The 60 Second Sale

The Ultimate System for Building Lifelong Client Relationships in the Blink of an Eye

David V. Lorenzo

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119499787
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

Every sale is made or lost in 60 seconds—make them count

Cold calling and pushing your way into an office or a living room creates an atmosphere of adversity and distrust you must overcome before you close the deal. With those tired tactics, you're swimming upstream, against a strong current, with a bag of rocks tied to your waist.

Sales has changed.

Legacy sales gimmicks destroy relationships right from the first minute.

The 60 Second Sale is a turnkey system for building profitable, lifelong relationships. Whether you work with affluent consumers or sell to senior executives in FORTUNE 500 companies, this step-by-step guide will help you open doors, close deals, and make more money in a way that leverages your natural strengths. That's the magnificence of the 60 second sale system. You get to be yourself and build your business.

In this book you will discover:

• How to start a sales conversation in 60 seconds
• Who to target for immediate income
• A powerful yet easy-to-use system to generate relationship revenue
• Five ways to initiate new relationships
• What to say to make sure your business meetings result in money in the bank
• The secret to getting a "yes" every time, even in the most competitive sales environment
• The winning mindset that removes the stress, uncertainty, and fear from income generation
• And so many other effective business growth strategies, your competition won't know what hit them

Business relationships are built one minute at a time. From introduction to closing, every 60 seconds you have an opportunity to strengthen your relationship or destroy it. Isn't it time you started leveraging your expertise, demonstrating your value, and building trust with your clients? When you do, they buy into who you are and how you can help them – right from the first minute.

The 60 Second Sale is a fail-proof system for succeeding in today's relationship-focused sales environment.

Chapter 1
It Was Never about the Pen

60 Second Summary

Sales has changed.

Once upon a time, you walked into an office and knocked on a door and offered something to potential buyers. If they said they wanted what you had to offer, you negotiated a price. Once they paid, you moved on to the next office or knocked on the next door.

Sales is no longer transactional. It's now about relationships. You can't even get to the door upon which to knock without a relationship. You can't get into the office without a relationship.

If you want to sell now, you must start by selling yourself and selling your interest in helping the prospective client succeed.

What's in This Chapter for You?

This chapter will help change your thinking about sales and selling. You will begin to focus on relationships not transactions. When you do, you'll be in the minority: people leading a relationship‐based business today. This gives you an advantage.

Imagine that.

Your competitive advantage is the way you look at the world of business and the way you approach each person with whom you come into contact.

In 60 seconds, you'll open doors, deepen relationships, and make more money because you think differently.

The key concept you will discover in this chapter is called external orientation. That means focusing on meeting the needs of the other person before asking them to take action on your behalf. Understand them and seek to help them achieve a goal or relieve some pain before you sell to them.

This type of thinking is the ultimate competitive advantage.

The Dumbest Sales Interview Question in History

“Can you sell me this pen?”

One of the dumbest things I've seen is a sales executive, in an interview, use this hackneyed question to determine if someone is qualified as a sales professional.

You see it in the movies. You see it on talk shows. It's used everyday in sales interviews. The idea behind the question is, if you can sell the pen to the person sitting across the desk, under pressure, you can sell anything to anyone.

The problem: Before you get to have a conversation about the pen, you need to know the answers to a whole host of other questions, like:

Why is this person buying pens?

Does the person's success in a pen purchase advance his or her career?

What can you do, beyond providing this pen, to advance that person's career? How can you help the pen buyer succeed?

So what do you do? What's the correct answer?

The correct answer is to say: “Mr. Buyer, I want to help you with more than just the pen. I'm in this for the long term. Take the pen and use it for as long as you'd like. Now tell me a little about what you do here and how your success is measured.”

You're not in the business of giving away things you'd normally be able to make money selling, but if forced into a situation that makes you choose between a transaction and a relationship, you should choose the relationship every time.

Selling a pen to someone on the spot is a transaction. Helping the guy who buys the pens grow his business and advance his career is developing a relationship.

Office Supplies by Referral Only

Can you imagine a waiting list to have lunch with an office supply salesperson? Well, it actually happened to a man named Ralph Liparulo. “Mr. Ralph,” as he was known, spent the last decade of his 56‐year career selling office supplies. He wasn't focused on selling pens. He was focused on helping people make money.

How can the guy who sells office supplies become the person who influences careers?

Mr. Ralph was in and out of offices all day long. While he stopped in an office, he talked with the business owner or manager about what they did, who their clients were, and the value they provided.

One day, he stopped by a customer's office and found it was flooded. The carpet was soaked. Mr. Ralph jumped on the phone and called a carpet cleaning company, who also happened to be his customer. The timing was excellent, and they had water extractors on the scene within the hour. Both the carpet company and the customer with the flood were thrilled.

This gave Mr. Ralph an idea. Each week, he began dedicating two hours to calling existing clients and referring them to each other. He'd schedule one breakfast and one lunch each week to introduce his customers to each other. He wouldn't sell any office products at these meetings. He'd simply introduce the two people and talk about what they did and the value they provided.

His clients viewed Mr. Ralph as someone who took a genuine interest in them and the growth of their business. He wasn't the guy selling pens. He was way more valuable than that.

Over time, Mr. Ralph was able to stop cold calling. He lived off the referrals these clients passed him. His weekly introduction meals became almost a daily routine. His clients not only rewarded him with more frequent orders, they also introduced him to their colleagues.

Office supplies were a commodity, but a relationship with Mr. Ralph was a unique opportunity to grow your business with every order of pens, copy paper, and legal pads. People would buy office supplies just to be introduced to Mr. Ralph's network.

External Orientation: Relationships, Not Transactions

What did Mr. Ralph discover that his competition, and almost every sales professional in the world, missed? He unlocked the awesome power of relationship‐based sales.

Everyone else in his industry was knocking on doors trying to sell pens. Mr. Ralph was trying to help people achieve their goals. He had what I call an external orientation. This means he placed the benefit of the other person ahead of his need to achieve his goal.

If you want to connect with people in 60 seconds, you have to show them you can help them achieve a goal or solve a problem.

Here are three guidelines to keep you focused:

1. For every conversation, 70% should be focused on the other person. Stop talking. People do not care about you until they believe you have their best interests in mind. This means you have to shut up and let them do the talking.
2. When people talk to you, they tell you their problems and their goals. People want help but they don't want to ask for help. Sometimes they are too embarrassed to ask. Sometimes their pride gets in the way of asking. But if you allow people to open up, they will tell you what they truly desire. That will give you the opportunity to help.
3. When you solve problems, you make money. Most sales professionals look for problems their product can solve. When that particular problem hits them in the face, they are great at matching the benefits of their product...