When a law is universal, it means it works even you don’t believe in it. For example, it doesn’t matter what you think about the Law of Gravity, it exists. To overcome it, you have to work hard and long. And even if you’re successful at circumventing gravity, it’s only temporary. In the end, the Law wins. It’s the same with The Five Universal Laws of Selling in the Real World, It doesn’t matter what you think about them, whether you think they are silly or super, they still work. Each of these laws is currently in operation, creating an end product. A result. Your choice is this: Either let the laws work on their own and live with whatever they produce, or use the laws to create the result you want.
1. The Law of Singularity
Makes you like no other. Recognize your uniqueness and capitalize on it. Your journey creates the person you are. You will either become the singular person that life makes you or you will use life to become the singular person you choose to be.
The ways in which you become singular are limitless. Discover your core and work to improve it, make it stronger. Do more, read more, experience more, question what you think you know, and always be gathering knowledge. Know that you are a distinct, unique special individual.
Treat everyone with whom you deal as singular, too. They are not someone else. Just at the moment you think you have them all figured out, they do or say something that doesn’t fit with the model you’ve created for them. To recognize this singularity, you will have to listen to what they say and how they react to what you say. Don’t put words in their mouth. Don’t hear the first thing they say and assume you know what’s next and start talking as if that were so. Likely as not, it won’t be so. They will surprise you.
2. The Law of Applied Effort
Determines the specifics of the result you get. The more effort, the more result. The better the effort, the better the result. The more directed the effort, the more directed the result. What you get from what you do is determined solely by what you put into it.
So if you want to really win, if you want to become special, you have to learn to work – hard, smart, long, strong, constantly. Hard work is what generates that thing we tend to think of as luck: being in the right place at the right time, apparently by accident. Mostly, however, that kind of luck is no accident. It’s the result of hard work.
3. The Law of Learning and Knowledge
There is nothing more important than knowledge. Not just product knowledge, but also knowledge of yourself, knowledge of how the world around you works, knowledge of what people will tend to do and say in every situation in which you might find yourself in a selling scenario. In addition to personal skills, you will need knowledge about your business and your everyday life.
The more information you have, the better decisions you can make. Become a sponge. Read, watch, question, go to seminars, go on-line, ask questions, and read more. Gather everything you can. Gather resources that work for you: websites, magazines, blogs, seminar, books. Create networks and alliances. Make friends.
4. The Law of Expectations
Expect to get the sale every time you go in. The fact that you know you won’t doesn’t or shouldn’t diminish the power of expectation. As you work on becoming expectant, you will discover that more and more frequently you are successful. This is the Weight Lifter’s Law: That which you focus on gets stronger. If you expect to succeed, you will.
5. The Law of Sales Vision
The more specific our vision, the closer we can target our result. By not having a clear vision, we have an unclear idea of what our results will be and along with the rest of the world, we don’t know what they will be until they happen. Becoming singular requires clear vision. You must know who and what you wish to become. If you don’t know where you’re going, you cannot make the best decisions to get there. The key is not to focus on changes first but to focus on deciding who you want to become and make the changes necessary to become that person.
In addition to creating your vision of the future, you have to create a vision in the present. As you transform your interior, transform your exterior –your appearance, your speech and speaking patterns, your first impressions, your behavior in public. Remember, you are always on stage, always making a first impression. Make the vision people have of you congruent with the vision you have of yourself and of the future.
WHEN UNDERSTOOD, LEARNED AND APPLIED, The 5 Universal Laws of Sales will help you become the best salesperson possible – not only in today’s recessionary market, but also in a world of relative success and plenty. If you become a great salesperson today, imagine how good you’ll be when things normal out.
Sales is an art form. We encounter it everyday. Whether we are trying to convince our parents to provide a larger weekly allowance, or someone to be enamored with our attractive qualities, or even a high level sales executive to agree to a twenty-million dollar order, everyone is consciously or unconsciously selling something almost all the time. The better you are at selling, the better the results.
But what about sales as a career? Can those of us not born with the ‘gift of gab’ learn to sell with the best of them? If sales is an art form, can it also be a science? Are there strategies that will make you better at the craft of selling? Do you think an artist with natural abilities can learn to draw better or be more effective with his or her abilities? The answer to all these questions is, ‘of course.’
Successful Sales Person
Tom Hanks, in the role of the team manager in A Field of Their Own, has one of the most memorable and useful lines of any movie. He says, “If it were easy, anyone could do it.” That applies to baseball, sales, and actually any aspect of life. Sales is not easy. Not everyone can be a salesperson. Even fewer can be a successful sales person. And no one can be a successful sales professional without the willingness to work hard at all times.
Attitude
For some, the willingness to work hard is an inherent attitude—they were born with it. It is simply how they attack everything they do. For most of us, however, it is an attitude we choose to have. Much like we choose to have a positive attitude, we choose to work hard. At all times.
At all costs. Whether or not we feel like it. Without this behavior, it is not possible to be a successful sales person. If you do not choose to work hard at all times, do us both a favor: close this book, give it to someone who will work hard, and find something else to do with your life. Without the willingness to work hard, you will not be able to practice the Psychology of Selling, you will not be a salesperson, and you will not be successful. The choice is yours.
It is said that our thinking makes things either good or bad. That the reality of life is dependent solely on how we choose to see the things that make it up. This explains a very important fact of life: our mind and its thinking process are responsible for 90 percent of our success in life. Positive thinking, therefore, is essential for success in sales and for our quality of life. Our mind is the most powerful tool there is. By itself, it is responsible for each of us being content or sad, determined or indecisive, strong or weak, positive or negative. The way in which our mind works, therefore, determines the way in which we feel and the way in which we act.
Be aware that while many people intend to be successful in sales, only 20 percent are truly successful: those who produce 80 percent of their company’s sales revenues. Corporations such as General Electric (for whom I was once employed) had a philosophy that tried to eliminate the bottom twenty percent of their sales force every year and reload with newly hired sales people, introducing new hungry, blood into their sales organization.
The question is: Why do the top twenty percent succeed and the bottom twenty fail? While there may be contributing circumstances (such as being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I know this happens. First hand!), the following three areas are the prime contributors to one’s success or failure in sales:
Regardless of the changes in cultural expectations and realities, today’s requirements to be successful in sales are exactly the same as they’ve always been: listen to the client, hear what they are saying and use what’s been heard to create solutions to their problems for which they are willing to pay you. The difficulty for today’s sales person, then, is not in knowing what to do, the difficultly is in listening to the client. The difficulty is in knowing what to ask. The difficulty is in creating one of the most common of interpersonal events – a conversation.
We are always reluctant to give out information for which there has been no request. We realize that kind of talking on our part gives away our innermost thoughts, so we avoid it.
When the other person asks questions that elicit that same information, however, we are more than willing to tell them the same exact same thing we were reluctant to share unasked. Questions, then, become the prerequisite for conversation and conversation is the prerequisite for gathering information critical to the sales process.
If a salesperson cannot instill confidence, they cannot make a sale; they cannot create a customer. Without confidence, there is no success. To succeed, you must expect to succeed, every time, all the time. Rain or shine, good hair days or bad hair days. Confidence is that external feeling we have that can be felt by those around us. If we are not confident, they instinctively know. You can’t fake it.
Confidence is an automatic response to the problems and circumstances of life. That doesn’t mean it can’t be learned. In fact, true confidence can only be learned. Those who seem to be confident without having the support of knowledge and experience are either arrogant or ignorant. They will be able to get only as far as their customers let them.
From that experience, believe you will be able to overcome any problem and thus circumvent failure. Success, then, only comes from failure. When you have failed and learned to overcome and prevent that failure in the future, you will become confident. When you are confident, you will be successful.
If you want to be successful, get started immediately and don’t worry about failing. If you do fail, analyze your failure, develop systems and procedures to prevent or overcome those situations in the future, and confidently sell, sell, sell. Sometimes this process is called paying your dues. In addition to experiencing failure (the unintentional acquisition of knowledge), paying your dues includes the intentional acquisition of knowledge: learning your product, knowing your competition, knowing your customer, and searching for new business opportunities.
In our minds we cannot visualize ourselves winning. We are afraid we will not be successful. We say and/or believe things such as: “I’m not one of the chosen people. I can’t charm them, I don’t have a great personality, and I’m not even attractive enough. I’ll never enjoy the commissions, long lunches, working from home, having expensive clothes, cars, etc. I’m just ordinary Bob. Nothing goes right for me. I’ll never get this large sale. My competition is too great. Woe is me.”
This mentality will take you down faster than a large cement block attached to your ankle as you enter a body of water. Either play to win or don’t play at all. Never sabotage yourself with negative thoughts. Don’t be afraid of anything except of being afraid.
One of the most often ignored step in any process, and sales is no exception, is the review, or recap. While it might seem to be optional and nonessential, done correctly the review can generate more sales, revenue, efficiency, and effectiveness in the future. And review costs nothing but a little bit of your time. It’s my experience that this is time extremely well spent.
After the sales process is complete, after you have celebrated, after you have spent your money or invested it, take a few minutes to interview your sales team to determine what was successful and what worked when selling this client. Once you know all the things you want to do more of, talk about what didn’t work as well as you had hoped. These are things you want to do less of and/or modify before you do them again. The review process can uncover valuable information about selling future clients. Additionally, your organization can recognize what types of sales support works in assisting you with the sales process and what does not. Your company may, for example, determine that new skill development is necessary for the entire sales team. They may even want to change their processes and/or add new support personnel.
The competition has never been more difficult to defeat. Each of us has to be extremely prepared by knowing and fully communicating our strengths plus our competition’s shortfalls. Make sure you listen very carefully to your customer’s requirements.
Being proactive requires the creation of an action plan designed to reach and exceed your quota. Being successful requires that this action plan be put into place immediately, not the second week of your employment. You should place yourself on a performance plan from the get-go lest complacency sets in and company management places you on a plan of their own making. When that occurs, it’s never good news for you, usually meaning you only have a short time, normally between thirty and ninety days, to hit some hefty numbers or be given a pink slip. The real outcome of most performance plans is that you will have that short amount of time to find a new job. If you put yourself on a plan from day one you will have the professional pride of knowing that you will succeed.
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