The Psychology of Selling

The strategies and techniques you will learn in this book are very much like a treadmill. There is no question about whether or not they work. They are used by all the highest-paid salespeople in every industry worldwide. They are tested and proven. The more you use these methods, the better you will get at them and the better and faster results you will achieve. By practicing what you learn in the pages ahead, you will move into the top 10 percent of sales professionals in your field and become one of the highest-paid people in the world.

Use What You Learn

Here is a great rule: “If you do what other successful people do, over and over again, nothing in the world can stop you from eventually getting the same results that they do. And if you don’t, nothing can help you.”

The simple idea that changed my life was the discovery of the “Law of Cause and Effect.” What this law says is that there is a cause for every effect, that everything happens for a reason. Success is not an accident. Failure is not an accident either. In fact, success is predictable. It leaves tracks.

Then I learned about books on selling. I had no idea that some of the best salespeople in the world had written some of the best ideas on selling in books. I began reading everything I could find on selling, spending the first two hours of every day studying and taking notes.

Next I learned about audio learning. It changed my life. I began to listen, hour after hour, to audio programs as I walked from office to office. I listened to them in the morning; I listened to them in the evening. I rehearsed and practiced the best sentences and phrases from the best salespeople until I could recite them in my sleep. And my sales went up and up.

Then I discovered sales seminars. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I had no idea how much you could learn from a sales seminar. I began to take every seminar and course I could find, even if I had to travel long distances, which I did, and which I could eventually afford to do. And my sales continued to increase.

instead of talking, I asked questions. Rather than trying to overwhelm the prospect with the features and benefits of my product, I focused on learning about the prospect’s situation and how I could best help him or her. With this new method, my sales went up.

Take Action Immediately

Instead of using a “speech” or clever one-liners to get attention or to overcome resistance, he asked a series of logical questions, from general to specific, that were ideally suited to a genuine prospect. At the end of this series of questions, it had become perfectly clear to the prospect that he could use and benefit from our product. The final question was simply to close the sale.

It turned out that he had worked for a Fortune 500 company when he was younger. That company had spent sixteen months training him intensively in the process of professional selling. With those skills he could then go to work for any company or industry and sell any product or service in virtually any market. Because he knew how to sell, he could sell circles around people like me, even though he was working half the time or less. This discovery changed my life.

He was selling five and ten times as much as me, or anyone else in our office, and he hardly seemed to be working at all.