Sales Success (The Brian Tracy Success Library)

Brian Tracy

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780814449202
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Ventes

The performance difference between the top salespeople in the world and the rest is smaller than you may think. Learn where you can elevate your game today and reach unprecedented new heights.

Did you know that the 80/20 rule applies to the world of sales too? Eighty percent of all sales are made by only twenty percent of salespeople. How are they raking in so much money though, and how can others join them?

Sales trainer extraordinaire Brian Tracy has spent years studying the world's best salespeople and their methods to discover that the difference between the top 20 and the bottom 80 boils down to only a handful of critical areas in which the top professionals perform better than their peers. In this compact and convenient guide, Tracy shares 21 tried-and-true techniques that can help any salesperson gain that winning edge.

In Sales Success, you will learn how to:

• Set and achieve clear goals
• Develop a sense of urgency and make every minute count
• Know your products inside and out
• Analyze your competition
• Find and quickly qualify prospects
• Understand the three keys to persuasion
• Overcome the six major objections, and much more!

Packed with proven strategies and priceless insights, Sales Success will get you planted firmly on the path to success, making more money than you thought possible and greater career satisfaction than you ever believed you would find.

ONE

Become Brilliant on the Basics

When Vince Lombardi was brought in from the New York Giants to take over the Green Bay Packers in Wisconsin, the team had been performing poorly for several years.

When he was asked what he was going to change or do differently to move his team into championship contention, he said these famous words, “We are not going to try anything fancy; we are just going to become the best team in the National Football League at kicking, running, passing, and catching. We’re going to become brilliant on the basics.”

He went on to say, “We are going to run each play so smoothly and efficiently that, even if the other team knows what we are doing, they will be unable to stop us.”

High-performing salespeople are those who have, first of all, identified the basics of sales success, and, second, have become brilliant on those basics.

The Basics of Sales Success

There are seven key results areas that determine sales effectiveness. Give yourself a grade from one (low) to ten (high) in each of these seven areas (listed below). Remember that a weakness in any one area can be enough to hold you back from realizing your full potential in sales.

In fact, your weakest key skill largely determines the height of your sales and the size of your income. Sometimes, just bringing yourself up in your weakest key skill area can lead to a dramatic increase in your sales results.

Here are the “big seven”:

1. Prospecting. Find and spend time with more and better prospects.

2. Building Rapport and Trust. Take the time to understand and empathize with the prospect so that he likes you, trusts you, and is willing to discuss his needs and problems with you.

3. Identifying Needs. Ask well-formulated and structured questions to uncover the real problems, wants, and needs of your prospect as it relates to what you sell.

4. Presenting. Move from the general to the particular and show your qualified prospects that your product or service is the best choice for them at this time, all things considered.

5. Answering Objections. Present logical and conclusive answers for the natural objections that most prospects have regarding the price and capabilities of your product.

6. Closing the Sale and Asking for Action. Bring the sales conversation to a satisfactory conclusion with a closed sale and a signed order or contract.

7. Getting Resales and Referrals. Provide excellent follow-up customer service such that the customer is so happy that he buys again and recommends your products/services to his friends.

Total your score and divide it by seven to get your coefficient of sales effectiveness today. If your average score is less than five, your sales results are probably less than satisfactory. And the area where you scored the lowest is probably holding you back from sales success more than any other factor.

Old and New Models of Selling

Almost all top salespeople use what I call the “new model of selling.” This is very different from the old model, which is still taught by many companies and used extensively by many salespeople. Each of the models, the new and the old, has four parts.

The first part of the old model, about 10 percent, begins with the approach—the first contact. The salesperson meets the prospect and says something like, “Hi, how are you?” before engaging in small talk about the latest football game or television program. The salesperson then launches straight into the sales conversation.

The second part of the old model involves quickly qualifying the prospect to determine whether the person is in a position to buy your product or service. Salespeople have been taught supposedly clever qualifying questions to make sure that the prospect could both use and afford the product before wasting any time on a sales presentation.The third part of the old model is presenting your product or service in the best light possible by showing prospects what the product consists of and then trying to get them to buy it. The salesperson was taught to talk as much about the benefits as possible, and then to answer objections with a series of clever questions and answers.

The final part of the old model of selling—fully 40 percent of the sales process—is closing the sale. The general assumption was that all of sales effectiveness comes down to the ability of the salesperson to close the sale using a variety of techniques.

New Customers, New Methods

Today, the old way of selling does not work at all. Customers have changed completely in their knowledge and sophistication, and successful salespeople, those in the top 20 percent, have learned to sell to customers the way that customers want to be sold to.

The new model of selling is like an inverted pyramid, with the bulk of the pyramid at the top and the point at the bottom. The pyramid is divided into four parts. The first part, 40 percent of the sales conversation, is simply to build trust. Trust is the most important single factor in determining the purchasing decision, and in all relationships between people, for almost all reasons.

The second part of the new model, 30 percent, is to identify needs accurately. Take your time to ask a series of prepared and structured questions that allow you to fully understand the customer’s situation before you even mention or discuss your product or service.

The next 20 percent of the new model is for you to present your product or service, based on what the customer has said, and show your customer how your product or service can satisfy the needs that have been clearly identified in your conversation with the customer up to this point.

The final 10 percent of the new model of selling is to ask the customer to make a buying decision, to confirm that what you are offering is what the customer needs and wants, and to get the customer to take action today. The more time you take to build trust, the easier it is for you to make an effective presentation and to close or confirm the sale at the end.

Relationship Selling

This new model is based on what we call “relationship selling.” The key to success in selling today is developing high-quality professional business relationships with customers. This model requires building high levels of trust and credibility, identifying needs carefully and accurately, showing the customer that your product or service will satisfy those needs, and then encouraging your customer to take action and wrap up the transaction.

Throughout this book, we will be talking about relationship selling. We will return continually to these two concepts: 1) the importance of building credible relationships and 2) the importance of becoming brilliant on the basics. The starting point of your becoming the best in your field, and moving into the top 20 percent or even the top 10 percent in your business, is to identify the key skills necessary for sales excellence, and then determine what you have to do to become excellent in each of those areas.

ACTION EXERCISES

1. Give yourself a grade of one to ten in each of the seven key result areas, and determine where you are the strongest and where you are the weakest.

2. Select one key skill area where you are weak and begin working every day on becoming better in that area.

TWO

Stay Enthusiastic

The 80/20 Rule applies to successful selling. Most of your success—fully 80 percent and maybe even more—will be determined by your attitude, your personality, and your level of motivation.

It has been said that the critical variable in a sales conversation is a “transfer of enthusiasm.” The sale takes place when you transfer your enthusiasm and belief in the goodness and value of your product or service into the mind of the customer. Like an electrical connection, when the spark of enthusiasm passes from you to your customer, the sale is made.

Enthusiasm is the key to establishing good relationships with buyers and closing sales. You need to be enthusiastic about yourself, your product, and your company to be able to transfer enthusiasm to another person. This enthusiasm is something you develop, like physical fitness. No one is born with it naturally.

Keep Your Energy High

There are several techniques you can employ each day to develop and maintain high levels of enthusiasm and selling energy.

Have Positive Expectations

This is one of the greatest motivators of all. Your expectations determine your attitude. And your attitude determines how you treat other people, and how they respond to you.

You develop an attitude of positive expectations by always expecting to do well. Expect that each person you talk to is a potential prospect. Expect that people will like you and be open to your presentation. Believe in yourself and your ability to be a top performer in your field.

Use Positive Self-Talk

Talk to yourself in a positive way all the time. Fully 95 percent of your emotions are determined by how you talk to yourself on an ongoing basis. Successful people make a habit of deliberately filling their minds with positive statements that are consistent with the way they want to be perceived, and the goals they want to achieve.

Successful salespeople love their work. They believe in their product or service. They are committed to their companies and to their customers. As a result, they continually reinforce these commitments in their minds and resist negative experiences by repeating, “I love my work! I love my work! I love my work!”

Practice Positive Visualization

Feed your mind continually with clear mental pictures of the person you want to be, doing what you want to do. “What you see is what you get.”

In sport, and in sales, the regular practice of the “mental rehearsal” is a powerful tool you can use to keep yourself positive and motivated, and performing at your best, all day long. In a mental rehearsal, you close your eyes and create a clear picture of yourself as the best person you can be, selling with the highest level of effectiveness that you can imagine. Each time you replay this picture in your mind, it is accepted as a command by your subconscious. When you go into the actual sales situation, your subconscious mind will give you the energy, enthusiasm, and positive attitude consistent with your mental picture. This technique can help you more than anything else to be successful.

Consume Positive Mental Food

You know that if you eat healthy, nutritious food, you will have more energy and will perform better throughout the day. In the same way, when you feed your mind with positive mental food—what we call mental protein—you will think with greater clarity and feel better about yourself all day long.

Here are three things that you can do to improve your mind, feel better about yourself, and move rapidly toward joining the top 20 percent in the sales field:

1. Read for thirty to sixty minutes each day. Reading is to the mind as exercise is to the body. Get the best sales books that you can and, for an hour each morning, read up ...