Big-League Salesmanship

Bert H. Schlain

• Publisher: Golden Springs Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781787202924
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Publicité

Techniques that RAISE YOUR SCORE IN SELLINGHow a Big League salesman plans his time, builds a prospects interested proves his points.How a Big League salesman sizes up his prospects, appeals to their self-interest, makes his product look indispensable.How a Big League salesman turns complaints into reorders, finds leads everywhere, builds his own public relations program.How a Big League salesman finds out important information, gets ready for an interview, gets "over the fence" to his sale.How to give yourself a 25 per cent raise—right awayHow to make money in the first 30 seconds of a callHow to make appointments that people are glad to keepHow to make your sale 50 per cent sure—before your interviewHow to turn "I can get it cheaper" into "I'll buy now"How to turn and objection into a reason to buy nowHow to make it easy for your prospect to sell himselfHow to show extra value in anything you sellHow to build a hard-hitting presentationHow to develop the will to winHERE IS a treasure-chest of professional selling techniques, written for the man who has his eye on more sales, more income, and steady advancement.In this clearly written book you will find sure techniques for developing prospects—ways to open doors that rarely open. You will see how to give a really effective sales presentation, close a sale, make one sale lead to another—build steady, profitable accounts. Each chapter points out not only what to do but tells you how to do it.As a "refresher course" for the veteran or as an eye-opener for the rookie, big league salesmanship builds your ability, confidence and enthusiasm...gives you the know-how that backs up every sale.

 

1. WHY WE NEED BETTER SALESMEN

 “Nothing happens—not a wheel turns—until a sale is made.”

“The factory whistles can’t blow unless the cash register rings.”

During the past several years, I have heard the inimitable Arthur H. “Red” Motley, president of Parade Publications, Inc., utter these observations on a number of occasions during his always brilliant talks before meetings of sales executives’ groups and at sales rallies sponsored by various local Sales Executives’ Clubs.

These statements are not pure hyperbole. They point up, tersely and succinctly, the vital role that selling in all its phases plays in today’s economy. And no one I know is better qualified or better able to expound this truth and bring home its significance more convincingly than “Red” Motley, one of the truly great salesmen of our day and one of the foremost apostles of salesmanship as an economic force in the American free enterprise system.

The importance of selling as an economic force is a comparatively recent phenomenon, which came into being with the advent of the machine and the application of power to its operation. It gained stature and momentum with the development of mass-production techniques, until today it is one of the most cogent factors not only in our present economy but in all of the future hopes of the entire free world.

THE PROBLEM SALESMANSHIP FACES

We have arrived at an era in which we have solved our problems of production. Our farms and factories can produce enough to give every American family an abundance hitherto undreamed of—and have enough left over for trade and exchange with the less-favored countries of the earth.

A foreign economist, after a visit to this country, commented: “The United States is without peer in the world, and its economic strength is unique in the entire history of mankind. No nation has ever accumulated such wealth; no people has ever enjoyed such a standard of living—a phenomenal, astronomical prosperity compared either with the contemporary standards of the non-American world or with levels reached by any past age.”

The big problem we face is to keep distribution and consumption of goods in step with our tremendous productive capacity. And one of the solutions to this problem must be more enlightened, more intelligent, and more effective salesmanship—big-league salesmanship, if you please.

THE JOB AHEAD FOR SALESMEN

What is the job ahead for salesmanship? It is so gigantic and so many-faceted that it staggers the imagination and presents a challenge worthy of the best planning and thinking that salesmen and sales executives can bring to bear on it. It is no place for the faint-hearted, the lazy, the unimaginative, or the timid. It will produce its own titans and all-stars, as past eras have produced theirs.

To bring home the magnitude of this challenge, most economists predict that by 1960 national production will reach a level of 420 billion dollars! This is an increase of approximately 120 billion dollars over a span of ten years. During this same period, population will have grown to 170 million, homes will have jumped to 51 million, employment will have increased to 67 million, and electric power consumption will have reached 605 billion kilowatt hours.

OPPORTUNITIES UNLIMITED

These facts spotlight a great need and unlimited opportunities in the years immediately ahead—a need for hundreds of thousands of additional salesmen, to bring America’s army of better qualified, better trained, and more productive salesmen up to the full manpower quota needed to do the gigantic selling job that must be done if we are to move 420 billion dollars in goods and services and keep 67 million workers regularly employed.

Here, indeed, is a challenge and an opportunity unmatched in history. It will call for every ounce of ingenuity, planning, training, and resourcefulness the profession of selling can muster. If we succeed in meeting the challenge and living up to the opportunity, we will help to inspire and sustain an economy and a standard of living conspicuously better than any we have yet known or dared to estimate.

WHAT IS A BIG-LEAGUE SALESMAN?

Today’s salesman is a “professional” in the best sense of the word. He must be well trained. He must know about the needs of his prospects. He must recognize the individual characteristics and idiosyncrasies of each prospect and customer. He must know every detail of his product or service. He must continue to study and broaden the scope of his knowledge. He must constantly think of new and better methods by which he can serve his customers. Today, selling is serving.

I could enumerate many qualifications and characteristics that are requisite to successful selling today, but I believe they can all be summed up in what I like to call The Indispensable Five I’s:

Imagination

Ingenuity

Initiative

Industry

Integrity

These qualities are, to me, the “sine qua non” without which no great measure of success in selling is possible. Let us briefly explore them.

IMAGINATION

Imagination is the elixir that gives new life, zest and color to the presentation and takes it out of its rut of routine dullness. It is the quality that enables the salesman to develop a sales appeal that is peculiarly and specifically suited to a given prospect—one that strikes at the root of that prospect’s needs, wants, and buying motives. From it comes the knack of finding some way to get in to see the top man who is well-shielded by secretaries and assistants. Imagination is one of the principal marks of difference between a mediocre salesman and a big-league salesman—an all-too-rare and priceless ingredient basic to top-rung success in selling.

INGENUITY

Closely allied with imagination, the quality of ingenuity is nevertheless one that merits separate evaluation. Ingenuity helps the salesman find new angles, new approaches, and new appeals with which to go back and sell tough prospects whom he previously failed to sell. Ingenuity may be described as the creative force that gives action and emphasis to the ideas the imagination has conceived. Ingenuity will enable the salesman to “think his way out” of any problem that might arise or any difficult situation for which his planned presentation has not made provision. Ingenuity helps the salesman to interpret various kinds of ideas and lead people to accept his interpretation. It gives him the confidence that comes from the realization that he is greater than any difficulty that may confront him.

INITIATIVE

Without initiative, a salesman would be better off punching a time clock in some job where he can do routine work under constant supervision and prodding from a foreman or boss. For initiative is the happy faculty of being a self-starter; of being one’s own sales manager; therefore, of self-managing one’s own time and activities. Initiative is self-expression; it is the driving force, powered by ambition, that makes the salesman set his sights high and enables him to achieve his goals.

INDUSTRY

Industry is just a polysyllabic synonym for plain, ordinary, day-by-day, hour-by-hour hard work. Without it, all the other qualifications go for naught or become so emasculated as to lose their effectiveness. There is no brilliance, no genius, that can substitute for work. The urge to work, the desire to work, and the ability to work hard and steadily at the job are personal traits worth many times any natural glibness or persuasiveness. Often the plugger who keeps on working in all kinds of weather and despite all handicaps and obstacles will outsell the “smart boy” who works only in spurts when the spirit moves him. There is more truth than poetry in the story of the tortoise and the hare!

INTEGRITY

While business and selling have both known instances where “sharpshooters,” “windbags,” and others of questionable reliability have been apparently successful (financially), their success is at best ephemeral and unsatisfying. There can be no real or lasting success in selling without complete integrity. It is a quality that involves more than simple honesty, although simple honesty is an integral part of it. Integrity embraces forth-rightness, reliability, and truthfulness. It means keeping every appointment made, right on time; it means living up to every guarantee or pledge; it prohibits exaggerated statements and unsupported “facts.” Integrity begets confidence, lowers sales resistance, and increases the buyer’s acceptance of your presentation—once he is convinced you possess such integrity. It makes your sales story “ring true.”

Integrity is a mental as well as a spiritual quality. It goes beyond mere financial honesty; it includes fair dealing with employer as well as customers. Integrity is a determination to succeed for yourself without causing loss or injury or hardship to others. It is not only an essential quality for the successful salesman—it actually pays off in orders and earnings!

These five qualifications are prerequisite to real success, both for the big-league salesman and—even more particularly—for the all-star. The man who possesses them, with proper training and intelligent supervision, cannot fail. He will be a proud and happy member of one of the best-paid professions, his earnings limited only by his own efforts and abilities, doing a useful and necessary job for our society and for our economy. He will be greater than any obstacle that might confront him. He will be a salesman!

2. PLANNING YOUR WORK

Time is the salesman’s stock-in-trade—his most precious asset. The most successful salesmen are those who make most effective use of their time and spend as much of it as possible in the only way that pays off in earnings: in front of their customers and prospects—in selling.

Why is it so necessary for the salesman to “salesmanage” his own time? To get the answer in its most realistically concrete form, let us take a look at the way his real selling time shapes up.

HOW MUCH SELLING TIME HAVE YOU GOT?

Beginning with 365 days in a year and subtracting weekends, holidays, and vacation periods (figuring only two weeks’ vacation, although some salesmen take three and four), we come up with an immediate loss of 121 days, leaving only 244 working days.

Now let us dissect one average eight-hour working day. Surveys show the salesman must spend about 12½ per cent (⅛) of his time—or an average of one hour per day—at desk chores, or in non-productive but necessary paper work (call reports, expense reports, sales records, and so on). He spends another 37½ per cent (⅜) of his time in traveling and waiting in reception rooms. So he unavoidably uses up half of his time in non-productive activities, leaving him only 4 hours per day—976 hours in the whole year—for actual selling across the desk from customer or prospect...