a sale, you must therefore appeal to the emotions that will drive a prospect to buy (desire), and avoid the emotions that will block the sale (fear). The next section explores these drives and emotions.
The most basic desire behind sales decisions is the desire for gain and improvement. People make purchases with the intention of becoming better off in some aspect of their lives. If your product or service can promise to improve your customer’s life significantly, she’ll be less hesitant and more willing to pay a higher price for it. Basic human desires that a customer generally wants more of include:
Another basic desire behind many sales decisions is the desire for social approval. When a person considers a purchase, she often considers what others will think of it before making a decision. There are different ways this desire can manifest itself, including:
Conversely, the main reason a person decides not to make a purchase is fear. Fear can manifest in several ways, but the two primary fears that block sales are:
Specific goals are far more motivating than vague goals.
Run through the exercise outlined above to determine your goals and subgoals. First, decide a reasonably ambitious goal for your annual income for the upcoming year. Then, figure out how much of your product you would need to sell on an annual basis to make that goal.
Next, figure out how much you’ll need to sell monthly, weekly, and daily to meet this annual goal.
What specific activities will you need to engage in to meet each of those subgoals? How will you need to structure your day to make time for those activities?
Your sales goals ultimately serve your personal goals; the reason you sell is to earn money to fund your life outside of work—your family, your hobbies, and your vacations. Having greater clarity on what you want to do with your earnings helps motivate you. The longer your list, the more motivated you’ll be.
Start making a list of everything you’d like to purchase and everything you’d like to experience in the next week, month, year, and decade. Start by naming 15-20 things.
Examine your list. Which items are the most important to you? How much would it cost to buy or do that thing? How much would you have to sell to be able to afford it?
Now that we’ve looked at the psychology behind sales, let’s move on to the techniques of sales. The first step in the selling process is getting an appointment. To do so, you’ll usually have to cold call: Call up strangers and get them to agree to meet with you so that you can show them your product or service.
Asking a prospective customer for an appointment is probably the most stressful and least-liked aspect of selling, and it’s the part that most often causes people to leave the profession. However, the good news is that prospecting is a skill and can be learned, practiced, and honed. There are specific techniques that can make your cold calling more effective, outlined in the following sections.
(Shortform note: For a more in-depth exploration of finding and developing new customers, read our summary of New Sales. Simplified.)
Before making a phone call, mentally prepare so that you know exactly what you’re going to say, and you’re in the right frame of mind.
Plan every word of your opening statements to a potential customer. People make decisions quickly and on first impressions, and you only have about 30 seconds to convince a new customer not to reject you. Research shows that the first 15 to 25 words you say set the tone for the rest of the conversation. Therefore, don’t call up a customer and just try to “wing it.” Know what you’re going to say, and mentally rehearse it ahead of time.
Then, before making your call, access your subconscious mind:
Make sure to get the right person on the phone—the person who deals with your product or who makes purchasing decisions.
Ask whoever answers the phone for the correct contact. For example, if you’re selling a sales training program, ask for the name of the person responsible for the sales force. Then ask to be connected to that person.
Immediately grab your prospect’s attention by emphasizing the benefits she can expect from your product. Don’t mention the product itself—only the benefits.
For example, don’t lead with, “I sell XYZ training software—may I come in and meet with you about it?” Instead, say, “Would you be interested in a proven method of increasing your sales by 40 percent over the next year?” Your opening statement should elicit replies of “Really? How?”
To lead with the right benefit, you’ll need to infer the benefit she’s going to care most about. Although you haven’t spoken with her before, you can make an educated guess about which benefit that is: You know your product’s overall features and which ones your customers tend to care most about. You’ll also know your prospect’s industry and the typical challenges she faces.
No one wants to commit to a long sales presentation. Therefore, right off the bat, let her know you’ll only need 10 minutes of her time. This puts her at ease and lets her know what to expect.
When cold calling, you can expect some common responses and objections, for which you should prepare responses. Common objections include:
When you’re trying to obtain an appointment with a potential customer, you’re guaranteed to fail if your customer feels pressure. Assure her she’ll be under no obligation to buy anything if she meets with you: Say something like, “I’ll show you how my product can help you, and then you can judge for yourself.”
In addition, don’t try to trap the prospect into making an appointment by offering a choice of two meeting times. For example, some salespeople try to get their targets to agree to a meeting by phrasing their request like, “I have two open slots, one on Thursday at 9 and the other on Friday at 3. Which works better for you?” A customer will feel like she is being manipulated, and you will lose credibility. She’ll usually respond by shutting you down. You can certainly offer a general choice of times, but be friendly, polite, and low-pressure about it: “Would around 10 on Wednesday work for you, or maybe Thursday afternoon?”
You can also simply phrase the question as, “When would be a good time for you?”
Before heading to an appointment that you’ve previously made, call ahead to confirm it. Many salespeople are reluctant to do so, fearing the customer might cancel it if given the chance, but often, customers end up not showing up for scheduled appointments because something has come up—for example, they’ve been called out of town or have a last-minute meeting. It’s better to know of these cancellations before you show up because you’ll have a better chance of rescheduling them.
To confirm an appointment, simply call or email your prospect and let her know you look forward to meeting with her at the scheduled time. Alternatively, you can call the company itself and leave a message with the receptionist that, again, you’re looking forward to meeting with your prospect at the scheduled time, and ask the receptionist to please pass along the message.
If your prospect does cancel, reschedule the meeting immediately by offering alternative dates and times.
When cold calling, you can expect some common responses and objections, for which you should prepare responses.
What are two or three common objections you get when you call a prospective customer?
What are some responses you could practice and have prepared ahead of time to counter each of these objections?
Once you’ve gotten an appointment, the next step is the actual sales meeting. In this chapter, we’ll discuss techniques to make your presentation as effective as possible.
To really nail a presentation, you’ll have to tailor it to each particular prospect you speak with. Everyone responds differently to information and questions, and if you can figure out how to best engage each person, answering their particular needs, you’ll have a much higher success rate.
There are six common types of customers, with an approximate percentage of the buyers in each category. (You’ll note these numbers don’t add up to 100 percent, but keep in mind these are approximate numbers just to give you a rough idea):
You may benefit from having several versions of your presentation that you’ve practiced and can switch into at the drop of a hat, so that when you detect you’re dealing with a certain type of buyer, you can immediately pivot to using a presentation suited to their personality style.
No matter which type of customer you’re dealing with, you need to have a strong opening to your presentation. An ideal opening will plant the seeds for a strong closing, giving you a much higher percentage of successful sales. We’ll look at two techniques in particular.
Each of these gets your customer to agree to give you an answer at the end of your presentation, preventing her from putting you off with a vague “I’ll have to think about it.”
With this opening, you propose a fair exchange: “The only thing I’d like to do today is show you why so many others in your industry have purchased this product and rave about it. All I ask is that you take a look at what I’m going to show you, think it over with an open mind, and at the end of our conversation, let me know if you think it applies to your situation. Does that sound fair?”
This technique does two things: First, it hints that other people have high opinions of your product, which appeals to the prospect’s desire for social approval that we discussed earlier.
Second, it allows you to remind your prospect at the end of the presentation that she agreed to give you an answer. If she says, “I have to think about it,” you can say, “I appreciate that, but you did promise to tell me if my product would or wouldn’t help your situation.”
You can further follow up by saying, “After what we discussed, it seems that my product answers your needs perfectly—unless there’s something I’m not understanding properly.” This kind of a statement will snap your customer out of her vagueness, and compel her to give you a reason for her hesitation. Once you have a specific objection, you can discuss it.
With the qualifier opening, you begin the meeting with a question that both emphasizes the primary benefit of your product and also qualifies your prospect, or evaluates whether or not she’s able to make a purchase. For example, “If I show you the smartest investment on the market, are you able to invest $10,000?” If your prospect replies that she is not able to invest that much right now, you can follow up with a lower number: “Would you be able to invest $6,000?”
This question changes the focus from, “Let me show you something” to “Are you capable of reaping these benefits?” It makes her try to qualify herself, and it gives you the ability to force your prospect to make a decision at the end of your meeting. She can’t say she has to discuss your proposal with someone else because she’s already admitted she can commit.
You can also use this opening to weed out non-serious buyers. For example, if you ask your prospect if she is able to commit to purchasing a car after she’s test driven a few, and she tells you that she just bought a new car that she’s happy with, then you know not to spend any more time on trying to convince her of your product.
Another technique to keep your prospect engaged is the show-tell-ask structure. This is a simple but effective format for a presentation. Essentially, you show the prospect a feature, tell her how she would benefit, and ask follow-up questions. For example, if you were selling software, you could show her one of the programs loaded onto a computer, tell her how her sales will go up because of it, and ask, “How could you see this being helpful in your business?”
Within the “show” piece of this structure, be sure to introduce features one at a time. This is the difference between top salespeople and bottom salespeople: Top salespeople will go through features one at a time and make sure that the customer understands each one and has a chance to ask questions along the way. Mediocre salespeople will excitedly run through a string of features and will end up overwhelming their prospect. When this happens, a prospect has no choice but to say, “I’ll have to think it over,” which means you've lost the deal.
Within the “tell” piece of this structure, you can use this additional three-part structure: “Because of (feature)… You can (benefit)… Which means (relevance)…” With this structure, you link the product feature to its benefit, and then make it relevant to the customer. For example, if you were selling a flat-screen television, you might say, “Because of the pixel technology (feature), you can view the screen from any angle (benefit), which means when you have a party, everyone can enjoy the game (relevance).
Within the “ask” piece of this structure, use logic to press your case. While customers make decisions emotionally, as we’ve previously discussed, they also like to feel their rational needs are being addressed. Ask a series of questions that build upon one another to lead your prospect to the logical conclusion that buying your product is the right choice. For example, if you’re selling sales training programs, you might ask:
One powerful benefit of the show-tell-ask technique is that it keeps your prospect’s attention. Research shows that an average adult has an attention span that lasts for only about three sentences before her focus starts to wander. If you’re peppering your prospect with a string of statements, she’ll start to think about something else. If you break up your statements with frequent questions, her focus will be continually drawn back to you.
During your meeting, you’ll need to engage in a conversation that allows your customer to open up and tell you what she’s looking for. In doing so, you’ll need to:
We’ll explore each of these concepts in the following sections.
To encourage a conversation in which your customer feels comfortable discussing her needs and listening to your solutions, you’ll need to come across as trustworthy. The best way to seem trustworthy is to position yourself as a friend or advisor rather than a salesperson. Focus on helping her rather than selling your product. This makes her feel your meeting is about her, not you, and dramatically reduces the likelihood of rejection.
It’s also crucial that you come across as honest, or your customer will reject you immediately. Therefore, don’t oversell the benefits of your product, but instead explain simply and truthfully how your product or service can help her.
To encourage an open conversation, ask questions. People love to talk about themselves, so let them. More often than not, if you let a customer talk, she’ll reveal to you what would convince her to make a sale. Asking questions has several advantages:
Three guidelines for asking questions are:
When a customer buys a product or a service, she’s actually buying a benefit—a solution to a problem or a need—and not a specific item. She cares only about how your product will help her or her business. Accordingly, when opening a conversation with a potential customer, state your idea’s benefit up front. Anything else—a description of your product, or an endorsement of your service—makes your presentation about you, not her, and will put her off.
It’s critical that you focus your presentation on the benefits she values most, and minimize your focus on benefits she doesn’t care as much about. The 80/20 rule we referred to earlier applies to benefits as well as to sales success: 80 percent of sales will be based on the 20 percent of benefits that are most important to a customer; the rest of the benefits won’t matter to her. If you spend too much time talking about benefits that are lower on her priority list, you may lose the sale, as she may end up feeling that you don’t fully understand her.
In addition to identifying the key benefits your customer is looking for, identify the key objection that will make her hesitate. Every customer has one primary reason that will prevent her from buying. Your job is to direct her focus to the key benefits and make her feel they outweigh her key objection.
A benefit is how a product or service meets a need. Therefore, underscore what your product does rather than what it is. Your customer won’t care that, for example, your payroll system is built with XYZ software—she wants to know how it will make her payroll process easier and therefore save her time and money: what it will do.
Keep in mind that companies are most concerned with profits, so show how your product or service can increase profits either by increasing revenues or cutting costs—or both. Within that overall guideline, there are slight differences in what might matter most to certain types of businesspeople. Consider what type of customer you’re dealing with when framing your offer’s benefits.
Overall, a business customer of any size wants to know three things:
Many salespeople devote a lot of time convincing a customer of the quality of their product. However, most people assume products work properly or they wouldn’t make it to market, and therefore, they are often not impressed with boasts about quality.
Usually, quality is less important to a customer than basic utility. For example, if she’s looking for a car that will get her reliably to work every day with decent fuel efficiency, she won’t be interested in the exceedingly high quality of a Ferrari.
You should focus on quality only in two situations:
Position your idea as an improvement over something already known. Most people are wary of something completely new and different, as it’s a risk: It might not work, and the customer might find she’s wasted her money. It’s usually better to show how your product is an advancement of existing technology or ideas, so your customer feels secure that it will do what it promises.
As you make your presentation, some additional techniques will continually grab your prospect’s attention and increase her desire to buy:
By the time you arrive at the close of your presentation, you should have prepared your prospect to be receptive to your request for the sale by setting up her expectations with a strong opening and by increasing her desire with a focus on benefits.
It’s important to close as soon as your prospect is ready. Watch for this readiness as you go through your presentation. Often, a salesperson will actually delay—and sometimes lose—a sale because she doesn't ask for it soon enough based on her customer’s cues.
Now that you’ve had an open conversation, you should have identified the hot-button issue: the issue that your customer cares about over every other issue. If your previous questions haven’t revealed the hot-button issue by this point, you can very often discover it by asking a hypothetical question along the lines of, “If you were going to buy this product now or at any time in the future, what would cause you to do so?” Making it hypothetical often inspires the customer to reveal what would convince her to move forward with the sale.
Once you know her hot-button issue, continue to press it, over and over. Make the entire decision revolve around that issue.
As soon as you’ve identified your prospect’s hot-button issue and gotten her to agree that your product addresses it, assume she agrees to the sale and act accordingly. In other words, force your customer to stop the sale from going through rather than wait for her to ask for the sale to happen. For example, after she agrees that your product can help her double her sales, take out an order sheet and start filling it out. Often, a prospect will not stop you: They agree with your assessment and just need a little push to keep the momentum going.
With the trial close method, check in with your prospect at several points in your presentation to make sure you are on the right track and to test for your prospect’s readiness to close. For example, you might ask, “Does this make sense so far?” or “Would this improve your current system?” You can refer to a specific benefit to make it even stronger: “This copy machine will make 140 copies a minute. Would this be important to you?”
The benefit of the trial close is that it allows you to adjust your presentation in real time if your prospect indicates she isn’t connecting to the particular feature you’re discussing. For example, if you ask, “Would producing 140 copies a minute be important to you?” and she tells you that it wouldn’t because her department never makes that many copies at a time, then you can pivot to highlight a different feature with a different benefit.
You will need different closing methods depending on the type of product or service you’re selling. In general, tangible products require different closes than intangible products, and each type of product works on a different closing schedule.
Tangible products, like clothing or furniture, are faster sales, and you can expect in many cases to close a sale after your first meeting. At the end of a meeting about a tangible product, you are well within your rights to (politely) point out to your prospect that by now she knows everything there is to know about the product and there’s no reason to delay making a decision. This works in your favor because when a customer asks for more time to “think it over,” she typically forgets about the sale fairly quickly, loses her desire to make the purchase, and you’ve generally lost the opportunity.
On the other hand, intangible products, like investment opportunities, often involve more of a long-term commitment from the prospect and may require several meetings—the first to establish a relationship and gather information as to what your prospect needs, and the next to come back with additional information and even a specific proposal.
A benefit is how a product or service meets a need. Therefore, you must underscore what your product does rather than what it is.
Think back to your last sales meeting. What was the primary need of your buyer? What was she most concerned about for her business?
How did you frame your product’s features to meet that need? Did you spend more time describing what your product is rather than explaining what it can do?
How can you better focus on your product’s benefits to your customer in the future?
During your meeting, you can increase the likelihood of a sale if you appeal to your customer’s subconscious mind with cues that lead her to think you’re professional, in control, and an expert in your field. You can do this by harnessing the power of suggestion, which plants ideas and beliefs in a person’s subconscious mind with subtle social cues. This chapter outlines techniques to do this.
When you’re presenting any idea, product, or service, your customer sees you as an extension of it. Your appearance reflects on your product—if you present professionally, your customer will see your product or company as professional also.
First impressions matter, and 95 percent of a first impression is determined by a person’s clothing. Therefore, dress professionally and neatly. In addition, be punctual, organized, and polite. If you are late, disheveled, unorganized, or poorly prepared, your customer will think your product or company is of lower quality.
Additionally, present your product cleanly, neatly, and in an organized fashion. Materials should look well-kept; no coffee stains on your brochures or broken pieces.
If a prospect is meeting you at your place of business, be sure your offices are up-to-date, comfortable, and clean. Again, your customer will associate these qualities with your product.
Even if you don’t meet customers at your office, always keep your desk organized and clean. When you have an orderly office, you come across as a successful person, and even if you’re the only one to see it, an organized desk will tell your subconscious that you’re competent and in charge.
Additionally, of course, having an organized desk simply makes your job easier. Focus is the key to productivity, and an uncluttered desk allows you to focus on one task at a time.
People are drawn to energetic people, as energy indicates enthusiasm, and a sale is merely a transfer of enthusiasm, whereby a salesperson transfers her excitement for her product into the minds of her customers. There are many ways to convey energy. Some basics are:
Earlier, we discussed the importance of asking questions to get your customer to open up to you and to allow you to control the flow of conversation. Asking questions also allows you to come across as a professional expert, positioning you as a concerned helper to your customer and decreasing her sales resistance and skepticism.
Think of a meeting with a doctor, accountant, or consultant. To start the meeting, this person will ask a series of pointed questions designed to extract information, from which she’ll assess and evaluate your needs. When you meet with such a professional, you view them as knowledgeable and you get the feeling they are there to help you. You as a salesperson can use pointed questions to convey the same feeling to your customer.
Sometimes your prospect’s body language can convey distrust or reluctance. If you detect this, use your own body language to encourage her to change her pose. Sometimes simply getting a person to change her posture can affect her mood. Some indications of disinterest include:
You can minimize your prospect’s resistance by remaining in control of the meeting. By controlling the tone and the direction, you’ll prevent her from getting distracted, tuning out, or focusing on the wrong aspects of your presentation. To stay in control:
1. Minimize interruptions: Interruptions can break your presentation. A person can only focus on one thing at a time, and if your prospect is getting interrupted during your meeting, her attention will be drawn elsewhere. When she returns her attention to you, her concentration has been broken and she has lost the thread of your conversation. To prevent this, look to present your product in a quiet area. If there are noise and distractions where you’re meeting, simply ask your prospect, “I only need about 10 minutes of your time. Is there somewhere we can go where we won’t be interrupted?”
2. Avoid barriers: If there’s a physical barrier between you and a prospect, like a table or desk, it creates a psychological barrier as well. If your prospect is sitting behind a desk, ask if the two of you can sit at a table side by side, as you have some things to show her. A person will usually readily agree to this—if she doesn’t, you can pull your chair around her desk so you’re seated next to her. (Another tip: if you’re right-handed, sit to the right of your prospect so she can easily see your materials as you flip through them.)
3. Don’t present standing up: No one makes serious decisions standing up: Standing up feels rushed and temporary. If your prospect asks you to quickly pitch her—for example, if she comes out to meet you in the lobby and asks you to tell her about your product right there—don’t do it. If you do, you’ll come across as weak and unimportant, and consequently devalue your product and company. It’s unlikely your prospect will buy from you in such a situation.
Instead, repeat that you won’t need much time but insist (politely, of course) that what you have to show her is important. If she still doesn't agree to bring you in and sit you down somewhere, request to reschedule the meeting: “If now’s really not a good time, let’s schedule 10 minutes at a later date that would work better for you.” Often the prospect won’t want to bother rescheduling, and she’ll show you in right then. However, if she doesn’t, leave. If you pitch standing up you’ve lost the sale anyway.
(Shortform note: To further explore ways you can stay in control of your meeting, read our summary of Pitch Anything.)
Now that we’ve covered some of the psychology underpinning sales as well as some basic and advanced selling techniques, we’ll look at how you can increase your creativity when you approach sales, enabling you to find more customers and opportunities. We’ll examine:
Most people think of creativity as something that applies to arts or literature. However, creativity is simply the process of creating something—and when you’re selling, you’re creating business where there was none before. When you engage in many of the practices of selling—looking for prospects, presenting solutions, answering questions and objections, closing the sale, and getting referrals—you’re accessing your creativity to connect with people.
When you can increase your creativity, you can increase your success rate in closing sales and therefore increase your earnings. This can make an immediate, tangible difference in:
Everyone is naturally creative on a daily basis—every time you think of new ways to avoid traffic, you’re using creativity. When selling, you use your creativity every time you convince someone of the value of your product. Creativity is a skill you can improve, and there are several things you can do to spark your creative thinking.
Before you can tap into the full potential of your creativity, you need as much information as possible about your product, your market, and your competition. Get specific and do a full analysis:
1. Study your product: Read all the information supplied by your company and search out more information online or by talking to people. Ask yourself:
2. Study your customers: Become an expert in your market, in what your customers need and what challenges they face in their industries. Ask yourself:
3. Study your competitors: Find out what they’re selling and what benefits they’re emphasizing.
After you’ve fully educated yourself and thought through every aspect of your product and market, you can mindstorm to spark your creativity and inspire ideas. This method works by recognizing three things that stimulate creativity:
Start by writing down your biggest goal or most challenging problem, in the form of a question. For example, “How can I increase my income over the next year?” The more specific you are, the better: “How can I increase my income from $60,000 to $80,000 over the next year?”
Then, write out 20 answers to that question. Write them in first person, present tense, and be specific. For example, instead of writing, “Meet more customers every week,” write, “I meet with four additional customers every week.”
From your 20 answers, choose one idea that you can implement immediately. Then, implement that idea without delay. Acting swiftly on an idea you generate inspires your brain to continue generating more ideas. You’ll find you have insights coming to you all day long about how to sell more effectively and accomplish more.
If you use this method every day, you will end up with hundreds of usable ideas every year that can propel you toward both your personal and career goals.
By increasing your creativity, you’ll find innovative ways to track down new business (prospecting) and to engage your customers (through strategic selling). We’ll explore both below.
Getting creative in finding prospects might be the easiest way to increase your sales. If you can identify people who are not yet your customers but who might become customers, you can increase your sales dramatically.
To increase your pool of prospects, look beyond the usual customer segments that you typically approach to find noncustomers—people who don’t use your product for some reason. Closely examine these noncustomers and ask yourself why they don’t buy your product. Ask yourself:
Once you've identified some ways in which you can appeal to potential customers, find ways to demonstrate to them that your product meets their specific needs.
A creative way to seek new customers is to use a testimonial letter—a letter from an existing customer vouching for your product, service, company, or you yourself.
People by nature value the opinions of others, but they are naturally suspicious of your opinions when you’re trying to sell them something. Consequently, when a prospect hears you say how wonderful your product is, she discounts your claim. However, when she hears the same thing from someone else, she believes it. In fact, 85 percent of all sales happen only after one person has heard a positive review from someone else. This is often called “word-of-mouth advertising.”
To get these letters of recommendation, simply ask existing happy customers for them. More often than not, they’ll be happy to recommend a product or service that they’re pleased with. If your customer is particularly busy, you can even offer to draft a letter for her to write up on her own letterhead. This sometimes makes the process easier for the customer, and they’re happy to comply.
You can get general letters of recommendation, and you can also get letters that counter specific objections. For example, if you often hear that your product is expensive, you can ask an existing customer to write a letter saying that even though the product costs more than some competing products, she has found it’s been worth the extra money because of the increased benefits she’s received from it.
Improve your creativity by thinking strategically. Four strategic selling techniques can improve your sales success. Use these techniques as a framework within which you can get creative:
Before you can tap into the full potential of your creativity, you need as much information as possible about your product, your market, and your competition. Get specific and do a full analysis:
What are the five to 10 best features of your product, the ones that most customers prioritize? What might be some that your customers are overlooking that you might be able to feature as well?
What qualities do most of your customers share? Are there any shared qualities you never noticed before? How could you appeal to those qualities when discussing your product’s benefits?
Why does a customer buy your product from a competitor? What benefits do competitors offer that you don’t? How might you approach that difference and frame it for your customers?
After you’ve fully educated yourself and thought through every aspect of your product and market, you can mindstorm to spark your creativity and inspire ideas.
Write down your biggest goal or most challenging sales problem, in the form of a question.
Write out 20 answers to that question. Write them in first person, present tense: “I call five more people every day.”
Choose one idea that you can implement immediately. How can you start working on this right away?
To improve your sales success rate so that you end up in the top 20 percent of salespeople—or even the top 5 or 10 percent—you must consciously approach your job with a desire to improve. Fortunately, you can greatly improve your performance by following some guidelines that have helped many others improve their performance: The best way to achieve success is to do what successful people do.
Here are 10 common guidelines to achieving success:
In order to excel, you must make the decision to excel. Oddly, the majority of salespeople spend their entire careers just getting by in sales and never make a conscious commitment to excellence. Their inability to commit means they remain mediocre. In contrast, the people who do make this kind of conscious commitment are, every time, the ones who find great success.
Excellence is tied to happiness. On one hand, happiness leads to excellence: If you enjoy what you do, you’ll put your heart into it, which will lead you to become good at it.
On the other hand, excellence leads to happiness; when you’re successful, you’re happier and more satisfied with your life and career. The first step toward becoming competent in any endeavor is simply deciding to be so.
As we’ve discussed, studies show that the people who have solid quantifiable goals in life and in work are the people who become the most successful. This is because their goals give them a road map, and without a map, it’s less likely you’ll end up somewhere deliberate.
We discussed setting goals earlier in more detail, so here we’ll just wrap the techniques you can use in a seven-step formula that can help you be more intentional:
A successful person is persistent and determined in pursuing her goals. Develop an attitude of complete commitment. Deciding to not accept failure engages your whole mind—conscious and subconscious—and taps into your willpower to succeed.
Focus on being resilient. People who bounce back quickly from setbacks—such as rejections—are ultimately successful.
One difference between successful people and the rest is that successful people continue to learn throughout their lives. However, most adults do not do this; once they have left school, most people rely on the knowledge they’ve accumulated and the skills they’ve developed up to that point—which are typically basic. Unfortunately, a person can’t advance much if she’s relying on outdated knowledge and skills.
Your mind is your most valuable asset. Invest in it by seeking out learning opportunities to help it grow. Read books, attend seminars, take courses, and listen to audio programs. You will expose yourself to ideas that will help you and opportunities that will move your career forward.
Successful people are efficient with their time, spending the majority of it on those tasks and activities that will bring them the most value. Your time is a finite resource and it is another one of your most valuable assets (along with your mind). Managing your time well is crucial to finding success.
Follow these guidelines to see an instant improvement in your time management skills:
As we’ve stated earlier, successful people learn from other successful people. Identify the people in your field whom you admire and want to emulate. Then, get to know them. Study what they do. Associate with them when possible. Ask them questions. Ask them for advice not only on your career directly (for example, specific opportunities you might face or companies you might work for) but also on peripheral elements such as books you can read or classes you can take to improve your skills at selling.
Importantly, if one of these successful people gives you a piece of advice, take it. If she recommends a book, read it. Then, the next time you interact with her, you’ll have a point of connection, and she will likely want to help you out further.
Take note of these peoples’ habits, attitudes, clothing, and philosophies, so that you can adopt them into your own routines. When you’re behaving and presenting yourself in the same way as these successful people, you’ll find your own success increasing.
To be a successful salesperson, maintain a reputation as trustworthy. If customers don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. If other salespeople don’t trust you, they won’t work with you, and your employment opportunities will be limited.
Fortunately, maintaining a reputation as trustworthy is easy: Simply be trustworthy. Don’t lie, cheat, or steal. Deal with people honestly and fairly. Don’t try to trick a customer into a sale.
We discussed how you can access your creativity in greater detail earlier. We’ll review it quickly here because it is an essential part of realizing your potential as a salesperson.
Although most people outside of the arts tend not to see themselves as creative, you must recognize your inner creativity so you can access it. One way to do so is to use positive affirmations to engage your subconscious (“I’m a genius!”).
Then, find and develop your special talent. Everyone has a natural, special talent that is uniquely theirs. A special talent is something you:
Your special skill may be selling. Recognize it as a special skill. Tell yourself this is your skill, and believe that you are capable of becoming a master of it. Believing in your natural skills will help you access creative ways to improve them.
Successful salespeople live by the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want them to treat you. This coordinates with Guideline 7: Maintain Your Integrity, because when you live by the Golden Rule, you will easily maintain a reputation of integrity.
Just as you’d want a salesperson to be honest and straightforward with you, so should you be honest and straightforward with your customers. Just as you’d want a salesperson to follow through on promises, so should you keep your promises.
When you treat others decently, you reap the benefits of their goodwill. A customer who feels well-treated will view you, your product, and your company more positively. She will then be more open to buying from you, and your sales numbers will increase.
In the end, the secret to success doesn’t lie in being smarter, more attractive, or more capable than anyone else. Success comes to those who work hard for it—that’s the secret. A little more effort than the next person, consistently, every day, over the course of years, will yield dramatic results. All it takes is starting a little earlier, staying a little later, making a few more calls.
If you intend to end up as a top salesperson, you must give your career 100 percent effort. This is especially true in the early stages of your career, when you’re getting your success off the ground. Once you’ve reached a level of success you’re happy with, you’ll be able to maintain a consistent income while making more time for friends and family. But to get to that point, you’ll need to devote full effort and work just a bit harder than your colleagues. Fortunately, if you work smart and hard, your success is virtually guaranteed.